March 30, 2025
Dear St. Rita Families,
This week’s email newsletter includes the official flyer for our St. Rita Day Festival on Saturday, May 24, which as always promises to be a fantastic event! You’ll see that we’ve changed the format for this year in the hopes of providing a space for parents and adults of the parish to be together and celebrate St. Rita, the saint and the parish. The festival will be evening of dinner and dancing just for adults, which will help differentiate it from our Fall Festival and will also give us a chance to have a parish event that doesn’t require as much organizing from all sides. The vast majority of the event will be staffed and catered by folks from outside the parish. It is my hope that an inexpensive evening for parents to be with each other will also help to serve the whole family by strengthening the marriage bond which is so necessary for healthy family life.
While we are on the topic of marriage and family, I would like to mention the great success of our Fierce Fatherhood Conference Saturday morning! Three fantastic speakers – Trevor Williams (Nats Pitcher), Deacon Marques Silva, and Art Bennett – gave some profound guidance to about 70 men in the school hall, some dads and some dad-hopefuls. The family is the building block of society, and if we don’t do it well, we are missing our main mission. When God calls men and women to marriage, He is calling them precisely away from a careerist outlook. Career is necessary, but it is for the sake of the family. Nothing, including the great social movements that many of you are involved in, is more important than God and your family. The souls in your family are given to you (and no one else!) to care for, and we cannot relinquish that responsibility.
Even the parish itself (and the institutional part of the Church) doesn’t exist for its own sake. It exists to enable you to journey to God. The Body of Christ isn’t made with stones. Or, rather, it is made with “living stones” (1 Pt 2:5) – you and me! I encourage you, then, to ponder deeply and to consider seriously the kind of example you offer as parents. Likewise, I encourage you to be very intentional in the way that you raise your children. Finally, I encourage you as parents to continue to seek your own freedom in Christ. In this way you will be able to share your experience of Christ better with your family.
Many people complain about the modern world, and there are many activists who want to “do something about it” and “make the world a better place.” I am convinced that the only way to make the world a better place is for souls to be converted to Christ. Only He is Love Incarnate, and only He can fill us with peace. Conversion begins with you and me, every single day. Our words and actions either help it or hurt it for others. Everything we are involved in should be geared towards preparing a space for Christ to enter hearts. You and I have a role to play, then, and nothing we can give to anyone else even begins to compare with the gift that is Jesus Christ.
To that end, have you spoken to someone about Christ recently? Have you invited them to Mass? Have you suggested that He could be the solution to their struggles? Have you encouraged them in His Name to persevere? Have you reminded them of His presence in their suffering? All of these are little ways, expressed in charity, that can open doors for our family and friends! Notice that none of this is using dogma as a sledgehammer, but is rather rooted in the friendship and good relationship you already have. Even in moments when you do have to defend the Church and be clear about doctrine and about what you believe, you do so knowing that your witness makes an impression on those who hear. They see the clarity of Truth in the doctrine, and they are invited to recognize and accept that Truth even though it may be difficult for them. This, too, is preaching the Gospel well.
Let your desire for goodness, then, be rooted first in Christ. Then, let it spread to your family, and from there to your neighbors and to the rest of world. Only in this way will others come to know the Salvation of Jesus Christ!
In Christ,
Fr. Christensen