This will be a short letter because I am away on vacation this week. You are all in my prayers. I have been talking about prayer for the last several months following a set of talks by Pope Benedict XVI. This was not done on accident but with a purpose for St. Lucy Parish. The last few weeks at each Mass we have sent a family home with a cross and prayer binder for our ministry “Creating a Culture of Vocations” in focussing on family and God’s call to our proper vocation in life.
Prayer and especially prayer as a family is a powerful and fruitful weapon binding the family together and helping all members to resist the temptations that surround us in our daily life. In the coming weeks we will continue to invite all families in the parish to a deeper and greater ministry of prayer within the family. Prayer in the family is a ministry because it is the work of bringing people closer to God and into a more intimate relationship with all members of the family. It’s not as if prayer will solve each and every problem, but it does help in opening our hearts to the moment of conversion that allows the power of the Holy Spirit to transform our lives.
Venerable Patrick Peyton who popularized the phrase, “a family that prays together stays together” in his promotion of praying the Holy Rosary but there was a second phrase that is just as important where Fr. Patrick Peyton repeated again and again, “a world at prayer is a world at peace.” Both of these powerful phrases have deep meaning for us and we should pay attention.
We know how the example of the parents have deep and lasting influences on children. Children from the very beginning watch and learn how to be “people” by watching those who are in their lives, especially their parents as they grow. When children see dad and mom taking time in prayer together, using words of blessing towards each other and how they prioritize God in their lives they will be more likely to have a greater relationship with God and not leave the faith and religious practice behind. In my own experience, my family’s practice of prayer before meals, praying the rosary often as a family and Sunday Mass were foundational in my faith experience and certainly my parents practice of the faith lived daily was always an inspiration. It is also important to remember that we are not called to do all these things perfectly but rather with devotion towards God that shows that even in failing we still strive for goodness.
The second phrase of Fr. Peyton is even more important in the world today with so much breakdown in societal structures, acts of violence, drug use and human debasement that occur daily. A world where the many conflicts of war, persecution and government violence against its own citizenry has become so common we don’t even seem notice it any longer. As have written over and over again, when we unite ourself to God in prayer there will be fruitfulness because we change and are made greater and through this we then encourage the same change in our spouse, children, parents, neighbors and all whom we meet.
In a few weeks we will be asking all families in the parish to begin to go deeper in prayer for our children and for everyone when we journey with “A Parent Who Prays” written by Katie Warner. .
God Bless
Fr. Mark

This weekend, with Labor Day being celebrated, we traditionally end summer and begin our journey towards winter with the fall months upon us. It is a time where we wrap up the last things of summer and look back to see if we have “accomplished” all we wished to do during this time a slowing down, vacationing and warm weather. One of the traditional practices of summer was to read a book, especially for vacation. I remember hearing and reading about what are the best summer reads, those books for the days at the beach or just lazing around the pool. Normally these books weren’t heavy reading but were rather light or exciting and certainly the description of “it’s a page turner” was important.
As we have been covering Pope Benedict’s Wednesday Audiences from the May to August of 2011where he has been discussing prayer, today we look at the final talks where, as he is on vacation at Castel Gandolfo, we see the fruits of the journey of prayer. Pope Benedict tells us “I would therefore like to make a suggestion: why not discover some of the books of the Bible which are not commonly well known? Or those from which we heard certain passages in the liturgy but which we never read in their entirety?” (from General Audience, 3 August 2011)
Two quick examples…When I was a sixth grade teacher our religion curriculum call for us to study the Old Testament because as we study ancient civilizations in Social Studies this was a wonderful way to support this academic learning. During the course of my teaching I discovered the Book of Tobit. I had heard of the book and had read some short snippets or heard them in Mass from time to time but never the whole book. And much to the joy of my sixth grade students, especially the boys, the story of bird droppings falling into Tobit’s eyes that blinded him and leads to the rest of the story of depending upon God was a great hit. (Tobit 2:9-14) Taking time with the students to not just read the famous parts but also the whole book gave each of us a greater appreciation for the story of God’s goodness and love.
Secondly, a few years ago on my yearly priest retreat the retreat master suggested we read the Gospel of Mark from beginning to end as a form of prayer meditation, It had been years since I looked at the Gospel as one complete word proclaimed by Jesus to us. The connections missed in hearing only the snippets at Mass and the readings done out of sequence began to be filled in as I slowly read and then reread the Gospel several times.
Whether it is a book of the Bible that we are unfamiliar with like the Book of Tobit or another we have heard many times, such as The Gospel of Mark, the fruitfulness of this adventure will be bountiful as we pray with the word of God.
Try not to over analyze as you read and pray Sacred Scripture. There is a time and place for that but in reading and praying truly allow the breath of the Holy Spirit to fill your hearts and minds. You may also want to read the book of the Bible aloud as a family, sharing the good news together that can prompt discussions. Most of the books are short and easy to read in one sitting, for those longer books, set a timer and when it buzzes finish the part where you are at and then pick it up again the next time and continue.
Lastly, if you are interested in the commentary and explanations of Sacred Scripture simply buy a Catholic Study Bible which will give those nuggets of information that often help us to understand the fullness of God’s message to his people.
May you all be blessed with a peaceful and holy Labor Day weekend.
God bless
Fr. Mark.

“Indeed the Psalms teach how to pray. In them, the word of God becomes a word of prayer — and they are the words of the inspired Psalmist — which also becomes the word of the person who prays the Psalms.” (from General Audience, 22 June 2011, Pope Benedict XVI)

Nineteen years ago I walked through the doors of St. Patrick Seminary to begin my formation to the priesthood. One of the items we were asked to bring with us was the “Liturgy of the Hours” which is also known sometimes as “The Psalter” and as a book is called the Breviary. It was a daunting set of four books with ribbons and numbered weeks, with saint days and special prayers and the instructions were a bizarre set of words that left me ever confused as I looked at them.
The joy of the Liturgy of the Hours over the past nineteen years as I have learned (and continue to learn) the rhythm and the words of the Psalms is that, as Pope Benedict points out in the above quote, to pray in the Word of God and with the Word of God in these inspired prayers.
The Liturgy of the Hours is also called the “prayer of the Church” and while all priests, deacons and consecrated religious women and men are obligated to pray the hours daily the Catholic Church also invites all members to join in this wonderful and beautiful prayer.
“Since they are a word of God, anyone who prays the Psalms speaks to God using the very words that God has given to us, addresses him with the words that he himself has given us. So it is that in praying the Psalms we learn to pray. They are a school of prayer.”(Benedict XVI) Learning to speak the words God has given us is like all learning we do in family, school and life. At times the task at hand may seem boring and fruitless and at other times difficult and almost impossible but we discover the fruits and the possibilities in the learning repetition where our mind and body conform themselves to the thoughts and actions shared.
This is why prayer is always fruitful in the end…it forms us into the image of God and we then begin not simply to parrot the words spoken but become living witnesses very Word of God, Jesus Christ, is the center of our actions, our thoughts and our dreams in life. Prayer is the point where we speak and act in the way of God. We are able to do this because we begin to experience the true presence of God in all aspects of our lives. God, Our Father, isn’t a distant and alien presence rather he is intimately present in all moments of our lives and especially through the gift of Jesus Christ. In the Book of Psalms, which makes up the majority of the Liturgy of the Hours, we enter into the conversations of life that animate our relationship with God. As Pope Benedict notes, “In the Psalms are expressed and interwoven with joy and suffering, the longing for God and the perception of our own unworthiness, happiness and the feeling of abandonment, trust in God and sorrowful loneliness, fullness of life and fear of death. The whole reality of the believer converges in these prayers. (Pope Benedict XVI)
This is the ultimate fruitfulness of prayer—not that we somehow change God’s mind or bribe him into an action—it is how prayer conforms us to God in serving and caring for one another. The vow to pray the Liturgy of the Hours is a vow to allow our lives to be molded to the life of Jesus Christ. It is what obedience to prayer finally does—it makes us anew.
God Bless
Fr. Mark

“By teaching us to pray, the Psalms teach us that even in desolation, even in sorrow, God’s presence endures, it is a source of wonder and of solace; we can weep, implore, intercede and complain, but in the awareness that we are walking toward the light, where praise can be definitive.” (Pope Benedict XVI)

“Christians, therefore, in praying the Psalms pray to the Father in Christ and with Christ, assuming those hymns in a new perspective which has in the paschal mystery the ultimate key to its interpretation. The horizon of the person praying thus opens to unexpected realities, every Psalm acquires a new light in Christ and the Psalter can shine out in its full infinite richness.” (Pope Benedict XVI)

“Worship of an idol, instead of opening the human heart to Otherness, to a liberating relationship that permits the person to emerge from the narrow space of his own selfishness to enter the dimensions of love and of reciprocal giving, shuts the person into the exclusive and desperate circle of self-seeking. And the deception is such that in worshipping an idol people find themselves forced to extreme actions, in the vain attempt to subject it to their own will. For this reason the prophets of Baal went so far as to hurt themselves, to wound their bodies, in a dramatically ironic action: in order to get an answer, a sign of life out of their god, they covered themselves with blood, symbolically covering themselves with death.” (Pope Benedict XVI from General Audience, 15 June 2011)

As we continue to talk about the importance of prayer through the eyes of Pope Benedict XVI, he presents to us the Prophet Elijah and his confrontation with the prophets of Baal and what this confrontation teaches us about faith and the blessing of religious practices as a necessary part of the ongoing conversation of the individual and of society at large. The Prophet Elijah in a prayer of supplication seeks a union with God that will help him lead others into the blessing of a relationship with Divine love.
As we continue to struggle to comprehend the continued aftermath of the tragedies of violence and how we are to respond in prayerful action, our invitation to seek God’s peace and justice is the antidote to the quick fixes which very seldom lead to the full unity of the Body of Christ.
“In spite of claiming to follow the Lord, an invisible and mysterious God, the people were also seeking security in a comprehensible and predictable god from whom they believed they could obtain fruitfulness and prosperity in exchange for sacrifices. Israel was capitulating to the seduction of idolatry, the continuous temptation of believers, deluding itself that it could “serve two masters” (cf. Mt 6:24; Lk 16:13) and facilitate the impracticable routes of faith in the Almighty even by putting its faith in a powerless god, fashioned by men.” (Benedict XVI) Like the people of Israel we, as followers of Jesus Christ, can be seduced into desiring a God who acts according to our whims and is easily controlled by the bribes of promised actions if only the right results come from the giant vending machine we have deposited our coin of prayer into. This quickly falls apart because God in our desire to make him in our image quickly becomes dispensable as we move to the next “god” who will satisfy our next desire.
In this we know the ‘gods’ we begin to create are unable to unify because each of us will have a different ideal of who our god should be and we must then destroy all other gods which means we must destroy those who hold up their gods that contradict our personal god. It is the evil of separation and isolation from community that we see too often in our modern society.
Pope Benedict reminds us of the need for the ideal and absolute that is outside our small and limited social constructs that constrict the true freedoms of actions and love. “The believer must respond to the Absolute of God with an absolute, total love that binds his whole life, his strength, his heart. And it was for the very heart of his people that the prophet, with his prayers, was imploring conversion: “that this people may know that you, O Lord, are God, and that you have turned their hearts back” (1 Kings 18:37). Elijah, with his intercession, asked of God what God himself wanted to do, to show himself in all his mercy, faithful to his reality as the Lord of life who forgives, converts and transforms.” (Benedict XVI)
Becoming a true “intercessor” as I wrote about last week, is to enter into a deep, full and prayer-filled relationship with God. It is not a sleepy inactive relationship but rather one of vibrant and full actions…but actions with the purpose of love and unity in God. Pope Benedict reiterates the three basic goods of prayer and why it becomes not just necessary but vital to our relationships with God and all people we meet. It is to seek the one true God to know and to worship him, to discover the conversion of heart that brings us into true and fruitful relationship with God and others and finally to see in the embrace of the cross of Jesus Christ is to embrace the peace and to embrace all in this gift of healing, reconciliation and mercy.
Let us continue to pray for healing, peace and reconciliation as we go forth and do the work in the image and love of Jesus Christ.
God Bless
Fr. Mark

Israel could no longer have doubts; divine mercy came to meet its weakness, its doubts, its lack of faith. Now Baal, a vain idol, was vanquished, and the people which had seemed to be lost, rediscovered the path of truth and rediscovered itself. (Pope Benedict XVI)

Once the work of salvation has been begun it must be brought to completion; were God to let his people perish, this might be interpreted as a sign of God’s inability to bring the project of salvation to completion. God cannot allow this: he is the good Lord who saves, the guarantor of life, he is the God of mercy and forgiveness, of deliverance from sin that kills.(from the General Audience, Pope Benedict XVI, 1 June 2011)

These past few weeks with the acts of violence and death that have permeated the news headlines we once more heard the refrain, “We need more than prayers and good thoughts.” to help solve the numerous acts of violence. And as I wrote earlier and as I will write today this is very true: we do need more than “just” prayers and good thoughts but…if we do not ground our actions in our relationship with God then the human will with it’s brokenness and fallen state will only produce more violence, hatred and evil in trying to solve the newest epidemic of sin.
As we continue to look at Pope Benedict XVI talks on prayer we come to the his reflection on intercessory prayer in using the example of Moses as a man of prayer. He notes that throughout the story of Moses we hear certain phrases over and over again: “Moses asked the Lord…he interceded for the people…he prayed…he addressed the Lord….he saw and spoke “to him face to face, as a man speaks to a friend.” (Pope Benedict XVI) What we come to see and understand is that in his prayer Moses was active with God and his people. He didn’t sit back and just wait but rather he interceded for them actively and forcefully but always after he prayerfully listened and spoke with God.
Prayer is the active listening of emptying our hearts of the rancor and division to seek the unity of God. One of the traditional ways, we as Catholics, empty our hearts is in fasting (yes, fasting is not just for Lent on Fridays). “By fasting Moses showed that he was awaiting the gift of the divine Law as a source of life: this Law reveals God’s will and nourishes the human heart, bringing men and women to enter into a covenant with the Most High, who is the source of life, who is life itself.” (Benedict XVI) We often want to jump into the “doing of something” in the immediate aftermath of some act of sin to “fix the problem” but as we hear Moses awaited the gift of Divine guidance trusting in God’s will in the life of the community, not tolerating the sin, but rather seeking a way of unity…even unity with those who most egregiously sinned against the community and drew many into the same act of sin.
Moses in prayer, as our example, reminds us of our need to seek the divine mystery in our lives and in the life of the community because there can be, “This is a constant temptation on the journey of faith: to avoid the divine mystery by constructing a comprehensible god who corresponds with one’s own plans, one’s own projects.”(Benedict XVI) As a Catholic Church we are called to stand up against hatred, bigotry and violence but also seeking healing, reconciliation and sanctity in our interactions with all people. We are not a faith seeking to “cancel people” because of sin, we are a faith seeking to renew people in the face of mercy, the mercy which the only source can be Jesus Christ. The active prayer of intercession is anchored to mercy, “The prayer of intercession is permeated by love of the brethren and love of God, they are inseparable. Moses, the intercessor, is the man torn between two loves that overlap in prayer in a single desire for good…(where he, like us)…wanting what God wanted, the intercessor entered more and more deeply into knowledge of the Lord and of his mercy, and became capable of a love that extended even to the total gift of himself. With prayer, wanting what God wanted, the intercessor entered more and more deeply into knowledge of the Lord and of his mercy, and became capable of a love that extended even to the total gift of himself.” (Pope Benedict XVI) We must become this intercessor.
The only way we will truly find healing and holiness is when we ground each and every action in Jesus Christ and allow his love, his mercy, his forgiveness to be the first actions in our lives. It is not the easy what of knee-jerk reaction seeking to amputate the other from our community but rather the long path of healing, often more painful but ultimately restores the wholeness to the Body of Christ. Let us therefore begin with our intercessory prayer for peace and healing and go out as true disciples seeking to be sisters and brothers, true intercessors, to all we encounter on our mission of life.
God bless
Fr. Mark

This is God’s salvation which involves mercy, but at the same time also the denunciation of the truth of the sin, of the evil that exists, so that the sinner, having recognized and rejected his sin, may let God forgive and transform him. In this way prayers of intercession make active in the corrupt reality of sinful man divine mercy which finds a voice in the entreaty of the person praying and is made present through him wherever there is a need for salvation. (Pope Benedict XVI)

I think we should meditate upon this reality. Christ stands before God and is praying for me. His prayer on the Cross is contemporary with all human beings, contemporary with me. He prays for me, he suffered and suffers for me, he identified himself with me, taking our body and the human soul. And he asks us to enter this identity of his, making ourselves one body, one spirit with him because from the summit of the Cross he brought not new laws, tablets of stone, but himself, his Body and his Blood, as the New Covenant. (Pope Benedict XVI)

“Dear brothers and sisters, our entire lives are like this long night of struggle and prayer, spent in desiring and asking for God’s blessing, which cannot be grabbed or won through our own strength but must be received with humility from him as a gratuitous gift that ultimately allows us to recognize the Lord’s face. And when this happens, our entire reality changes; we receive a new name and God’s blessing.” (Pope Benedict XVI, from the General Audience, 25 May 2011)

For my part, I would rather prayer not be a long night of struggle as Pope Benedict suggested in his General Audience several years ago. I have been rereading these talks this past month as I renew my commitment to prayer and take time on reflecting on how prayer informs my life and the life of all Christians. Pope Benedict takes the life of Jacob and more importantly the days of travel and struggle as he returns with his family to his home from which he fled after deceiving his father Isaac to receive the blessing of inheritance. Pope Benedict reminds us that in this night of struggle where Jacob the
“Patriarch reveals his true identity as a deceiver, the one who supplants; however the other, who is God, transforms this negative reality into something positive: Jacob the deceiver becomes Israel, he is given a new name as a sign of a new identity.” (Pope Benedict XVI)
When I pray and think about this struggle and transformation, this new identity God offers to us in prayer, I begin to understand why the struggle is necessary. We, too often like Jacob, wish to hide and minimize the sin that is in our lives. We don’t want to acknowledge the pain sin cause to each of us and those around us. We would rather focus on the soft and gentle God and not deal with the harder and more demanding God who calls us into a transformation of life where we find the true peace and joy in the struggle. And of course God does not wish us to be defeated in the struggle but rather persevere in the long night of the struggle where we contend with the vices that have infected our soul and seek to be strengthened by the grace received through the intimate wrestling with God to grow in holiness and virtue.
“Prayer requires trust, nearness, almost a hand-to-hand contact that is symbolic not of a God who is an enemy, an adversary, but a Lord of blessing who always remains mysterious, who seems beyond reach. Therefore the author of the Sacred text uses the symbol of the struggle, which implies a strength of spirit, perseverance, tenacity in obtaining what is desired. And if the object of one’s desire is a relationship with God, his blessing and love, then the struggle cannot fail but ends in that self-giving to God, in recognition of one’s own weakness, which is overcome only by giving oneself over into God’s merciful hands.” (Pope Benedict XVI)
This is the sacramental reality of our Catholic faith and something I see played out again and again in marriage in my ministry in Worldwide Marriage Encounter. When husband and wife choose to enter into the nearness of trust where true and intimate conversations occur then prayer occurs and where prayer occurs then life is grown in abundance and nurtured in hope; spiritually, emotionally, physically and sexually. The struggle, the wrestling of life becomes a greater self-giving to the other through the grace celebrated, given and received. This occurs in all relationships as we seek the “hand-to-hand” contact of relationship becoming sacramental signs of love in the world as brothers and sisters, friends and neighbors, true sons and daughters of the living God.
God’s invitation to each of us is to enter the battle, come into His presence with our lives and give our lives to God’s merciful love. See you at Mass.
God Bless
Fr. Mark

“Whoever allows himself to be blessed by God, who abandons himself to God, who permits himself to be transformed by God, renders a blessing to the world. May the Lord help us to fight the good fight of the faith (cf. 1 Tim 6:12; 2 Tim 4:7) and to ask, in prayer, for his blessing, that he may renew us in the expectation of beholding his Face.” (Pope Benedict XVI)

“It was to be necessary for God himself to become that one righteous person. And this is the mystery of the Incarnation: to guarantee a just person he himself becomes man. There will always be one righteous person because it is he. However, God himself must become that just man. The infinite and surprising divine love was to be fully manifest when the Son of God was to become man, the definitive Righteous One, the perfect Innocent who would bring salvation to the whole world by dying on the Cross, forgiving and interceding for those who “know not what they do” (Lk 23:34). Therefore the prayer of each one will find its answer, therefore our every intercession will be fully heard.” (Pope Benedict XVI and all quotes from the General Audience 18 May 2011)

One of the most common requests I receive as a priest is the simple phrase, “Father, would you please pray for…. The requests are varied and range from very urgent and at time grave to the small and continuing troubles of family, country and world. This request for intercession is something we need to be attentive too and hopefully bringing prayers into the center of life. Because our call to intercede in prayer goes deeper than the response we find often in the secular world where to “I will keep you in my thoughts” is the pail response to prayer.
Pope Benedict uses the famous story of Abraham seeking mercy for the people of Sodom. The reality is this conversation between God and Abraham is greater than the surface bargaining and testing that are first noticed, rather as he notes, “In this way he brings a new idea of justice into play: not the one that is limited to punishing the guilty, as men do, but a different, divine justice that seeks goodness and creates it through forgiveness that transforms the sinner, converts and saves him. With his prayer, therefore, Abraham does not invoke a merely compensatory form of justice but rather an intervention of salvation which, taking into account the innocent, also frees the wicked from guilt by forgiving them.” (Pope Benedict)
The greatness and deepness of intercessory prayer is we place ourselves inside the suffering and hurt were we participate in the lives of those we pray for even when they are on the other side of our planet. Abraham steps in and takes up the cause of not only the just but the sinner too and we are called to do the same as disciples of Jesus Christ. As noted in the first quote above, God becomes one of us in the presence of the second person of the Most Holy Trinity, Jesus, where he intercedes, he steps into the world to be present to all where he reminds us, “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” (LK 5:32) The call we have to intercede for others, in prayer, is an invitation to move more deeply into their lives in a relationship of love where we begin to see them as sisters and brothers worthy of love because this is how Jesus/God sees us.
It is important, as Pope Benedict reminds us, to remember our prayers are for those in need…including our enemies and even those who commit the most heinous crimes against society, “Yet the Lord does not want the wicked to die, but rather that they convert and live (cf. Ez 18:23; 33:11); his desire is always to forgive, to save, to give life, to transform evil into good. Well, it is this divine desire itself which becomes in prayer the desire of the human being and is expressed through the words of intercession.” (Pope Benedict)
Whether the intercession of prayer is for a person suffering from cancer or another suffering from the self imposed prison of addiction our call, as disciples of Jesus Christ, is to reach out, to step into, to walk and be with the other in the unity of love. It is only here that we find the fullness of God’s mercy and healing grace.
Please pray for me…I am praying for you.
God Bless
Fr. Mark

“Dear brothers and sisters, the prayer of intercession of Abraham, our father in the faith, teaches us to open our hearts ever wider to God’s superabundant mercy so that in daily prayer we may know how to desire the salvation of humanity and ask for it with perseverance and with trust in the Lord who is great in love. Many thanks.” (Pope Benedict)

“The problems that weigh heavily on the hearts of men are the same today as in the ages past. What is man? — [who am I?] — What is the meaning and purpose of life?” (Pope Benedict XVI from General Audience 11 May 2011)

The above statement by Benedict XVI is an age old reality. As we grow from childhood dependent upon our parents and family and begin the search for “who we are” as individuals we begin to ask these very important questions. And the reality of this great question on the purpose of life is that it is a good and necessary question. The willingness to look beyond the superficial and into the deepness of the heart and soul where relationships are discovered is the difficult and often avoided area by many people, including people of faith.
And in truth, the superficial is much easier and often more sensually satisfying in the short term moments of life. The idea of delayed gratification is thrown away quickly with the rationalization of; “Why wait for something that may happen when I can take and do the lesser of the something right now?” But at the same time, we know deep down the goods that come from preparing, sacrificing and waiting are what truly brings peace and joy into our hearts.
Pope Benedict XVI in the same audience continued, “The “digital” man, like the cave man, seeks in the religious experience ways to overcome his finiteness and to guarantee his precarious adventure on earth. Moreover, life without a transcendent horizon would not have its full meaning and happiness, for which we all seek, is spontaneously projected towards the future in a tomorrow that has yet to come.”
This seeking, this quest for the greater is a found in the discovery of a relationship of love that is “beyond” the natural experience and into a conversation that draws out a reality of the infinite in the lives of each person. It is a discovery of a relationship of movement towards a greater desire for unity where the joy and happiness God calls forth in life is lived to the fullest.
There is an experience I will often share with young men asking questions and discerning a call to the priesthood or those young women doing the same for consecrated life. In my first year in seminary one of my classmates and someone who became of good friend announced he was leaving formation. Personally, for me, this was devastating. He was a good, positive and genuine man who I believed would be a great priest and yet in seeking the greater with an open heart to God’s call he knew God had a different plan for him, (and I am sure his wife and children would agree). But it was only in prayer, a deep conversation of relationship with God and others, was he able to discern and choose the path God called him to live. Pope Benedict reminds us in this same talk, “St Thomas Aquinas, one of the greatest theologians of history, defines prayer as “an expression of man’s desire for God””
God has called each of us to a mission in life, a mission that is unrepeatable by any other person and we discover this mission in our prayer of blessing and adoration…in our desire for God’s presence and relationship…our response to the greater. It is a discussion of love where Jesus calls us his friends (Jn 15:15) and invites us to speak with him and search him out in prayer as a friend. As Pope Benedict points out, “I can be forced to kneel — a condition of indigence and slavery — but I can also kneel spontaneously, declaring my limitations and therefore my being in need of Another. To him I declare I am weak, needy, “a sinner”.” It is in the recognition of my limitations where I search for the other in hope and blessing—through conversation, through prayer knowing it is here the glory of love, the glory of God is found.
God bless
Fr. Mark

Man bears within him a thirst for the infinite, a longing for eternity, a quest for beauty, a desire for love, a need for light and for truth which impel him towards the Absolute; man bears within him the desire for God. And man knows, in a certain way, that he can turn to God, he knows he can pray to him. (Pope Benedict XVI)

“We know well, in fact, that prayer should not be taken for granted. It is necessary to learn how to pray, as it were acquiring this art ever anew; even those who are very advanced in spiritual life always feel the need to learn from Jesus, to learn how to pray authentically. We receive the first lesson from the Lord by his example. The Gospels describe Jesus to us in intimate and constant conversation with the Father: it is a profound communion of the One who came into the world not to do his will but that of the Father who sent him for the salvation of man.” (Pope Benedict XVI from 4 May 2011 Audience)

A little while back a young couple came to visit me because of some problems in their relationship. I asked some questions to get to know them, to find out what they did and how their home life functioned and after about 30 minutes of this conversation I asked them a simple question, “How do you pray at home?” There was a few moments of silence and she then asked me, “Did I mean like the ‘Our Father’ or something else?” This began a very wonderful conversation about prayer: praying for each other, talking to God, asking for blessing and giving thanks through prayer.
Pope Benedict reminds us in the quote above about the reality of the work of prayer. While prayer is a natural outpouring at many times during our life, we also need to be attentive to the continual practice of prayer so we may not just run to prayer when we need it but allow prayer to draw us deeper into relationships of love, thanksgiving and care for God and others in our life.
Prayer takes attentiveness on our part so we are ready because as I stated above it is a natural gift to share but when we are not attentive to prayer it can’t atrophy much like our physical nature. A great example of this is our children’s summer break and the slide backwards many of them experience in their reading and math skills so when they return in the fall for the next grade they often need to relearn what they knew because throughout the summer they did not pick up a book to read or do a math problem to keep the mental growth increasing. The spiritual growth of prayers works the same way…if we don’t use it daily.
We are reminded there are five major types of prayer: Blessing and Adoration, Petition, Intercession, Thanksgiving and Praise. Each of these types of prayer have a place within the prayer life of each person and family/church. We need to practice each type to once extent or another because if we don’t, then we can begin to fall into the mumbling of the great prayers, like the “Our Father,” where they become just words rattled off without thought rather than the deep and profound conversation with a loving God, loving family and community.
As we talked about prayer, this couple began to ask the harder questions about their desire for a deeper and more intimate relationship with Jesus Christ. But they wanted to know, how do we do this? For each of us the answer will be a little different and yet looking at the five-forms of prayer we all have the same compass pointing towards Heaven, pointed towards God who is love.
In my prayer chest I always like to start with blessing and asking the question, “Where did I experience/see/feel/hear God’s blessing today?” Trying to be as specific as I can by just not noting the beauty of the day (which is important and a wonderful blessing) but seeking to be very specific, especially in the who and when, in naming the blessing(s) as I recall my day and more importantly begin to offer blessing and then thanksgiving when I have these little experiences of the miracle of God in my life. Pope Benedict XVI notes in the same audience, “Human life is a fabric woven of good and of evil, of undeserved suffering and of joy and beauty that spontaneously and irresistibly impel us to ask God for that light and that inner strength which support us on earth and reveal a hope beyond the boundaries of death.”(Benedict XVI)
This young couple has a long and holy journey in front of them full of growth with all the sufferings and blessings of life and relationships. Please pray for them as they seek to live as God’s son and daughter it is part of the great intercession we can offer as family, as the Body of Christ.
God bless,
Fr. Mark

God Bless America
God bless America, land that I love
Stand beside her and guide her
Through the night with the light from above
From the mountains to the prairies
To the oceans white with foam
God bless America, my home sweet home

As we celebrate the 4th of July this week and look back at our history and forward to our future as people of faith we may call to mind the blessings of life and the hopes and dreams we see in how we are to go forward. As a Catholic priest one of the first “tempest in a teapot” I was faced with was the song “God Bless America.” I can’t remember which national holiday it was but directly after Mass I was confronted and excoriated by several parishioners about why we didn’t sing “God Bless America” at the end of Mass. Later on in my priesthood after another national holiday I was confronted and excoriated by several parishioners on why we did sing “God Bless America” at the end of Mass…and throughout the years this has continued because it is not something I think too much about and often it slips by my notice. But it has been something I do think about from time to time and seeing this song as prayer (to sing is to pray twice according to St. Augustine) is important…because the call to blessing is very important no matter who we are and to whom and where our prayer intention is headed. Jesus reminds us, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’  But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,  that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” (Mt 5:43-45) It is where our prayer/song becomes the reaching out of healing and blessing towards all people.
“God bless America” specifically in this song, The United States of America, if we added this to a list of prayers we may not have any objections but yet at the end of Mass there are many. If we consider the prayer we may begin to see the blessings is simply offered. I often pray these words to many people during the day. As a sixth grade teacher I would often say to my students, “God bless you Peter” to which in the beginning they would respond, “I didn’t sneeze.” It is a short prayer that we hopefully utter many times in our lives and days to family, friends and yes, enemies. It is a short prayer we send towards many parts of the world and many peoples in different situations and places in times of need. It is because we understand that whether it is “America” or any other country, place or group…it is the people who we seek to bless because the second phrase is about love, “Land that I love.”
Love is the understanding that with faults and failures we still love. I bless and desire my family, friends and each person I meet to be blessed because I hope for the better, the more holy, the fuller dignity to grow within that particular person but also in the community and world we inhabit. It is because we understand whether an individual person or a land, we love through failures and faults, not dismissing or forgetting them, but forgiving and moving forward in the growth of generous love. I will never be 100% in-sync with any person, I know my own faults and failures and know them also in family and friends and yet it is in love I draw closer because I know their presence makes me a better man. In the same way we should have this same hope for our communities, our country and our Church…not because any are perfect but because we are made better when we seek unity rather than division. It is here we have the desire, as Christians, for our God to guide and lead us through the darkness into the light of charity and justice. And I would hope this is where we all desire to be.
Just some thoughts about a simple song shared and blessed.
God Bless you and America
Fr. Mark