Pastor's Note - October 22, 2006

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

       Welcome to St. Maria Goretti as we celebrate together the Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time!  If you are visiting us this weekend, it is great to have you with us.  This weekend we welcome home Fr. Dale and our pilgrims who traveled to Rome for last week’s canonization of St. Theodore Guerin.  I don’t know about you guys, but I can’t wait to hear the stories of what it was like to be at that Mass with Pope Benedict when he canonized our new Hoosier saint!  Welcome home, guys!

       This past week, I had the occasion to remember a specific conversation that I had in Rome over twenty years ago.  I had gone for a walk in the Villa Borgese, one of Rome’s largest and most beautiful parks, on a beautiful October afternoon, with an older priest friend that I had met when I was studying there.  While we were walking, my friend who was retired from active ministry, brought up the name of another mutual friend of ours, and asked me about him.  My immediate response was to say something that was very unkind about that person.  I didn’t think.  I’m not sure what got into me.  I had no excuse.  It was sarcastic.  It was cynical.  It was a put down.  My older friend just stopped in his tracks.  He asked me, “Why would you say that?”  Then he said, “If you truly love God, then you would never say something like that about a friend.”  I felt terrible.  I was embarrassed.  My friend could have stuck a knife in my gut and I wouldn’t have felt any worse.  I learned my lesson.  Since then, I have had tens of thousands of other opportunities to say stupid things and make a jerk out of myself.  But since that conversation in the park in Rome, I try a lot harder now.  Sometimes, I still slip up occasionally.  But for the most part, when I’m tempted to say something mean out loud about a brother or sister, I still hear the words of that old priest: “If you truly love God, why would I say something like that about a friend?”  There is no reason.  Not even if it’s true. 

        Sometimes, as followers of Jesus, we just need to keep our mouths closed and not say a thing.  Our kindergarten teachers were right when they advised us that if we didn’t have anything nice to say about a person, then we should just not say anything.  Sometimes our tongues can be our most lethal weapons.  Isn’t it time that all of us got better at what we say about others?  What if we spent as much time making positive comments about our brothers and sisters, as we do making the negative ones?  We have so much power to build up and support one another in the Christian life!  We can change a soul!   But we also have a terrible ability to do so much damage.

        In the Book of Sirach, we read…

                                   “He who gloats over evil will meet with evil, and he who repeats an evil

                                    report has no sense.  Never repeat gossip, and you will not be reviled.

                                    Tell nothing to friend or foe;  if you have a fault, reveal it not, for he who

                                    hears it will hold it against you, and in time become your enemy.   Let

                                    anything you hear die within you; be assured it will not make you burst.

                                    When a fool hears something, he is in labor, like a woman giving birth

                                    to a child.   Like an arrow lodged in a man’s thigh is gossip in the breast

                                    of a fool.   Admonish your friend – he may not have done it; and if he

                                    did, that he may not do it again.  Admonish your neighbor – he may not

                                     have said it;  and if he did, that he may not say it again.   Admonish your

                                     friend – often it may be slander; every story you must not believe.  Then

                                    too, a man slip and not mean it; who has not sinned with his tongue ?”

                                                                                                                                        (Sirach 19: 5-15)

           Think about it?  Do you build others up with your words?  Or do you tear down and do injury to your brothers and sisters?  We can all better!

            The “As A Family…We Build God’s Kingdom” Campaign is going well, except we still have a large number of families who haven’t filled out their cards yet.  PLEASE fill out YOUR card today.  Even if you are not making a pledge, we still need your card filled out.  All of us can do something.  Stop by today and fill out your card!

In Christ,

Fr. Kevin

                                                 Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day.

                                Teach a man to fish and he will sit in a boat all day drinking beer.