Merciful Jesus I consecrate myself today and always to your most Sacred Heart.
Most Sacred heart of Jesus, I implore, that I may ever love you more and more.
Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, I Trust in You!
Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us!
Sacred Heart of Jesus, I believe in Your love for me.
Jesus, meek and humble of heart, make my heart like Your Heart.

Prayer is a powerful and integral part of every Christian life. It’s a call to be in direct conversation with the Most Holy Trinity and to walk with our Lord Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, on his Way to the Cross. Prayer is also a powerful guide to a life of holiness and grace.
The prayer above is my daily consecration to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. While I was teaching in New Mexico in the early 1990’s I found a book that was donated to the mission about the devotion to Jesus’ Sacred Heart. I read about St. Margaret Mary Alacoque and began for the first time in my life to willingly pray a Novena and it is the above prayer that I begin each day and the prayer I end all other prayers with, whether it is my morning office, the sacrifice of the Mass, my Rosary it is the prayer that calls me to the most intimate part of Jesus and to rest within his Sacred Heart.
When people ask me how to pray, I can share with them basic strategies and some sound advice that are readily available from a host of reliable Catholic spiritual guides and evangelist. These open us up to some basic forms of prayer but I always end with the understanding and truth that where or when we encounter Jesus in prayer He will lead us into a path that bonds us ever closer to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. I remind them of how prayer is like marriage. I can share with them sound principles, that are tried and true guides to building a strong, loving and enduring marriage but it is only when the man encounters the woman in a deep and profound conversation of love that they will begin to see how the advice becomes alive in their unique relationship with God and each other. (See my Worldwide Marriage Encounter ad below)

“Be with us this day.
Give us courage to be strong, loving and wise;
strong in prayer,
loving in service,
and wise ministers of your mercy.” (DSJ prayer of priests)

This short snippet from the prayer all the priests of the Diocese of San Jose were given and asked to pray a few years ago has become a staple of my daily prayer too…especially in my morning prayer. This call to action is a reminder of how our prayer changes throughout our lives. Prayers we find powerful and impactful today may slowly fade away as we hear the call of God to follow him into a new and more profound relationship. It is similar to how when reading the Gospels, such as the Parable of the Sower (Mark 4:1-20) we see and understand different aspects of Jesus’s call to become fruitful and life giving in our lives. I pray the prayer above not because I was asked but because it has, particularly this small part, touched my life and moved me to be stronger, more loving and gracious in the service of God’s holy people.

Let nothing disturb you,
let nothing frighten you,
All things are passing away:
God never changes.
Patience obtains all things
Whoever has God lacks nothing;
God alone suffices: (St. Teresa of Avila)

Lastly, I end with a prayer that has been a blessing for many years, first as the Taizé prayed during the Holy Thursday adoration, but also a part of my spiritual journey of singing these simple but beautiful truths of God’s love in our life. St. Theresa of Avila a Doctor of the Church reminds us of the trust we are to have in God’s plan. It is a prayer I use during my night prayer as a way of calming and opening my heart to the restful sleep I desire. Finally, I offer you words of much greater wisdom that I have from Archbishop Venerable Fulton J. Sheen, “Prayer consists not in the saying of words but in the lifting of our heart and mind to God. Our divine Lord Himself warned us: “In praying do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think they will be heard for their many words” (Matt. 6:7). In the same spirit, St. Augustine said: “We may pray most when we say least, and we may pray least when we say most.”…Prayer is a dialogue, not a monologue. “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you” (James 4:8). The joy of a Christian comes not from intermittent devotions and vocal prayers, but by living the Christ life intimately and to such an extent that even in our failings and weakness we may still betray our familiarity with Christ, as did Peter in the moment of his weakness: “You also were with Jesus the Galilean … Certainly you are also one of them, for your accent betrays you” (Matt. 26:69, 73). (from “Wartime Prayerbook by Venerable Fulton J. Sheen)

Fr. Mark

Each Good Friday is a time of silence and reflection. It is a time for all Christians to look deeply into the Cross of Jesus Christ and seek meaning, hope and courage to confront the sin of the world. We have all watched in sadness the fire that consumed Notre Dame in Paris earlier this week. And these big events can consume us in many ways but they can also help us to focus on what is most important, especially the suffering of so many around the world. Throughout the week I have been hearing stories…yesterday, Holy Thursday, a friend ask me to pray for Nicaragua as they suffer and as violence continues…earlier I received an email for a parishioner from Venezuela asking for prayers for her family as one member is sick and cannot get the medical care needed…a parishioner from Nigeria asked for prayers for his village and country as a church was burnt and the people were threatened if the celebrated the faith…and there are members of the Coptic Christian community in Egypt whose churches were destroyed and closed for Holy Week.
Fr. Ronald Rolheiser in his book “The Passion and the Cross” writes, “God didn’t spare Jesus from suffering and death and Jesus doesn’t spare us from them… the cross and resurrection of Jesus reveal a redeeming, not a rescuing, God. (p39-40) We all fall into the trap too often of seeing God as an instrument of taking away all bad things, a God who will wipe away those who hurt and bother us, a God who destroys. What Fr. Rolheiser is reminding us is God is a God of relationship. A God who desires us to turn away from evil, violence, hatred and sin and to embrace a different path, a path of mercy and forgiveness.
“The best place to start is with God. What the cross tells us, more clearly than any other revelation, is that God is absolutely and utterly nonviolent and that God’s vulnerability, which the cross invites us into, is a power for community with God, and with each other. What’s being said here? How does the cross reveal God as nonviolent?” (p 35) Trying to answer those last two questions has been the Christian project for the past 2,000 years. How do I follow God? It is a reminder of how God invites us into a community. This is why coming together is so vitally important and the individualistic spiritualism of modern society is so harmful. Choosing to come together renews in us and reveals to us how God acts through the gifts of one another. In the Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi, the great saint reminds us, we are all called to be instruments of love living in the freedom of Christ-like obedience to the will of the God who is Love. Choosing to lead, guide and hope in love leads us away from coercion, force and vanity which the choosing to sin too often enslaves the souls of those Jesus has called to discipleship.
We are also reminded how this call to peace is rejected by the world of sin. It is, as Fr. Rolheiser writes, the throwing away, the discarding the abandoning of the most vulnerable and weak of society. “The crucified one is the stone rejected by the builders, the one deemed expendable so that normal life Will not be disrupted. But the crucified one is also God and there is a special intimacy with God that can be had only in standing, as did Mary and John, near the cross, in solidarity with the crucified one, the one who is being excluded.” (p. 41) Sometimes like, Mary and John, we are simply called to witness in silent love…but the witness must be present. It may look like the vigil of those praying outside an abortion facility, silent witnesses to the suffering and pain, the masking of the horrendous acts of violence against the innocent occurring within or it may look like the spouse quietly sharing the suffering of their dying loved one, holding a hand and caressing the soul with words and touch.
It is these acts of love where we come back to the understanding of how God has “redeemed” us and not “rescued” us from sin and death. It is in these acts of generous love where we discover the depth of our own enduring love which moves beyond passion and into the quietness of being with and the gentleness of obedient trust. The Cross reveals how forgiveness and reconciliation endure in love knowing the better within the other in our heart. “Sin is a betrayal of love. However, you first have to be loved and, however dimly, sense that love before you can betray it.” (p 44) Jesus in the silence of the Cross overcomes and frees us from betrayal and invites us once more to endure with him God’s gift of life in love.
The situations of violence and hatred we can believe are too great and too difficult to deal with so we will close our eyes to these crosses, to the Cross of Jesus but faith and love allow us to open our eyes and reveals the hopefulness of our cross united with Jesus’ Cross. “What the cross of Christ reveals is that when we are so paralyzed by fear and overcome by darkness that we can no longer help ourselves, when we have reached the stage where we can go longer open the door to let the light and life in, God can still come through our locked doors, stand inside our fear and paralysis, and breathe out peace.” (p 47)
Let us pray for men and women of good will this Easter season to embrace the cross of peace, the cross of justice, the cross of love.
God Bless
Fr. Mark

One of the greatest blessings of the Lenten Season for a Catholic Priest is the celebration of the Chrism Mass that is traditionally done on Holy Thursday morning but for pastoral reasons the Diocese of San Jose celebrates the week prior. It is a great blessing for me personally but also for our Church because it is a time when the vast majority of the priests serving in the diocese come together for a day a prayer and then con-celebration of the Mass with our Bishop. It was made even a greater blessing this year because our Bishop Patrick, who is retiring this year, celebrated his last Chrism Mass as the shepherd of the Diocese of San Jose. As I was thinking about the 20 years Bishop Patrick has been our diocesan bishop I thought that as both a seminarian and then a priest I have had the privilege of taking part in all but the very first one of these holy celebrations.
Reflecting on my years of priesthood, I try each year to read one book on my ministry and this year I chose “Priests for a New Era” by Msgr. Francis D. Kelly. While this book spoke directly to the ministerial priesthood many of the lessons apply to the baptismal priesthood we all share as sons and daughters of the living God.
Early on Msgr. Kelly takes on one of the over-arching sins of our present age that of busyness or as he calls it ”super-activism.” I often see this in myself and my brother priests but also in many young families as they run about to different events, practices, appointments where many meals are eaten in cars, quality time becomes the handing off of one child for another as they race off and family time becomes exhausted moments of zoning out before bed just to begin again.
The quiet pondering and time for deep reflection and conversation are replaced by the checking off of the boxes of “what needs to be done.”
“The antidote for this is a true quest for a spirituality that deepens the priest’s character and convictions and orders his life. Being pulled in many directions requires of the priest discipline and fortitude and a rule of life that prioritizes the spiritual over all else. It will not suffice “to go with the flow.”” (p 24) The struggle we must enter is to intentionally take time each day for prayer but also for time with others in listening and focussing on the true person in front of us and not just what the do or what needs to be done but who we are as children of God.
And this requires help and discipline…We are always faced, as a Catholic Church, with reality that there are not enough priests. At St. Lucy we are reminded that just a few years ago there where four priests where we now are served by two, and one of us also serving at St. Francis High School. Allowing others to help us carry the load is always a challenge of humility. “When in the early Apostles began to find themselves overwhelmed by the administrative and spiritual demands of the community, they established the diaconate, justifying this delegation of work by the principal: “This will permit us to concentrate on prayer and the ministry of the word.”(Acts 6:4). (p 33) The Apostles sought help when needed as both priests and families we can often “hunker down” and try to do it all when both family, friend and neighbor are there for support and blessing. Jesus reminds us, “And surely I am with you always.” (Mt 28:20) but do we look for Jesus in those who surround us in love to help us and guide us in our ministry as parents, spouses, priests and sons and daughters?
When we seek help, we seek love. Love as Msgr. Kelly reminds us is the first and last word in life. We are made in love and our death finds us in the arms of love. And it is true that in the Catholic priesthood my call is to chaste celibate love… but all people are called to live chastely in the sexual expression of husband and wife or the preparing our hearts to receive our future spouse. In either case, it is understanding how God’s love flows into our lives with joy and blessing. In my ministry with Worldwide Marriage Encounter I see daily how the spousal love of husband and wife is united and strengthens my call to chaste celibacy by living out healthy relationships with God’s holy people. “The final word on celibacy must be in Word on love. Celibacy is a supreme witness to the reality of God’s overflowing love. The Christ event—his Incarnation, Passion and Death, and Resurrection—proclaimed that the fundamental force behind the universe and our lives is the love of God.” (p 51) This fundamental force is the gift and grace of sacramental love shared by God.
Lastly, Msgr. Kelly shares this quote from Basil Cardinal Hume on the need to be able to share our story of God’s love with others. We cannot share it if we do not know God and live with God daily. “It is easy to get caught up In the “institutional” aspect of the Church. But it is so refreshing just to ponder the mystery of God, just wondering what God is like. I think that is what people want us to talk about: “What is God like; what does he mean to you, what have you discovered? Tell us about it, and tell us how to find God.” I never cease to be amazed by the spiritual thirst and hunger there is in people, I fear that we may not be feeding it. To quench that thirst is one of our most important functions. But people what to hear from us our personal experience of God and that for some priests presents a problem.” (p 37) Do we live only the institutional aspect of family…or do we share the story of love with God and others?
God Bless,
Fr. Mark

Please pray for your priests.

This past week I had the blessing of seeing the movie “Unplanned” with Fr. Steve and Fr. Joseph. And while it was very difficult to watch with the subject matter of abortion so baldly presented the themes of redemption, reconciliation and forgiveness were the true and ultimate gifts this powerful movie placed into my heart. I am not a movie reviewer nor do I wish to review this movie but I would highly recommend it to anyone to help to better understand the grave tragedy of abortion in our society, communities and families.
As followers of Jesus Christ we believe in the reality of redemption, reconciliation and forgiveness within the community and family but most importantly with our God. “Of all human events recorded in history, none is more appalling to the human mind, none more appealing to the human heart, than the tragic scenes and events surrounding the Passion and Death of Our Lord and Redeemer, Jesus Christ.” (p 10 “Christ’s Darkest Hours” by Rev. Clement Henry Crock) As we near the great Easter mystery, the moment of forgiveness offered to us from the Cross of Jesus Christ, can be seen through this act of love, this call to life and the blessing of unity that is destroyed when we choose sin and divisiveness in our daily lives.
One of the most powerful images in the movie “Unplanned” was the change in the pro-life movement through the passage of the 8 years of the story. At the beginning of the movie the protesters were angry, shouting, condemning and threatening in many instances. By the end of these years there is a conversion of mercy and forgiveness; they became prayerful, quiet and trusting in God’s will even in the midst of this terrible wound inflicted upon our world. It is the model of Jesus’ Passion played out where Peter begins the night with sword drawn but it ends with the peaceful and quiet prayer of our Blessed Mother and St. John the Beloved Disciple at the foot of the cross in loving witness to the death of our Lord and Savior for the forgiveness of our sins.
This is the reality of redemption we must all choose to live in all circumstances of our lives. All to often we fall to easily into condemnation in the noisy and distracted world that surrounds us where we barely take a breath of thought before we jump into the next constructed crisis given to move our eyes away for the call to intimate and lasting relationship. We must begin to once more contemplate the scene on Calgary, the Cross with a woman and young man at the foot looking up at the tortured body with love and silence not distracted by the jeering of so many but remaining constant and true in their hope of a greater love. As St. John Chrysostom reminds us “Adoring the Cross means taking up part of its weight, being like the man from Cyrene who lightened Christ’s burden on the path of suffering. Adoring the Cross means being aware that we are not alone in the struggle against sin, and that even the worst of thieves can reach heaven by looking to the Crucified Christ.” (from Discourses on the Cross and Thief)
“Taking up part of its weight” is choosing to walk with in love and mercy and join with God in the healing acts of love we are all called to share in as disciples of Jesus Christ. Because as “Unplanned” shows clearly…redemption is for each of us offered in Jesus’ Passion, forgiveness is extended to all through the pained whisper of love from the Cross, reconciliation is the union of love as we embrace the Body of our Lord.
“Holiness does not consist in not making mistakes or never sinning. Holiness grows with capacity for conversion, repentance, willingness to begin again, and above all with the capacity for reconciliation and forgiveness.” ~ Pope Benedict XVI
God Bless
Fr. Mark