Tomorrow, August 22^nd is the Memorial of the Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary it will be also a day when people of good will and hope will stand in prayer in protest against the violence done to the unborn seeking and end to the support of federal funds supporting Planned Parenthood.

Although many of those who stand in prayer will not be Catholic, I believe, it is an important foundation for us to begin with, this Memorial of Mary, as we look at the issue of life and how we are called to be a people of life united with our Lord Jesus in the example and blessing of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

I know that I do not often write about such serious subjects but this post has been on my mind and heart for several weeks. As I was reading the Papal Bull of Pope Francis announcing the Jubilee Year of Mercy I could not help but ponder some of the words and images that have been produced in uncovering the banality and brutality of the practice of this procedure. As I follow Live Action and their founder Lila Rose on Facebook and Twitter I have been brought to tears hearing the callousness of word, thought and action in the casual destruction of human life.

It is a reminder to each of us that in the faith of our Blessed Mother the life of the world was placed in our midst. The in her visitation to Elizabeth, the unborn life of John the Baptist leapt for joy. And in the birth of our Savior Jesus the shepherds joined the Angels in proclaiming God’s glory in our broken humanity.

As a person who is proud of my German heritage I am all to aware of the evil that surrounded the actions of the Nazi regime and in reading, studying and speaking to people who lived through that time it is almost to easy to make the comparison. But in truth it is when we refuse to engage in the honest and moral conversations of the hard issues and realities of life that we find ourselves slipping slowly towards our very destruction. As Hannah Arendt wrote, “The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.”  In this we must “Let your ‘Yes’ mean ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No’ mean ‘No.’ Anything more is from the evil one.” (Mt5:37)

It is the call to justice, mercy and forgiveness that we must all respond to as sons and daughters of the one true God. As Pope Francis writes in The Face of Mercy “(M)ere justice is not enough. Experience shows that an appeal to justice alone will result in its destruction. This is why God goes beyond justice with his mercy and forgiveness. Yet this does not mean that justice should be devalued or rendered superfluous. On the contrary: anyone who makes a mistake must pay the price. However, this is just the beginning of conversion, not its end, because one begins to feel the tenderness and mercy of God. God does not deny justice. He rather envelops it and surpasses it with an even greater event in which we experience love as the foundation of true justice.”(21)

I invite you tomorrow to pray Psalm 136 for the conversion of our hearts and the hearts of all as we pray that all life, from the moment of conception to natural death, will be treated with the dignity of sacredness of God’s love for us.

God Bless

Fr. Mark

“It’s not the load that breaks you down. It’s the way you carry it.” C.S. Lewis (or) Lena Horn, (or) Lou Holtz

This quote from C.S. Lewis struck me very forcefully this week. If you remember the Second reading last Sunday from St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians (4:30-5:2) he called us to follow Jesus as live as a “fragrant aroma” in the world. As sons and daughters of God it is often how we carry life that allows us to be evangelizers of the good news of Jesus Christ. The fragrant aroma of life invites us and others to move closer and gather as one as we are drawn by the sweetness of love. It is like the baking of fresh bread that moves us one by one into the kitchen of life. And when we think about it, if the aroma is not that of sweetness and joy then the opposite also occurs and we find ourselves the stench of hatred and bitterness scattered and avoiding the unity of Jesus and his Church.

If we carry our load with anger and resentment then we can quickly discover that the sin of unforgiveness, greed, hatred and prejudice will overcome us. The anger and resentment will color the sweetness of life and we can be isolated from the peace of living in union with love. The destructiveness of anger, especially anger that is held and never released, does harm to our call to serve as we become grudging participants always looking for the harm that is being done to us by others and missing the beauty of God’s love and grace that we participate in but never accept. Shoving away rather than embracing in hope.

If we carry the loads of life with the face of a sacrificial martyr, look at me as I suffer for you, pitying our lot in life as the unwilling bearer of life’s burdens we have lost our focus on the importance of serving and caring in our vocation of love. We enter into a joyless and loveless act of service where our load becomes ever increasingly and annoyance that wears down our ability to reach out to others. Our focus becomes ever more increasingly on the perceived injustice of our having to shoulder everything for everyone else and that no one notices our cares about my sacrifices and how much I suffer for them. Poor little me!

If we carry our load with Jesus we carry it with hope and love, “take up his (your) cross and follow me.”(Mk 8:34) It is were we allow the anger and self-pity of sin to be seen in the light of God’s love in giving us His Son, Our Lord Jesus.   It is where we recognize the load for what it is, a burden to be carried, and not for what it isn’t, a punishment to be suffered. It is when we choose to accept that our sins and the sins of the others will at times cause us heartache and hurt but cannot destroy our call to be beloved sons and daughters of God. The hope and love with which we live our Christian call is one of living within the joy and peace or a relationship with God. It is where we bear witness to the grace of reconciliation, forgiveness and mercy that unites us with one another and ultimately allow the great Other to walk with us as the others that we live in community with. It is living daily the antidote for despair, which is an inoculation of prayer, our daily conversation with God.

God Bless

Fr. Mark

It has been a great week to be on Pope watch. Our Holy Father Francis has been giving us much food for thought this past week and I would like to touch on a very particular matter, which as a parish priest, is of upmost importance to our faith and our evangelization of the world. The subject is altar servers.

Pope Francis hosted several hundred altar servers from Germany this past week and he gave them a wonderful talk. Why is this so important especially in the evangelization efforts of our community? We can ask the question and give the answer by observing our servers this Sunday, not in a hypercritical way but in asking the questions: what they are doing? Why are they doing this duty? Do they look like evangelizers?

1. They are serving Jesus through the community. Do you think that our altar servers would say that in answer to the question? But that is what they are doing. They are offering their time to God to serve His son, Jesus, by assisting in the sacrifice of the Mass. This is a great and important service. Serving God means knowing God and taking time with him in prayer and preparation for the Mass. It is a challenge to the parish, the parents and the servers to seek moments of preparation before Mass so that we can all be attentive to what is occurring within the Mass and how we are transformed in the work of the Mass.
2. The why’s of life are so very important. If we don’t know the reason we are serving God, then how can we be joyful and sincere in our service of others in our call to Christian love. This is what Pope Francis said to them, “It is important to realize that being close to Jesus and knowing him in the Eucharist through your service at the altar, enables you to open yourselves to others, to journey together, to set demanding goals and to find the strength to achieve them. It is a source of real joy to recognize that we are small and weak, all the while knowing that, with Jesus’ help, we can be strengthened and take up the challenge of life’s great journey in his company.” The celebration of the Eucharist is vital to life as we open our hearts to serve in the name of Jesus.
3. In baptism we are all called to the prophetic vocation of proclaiming God’s word. That is a scary reality for many people, especially the young. But we cannot flinch from speaking God’s mercy and love to all people and not just in the safe places but in the challenging areas of life, such as school and activities where the name of Jesus is often only whispered and hidden from the public square. Once more our Holy Father does not hold back in challenging the altar servers, “You are called to speak of Jesus to your contemporaries, not only those within your parishes or associations, but especially to those outside.”

This Sunday and the coming weeks, take time to pray and observe the altar servers and remind yourself that we all serve at the altar of our Lord when we truly and fully celebrate Mass in communion with our Catholic faith. And while the Pope’s words may have been for a group of German altar servers they are reminders to all of us of who we are called to be.

God bless

Fr. Mark

The full text of the Pope’s remarks are found below, give them as a gift to a altar server near you… http://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2015/08/04/pope_meets_with_altar_servers_in_st_peters_square/1163018

“For a parish to actually be a ‘family of families’ calls for concrete actions of hospitality and generosity. St. John Paul II said that ‘opening the doors to one’s home, and still more of one’s heart,’ is a mode of imitating Christ. To give help and to receive help are intimate things. No one, especially a child, parents struggling with unexpected crises, vulnerable elderly people, or anyone who is suffering, should be lonely in a parish family. There is no substitute for ordinary parishioners simply befriending and serving one another during the week, extending church beyond Sunday mornings.” (#88 Love is our Mission: The Family Fully Alive)

The wonderful catechesis on the family given to us by the U. S. Bishops has been a wonderment of blessing for me these past few months as I have slowly prayed my way through each chapter and each paragraph. The quote above comes from the 5^th chapter entitled “Creating the Future” which gives us a vision of parish life that is truly alive, vibrant and filled with hope and faith. I cannot imagine any Catholic who would not in one way or another embrace a parish that lived the simple statement above.

The question we may ask each other is: why are we not practicing being a “family of families” as called for by our Lord? Speaking only for myself the only answer I have is FEAR. I often try to live the above, to help carry the burdens of others, to celebrate the joy of life with others, to be present during crises and give thanks for the blessings given, shared and received…but at times I am afraid. I fail to often. I fail in my natural family, in my family of friends and certainly in my family the Church. And yes, I could give you a long list of well-worn excuses but they are only excuses.

I could also fall into despair at my failures, yet through God’s grace and love I can reflect and look back and see the growth of hospitality in my heart as I do continue to pry open the door to my own heart to receive the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the hearts of my brothers in sisters in the Lord. This is the ultimate key to our call to follow Jesus, to recognize our shortcomings and failures and then to strive, with Jesus’ help, to move towards a holier life in union with Him and all people. It is practicing daily prayer, daily examination of conscience and daily thanksgiving and devotion that leads us to participate in the sacramental life that give us the strength to walk with others as we walks with our Lord. It begins with a hello and continues with the “getting to know” the other in all moments of life. It is reaching out and living the joy of the Gospel within the family of God.

God Bless

Fr. Mark

Ps. I would highly encourage you to read and pray with this wonderful little book Love is Our Mission: The Family Fully Alive. I am not plugging Amazon…but it is available in both paper and electronic form. Take time to read it with family and friends as we grow as a family of families.

I have had this conversation more times that I can remember over the past ten years of my priesthood. A husband or wife comes in and says, “Father we are having trouble in our marriage.” Then the various list of what is wrong follows. Then I will ask one question, “When was the last time you had time alone together? A date night? A weekend away? Some time just to focus on each other?” More often than not (I would say over 90%of the time) my question is met with silence and they try to think of the last time. I can then ask a second question, “when was the last time you had quality time with one of your children?” I get just the opposite response…usually there is a whole list of times. Don’t get me wrong, problems in a marriage are difficult and just spending time together isn’t going to solve every problem but it is a beginning.

Here is what the Church says marriage is “the intimate partnership of life and the love which constitutes the married state has been established by the creator and endowed by him with its own proper laws…For God himself is the author of marriage.” (Gaudium et Spes #48)   This statement on marriage from the Second Vatican Council is powerful because it links the life of husband and wife to the life of God. In just the first five works “the intimate partnership of life” reminds us of the call to unity and dedication towards the other that holds marriage together. To be intimate in a relationship isn’t just the physical that is often portrayed by media rather it is the deep knowing of the other that takes time, effort and sacrifice in the presence of the other in our life. It is the choosing the first and greatest love over all others as we unite our life to God’s call to holiness in our proper state of life. True intimacy is responding to the needs and call of our beloved in faith, hope and charity.

It is the partnership of dedication where working towards a common goal (heaven) is found in the laboring in the field of marital love where husband and wife choose daily to be open to life, open to love and open to the response of God’s message to lead one another to the foot of the cross where sacrificial love blooms in the holiness of unity with God and the beloved. It is recognizing that the fruit of love pales in comparison to the lived life of love in the sacramental holiness of marriage.

Lastly it is all about life lived and blessed. We damage life when we cut ourselves off from the source of life, which is first and foremost God, but also from our sacramental life. Choosing to live that life fully in faith and hope helps us to move through the struggles and to re-engage again and again in the beauty of love.

Oh, and by the way…I know you have been waiting for the God part…all of the above paragraph works with God where he desires us to be in an intimate partnership of life through Him, with Him and in Him, (you might recognize those words from Mass) in the joy of the Gospel.

We pray for happy and holy marriages. We pray for those who are struggling in their marriage. We pray for those who have suffered the hurt of divorce in marriage.

God Bless

Fr. Mark

Who would have thought that joy could be so difficult to hold on to in the daily gift of life?  It is a passing moment of blessing that reminds us of the joy that we are called to hold and be held by that is our Lord Jesus.

William A Meninger a Trappist monk writes in this updated version of “The Imitation of Christ” these prophetic words. “the world is too much with you.  It is all that you know.  All you being, all your faculties are taken up with it.  Its legitimate beauties, its inevitable troubles, its lures and preoccupation are, a means to something beyond them. The very best of what this world has to offer is not even a shadow of what is to come, which I have prepared for those who love.” (p. 70)

We are reminded in these wonderful words of blessing that we should look through the creation that surrounds us, not because it is hold no goodness, (it does) but because it can become a trap that absorbs our desire for the greater, the holier, the more mysterious. It is how we discover the true person we are created to be when we choose to break the bread and drink fully of the cup.

This is the trap of sin. To settle into the lesser and be absorbed into the mediocre.  God desires greatness and has created each of us to share the saintliness, the holiness, the wonder of Jesus in our hearts.  This is the truth of our call of vocation, as husband and wife, as priest and religious, as those called to live the single life, to see and experience the greater mystery and strive to follow the way of the cross.

The trap of sin is this banality of evil that allows people to speak of monstrous cruelty without seeing the great gift of life and choosing to destroy human life for a momentary gain.

God Bless

Fr. Mark

How do you rediscover a lost blessing? I was reminded about a time when my faith life needed a kick in the rear this week when we celebrated the Memorial of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. The memory involved the study of the German Language, some beer and Edith Stein.

I wrote a few years ago about my adventures in Germany when I was at university and how the language and beer became objects of study and examination that gave me much joy and blessing during my year abroad. But there was a lot more to the year than those two blessings. We, the study abroad group I was with, had to write a final paper on some aspect of German history and how it helped us to better understand our experience in Germany.

As a philosophy major I had sampled many classes at the University of Constance and found them very interesting it was here that I came across Edith Stein. Edith Stein was a brilliant philosopher from the early part of the 20^th century who worked mainly in the study of the philosophy of Phenomenology.  All I can remember of reading her and other writings on the subject was that I had a headache and I spent most of my time trying to deconstruct and reconstruct the German sentences into something I could understand…failing most of the time…and this is where the beer helped.

I also read a few small articles about her and then began to do more research into her life. What intrigued me most in her life was that she was born of Jewish parents, converted to Catholicism, became a Carmelite Sister and was murdered in a Nazi death camp. During her doctoral studies she tells this part of her conversion, “(I) went to Frankfurt Cathedral and saw a woman with a shopping basket going in to kneel for a brief prayer. “This was something totally new to me. In the synagogues and Protestant churches I had visited people simply went to the services. Here, however, I saw someone coming straight from the busy marketplace into this empty church, as if she was going to have an intimate conversation. It was something I never forgot.”

What Edith Stein witnessed was in truth a conversation, a brief chat with our Lord. As I reflected on this during the last month or two that I was in Germany I began to remember during my travels how often I would find myself sitting quietly in a church, yes admiring the beauty of the art and architecture, speaking softly to God in prayer. It was the most natural thing in the world. It was also here that my faith took a step forward in recognizing the call of God is one to conversation and conversion.

Edith Stein upon entering the Carmelite order took the name Teresa Benedict of the Cross and was in 1997 canonized by Pope Saint John Paul II.

It is reminder that when are hearts are ready God speaks to us even when we are not looking.

God bless

Fr. Mark

I remember distinctly the very first time that I put on the dress green uniform in the final days of Marine Corps boot camp. It was an odd and strange feeling. Looking about at my fellow platoon mates, catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror and going over every detail of the uniform as we prepared for inspections was both an exhilarating and disconcerting feeling. It was hard to feel comfortable, not because of the fit of the uniform, but the idea and reality of the uniform. It marked, especially in the final days a change that was going on in my fellow recruits and me that went beyond the physical and entered into whom we are in the core of our being.

In Marine Corps boot camp the Drill Instructors would call you by every name in the book (and some names that aren’t found in books) except the name Marine. That name was given only after the completion of the long journey of boot camp. But as the days became shorter and the preparation for graduation became closer that uncomfortable feeling of change began to take greater hold: in a few days everything would be different.

It wasn’t different because I had assumed a new name it was different because of the change of heart and mind that had taken place. The forging of the heart and mind through the rigors of the physical, mental and emotional trials strengthened and enlivened the foundation of life that would allow the name to hang upon the body which the dress uniform signified.

The foundation was already there…it was just strengthened and enlivened. This is also part and parcel of our faith life. As we are created in the image and likeness of God, the foundation for human dignity, from conception to natural death, remains in us. It cannot be taken away. In that dignity is the desire for relationship with God and with others, which can never be destroyed or taken away. Sin will often distort this desire for the truth of God’s love but there is and always will be a stronger desire for God.

This is why our struggles of faith are important and necessary. Like boot camp, the struggles strengthen and enliven our faith. They help us to live the virtues and turn away from that which degrades us and seeks to falsify our dignity before God. The headwinds of this world may in many ways be blowing against the truth of the Gospel of Life at this moment but as we walk, in God’s truth and charity, into these winds we know, as Jesus promised, that He will strengthen us and be with us because we walk in faith.

God bless

Fr. Mark

I have spent the last few days on a short trip to Southern California for a long promised trip with our liturgical dance group, La Danza. It has been a wonderful few days with the chaperones and the young people as we visited Mission churches and the Cathedral parish in the Diocese of Orange. In the middle of it all we spent a day at Universal Studios.

Admittedly, I am not a theme park person. I will confess to never having set foot within the confines of Disney Land or any other major park in my life. I did enjoy the rides that I went on and the shows that I saw. It was fun to see the young people animated and excited about their shared experience of the “rides.” What I found most interesting was the willingness to wait. It was the willingness to stand in line for an hour so that they could spend the short time on the ride to capture the thrills and excitement of that moment.

Waiting is a big part of God’s plan for us. He waits and we wait but it is always, much like the park rides an active waiting where we are (or should be) moving towards our goal. Which brings us back to those long waiting lines…people basically waited in three ways. 1. The talked with those around them. 2. The distracted themselves with their telephones. 3. The stared with a comatose expression into space.

Is our waiting for God similar to this? If we are like #3 (and I can be this way) it is like I am saying to God, “it’s your job to make me happy and entertain me and if you don’t I will go to another line and wait to be entertained there.” In other words: my faith life is dormant until activated by something that will usually be in short duration before the comatose stare infiltrates the mind again.

If we are like #2, I think we can guess this one. (I, again, can fall into this pattern) it is where we will do everything and anything to keep our minds off where we are and how we are coping with the wait. We wait for the high moments but pay very little attention to our overall interaction with God. Perhaps it is just a Sunday Mass that we think of God and during the week (or several weeks) between Mass we allow the distractions of the world to drag our focus away form God.

Finally, if we take life as a conversation with God and his holy people (#1) we find the wait an enjoyable and less tedious reality that we all must endure. It is when we are engaged in the conversations of life that we recognized our shared gifts and blessings and find that we remember and relive the joys and excitements of the past as we move slowly towards those great and powerful experiences with our God and other people. When we take time to share who we are, our experiences and memories, our hopes and future love without condition with God and his holy people we discover that life is abundant and those high moments are joined by conversations of love.

God Bless

Fr. Mark

One of the hardest things to do is say goodbye. We often find ourselves lingering on at front doors, on lawns, outside of cars as we take leave of those we have been visiting. It is almost as if, within our DNA, we have an aversion to moving away from relationship. This Friday letter has been on my mind for many weeks as I have lingered at our parish saying goodbye to many people and taking leave of a community that has become a home. But now it is time.

This past week I have been packing in earnest and going through the many things that we have shared together. It has been hard. I see pictures of Baptisms, Confirmations and First Holy Communions. I have photos of weddings and holy cards for the funerals we have celebrated. I have rediscovered so many of the blessings that we have shared that were forgotten and now remembered in the rush of daily ministry. I have shed tears and laughed at the memories formed and blessed in our relationship as disciples of our Lord Jesus.

And now it is time. Yesterday I put away my small prayer chapel. I lovingly wrapped my icons, carefully placed the statues and crosses in bubble wrap and packed up the prayer books and cards to be reopened and replaced when I move into my rooms at St. Lucy. This morning when I sat in the chair in which I have prayed for many hours there was only a simple crucifix on the wall. This was a clear and wonderful reminder of true blessing of who we are as sons and daughters of the living God. As St. Paul reminds us again and again, “For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.“ (1 Cor 2:2)

If we do this, then once more from St. Paul, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?” (Rom 8:35)

It is time. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your prayers and acts of kindness throughout the past six years. Your blessings are a gift beyond all measure.

Thank you and God Bless

Fr. Mark