Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

The State Fair is over. School is back in session. All of our programs from RCIA to PRE, from TRUTH and HOPE to the St. Philip Neri Oratorio, are gearing up for another great year. These are great days. There’s a lot of excitement in the air around St. Maria Goretti. There are lots of opportunities for learning, for growing, for serving, and for building Church. I love this time of year! There’s so much potential!

I wanted to write this week about something that I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and praying about all summer long. I’ve been concerned about our very human tendency to do as little as possible. We have become a culture and a society of minimalists. Perhaps all of our modern conveniences have made life so easy, that now the very first thing we ask, is “What is the minimum that I need to do to get by?” We do this in so many different areas of our lives. We see it in education, we see it in health and fitness, and we see it when it comes to morality and spirituality. There is a very real tendency today to want to know what the bare minimum requirement is, and then to shoot for the minimum as the goal. Then we pat ourselves on the back and move on to the next thing that we do the minimum for in our lives. And what I fear is, that as we shoot more and more for the minimum, we “dummy-down” our expectations and our potentials. In not long at all, the minimum becomes the standard, and then it’s a short jump to consistently lowering the minimum. And then we wonder why we aren’t our best? Our country did NOT achieve the great things that it has accomplished in its history by shooting for the minimum. Greatness, in our history and in the history of the world, has always been achieved by those who pushed way beyond the minimum expectations. This is also true of the history of our Church. The Apostles didn’t build a Church that has lasted two thousand years by doing the minimum. The holy martyrs of our Faith didn’t shed their blood to meet the minimum requirement. The great saints of the Church didn’t get to be saints by just doing what they had to, to get by. Our Faith demands our all. It demands our best. We should want to give our maximum effort to God.

Guys, we get one life. We will not pass this way again. One day, God is going to have some real serious questions for all of us, about what we did with this life. I just hope and pray that when that day comes, that all of us will be able to say that we did our absolute best, and not just that we met the minimum requirements. This is especially true of getting ready and prepared for the Sacraments. We can never be too ready for any of the Sacraments. The Church says that the more prepared we are to receive the Sacraments, the more then we are going to get out of them and the more meaning they are going to have in our life. We’ve all got to be willing to invest more in our Faith. We should want the maximum, not the bare minimum. God is offering us so much more than what most realize. If we keep aiming for the minimum, some people will never realize all that God has to offer.

I mention all of this to you this week because P.R.E., the youth groups, Adult Bible Study, RCIA, Christ Renews His Parish, the St. Philip Neri Oratorio, and many other things are getting ready to start or have just recently begun their new schedule. I can probably name many of the same individuals who are going to be involved in these awesome activities again this year. And that’s great! I am so grateful for all of those people who are the “salt” of St. Maria Goretti and who keep these wonderful programs going each year. These people seek more than just coming to Mass once a week from their Faith. But what is it going to take for some of the rest of us to get involved? What would it take for you and me to do more this year? What would it take to seek God in new and greater ways? We need to keep pushing ourselves. We need to challenge ourselves. The minimum is no longer enough. How can we be better Catholic Christians? How can we be better as a Church? And before we all start our laundry lists of things that the Church can do for us, to be better, let’s ask first what we can do ourselves to make our Church better.

Minimalism scares me. It is a sure fire way to become complacent. If we as Church expect little, little is exactly what we’re going to get. If we expect great things from God and from one another, then we are going to get great things from God and one another. Don’t water down or dummy-down our Faith. It’s far too precious for that! Let’s give it all that we can this year. And then let’s see what happens!

In Christ,
Fr. Kevin\

Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll eventually get run over if you just sit there.