When times get tough, we are called to take action

This weekend our parish is promoting hard for a contest on ESPN: Infiniti Coaches' Charity Challenge. Purdue's own Coach Painter represents the Smith Family BReaK Thru Fund. The big letters in BREAK stand for: Braden, Riley and Keaton who along with their older sister and parents are resident parishioners at St. Tom's. Braden passed from Niemann-Pick Disease Type C (NPC) in 2006 at the age of 10. His sister Riley passed this morning, at the age of 15.

The plan all along was to promote this weekend as to the winner goes $100,000 to the charity backed by the winning Coach. It just so happens that some of the best research in the world for NPC is happening right across the street from our parish at Purdue. Saturday Vigil brought excitement as Fr. Patrick Baikauskas, O.P. encouraged us to vote often and show support for our parishioners, not just to beat out the Ohio State coach who beat us the last time around. But this morning brought a different atmosphere, while announcing to vote using this image Fr. Patrick encouraged us to come together as a community to show our support even more now than ever for the Smith Family.

I don't know how many will read this, but please, stop and take some time to do this. It takes about 30 seconds to sign up, and about 3 seconds to vote.