Two things happened on Twitter this past week that got my brain working. (and yes, I am on Twitter, and Facebook and Instagram) First was a tweet from the youth ministers who were attending the #NCCYM, which came in part, “Doubt is not toxic to faith—Silence is toxic to faith.”  (thanks Deepu, John, Row, Steve et al) The second was on St. Nicholas Day (Dec 6^th) in which there were many Memes with jolly old St. Nicholas punching Arius for denying the divinity of Jesus but the one tweet that asked us to reflect and not retweet something of legend instead of fact. In other words we don’t know if the Bishop Nicholas was at the Council of Nicea and should we be happy about the punch?

A long introduction that is hopefully worth the thoughts that follow.  The youth ministers that gathered from around the nation in San Jose last week at the #NCCYM are vital and essential to the life of the Catholic Church.  It was fascinating following the tweets they placed into the twitterverse that were thought provoking, funny, sometimes irreverent but always a challenge to see how we serve our young people, both teens and young adults, not as objects but as “who” each one is and their unique experience of God in the world.  The above quote and been in my prayer over and over again because I like to talk through the doubts of the young men and women who often come to talk, flooding them with my pearls of wisdom and fail to hear them as who they are…or in other words, silence them into the toxic wasteland of not being heard. It is a challenge that our ministers to the young also face as they seek to listen and hear God’s voice in our young people.

This is the difficulty we often confront. We want to fix it right now rather than let the Holy Spirit move in the life.  We want our advice and experiences to help others when often times it is only the quietness of listening that allows the breath of the Spirit to truly animate the soul of life.  Now I don’t know the full context of the tweet, but it is a thought worth pondering because the silence can flow both ways as we leave unspoken the true words of grace and blessing that others might need…or the words of hard truth…or the gentle nudging of holy presence that speaks loudly and clears the air with the gale force winds of life and love. So…#1 Thank God for our youth and young adult ministers…and #2 pray for them.

Second we get to good ole St. Nick.  I have a great love for the Bishop Nicholas for a variety of reasons, the greatest of which is he is my Confirmation patron saint.  When I was in my High School Confirmation class we were asked to choose a saint name for Confirmation.  I remember that the teacher also challenged us to choose a saint with a virtue with which we wished to strengthen in our own lives and then ask the help of our saint to grow in this virtue.  Strangely enough and I believe with the guidance of the Holy Spirit and perhaps my guardian Angel, I choose Nicholas.  The virtue that I saw and believed I needed to strengthen was that of generosity.  How a 14 year old boy comes up with this I will forever be puzzled at…but there it is.

So, when I saw all the tweets with the Memes of St. Nicholas punching Arius I was truly saddened because, while I know that St. Nicholas had his sins, I like to remember his blessing of generosity and his prayers for me.  Nicholas is a saint, not because of a punch, but because of his choosing to say yes over and over again to God in seeking mercy, reconciliation and living within the generous charity of God’s love for him and all people.  St. Nicholas generosity shows us the face of God as we acknowledge our need to grow in holiness and avoid the sins of the world.

Just some thoughts.

God Bless

Fr. Mark

“It could very well be that the goodness of God in my behalf has been manifested not only in the gift of Christian parents, unusual opportunities for education and on and on; the greatest gift of all may have been His summons to the Cross, where I found His continuing self-disclosure.” (p. 372 Treasure in Clay)

The words quoted above come from the last sentence of Archbishop Fulton Sheen’s autobiography.  I have been reflecting these past days on these word, most especially on “His summons to the Cross,” after I learned of the death of my classmate and brother priest, Fr. Andres Parra.  God has blessed us with his goodness in so many ways but it is in the gift of life that we begin the journey, the summons to the ultimate unity with God.

It seems we are always surround by life and death in our world.  It is a temptation that we seek to cheapen and degrade life so that death does not define how we live our lives.  Fr. Andres was two years my senior and we shared many things.  We shared the call of a later vocation in life.  We spent a summer together in San Antonio, he working on his English and me on my Spanish, neither too much success during those six weeks. We also shared the reality of a heart attack, and the understanding of how this changes the outlook we have on life.  Most of all we shared the gift of serving God in the gift of priesthood as we sat next to each other on the day of our ordination.

It is often at the time of death that we are able to best look back and see the many blessings given and shared, even the blessings of the crosses we bore in life, that make our relationships with one another such precious and holy gifts.  This too is part of our Advent journey where we are entering into the mystery of new life in the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, yet we are also looking towards the Cross and how it is ultimately the greatest of all gifts given and shared.

The question of how God is involved in all of this is stuff is the journey that we all share.  We share this journey because ultimately it is about life and the life that we live in the love and service of each other.  This is the joy of our Advent journey to Jesus.  It is the seeing and knowing of Jesus in the stuff and life that surrounds us.  How do we respond daily to this great adventure? As many of you know my beard has become a little grey and quite long over this past year.  On my day off I often take a morning walk in the neighborhood and enjoy a breakfast out during the walk.  The other morning, as I came and sat down, a young boy sitting with his grandmother looked at me with great big eyes and stared and stared and I could see (and hear) him whisper this to his grandmother, “Santa Claus just sat down.”  Apparently my belly is growing too. I think his grandmother assured him that in fact I wasn’t Santa Claus but it gave me a chuckle all through my breakfast to be scrutinized and wondered at by this young child.

This moment reminded me, as I seek to remember always, the “who I am” should shine through in “how I am” in the eyes of friend and stranger.  Did I eat my meal and drink my coffee with a little more grace under the watchful of the child…you bet I did…but also the question is always…do I seek to be more grace-filled and hope-filled always…even when I am not under the eye?

That is how we complete the circle of God’s grace in our lives as we prepare for the ultimate summons to the Cross.

God bless

Fr. Mark

1. Fr. Andres’ heart disease was compounded by his addiction to smoking, as with my Dad’s own death, please pray for those with this addiction and for the health of your parish priests.

First and foremost, I wish each of you a blessed and holy Thanksgiving weekend and a peaceful “black Friday” in the hopes that time with family and friends will remind us of what we already possess and be satisfied in the love that surround us.

My moment of preaching.

As many of you know I have celebrated weekly, throughout the 11 plus years as a priest, with the Sisters of the Eucharistic Missionaries of The Most Holy Trinity (MESST) with Mass followed by my lessons in Spanish around the breakfast table as we share stories of hope and blessing…and yes complain about life too….we are human.  But mostly it is about the celebration of life and the gifts that God shares with us.  On Monday of this week I was blessed to celebrate with them as they marked the 80^th anniversary of the founding of their congregation.  It has been a great year of blessing for the sisters as they have also marked the naming of their founder, Fr. Pablo Maria Guzman, as Venerable in our Catholic Church. Venerable is one of the steps that move a man or woman in the process of being recognized and canonized a saint.

I think all people are fascinated by holiness.  I often look at pictures of St. John Paul II or St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta in prayer and am brought to great peace in my heart.  It is as if I am spying a moment of great grace and conversation with our Lord Jesus that is bringing forth the gift of life which is the gift of holiness. Knowing that and seeing that in the recognized Saints of the Church gives me great joy and peace because I will often see the same graceful peace in those who are caught in prayer, in looks of contemplation and in holy moments of service to our brothers and sisters.

It happens all the time.  A few weeks ago at our retreat for the children and their families preparing for First Reconciliation we offered them a time of prayer where they came to the crucifix in veneration and prayed together.  Watching them and praying with them was a moment of joy for me.  One of the children, as he came forward with his family, touched the cross with such gentleness, caressed the image of Jesus with holy tenderness and entered into a sacred moment of communion as his family prayed with him.  It is the image of holiness.

Visiting a family whose mother was in her final hours.  Praying with them, anointing her, sharing God’s love with her and her family.  Watching her children touch and speak words of blessing and love as we knew the peace of our Lord Jesus filled the room and filled their mother with the invitation to come and follow him to paradise.  It is the image of holiness.

It is walking into a silent church and seeing a man or woman deeply in prayer as they carrying the words of thanksgiving, the words of sorrow, of trouble or of hurt, the words of joy, of peace or of hope quietly and assuredly to the feet of Jesus.  It is the image of holiness

This is the grace of life lived out each day if as our Lord Jesus reminds us, “Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.” (Mk 4:9) And we with eyes to see…let us see the presence of God the surrounds us.  This is what each of us should be doing every day but especially this time of Thanksgiving. In it we will be and see the image of holiness.

God Bless

Fr. Mark

It was a week that started off with a lot of stuff going wrong.  Off the bat on Monday morning, poured my coffee after Mass, settled into reading my emails, looking at the agenda of the week, feeling pretty good about myself….then….spilled my cup of coffee on the laptop.  Big sad face.  Called myself a stupid idiot under my breath and then the process begins of trying to put everything in order and asking myself what to do next and how to recreate and gather the week together without the one tool that helps you to organize and do all the work you are used to doing????  I guess I could blame it all on Donald Trump but that may be stretching it a bit far…I must take responsibility for this myself.

One of the normal human joys and failings is that we are always looking for someone to solve our problems at the same time we are looking for someone to blame our problems on…and believe it or not they often turn out to be the same person.  In faith we often do, and rightly so, look to God for the solution to our problems and at the same time, and wrongly so, blame God for all the problems in our life and in the world.  It is that small and necessary understanding that we “look to God for solutions to” rather than “we want God to solve” our problems that is the moment of growing in faith, hope and love in our life. For me it is the work of choosing to frame my life differently form the “What if I had…?” to the “What if I do…?

We can, and often do, spend considerable amount of time, energy and treasure on the, “what if I had?” questions of life.  In my journey of vocation the biggest question that came up over and over again was the “What if I had recognized and answered God’s call to the priesthood in my twenties?”  It is an impossible question to answer as my spiritual director continually reminded me during my formation.  I could blame all sorts of people, myself and certainly God for not making it clearer what He wanted me to do in life and yet all of that was empty thought because it didn’t happen.  The bigger question wasn’t about God solving the question it was the seeking of God’s presence and how that presence brought me to the ultimate “yes” in my life.

In the daily examen it is a question that we must all be answered each day anew.  In reviewing the day and seeking God’s presence in the good things and the bad, in the moments when I acted as a blessing and those when I chose not to act as blessing, and how God through the people around me helps me to grow in love throughout the day was the movement from the looking at the world in regret and defeat and choosing to seek out the hopefulness of joyful faith where the new day begins “What if I do…?’ and “How can I grow in…?”

When we choose the possibilities of hope, we then move from the doom and gloom of a coffee covered computer to the reality that while it is a wonderful tool of ministry and life that can and will be replaced, what cannot be replaced is the person with whom I speak each morning, noon and night, Jesus Christ, and how he is made present in my daily life with and through others is the greatest and true blessing that I can and should celebrate each day.

It is a lesson learned and relearned each time I choose to act in truth.

God Bless,

Fr. Mark

This past week has been filled with many blessings and joys as important dates and blessings surround us in so many ways. Today as we celebrate Veterans Day I remember my time serving our country in the Marine Corp, (1979-83) whose birthday (241 years) we celebrated yesterday (November 10, Semper Fi). It was also the week, in which we participated in the election of a new president, my tenth, that has continues to give me new perspectives on how we move forward as a people. And last and certainly not least National Vocation Awareness Week where we as a Catholic Church offered prayers and encouragement to those our God calls to discern to the priesthood and consecrated religious life.

When I returned home for a short leave after finishing boot camp, my parents picked me up at the Lewiston Airport. They then took me to lunch. It had been a long trip home. My flight from San Diego to Boise had been delayed and I spent the night in Boise before catching a connecting flight to Lewiston. As I sat in the car we talked and chatted, when we arrived at the restaurant my Dad pulled me aside and in a voice and look I will never forget he said in not so many words, “If you ever talk like that in front of your mother again…” Of course I had been talking “like a Marine” dropping swear words right and left. My Dad was no angel with language but apparently I went way beyond the pale. I remember this because it began the slow process of learning that words and the words we use matter in our conversations and how we act and interact with people.

I bring this up for one reason. Like many people I was a bit shocked by the outcome of the presidential vote. As I looked at my social media accounts I was stunned and puzzled by the number of people who were using hashtags that contained one profane word in particular and the number of comments that were laced with profanity. It was hard to read and look at as these posts came from people whom I respected and would have not thought to respond in such a vulgar manner.

The use of profanity, swear words, is something often confronted in modern society, whether it is in writing, song or conversations, the use has invaded almost every aspect of life. I am not a puritan in this matter, I do confess on rare occasions the swear word passes my lips, but for the most part I can move through daily life without them.

In the Sacrament of Reconciliation, when talking with people who confess using foul language, I try to remind them of God’s blessing and how He desires us to, both in word and action, to build up—rather than tear down, to bring about love and unity—rather than hatred and isolation. And sadly, that is what swear words do…they are ugly and weak words that show the nature of destruction and isolation of the person rather than the desire to understand and grow together into something greater.

I know that in conversation with those who are despairing the election I give this advice and am told “you don’t understand” and maybe I don’t. But let me assure you that while I am afforded great respect in many places for the collar I wear daily, I have also been spat upon, shouted at, cursed and accused of the most vile acts, without cause for simply being who I am…remembering the words of Jesus, “Blessed are you when people hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven.” (Lk 6:22-23) are often small comfort at the time but are always there in my heart.

If our ultimate goal is the peace of Jesus Christ in our hearts and in the world then the price is to listen, to be open to the movement of the Holy Spirit and to act as Saints. There has been a pre-election phrase by Archbishop Gomez of Los Angeles that has floated around social media where he simply states the true duty and call of each Christian, “If we want a greater America, we need to become, by the grace of God, greater saints.”

We must be open to listening to the other, allowing the other to enter into the hurts and pains as we share both our sorrows and joys. That is the cost of sainthood…acting with love.

We can rant and rave with the profanity-laced tirades that are floating about but ultimately this only drives us deeper into the isolation that separates us from Jesus the work of the Gospel. Winners or losers, we are all children of the one true God. I would invite you to watch the video link below…see the joy and excitement of those who win, the sorrow and pain of those who lost…but most of all see the humanity of peace as they come together to see each other as children of God. In both large and small ways, can we not seek to do the same?

God bless

Fr. Mark

www.theguardian.com/football/video/2016/aug/31/barcelona-youth-team-console-japanese-squad-soccer-world-challenge-video

“I’m not ready yet.” or “We’re not ready yet.” is often the plaintive plea I hear from young adults who are in a serious and committed relationship but have not taken the step towards marriage YET. This attitude is more often than not reinforced by their parents who counsel them to wait and then are surprised when they do wait for much longer than they would wish for their children, in their desire of happiness for them.

The idea of “not ready” for the vocation of marriage is brought out of, I believe, fear rather than hope. The fear is a real thing with many families experiencing broken marriages and struggling relationships our young adults can see the advice to wait as a hopeful cure to the fear of hurt within the marriage.

Of course, this is all a great lie. Marriage is never easy and most couples I know will tell you honestly, the only thing that ultimately prepares you for marriage is living and loving marriage itself. There is a truth in this reality but also we need to remind ourselves that the preparation for the vocation of marriage as with any vocation is founded in the love of family and the example and support given by family, friends and the community.

This truth is also present in vocations to the priesthood and religious life. Rather than the cry “I’m not ready yet.” we more often hear, “I’m not holy enough yet.” as the stated reason for not saying “yes” to God’s invitation to serve in these two wonderful vocations.

The coming week, November 6-13, is Vocation Awareness Week in the Catholic Church where we pay special attention to the vocations to the priesthood and consecrated religious life.   As a vocation who entered seminary formation at a later age, 39, I understand in a special way both cries/excuses that I hear from young men and women who are called to either marriage or priesthood and consecrated life. It is an excuse that I used too.

How do we, as a Catholic Church, help and support the formation of our young people for their proper vocation in life?   The easy answer is prayer. The more difficult answer is example. The hardest answer is encouragement and support. All three are necessary and vital in growing the heart and soul in preparation for the proper vocation of each person but it is also important to recognize the third step brings to fruition all that we desire for in the joy, peace and happiness of life.

Two quick stories…I still remember one of my older sisters, Molly, telling me many years ago that their parish had asked them to think of a young man who may have a calling to the priesthood. She gave them my name. I didn’t respond to the call at that time…it took many more years…but in a small way it was the voice of encouragement and support that helped me to think that it was possible, that someone saw something in me that I could not and perhaps, just perhaps, God was call me to the priesthood. (He was)

Second, several years ago, a young lady who had just graduated university and was in one of those serious and committed relationships talked about her future plans in life and the hope one day should would be married…I asked the simple question of, “Why are you waiting? You will never be more ready than you are today.” Her mother standing next to me had a horrified look on her face. Later talking to the mom we had a deeper discussion about happiness and the struggles of life and how waiting would never take those away, in fact it may make it even harder, but that support, prayers and hope of family and friends would be the greatest blessing. And of course the ultimate question…”Would it make you happier to see them just live together?” The answer was no.

We will never be completely ready to answer God’s call to marriage, the single life or priesthood and consecrated life because we are all works in progress. But, our progress will be more joyful and our lives filled with greater peace when we choose to embrace and walk in our proper vocation in hope rather than fear.

Pray for vocations. Live your vocation in joy. Encourage and support those you believe have vocations to the priesthood or consecrated religious life. Thanks.

God Bless,

Fr. Mark

This weekend the Catholic Church celebrates Priesthood Sunday, a day when parishes and communities are asked to pray for their parish priest and all priests around the world. It is a very special day for my brother priests and I as we receive the many blessings surrounding us as members of the Body of Christ. Pope Benedict XVI in his Holy Thursday homily in 2008 spoke these words, “”To serve the Lord”—priestly service precisely also means to learn to know the Lord in his Word and to make it known to all those he entrusts to us.”

The call to service in the Word or God is at the center of priestly ministry. The ordained ministry is founded on a special call to serve God and his people knowing our Lord Jesus deeply and with profound love. And this is the greatest challenge that we all face as disciples of Jesus…we can know a lot about him but do we know him?

This has been the greatest ongoing blessing of my eleven years of ministry: getting to know Jesus better each and every day of my life through sacramental service and love. It has been the daily and hourly conversations that I have had with our Lord: laughing and crying, singing and shouting, blessing and cursing as I seek to hear his voice ever deeper in my heart. And yes, I have failed miserably at times to hear this beloved voice whispering in my heart. Thank God for confession.

These moments of dialogue become moments of blessings because in this conversation of love I have discovered more and more each day I am not alone in my priestly ministry but it is founded and enlivened in and through relationships of love with those God has called me to serve. In my work in the parishes I have served and especially my work in the Worldwide Marriage Encounter movement I have grown in the understanding of how my vocation to serve is enlivened, enriched and made holy in the relationships of joy and love that God call me to enter into in the laughing and crying, the singing and shouting and even the cursing and blessing. It is here that Our Lord is calling forth the priesthood I am.

It is not the case that there is no hurts, frustrations and sadness’s in serving God in the ordained priesthood…those are the moments of crying, shouting and cursing…because it is through these moments, where in a conversation of love with my Lord Jesus, God’s graces flows forth in my greatest conversion, my greatest intimacy and my greatest blessings. In growing in the understanding that through sacramental relationships the blessing of God’s holy Church bring true peace and joy to my heart and to the hearts of the faithful.

Here is part of a prayer our Bishop gave to all priests of the Diocese of San Jose several years ago and a prayer I offer each morning, “Be with us this day. Give us the courage to be strong, loving and wise: strong in prayer, loving in service and wise ministers of your mercy.” This prayer is a constant reminder of the obligation to love, to serve and to be merciful in each interaction, thought and prayer. We become what we pray…or in the Latin, “Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi. Lex Vivendi”

On this Priesthood Sunday, please pray for your local priest, offer him a word of encouragement and bless him with a smile.

God Bless

Fr. Mark

I am bound by the vows I have made, God, I will pay you the debt of thanks for you have saved my life from death. (Ps 56:12)

A couple of weeks ago as I entered my office I saw the above image sitting on my chair. Almost everyone knows who Vin Scully is and his place within the culture of the United States. Our pastoral associate at St. Lucy, Andrew Brown, gave this memento to me, a Dodger fan (please forgive me), knowing that it would be cherished and honored in my life.

Of course there is the rivalry aspect of the Giants and Dodgers that comes into play as often the good natured banter and ribbing of each teams fan base which takes place as the ups and downs of the season occur as the pennants, world championships as well as the disappointments and losses break the hearts of the fans. Generally it is good-natured and most fans take in stride the abuse shared as the cheering for your team can become a little bit vociferous and obnoxious at times. There are also times when, sadly, the good natured-ness of the rivalry can step over what should be expected and hoped for in a sports rivalry.

The respect and honor between two rivals is necessary and helps to grow greater respect and joy in rooting for the home team. This comes about because as we know better the team we hope fails we know with a deeper and greater passion the team, which we love. It is the ability to sit in conversation, that may look a little bit like a argument, where we discover that the deep passions that unite us to our favorite team (the Dodgers) actually connect us in a wonderful and graceful way to those delusional souls who have a different favorite team (such as the Giants) for what ever strange reason.

With all fun aside, and sports and being a fan of a team should be fun, it is the respecting and honoring of others in all parts of our life that is at the heart of relationships and the greater community. It has become very apparent during this political season that the ability to listen, share and debate issues of great importance and which many people of strong opinions have become more about the destruction of the other person than about refuting the idea or position held. One of the greatest and most powerful symbols of this was at the end of the final presidential debate this week where the candidates, in an intentional and planned moment, refused to shake hands at the end of their debate. Why they chose not to take that small moment to recognize the other is puzzling and troubling.

It is the choosing to recognize the other person as worthy of respect, even of a handshake, that is at the center how we are called to be as sons and daughters of the living God.   I understand deeply held political, social and religious views that many people have because I too have deeply held beliefs that I will passionately defend and argue about with others. And I understand the religious, social and political beliefs are more important than any sports fandom, but ultimately we can learn from the field of competition and respecting each other. People always point to the end of hockey series, when the two opposing teams line up, winners and losers, to shake the hand of the other or after a soccer match where the teams walk to each other to share a word of sportsmanship after highly contested matches.

Ultimately, it is recognizing the dignity of the other, even in our disagreements and passionate beliefs, which bind us together and help to build respect and community. The next few weeks leading up to the election will bring more opportunities to refuse to shake the hand of the others in our life. Whatever candidate or issue you may support or oppose it is important that we seek to hear and, while we may disagree, respect the others in life. So don’t forget, as we hear the many arguments, to reach out and shake the hand and look the other in the eye and recognize that we are all children of God.

God Bless

Fr. Mark

One of the most remarkable things I have discovered during my years as a priest is how the Word of God infiltrates everything and everywhere in my life. I know that this has always been the case but I was blinded to it or took it for granted for much of my life in not recognizing His voice in my life. A great example came on Saturday afternoon of the St. Lucy Parish Fun Fest. I was visiting at the adult watering hole talking to the person pouring the drinks. He asked what was the Gospel for the weekend, actually what he asked was, “What was the lesson for the service?” When I told him it was the Gospel of the Ten Lepers his eyes lit up. We began a wonderful conversation about the reading and eventually about the reality of seeking and knowing Jesus. He told me that for many years he thought the one leper who returned had disobeyed Jesus because he was told to see the priest. Then he leaned in and said, “but he did see the priest because Jesus is the true priest and he knew where the source of true healing was to be found.”

Listening to his excitement in hearing this Word opened my eyes to another understanding. Full disclosure, it didn’t change the homily that I had prepared for the weekend, but it did put my mind on a train of thought towards the blessings that God shares with us in what we say and do in the world. It is a reminder that during this Jubilee Year of Mercy that each of the Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy are founded in the abundant and generous love God pours upon each and every person created in His likeness. We can feed the hungry but unless we recognize that true hunger is only satiated in God then physical hunger will never be fully satisfied. We counsel the doubtful realizing that it is only in the growing in faith and knowledge of God that doubt is truly replaced by confidence and trust in the grace that surrounds us. We can bear wrongs patiently and yet it is only through the offering of forgiveness and seeking reconciliation in an all-merciful and compassionate Father that the healing into true unity and love are brought about.

Which is a long way around the path to get back to the original point, the presence and blessing of God in each moment of our life. St. Peter is his First Letter reminds us to be prepared, “But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.” (1 Pt 3:15) And it is with “gentleness and respect” that true conversion in conversations of love become more and more apparent. It is also true that we must know the person of Jesus to be prepared to give witness to our beliefs and practices of the faith. When we are able to look into our lives, with the eyes of faith, we begin to see and understand the omnipresence of God in every moment, whether in joy or suffering, in praise or persecution, we are aware that God holds us in the gentle embrace of love.

This is the challenge we face, to seek God in all things. We can and do become complacent in our relationships, where we begin expect good things rather than appreciate and give thanks the small and large blessings given and shared each day. Looking for God is not hard and believe it or not you will find Him in the most interesting places.

God Bless

Fr. Mark

I was blessed to celebrate a funeral Mass for an elderly woman this past week. She was never married and her niece and nephew were helping with the arrangements. She had for the past eight years suffered from Alzheimer’s disease and for the last five years had been unable to attend Mass at the parish.

As we planned her funeral her niece remarked that only a few people would be at Mass because of her age and family…perhaps as few as three. She also said several times how important her Aunt’s faith was in her life and very emphatically that this, the funeral Mass, would have been what she wanted and what she deserved. You cannot know how her conviction, to do what her Aunt would have done, warmed the faith of my heart.

As we come to this Jubilee Year of Mercy in our Catholic Church we focus this month on both a Spiritual and Corporal Work of Mercy: Praying for the Living and the Dead (Spiritual Work) and To Bury the Dead (Corporal Work). The encounter described above focuses this simple Corporal Work in a wonderful light. We seek to honor those who have died in a dignified manner, respecting both their wishes as they lived but also treating the body with blessing, recognizing it as the temple of the Holy Spirit.

Speaking with others about your wishes at the time of death, giving instructions through a Will or other document or planning your funeral before you die is not morbid or fatalistic rather it is recognizing a blessing received, life, and seeking to help your friends and relatives honor your life as a son or daughter of God. The Diocese of San Jose asks me, and all priests, to place in our files a copy of our funeral plans as a way of helping to celebrate the Funeral Mass with joy and blessing.

We need to remember that we are anticipating something greater as we pass from death to life in our Lord Jesus. The small fruits of heaven we have tasted on earth are bound to the greatest fruits attained in the presence of our God. In honoring the dead through prayer and burial we join in the heavenly hosts joyous reception of the soul of our beloved in anticipation of the second coming of Jesus.

That’s the theological but as I noted above the decision to celebrate this woman’s life with a funeral Mass warmed my heart because too often I have been saddened by a family who chooses not to celebrate the life, faith and love of a their deceased relative. In doing so, often leaving friends and fellow parishioners unable to join in recognizing the joyous blessing that God shared with us on earth in the person of the one who died.

Let me clear, no funeral is easy. I understand this deeply. Two of the most difficult and heart wrenching moments in my life have been at the death of my father, Maynard and my younger brother Mitch. In both cases, even in the sorrow and sadness, the celebration of the Funeral Mass brought the memory of their life into clearer focus as we prayed together and listened to the stories of life. For me, it is remembering the image of the upper room after Jesus’ death, crammed with his apostles, his mother and his disciples…all friends…I can only imagine the stories, the laughter, the tears, the prayers, the songs and the meals they shared as they waited.

As Christians we know that their wait was not in vain, rather their gathering and being together as one, ultimately brought true life back into their hearts. It is the same gift of life the Jesus offers us today. Let us pray.

God Bless

Fr. Mark