Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

What a great Italian Festival last weekend! Thanks to everyone who was involved: to all those who helped out and to all those who attended the event. The Festival is a great way for us to reach out to all of our non-parishioner neighbors, both Catholic and non-Catholic. I met so many people last Saturday who had never been to St. Maria Goretti before, and who never would have come here, if it weren’t for the Festival. What a great way to introduce ourselves. Start out with breadsticks and tiramisu, and then bring them to Jesus! Good job to everyone! Mark your calendars now for Italian Festival 2006, which will take place on Saturday, July 8 th, 2006.

I have been noticing more and more in the media, how much emphasis is being placed on ourselves. If you read the articles and the ads, and you pay attention to the advertising on the TV and the radio, you will notice time and time again how much we are being encouraged to be selfish. They, the great “THEY” from Madison Ave. or somewhere, desperately want us to think only about ourselves. We are to take care of ourselves. We are to pamper ourselves. We are to improve ourselves. The media and big business are pushing us more and more in this direction, because it serves THEIR purposes. They make more money if we see ourselves more and more as selfish individuals. And my fear is, that their efforts are paying off quite handsomely. We live in a very selfish world. You have to take care of “Numero Uno” because if you don’t, nobody else will. I find this to be the antithesis of Jesus and the Christian life, which calls us together and makes us responsible for our brothers and sisters in this world. Is it any wonder, then, that marriages, and families, and even friendships have fallen on such hard times, when everything that we are bombarded with every day is telling us to be selfish? Selfishness is the opposite extreme of the Christian life, of marriage, of being a family, and even of being a friend. We were not created to be selfish. We were created by God to be communal, to live together as a family of mankind. Selfishness destroys this. You can’t love your brothers or sisters, as Jesus commands us to do, if you are selfish. Turning inward, instead of turning outward towards others, is a mark of immaturity. And there is nothing that big business and the media would like better, than for us to be immature.

I don’t think that we realize how much our selfishness affects us. We can get so wrapped up in taking care of our own needs and wants, that we fail to see anybody or anything else around us. This attitude is killing marriages. There are husbands and wives that don’t even think about their spouse any more. This is the same basic problem that is tearing parents apart from their sons and daughters. And how many friendships have we had that have ended, because somebody couldn’t get out of themselves? Our selfishness is killing us and our relationships. And quite possibly, our selfishness is going to get us sent straight to hell.

So what do we do about this? We fight our selfishness and our selfish desires as much as we can every day. We strive daily to get out of ourselves and to care more for others than we do for ourselves. We honestly admit and acknowledge the lies of media for what they are, and we quit buying into their way of thinking. Does any of us really believe that if we only wear a certain kind of shoe or drive a certain kind of car, then that will be just what we need to make us happy? Of course not! We get the things that we want, and then we feel even more isolated and lonely. Things will never replace people. And nothing will ever replace God. We must fight daily NOT to be selfish. This isn’t easy. The TV, the computer, video games, I-Pods, and all of these things make it very easy and very attractive to be only concerned with ourselves. We can spend a lot of time every day without ANY real human contact. This isn’t good. And at this time, I won’t even go into what this does to our “contact” with God.

When we get to Purgatory, IF we get to Purgatory, the one thing that we are most going to need to be cleansed of before we can enter Heaven has got to be our selfishness. There can be NO selfishness in Heaven. Why not save yourself time in Purgatory later, and start working now on getting rid of all selfishness in your life? We would all be happier, if we were less selfish. May Jesus show us how to truly live for God and for others every day!

In Christ,
Fr. Kevin

I want to die peacefully in my sleep just like my grandfather did.
Not screaming and yelling like the passengers in his car.