The temptation of interruption is a sin I battle with constantly.

“The fruit of silence is prayer, the fruit of prayer is faith, the fruit of faith is love, the fruit of love is service and the fruit of service is peace.”

― Mother Theresa,

When I returned from retreat a few weeks ago one of the first things I did was to buy a wristwatch. It was one of the spiritual insights I received during the retreat…I needed to buy a watch. Why? Simply put, by the third day of the retreat I was discovering a deepening prayer and a quiet that went beyond the silence of the retreat and absence of the daily “work” of ministry. It was a memory of prayer I had had before but a prayer that had gone missing recently.
What was the difference? It was the wristwatch…or the lack of one. Like many people I had begun using the ever-present cellphone as my go to time keeper. It seemed easier to just look at the cellphone face and see that it was 1:49 p.m. just as easily as it was to look at my wrist and see its was 1:49 p.m. but there was something more.
I know that many of you have guessed already but the little insight was how often I looked at my cellphone…even if for just a second…as an interruption and distraction in my daily life. On retreat, because the cellphone was sitting quietly on the closet shelf throughout the day and night I quickly found myself slipping into the remembered habit of not seeking the interruption or distraction of the cellphone, especially in prayer, throughout the day.
Sadly, coming off of retreat, the old temptations began to place themselves in front of me…yes, I had my watch on during my Holy Hour in the morning…but what if I got a call, a text, a Twitter beep or one of a hundred different distracted excuses for just interrupting my prayer time to check and make sure I hadn’t missed anything important. It is the lie that I tell myself as I seek to avoid God’s call to silence.
One of the oldest understandings of our hearing the voice of God is in the silence of life. In 1 Kings 19:11-13 we hear these words of blessing, “The Lord said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by. Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave. Then a voice said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?””
We know this innately in our souls, when we are quiet we are better able to see the blessings of life like the image of grandparents sitting quietly as their grandchildren scamper about in joy and seeing in the quiet of their hearts grace and hope flow forth in their lives. We hear it when we sit looking out on a vista of great beauty contemplating the grandeur of creation. We feel it as the man and woman stare deeply into the eyes of the other recognizing the blossoming of love.
I’m still working on it…staring deeply into the Eucharistic presence of God, quieting my soul to hear the powerful whisper of blessing. Going off, as Jesus does, into the community of Trinitarian love, to be quiet and know the presence of our Father.
God Bless,
Fr. Mark

“God seeks me in prayer and desires me to seek others in prayer.”

As I noted last week, I was away on a silent retreat, taking time in prayer and reflection and doing some hard labor of spiritual renewal. One of the phrases I noted listening to the spiritual director on the retreat was the one given above. It is not profound or new but a reminder of the how and why of the spiritual life and how and why our spiritual life is intertwined with each and every action that we have and do in our lives.
God seeks me in His Word: “Then he said to them all: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.”” (Lk 9:23) God’s Word is Jesus Christ and Jesus seeks us. From the moment he proclaims the kingdom of Heaven, to the call of each disciple by name and to his final breath on the cross—Jesus seeks us with love and mercy. Our daily prayer in love is the hearing of God’s voice calling to us. We take into our souls the blessings that surround us and discover more fully how God is inviting me into a closer relationship of love. When I do this then I must seek others in God’s Word, Jesus Christ, because love draws us forth into new life. Knowing God seeks us we find Him in the many prayers such as the rosary where praying the mysteries of Jesus’ life we live with him in our journey of salvation.
God seeks me in His community: “Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me, for in you my soul takes refuge; in the shadow of your wings I will take refuge until the destroying storms pass by.” (Ps 57:1) Jesus calls us, his disciples, into a community of love where we find refuge and healing in the great mystery of God’s presence in the community. We know in the family we find a refuge and the family of the Church becomes a greater blessing when we seek to be in the service of our brothers and sisters. As a family in prayer we discover the gifts present with each person and the greater gifts of the community shared and broken. When we begin to see and experience these gifts of blessing and love we naturally seek out the others that surround us as a family of grace and peace. We discover this community in those time when we find ourselves in moments of joy and sorrow. It is the stories we share of a memory of love at a funeral or the joyous blessing of family at the baptism of new life.
God seeks me in His celebrations: “You have stripped off your old behavior with your old self, and you have put on a new self which will progress toward true knowledge the more it is renewed in the image of its Creator.” (Col 3:9-10) We are a party people. God calls us to celebrate with joy and blessing. But the party always begins in prayer because we don’t celebrate nothing but we celebrate someone, Jesus Christ, who offers us the very best of food and drink. We don’t celebrate alone because the community infused in the love of God’s Word sees the very best of who we are and invites us to find the very best in the other by celebrations of joy in thanksgiving of God’s great blessings. We find this most perfectly in the sign of peace during the celebration of the Mass. This simple exchange of peace is focused on offering the fullness of who we are in Jesus Christ and receiving this same fullness from the person celebrating at our side.
Thank you for your prayers during my retreat and your continued prayers for your priests.

God Bless
Fr. Mark

One of the harder memories I have from my service in the Marine Corps was the after Christmas return of fellow Marines when you have been on duty during this festive time.
As a young man those first Christmases away from family, community and tradition often felt empty. Hearing the stories of friends talking about the joy of family, their sharing of gifts and the blessings of being together was not easy to hear. One of the only familiar things I had in Beaufort, South Carolina was Christmas Mass. I can still remember quite distinctly that first Christmas in 1979, I had just recently been assigned to the Marine Corps Air Station and being new was at the bottom of the ladder. Going to Midnight Mass that Christmas was a true blessing as the celebration brought into focus the reality that we are not alone.
I tell this short story not to lament the loss of Christmas with family because it was the first but not the last time I have been away for Christmas but rather the reality of our universal call to holiness and how we discover this through community and tradition that we often don’t even realize we have until it is needed. But it must be a tradition that has been practiced and ingrained in our imagination through time and love. This is where family, the domestic Church as St. John Paul II called it, becomes vitally important for the practice and handing on of the faith.
I doubt that I would have shown up at the base chapel that first Christmas night if I hadn’t done so for my entire life. I did have options…there was bed…there were a few parties with drinks and food that I could have attended…there was the invitation to attend other Christian services but for me the only place I could go was to where I had practiced and formed my early conscience…that was Mass. Let me also make it clear, the Mass was not the only reason I remained in the faith and practiced the faith (very poorly for the four years of service where I showed up when I thought I needed to but certainly not every Sunday) rather it was also the home that was filled with prayer, God and love. We were not a perfect family, Dad had a temper and Mom was often frazzled from the nine children. There was the reality of a large family where the phrase, “you always had someone to play with….and you always had someone to fight with” was true and practiced often.
In reflecting back it was faith both in the service of love in the family and the receiving of love in the Eucharist that were entangled in such a way that one could not be separated from the other. Pope Benedict XVI explains it better that I can in the Encyclical “Deus Caritas Est: God is Love” where he writes, “Only my readiness to encounter my neighbor and to show him love makes me sensitive to God as well. Only if I serve my neighbor can my eyes be opened to what God does for me and how much he loves me. The saints—consider the example of Blessed Teresa of Calcutta—constantly renewed their capacity for love of neighbor from their encounter with the Eucharistic Lord, and conversely this encounter acquired its realism and depth in their service to others. Love of God and love of neighbor are thus inseparable, they form a single commandment. But both live from the love of God who has loved us first. No longer is it a question, then, of a “commandment” imposed from without and calling for the impossible, but rather of a freely-bestowed experience of love from within, a love which by its very nature must then be shared with others. Love grows through love. Love is “divine” because it comes from God and unites us to God; through this unifying process it makes us a “we” which transcends our divisions and makes us one, until in the end God is “all in all” (1 Cor 15:28).” (#18)
Let us pray for the growth of true love and faith in all families during this Christmastime.
Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and God bless
Fr. Mark