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 Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
This is another big weekend here at St. Maria Goretti! There’s
lots going on and so many things to be grateful for this week.
Let’s get right into it.
First of all, congratulations to the men of Christ Renews His
Parish Teams #12 & #13 on an absolutely awesome Christ Renews
His Parish Weekend last weekend. The whole Parish continues to
feel the reverberations of what you guys did last weekend.
Special thanks to Mighty Team 12 for putting on a great weekend
and for doing the necessary work to fill up Team 13. We are all
looking forward to your Night of Discipleship tonight at 7:00 PM
in the Pope John Paul II room. It’s the ladies turn next
weekend. Let’s all keep the women of Teams #12 & #13 in our
prayers so that they too have a great weekend.
This is the first of our Commitment Weekends for our new “As A
Family… We Build God’s Kingdom” Campaign. Again, we remind
EVERYBODY that we need YOU to stop by the tables in the church
narthex after Mass today to fill-out your pledge card. I’d like
to thank Bill and Marilyn Sultan for their witness on
stewardship that we heard at Mass today. Bill and Marilyn were
so right when they talked about this being an act of Faith. We
don’t know many things about the next two years. Certainly,
nobody can predict exactly what the economy is going to be like
in the next two years. What we do know is that we are called by
God to give back to Him our tithe. And as we hear over and over
again in the Sacred Scriptures, we know that if we trust Him,
even in our giving, He will always take care of us. So this is
our chance to do our part to help out. Everybody can do
something. We can’t all do the same thing, but everybody can do
something. This church and parish belongs to ALL OF US! Then
ALL of us need to seriously consider what we can do in the next
two years. Think of what you can do in the next year, and then
double it for the two years of this Campaign. The Parish
recommends that we give 1% to 3% of our gross annual income, as
part of our tithe, to the Capital Campaign. If even most of us
did this, then our debt would be gone. Our tithe reminds us
that what we have is from God and all belongs to God. We should
never begrudge God His measly ten-percent that the Biblical
tithe calls for. It is truly nothing compared to all that God
has done for us.
So there will be many friendly faces waiting for you in the
Narthex after Mass. Please take the time to fill-out your
card. Each family is supposed to fill-out their card. We are
accountable to the Diocese for each card that they send us for
each family. Some response must be given. I ask your help and
commitment to not make us “chase” you down. It takes dozen of
volunteers to run a campaign like this in a parish of our size.
Our volunteers, under the extraordinary leadership of Chuck and
Carolyn Bullard and Dave and Theresa Miller, have already worked
so very hard on this campaign. I beg each of you to not make
their work any harder by making them keep contacting you to get
your pledge. We can be more responsible than that. We know
what we need to do. We know our responsibility. Let’s get this
job done and do our best to keep St. Maria Goretti strong. We
have so many things dependent on this campaign. We can do this
together!
On Wednesday, Fr. Dale and a large group from the high school
will leave for Italy for the canonization of Blessed Theodore
Guerin. Let us keep all of these pilgrims, including our Bishop
and his group also, in our prayers this week. Next Sunday, will
be a very important day for the Catholic Church in Indiana. My
understanding is that at least one of the local TV stations will
have live broadcasts from the Vatican next Sunday morning. This
is going to be great to watch.
Also this week, Fr. Joshua is away on retreat. Because
we will be missing a couple priests, we will not have our new,
regular Tuesday evening 5:30 PM Mass or the 8:00 AM Wednesday
morning Mass. Nor will there be Confessions on Wednesday
evening this week. Sorry for any inconvenience that this may
cause.
Today at the 10:00 AM Mass we also welcome St. Maria Goretti’s
largest RCIA class ever as they begin their walks as Catechumens
and Candidates in our Church. This is going to be a really
great year to join the Church! Congratulations to everyone as
you begin your formation!
In Christ,
Fr. Kevin
It is said that if you line up all the cars in the
world end to end, someone would be stupid enough to try and pass
them
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