A Pope, a Bishop and a Priest

The Tenderness of an Embrace #27- 30 (AL)

“Love also bears fruit in mercy and forgiveness”(#27 AL)

As we prepare for the 50th Anniversary of Worldwide Marriage Encounter in the United States and Canada I am going to offer some reflection on Marriage using a Pope (Francis), a Bishop (Fulton Sheen) and a Priest (Fr. Chuck Gallagher SJ) to reflect on the genius of the Marriage Encounter movement.

One of the greatest gifts I receive continually is ministering to families who are seeking to live a life fully in union with each other and God. I see this most clearly in the two points of marriage that may seem odd…one at the beginning and the other at an end. The natural moment is the birth of a child in the marriage where you see this reality in what Pope Francis teaches, “Love so central to the Christian experience of marriage and the family, another virtue stands out, one often overlooked in our world of frenetic and superficial relationships. It is tenderness.”(#28 AL) The other moment of tenderness is often at the end of a life. I have prayed with countless couples where one spouse is ministering to the other with this gift of tenderness that is so profound that it takes breath away.
It is this lived experience of growing in tenderness. In our mission of Marriage Encounter we witness to this reality each day. Fr. Gallagher wrote this truth we all share, “Nothing brings out the real personal qualities of a human being such as depth, tenderness, extraordinary generosity and willingness to sacrifice, as does gentle love for another person.” (p 28 ME)
I made my first weekend as part of the Spanish Encuentro. Looking back at the Divine Providence of this part of my journey I am amazed how God worked in the moment. The tenderness of God’s love manifested itself in my participation of listening more attentively with the eyes of my heart as God’s invitation to “get out of my head” was made easier in letting the words being spoken drift away as I began to witness the tenderness of God’s invitation to love.
It is in the our gift of sharing our vocation that Bishop Sheen reminds us is a gift of the Divine, “In Divine service and in marriage therefore, there should be a generosity that goes quite beyond the limits of justice.” (p 26 GM ) I remember clearly the moment I “got it” on the weekend. Seeing a couple on Sunday morning being made new in the eternal love of God where, “The tug between what is immediate and what is interior now vanishes, as they very enjoyment that the immediacy of the flesh gives becomes the occasion for joy in the interiority of the soul which knows that one is using it for God’s proposes and for the salvation of both souls.” (p 31 GM) In their choosing to offer their love/life/soul to the other, in this miraculous moment I was give the blessing of witnessing God’ gracious love lived out in sacramental love.
It is here, in the tenderness of the embrace of God and each other where our call as Sacraments of love, as married couples, priests, sisters and brothers, we live out God’s plan for our lives. We know we each have a mission which God invites us to share. When we choose uniquely to live out this call then we allow our Sacrament to be light to the world. “Each couple has their own unique love that only they can express. Marriage Encounter, through the dialogue, offers to each couple a way to let the love between them come forth loud and clear, without interference.” (p 28 ME) The genius of God’s blessing to each couple/priest/religious is in the gift of dialogue we truly begin to discover our way in following Christ’s Way as disciples who proclaim the truth of marriage as the wonder within our world.
Our dream of happy and holy marriages we share each day of our lives, Bishop Sheen shares reinforces in his powerful and prophetic voice, “In this way, the dream of the bride and groom for eternal happiness really comes true, not in themselves alone, but through themselves. Now they love each other not as they dreamed they would, but as God dreamed they would.” (p 31 GM) The call to live “not in…but through” our Sacrament is the liberating gift of being fully alive in our grace filled gift God has offered all married couples.

Let us pray,

God and Father of us all,
in Jesus, your Son and our Savior,
you have made us
your sons and daughters
in the family of the Church.
May your grace and love
help our families
in every part of the world
be united to one another
in fidelity to the Gospel.
May the example of the Holy Family,
with the aid of your Holy Spirit,
guide all families, especially those most troubled,
to be homes of communion and prayer
and to always seek your truth and live in your love.
through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Jesus, Mary and Joseph, pray for us! (p 117 LOF)

“Amoris Laetitia: The Joy of Love” Pope Francis (2016) (AL)

“The Marriage Encounter” Fr. Chuck Gallagher, SJ (1975) (ME)

“Three to Get Married” Bishop Fulton Sheen (1951) (GM)

“The 21 Undeniable Secrets of Marriage” Dr. Allen Hunt (2015) (USM)

“Love Is Our Family: The Family Fully Alive” USCCB (2014) (LOF)

Our “Universal Call to Holiness” is the recognition of God’s divine plan for each and every person created in His likeness and image. It is to share the blessing of life and love in abundance and generosity. As we prepare for our calendar New Year we may ask and seek how we can live this call to holiness better this year, month, week and day of our lives.
“‘All Christians in any state or walk of life are called to the fullness of Christian life and to the perfection of Charity.’ (Lumen Gentium #31) ‘Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.’ (Mt 5:48) God wants us to be holy. One must try to sanctify oneself in one’s place within the Church of Christ.” (p 2260 “Daily Roman Missal”)

Each of us has our story in searching for our call to holiness. I have mine that started as a small boy growing up on a farm in Idaho, making the missteps of youth and young adulthood that too often worked against the call to holiness and finally the long and continual conversion to a life of growing holiness (I hope). I write, “long and continual” because as with all relationships, our relationship with God is not static or final but rather it should be a dynamic and passion filled love drawing ever deeper into the mystery of God’s great love for us.
As a priest I need to be attentive to my relationship with God through His Church and the people who make up the holy people of God. Like any relationship I can and do go through time of great joy and of great sadness. But I am also blessed that in my spousal relationship with God I have literally hundreds (if not thousands) of people to enter into joyful relationships. And of course the opposite is also true. It is from this relationship with the Church that I am able to continually be renewed in my faith and love of God when I choose to be open to hearing God’s words spoken through the blessings and hurts of the people of God. This is my place in the Church.
I also must continually be attentive in my conversations directly with God through prayer and the sacramental life. I know many people think that for priests and religious sisters and brothers this is all we do. Prayer is something that comes easily and because we participate in daily Mass the sacramental life is always positive. Sadly, at least in my case, this is not always true. But just as with any conversation, if we seek love, reconciliation and truth then we try again and again even when the conversations can be dry and even hurtful because we know deep down there is a fountain of holiness and love in the relationship. I hear this most clearly in the praying of the Psalms daily where the emotions of a people seeking God in a turbulent world is prayed out continuously in grace.
In the call to holiness there is also the need to look at how we act upon this call in the works of mercy, charity and hopefulness in our lives. A few years ago Pope Francis gave us a year in which he asked us, as individuals and as Church to evaluate and invigorate our call to holiness in light of the works of mercy. I was certainly blessed in my year of prayer with these works. I saw my strengths and weaknesses placed in front of me as I challenged myself to honestly reevaluate my commitment to serving the Catholic Church. I was surely humbled as I saw the need to change in some aspects of my life and blessed by seeing the good work God has begun in me growing and being fruitful (I hope).
This is the promise to the invitation God offers to each of us at Baptism, to become fruitful in allowing the good work to continue in God’s plan for each of us…to be holy. At ordination it is prayed very starkly when the ordaining Bishop asks for obedience and upon receiving the affirmative reply prays, “May God who has begun the good work in you bring it to fulfillment.”
It is only in obedience to love that we can respond to our call to holiness and celebrate in joy our place within the Kingdom.
In other words…this was a long way to simply ask…What is your New Year’s resolution? Does it help you to grow in holiness?
God Bless
Fr. Mark

The below quotes come from Bishop Fulton Sheen’s booklet entitled “The True Meaning of Christmas.” I have been using this little booklet as part of my Advent reflection and prayer time for the past few weeks.

“Nine months passed by. One night there rang out over the stillness of the evening breeze, out over the white chalked hills of Bethlehem—a gentle cry. The sea did not hear the voice. The great ones of the earth did not hear the cry, for they could not understand how a Child could be greater than a man.”
We can often find ourselves waiting and then be surprised by the rapid and sudden change that happens when the waiting is over. May be 49er fans are feeling this with the new quarterback seemingly changing the fortunes of a team that couldn’t seem to win to save their lives into one that finds a way to win in all circumstances. Bishop Sheen reminds us that in our waiting we need to be attentive to the little things. The whole of the Jewish people had been waiting and dreaming and hoping for this moment and most of them missed it completely. They didn’t hear God’s call to come and see, to visit and spend time in prayer. Our Advent season, coming to a quick and abrupt conclusion, can feel this way. The joy and noise of the celebrations, presents and feasts can drown out the “gentle cry” inviting us to pay attention to God and one another. As we enter into these holy days a challenge we may place within our family is to stop and give thanks in prayer quietly and grateful to God for all the blessings of the day, to see how the child born in a manger is the true gift received this coming Christmas day

“There were only two classes of people who heard the cry that night: shepherds and wise men. Shepherds: those who know they know nothing. Wise men: those who know they do not know everything. Only the very simple and the very learned discovered God—never the man with one book.”
Believing comes from understanding the greater, not in solving the greater, but seeing and embracing the mystery of the greater in God’s love. Why the shepherds? Why these wise men? The mystery of their response to come and see, to come and bless, the come and worship is unending. Are we willing to enter into the mystery like them? This is one of the great challenges facing our lives: how will we respond? A person with one book knows only one answer and begins to exclude all others. If we act in this way we miss the deep beauty of God’s call to all people as we narrow our vision in how to act and see. To use the football analogy again; we try to fit the players into a system that is rigid and forces them to act against their gifts rather than seek the talents and beauty of each individual and meld them into a greater gift, the team of the Child Jesus. Jesus cries out and we are invited into sacrificial service of one another, because the Christ Child lives in us. Our challenge may be to invite our family to serve one another in the coming days, to joyfully go about our tasks as we pray for the gift of peace, in our family and in the world.

“When we say that God became man, we do not mean that the Godhead was cut down to human dimensions; it means, on the contrary, that a human nature was taken up into the Person of God and made One with Him. This union called the Incarnation, which literally means an “enfleshment,” or “made flesh.”
Bishop Sheen is expanding, in my humble opinion, on this most love filled sentence in the Bible.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)
Our Christmas joy celebrates this gift of love. We cannot earn it. We do not deserve it. We are given, without asking, the greatest gift of all. Is this how we receive our Christmas gifts; in joy and love? We can in the moment forget the giver and simply look at the what in front of us. We then miss the “gentle cry” of blessing and hope that surrounds us in family and friends. If we begin to focus more and more on the quarterback and miss the hard work of the right guard toiling away to give his teammate the time to throw the pass. Do we take time to teach our children to look beyond the what and see and thank the giver of the gift with attentive joy and love? Do we do this with God?
May God bless you during the coming holy days and may you and your family have a blessed and joyful Christmas season.
Merry Christmas
Fr. Mark

“In his incarnation, Christ assured human limitations. Face to face with God’s silence, we are confronted with absolute love. And this great silence also explains the freedom left to man. God’s only power is to love silently. He is incapable of any oppressive force. God is love, and love cannot compel force, or oppress in order to be loved in return.” (#90 “The Power of Silence” Robert Cardinal Sarah)

As we move ever closer to Christmas these words strike a chord of hope and blessing in our hearts. If we think of the child Jesus, in the manger, surrounded by Mary and Joseph, the animals and the Magi, the shepherds and the angelic choirs. It is the supreme moment of silence we have all witnessed as a parent, sibling or stranger stares into the wonder of new life, new love and new hope that is every child born but most especially this child born of Mary the Incarnate Word of God.
It is a love drawing forth from us the desire for greater and greater peace. It is the hope daring us to go further and dream wondrously of the possibility of what could be in the plans of God’s love. It is the life challenging us to live in relationships of holiness and grace holding gently our most cherished love as we share the blessing given by God.
The challenge of a life of faith is to rediscover this blessing over and over again and to choose willingly to search out this blessing even in the messy, uneasy and injured parts of our life. “A device the Devil uses with great success when he wishes to cripple a worthy project is the stirring up of petty pride among those concerned. This is an evil which, by infecting even one or two, can nip in the bud the most promising enterprise for good.” (p 149 “Light in the Darkness: the Teaching of Father James Keller, M.M.) And what is this “worthy project”…for me it is first and foremost life, the life God gives to us. When we move out of the silence of the Incarnation and turn our eyes away from the silence of love to the distraction of the world we begin to mess with the “most promising enterprises for good” which is a life of blessing and peace. This is our temptation because the noise seems more appealing in the beginning than silence: it takes less time, less energy and less focus. It can be changed discarded and thrown away to be replaced with newer, louder more raucous noises where the lure of silence becomes a faint memory.
We must practice silence…
I love the way Matthew Kelly, the Catholic author and evangelist, phrases it…entering into the classroom of silence. I imagine this may not be his original phrase but each time I review some of the key needs in my life, a life that too often is filled with distractions and noise, the first on my list is always reentering the classroom of silence.
We must practice silence….
I practice silence in my Holy Hour each morning where I am able to discover moments of peace and blessing. Slowing my mind and allowing the stillness of silence to draw me closer to the eternal moment of love.
I practice silence as I cook and bake letting the rhythm of the moment, with the stirring, measuring and waiting be absorbed into the focus of creating something life sustaining.
I practice silence in listening to a story of joy, of hurt, or of blessing allowing the words to float freely without seeking to judge, fix or explain away the healing and growth coming through the laughter and tears.
I practice silence in the small pauses of the day, knowing the moment of silence will sustain the peace and grace between the moments of rush, the piles of notes and the ping of emails and the buzz of text messages which never seem to want peace.
If, as Cardinal Sarah notes, we have the courage to freely choose to be embraced in the silent love of God, then the promising enterprise of all life will wash away and heal the infection of sin and the great project of life will be one of true and endless grace filled love. Our challenge, especially as we rush towards Christmas, is to take time in silence with God and with family allowing the love to surround and impregnate our lives with the truth of the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ in our hearts. Pray….pray….and pray.

God Bless
Fr. Mark

“Gabriel greeted her: Good morning! You’re beautiful with God’s beauty, Beautiful inside and out! God be with you. She was thoroughly shaken, wondering what was behind a greeting like that. But the angel assured her, “Mary, you have nothing to fear. God has a surprise for you. You will become pregnant and give birth to a son and call his name Jesus.”” (Lk 1:27-28 from “The Message: Remix The Bible in Contemporary Language”, by Eugene H. Peterson)

Words are very important and sometimes we become so used to words we hear that we need to hear them in a different way, with a different voice and a different cadence to bring life back into them and hear them as they truly are meant to be heard and understood. Today we celebrate the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception. It is a wonderful way to remember, as our Gospel for the day teaches, that Our Blessed Mother, Mary, was chosen to bear the Word of God, Jesus, in her womb as the Mother of God.
In reality, we can often gloss over the importance of the “words” because the become so familiar that they almost loose their power and meaning. This is why, at times, I like to rehear words that I know well and let them roll about my brain in a different way. You hear the truth of the power of words in many different ways. In the last of the Harry Potter movies Dumbledore, in talking to Harry in the “limbo” of life tells him, “Words, in my not so humble opinion, are an almost inexhaustible source of magic, capable of inflicting injury and remedying it.”
In the tradition of our faith, we are, in reflecting on Sacred Scripture, place ourselves in the very scene and take time to ponder and absorb the Word of God in this way. Because the injury of the words of Adam and Eve begin to find their remedy in the “yes” of Mary.
As I place myself with Mary and hear the Angel Gabriel speak…”Good morning!” Words that roll off my tongue without much thought now draw me to attention. To spark my mind into a rapid and wondrous moment of the speechless moment when you want to say almost everything but nothing is possible. God chose Mary for a very specific mission and he has chosen me and each and every person for a very specific mission that only you and I can do…have we listened to the greeting from God that comes to us, maybe not in the voice of an Archangel, but in the voice of love and greeting from friend, neighbor or family? Do we choose to listen carefully or are we to often occupied and distracted to hear the true meaning behind the words? Do we miss the beauty of being called?
“You’re beautiful with God’s beauty. Beautiful inside and out!” This is what it means to be “full of grace” I know from my own experience on many occasions I don’t hear the second part of the greeting. I hear the “good morning” but miss the blessing behind it or I say the “good morning” without taking time to see the person who receives the greeting from my lips. God doesn’t miss this with us…He sees and speaks the words of blessing…He sees how he made each of us as individuals and commands his angels to speak those words of beauty. If we have ears to hear?
Mary chose to hear and believed even when Gabriel says, “you have nothing to fear. God has a surprise for you.” I think if I heard this I would literally groan inside…do I want a surprise from God? Am I afraid of God’s surprises?
This is the blessing of Mary in our Advent journey. We see the joy that comes from God’s surprise and how if we listen with attentive ears to the greetings of God then we need not be afraid and jump into the surprises of life.
God Bless
Fr. Mark

Happy Birthday Mom! Today my mother celebrates another year of life and to God I am grateful and blessed to have such a wonderful mom who has done so much to form me into the man I am with the added bonus of driving me a little crazy at time. I love you Mom!
And so I write a love letter to my Mom.

Dearest Mother, one thing that I most love about you is your willingness to be yourself. I see this in the very life you live where in serving others, especially in the image and likeness of God, you live unselfconsciously in the life of grace.
The sound is like the silent whistle that blows from your lips as you go about the most mundane of tasks. It is an endearing quality that many of your children have been blessed with as we laugh and joke about this gift of love that we recognize as a true blessing from God. It is the joy of watching and hearing your silent tune of love and joy.
The color of your love is the soft blue of an Idaho summer morning. It is sitting with you on the deck looking out at the ripening field of wheat with a cup of coffee at hand or the quiet of the table where the solitaire cards interrupt the silence as you shuffle through the deck peaking and moving about to see how the next card will open up new possibilities. It is your trust in the providence of life, peaking into God’s will for you, your children and all the family hoping and blessing us with the desire for a deeper joy and happiness in union with our Lord Jesus.
The posture of the body is relaxed and comfortable like sitting in your favorite chair watching another Mariners’ baseball game. Absorbing the relaxing pace and the moments of tension in equal measure knowing the game is but a symbol of our joy together. It is your pleasure in the simple and defined blessings where the conversations that happen in-between the pitches of the game mirror your words of love and blessing, words of wisdom in-between the challenges I as your son speak in confidence of hearing your voice echoing the peace of our Blessed Mother Mary.
The taste would be like the simple home cooked meal offered as a Eucharistic blessing, broken and shared. The meal where two, three or many are gathered as family given with ease of the uncountable times you offered the family meal or fed the multitude with trust that it would be enough. The blessing of a multiplication only possible when you, as mother, let go and simply enjoy those your are with as Jesus does in his feasts of life.
The feel is the cold hand, the warm touch, the soothing movement of love that is found in the childhood memories that are reawakened each time the touch is renewed over and over again, like the Hail Mary spoken and blessed remembering the slow movement of the beads mirroring the graceful blessing of a mother to her child. It is the image of God’s mercy again and again reaching out in our distress to invite us once more into community.
It is the grace of starting anew. Seeing the home become an empty pit of smoke and rubble and beginning once more knowing the gift of community and the comfort of family. Allowing us to be taken in the hospitality of the family and friends and building once more treasuring the memories of the past while trusting and knowing the Divine Providence of a grace filled future as our Blessed Mother Mary experienced at the Cross of love.
A scene of memory is you sitting in the seat of the John Deer 95 Combine at harvest working alongside Dad, young and spry, full of energy, laboring in the vineyard of God’s abundance as we recognize the time passing where age begins to slow and the movement of life lessens. It is the blessing we discover and rediscover again and again in remembering the strength and vitality of bearing 9 children, burying a husband, a son, a brother and many loved ones knowing the final destination which we all must journey and doing so in grace, strength and hopefulness where life grows greater in God’s love.
This is my love letter to you. May God bless you and keep you always.

Love, your son,
Mark