A lot of different things can go right or wrong during any given day. We can often wake up in the morning with a gloomy disposition that is turned around is a few moment by the recognition of a gift of grace seen and received. The same is true in the opposite direction, a good morning can be soured by an unkind word, action or thought that intrudes upon the moments of peace.
I was out on one of my early morning walks earlier this week. I had finished my rosary and was pondering how well the Dodgers would do against that other team this week. Lost in the reverie and hope of a sweep, (2-2 split was reality) I wasn’t paying much attention to my surrounding. Out of the blue the ferocious sounds of barking came springing towards me as I jumped back in alarm. Soon after was the panicked call of the owner and then the embarrassed asking of forgiveness. The pause, the words “not a problem” and then laughter. The ferocious dog was about 10 pounds in weight and not much danger to anything larger than himself.
In reality, I could have let this moment cloud my day to the negative. I was startled and it did bring my heart rate a tad bit higher. But there was also comedy in the moment that I could choose to live with too. I chose the later. In choosing the later I was able to hopefully bring a bit of peace to the dogs owner instead of the feelings that may have arisen.
Please believe when I say that this isn’t always the way I react. I could also use an example from this week when following a busy morning and knowing the afternoon was also heavily scheduled, a person stopped me before I exited the church and spoke those six words…”Father, do you have a moment?” Blood began to boil, pressure began to rise, eyes began to stare…I cold almost feel her recoil. I ruined my afternoon remembering and regretting the moment but I am also sure that her afternoon was not as joyous as it could have been if I had listened with grace rather than listening with my heart closed and turned away.
“Their eyes were prevented from recognizing him.” (Lk 24:16)
These words come from our Sunday Gospel and are written in the Road to Emmaus story in St. Luke’s Gospel. They are words that speak of a choice to see the good or the bad of any given day. What prevents our eyes from recognizing God’s presence in our life? What prevents our hearts from responding to recognizing God’s movement in the daily challenges set before us?
For me, and for many of us, it can be when I let the busyness of life become the all consuming focus. I won’t and can’t see anything else. I become so focussed on what I “want” to be done that I loose focus on what God wants of me.
How do we overcome this? We can look once more to Emmaus and Jesus’ patience and untiring love as he walks with them in their hurriedness to get home, their worriedness in what to do next and their disappointedness that things didn’t work out the way they had wanted them to do. Instead, he let them walk away from all of this and into the blessing of the Eucharist, the blessing of God’s presence.
We are reminded time and again how God uses our roads to bring us home when we choose to seek the blessings, even when they are hard blessings, difficult blessings and sad blessings. When we choose to walk with him then we will get it right most of the time because we are with him who is love and thanksgiving.
Many people say, “Of course they got it, it was Jesus with them. We don’t have Jesus with us.” My response was to remind them, myself and all of us, Jesus walks with us always because he has promised the he has “got us” until the end of time.
God bless
Fr. Mark

Sacraments are “powers that comes forth” from the Body of Christ, which is ever-living and life-giving. They are actions of the Holy Spirit at work in his Body, the Church. They are “the masterworks of God” in the new and everlasting covenant. (CCC #1116)

Many times in life we can begin to take the Sacraments for granted. We become lackadaisical in our practice and prayer of the Sacraments. Yes, even priests can fall into this trap. Then we are awoken again and witness the power of the sacramental grace God shares with us.
Many of us witnessed during the Easter Vigil at or parish the blessing a grace of the Sacraments of Initiation, Baptism, Confirmation and Eucharist being celebrate with those who were being received into the Catholic Church. That moment is always one filled with joy. You can almost hear the Holy Spirit laughing with us as the new Catholics are washed, anointed and fed with God’s sacramental joy.
It is a joy coming from the Body of Christ and as the Church teaches above, it is “his Body, the Church” which we are participants in this life giving action of love. The wonder of the sacramental unity we share is our witness to this joyful blessing rather than a dour and listless action of ritual. When we simply become bystanders to these moments of grace, we begin to take God for granted and fail to live the practice of our faith.
The power of these sacramental moments are undeniable.
This past Easter Monday as I sat in and listened to many of the adults who had received the Sacraments they shared their experience with each other and the team that had prepared them. Each person began with a simple thank you and then talked about the “learning of the faith” through the long preparation of classes, retreats and prayer. Many of them then talked about the sacramental moment when the “powers that comes forth” touched them, transformed them and awoke them to a new and powerful moment of grace. They became living witnesses to faith as they talked about the Holy Spirit at work at the moment of Sacramental movement.

“The purpose of the sacraments is to sanctify men, to build up the Body of Christ and, finally, to give worship to God. Because they are signs they also instruct. They not only presuppose faith, but by words and objects they also nourish, strengthen, and express it. That is why they are called ‘sacraments of faith.”’(CCC #1123)

When we become living sacraments we begin to instruct with our very lives. We are living, breathing sacraments of grace in the world. What a wonderful gift. The question begins with: Am I practicing my sacrament with fervent joy and blessing or have I placed it on the back burner ignoring and allowing grace to be inactive in my life? This isn’t a casual question, for the Christian is is a question of life an death. And here is the good news, no matter where our practice of our sacramental life is at this point, God continues to invite us to allow His Holy Spirit to ignite us again and again and again and again… He gives us Sacraments of continual grace, Eucharist and Reconciliation to sustain us and enliven those moments of sacramental love as we recall our Baptismal, Confirmation, Marriage and Ordination vows and promises we made to bless God with each breath we share.
To be made holy, “to sanctify” is a blessing beyond all blessings. Jesus says to us in the Gospel, “I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!” (Lk 12:49) In practicing our faith, the sacramental grace, the holiness God has created us each to be our challenge is to be the fire burning with the love of Jesus Christ. A fire that attracts, invites and welcomes all into the presence of the one true God.
God Bless
Fr. Mark

“Our Lord guided the Twelve and led them home to was their feet. He signed them their role as heirs, and then rose to serve them as their friend.” (from “Hymn on the Washing of the Feet” by Cyrillona)
The beautiful words above begin our Triduum celebration this Holy Thursday as we celebrate The Mass of the Lord’s Supper. The words and actions from the Gospel of John this evening (Jn 13:1-15) remind us of this great act of service and love for a friend. It is also an action we are called to carry out in our relationships of love toward friend, neighbor and even our enemies. Jesus is preparing his first disciples and all who would follow them in the example of sacrificial love. The act of washing the feet of the disciples is met with dismay, confusion and for St. Peter refusal. How often in receiving the gift of love from God do we respond in a similar way?
We can find ourselves responding in these negative fashion because it calls for us to change our lives, to enter into conversion where we follow Jesus as a friend and brother in returning to him the gift of sacrificial love we have received.
Will you follow me? This is the question that Jesus poses again and again in the Gospel. Will you allow me to wash you clean? This is Jesus’ sacramental call to follow him through the refusal, dismay and confusion. Will you trust in my Father’s will for you? He asks us as a friend as a friend willing to give everything to us.

“Thanks to the Cross we no longer fear the tyrant, for we are by the side of the King.” (from Discourses on the Cross and the Thief by St. John Chrysostom.)
Our response to Jesus’ command to be washed and to wash is magnified as we celebrate the Good Friday of our Lord’s Passion. The confusion, dismay and refusal are magnified tenfold in the watching and participating in the movement of Divine Suffering and Divine Love. Even in the practice of love we will fall down and fail. But there we discover the true mercy and compassion, the reconciliation and friendship of Jesus Christ. “The Lord turned and looked at Peter. And Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how He had told him, “Before a rooster crows today, you will deny Me three times.”And he went out and wept bitterly.” (Lk 22:61-62) What did Peter see in the eyes of Jesus? Compassion, mercy and love…and he wept. He wept not because of fear and anguish but in repentance and hope, in the knowledge of reconciliation and forgiveness. On Good Friday as we come to venerate the Cross we echo the words of grace quoted above where our fear is turned to hope because we see in the eyes of Jesus the gift of life shared even in suffering and death. And then we enter into the great silence.

“Allow the light to open our eyes, so that we may look upon this splendor of light with radiant eyes, able to see the cause for such a brilliant night with unclouded minds.” (from Sermon Guelpherbytanus 5 by St. Augustine of Hippo) We have prayed through the hours of silence to the moment of resurrection and hope. In the obedience to Love we have lived, through these past forty days and all our lives, our eyes unclouded by fear see God as he truly is and how He participates in each and every moment of our lives, not as a puppeteer pulling strings but as a beloved embracing and lifting su up in love through grace. Jesus stands with us and calls us by name with the voice of peace. Jesus walks with us and invites us to hear him whispering joy. Jesus walks through the locked doors of our souls to free us from the sin of self imprisonment. He is with us for one reason…He loves each of us with the greatest love.

God Bless
Fr. Mark
All quotes come from “Lent and Easter with the Church Fathers” by Marco Pappalardo

This Sunday is “Palm Sunday” or as it is officially known “The Sunday of our Lord’s Passion.” We call it by this name because we traditionally hear the Gospel of Matthew about Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem and then the Passion Narrative from the Gospel. In this we begin our Holy Week. In our prayer booklet “Refresh and Renew Your Life” the Sunday reflection is entitled “It’s been one of those weeks!” (p 41)

We have all suffered through one of those days, weeks, months, years, decades that surely try our faith and challenge us to see things differently in life. The author advises us, “Accept that setbacks and bad news aren’t what matters. But our response does, as we look at how we can change things. Tough times don’t last, but opportunities for great things to come do. Just ask someone who’s been there.” (p 41)

Take time to think about this a little. Often times I pray for more patience. It never seems to be enough and I know for the confessional that many people, in their family, professional and recreational life suffer from this same sin. But in the end, the sin isn’t impatience, the sin is our response to being impatient with others. It is a hard thing to do, but to be gentle in our impatience, to be merciful in our impatience, to be loving with our impatience and ultimately to be patient with our impatience is the call of discipleship. Following the quote above…accept that the impatience I suffer from isn’t what matters…it is what I do when I am impatient that truly is the gift (good or bad) given to God and his people from me.

How does this look? I was watching the Masters Golf Tournament of a short while yesterday (Thursday) and Justin Spieth, one of the best golfers in the world, shot a quadruple bogie on a hole…that’s bad…but he responded with a birdie on the following hole…that’s good. The reality is the quadruple bogie was terrible and will live on his score card forever but the blessing come from not allowing the quadruple bogie to define the next hole, the next shot, the rest of the tournament. Because this is often what we allow sin to do…it has been one of those days so when I arrive home….I drink too much…watch television instead of talking with my spouse…argue with children/parents…complain about whatever….and we can each name a behavior that we allow to dominate the rest of the day rather than seeking to goodness of life and turn to the gift of love.

This becomes the Christian response to hurts and sufferings…no we do not want to be hurt or suffer nor do we hope others are in suffering and pain in their lives…but we understand that even there God is with us and wants us to turn to him and see the love that He shares with us in abundance. And this takes practice…no, not practice in suffering but practice in loving our way through our sins in prayer and communion with one another and God. It is the practice of those old fashioned but alway new virtues that strengthen our hearts and wills in the exercise of seeking God.

These words from St. Francis de Sales may sum it up for us. “We must hate our shortcomings, but with a hate that is tranquil and peaceful, not with a hate that is fretful and troubled; and, yes, we must have patience to see our shortcomings and to profit from the saintly abasement of ourselves. Failing that, my daughter, your imperfections, which you see very acutely, will trouble you even more keenly, and, by this means maintain themselves, as there is nothing which sustains our defects more than a sense of anxiety and haste to eliminate them.” In other words, the practice of virtue isn’t magic but rather the gentle growth in the virtues of holiness drawing us ever closer to God and the holy people he calls us to love.

God Bless Fr. Mark