Today, as we end January, we celebrate the Memorial of St. John Bosco a 19th Century Catholic priest and founder of the Salesian Order in our Church. St. John Bosco had a great love of the faith, in teaching children the faith and helping them to grow as productive members of society living their Christian values and fulfilling their roles as holy men and women. (some links are given below)
This week we have been celebrating Catholic Schools Week as a parish, diocese and Church throughout the United States. As many of you may already know, I taught in Catholic Schools for 8 years before entering the seminary to study: 2 years at Blessed (now Saint) Kateri Tekakwitha Academy in Thoreau New Mexico and then for 6 years at St. Lawrence the Martyr School in Santa Clara. These experiences helped to form me as a man and certainly prepared me for God calling me to the vocation as a priest. One of my greatest lesson, from the years of teaching is this: while the education in a Catholic School is wonderful, helpful and forms the student in a positive way, the first and foremost teachers of the faith remain the parents.
This is one of the major reasons why we shared the book “A Parent Who Prays” with our families last September and why we continue to encourage all families to spend time daily in prayer for the growth of holiness and faithfulness in the lives of our families.
Pope St. John Paul II shared these thoughts from Familiaris Consortio (The Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World), “Family prayer has its own characteristic qualities. It is prayer offered in common, husband and wife together, parents and children together…by reason of their dignity and mission, Christian parents have the specific responsibility of educating their children in prayer, introducing them to gradual discovery of the mystery of God and to personal dialogue with Him…”(#59-60).
How does this “gradual discovery of the mystery of God” take place? In the Aleteia article on St. John Bosco the first key they pointed out was to“Transform children into “honest citizens and good Christians.” This is a good starting point. A couple of weeks ago our virtue for “A Parent Who Prays” was “to keep holy the Sabbath.” With Super Bowl Sunday here we might ask that question of ourselves and of our family: are we keeping Super Bowl Sunday holy?
It is a reminder to us all how the teaching of the faith doesn’t just occur in church, in school and/or catechism, in our moments of prayer throughout the day, but it occurs most fully in the normal activities of life.
How can we keep Super Bowl Sunday and every Sunday, for that matter, a day of holiness?
Gratitude: Talking to our children about our gratitude for the blessings that are received and that we are called to share helps to open their eyes (and ours too) to the reality of all that surrounds us comes from God. Do we bless the food we will be eating as we watch the game? Do we thank God for those who come to share this moment (or those whose house we visit)? Or, if we don’t watch the game, do we give thanks that the store is a little less crowded or the hiking path a little more secluded? Showing gratitude is part of the school of love.
Life lessons: What are the life lessons sports can teach us? The value of practice, hard work, perseverance, camaraderie, teamwork, sharing the burdens, support, fair play and words of encouragement…in both winning and losing are life lessons which help us be better men and women and yes better disciples of Jesus Christ. Talking about these values doesn’t have to be a religion lesson but a reminder of God’s call to community.
Acts of service and love: What we do and how we treat those around us is a sign of our Christian life…how do we value those around us? Making sure we use words of grace and thankfulness to family, especially our spouse, during the day shows the importance of relationship over events…saying please and thank you in the heat of the battle grows the love of family.
As Pope Francis writes, “The Lord’s presence dwells in real and concrete families, with all their daily troubles and struggles, joys and hopes. Living in a family makes it hard for us to feign or lie; we cannot hide behind a mask. If that authenticity is inspired by love, then the Lord reigns there, with his joy and his peace. The spirituality of family love is made up of thousands of small but real gestures. In that variety of gifts and encounters which deepen communion, God has his dwelling place. This mutual concern “brings together the human and the divine”, for it is filled with the love of God. In the end, marital spirituality is a spirituality of the bond, in which divine love dwells. (#315 Amoris laetitia)
God Bless
Fr. Mark

Saint John Bosco

https://watch.formed.org/videos/don-bosco

https://aleteia.org/…/5-keys-to-a-good-education-according…/

A few weeks ago I wrote about the importance and binding nature of vows in respect to a situation of a husband choosing to euthanize his wife and then committing suicide. In my experience as a priest I have often been confronted by situations of elderly couples struggling with health issues and the difficulties in caring for each other. In Dr. Allen Hunt’s book “The 21 Undeniable Secrets of Marriage” his first chapter describes one such couple. As I read this several years ago it called forth dozens of memories and stories of sacrificial love in the sacramental unity of holiness and the growth in spiritual unity with God and the beloved.
Memento mori (remember you must die) or “Begin with the end in mind.” We all know that our day will come, it is a fact of life. Death will seek us all out and we must be prepared. St. John Mary Vianney (the Curé of Ars) wrote this beautiful quote where we are reminded of our basic purpose and reason for life, “There are many Christians who do not even know why they are in the world. “Oh my God, why hast Thou sent me into the world?” “To save your soul.” “And why dost Thou wish me to be saved?” “Because I love you.” The good God has created us and sent us into the world because He loves us; He wishes to save us because He loves us…To be saved, we must know, love and serve God. Oh, what a beautiful life!” (p 3, from “The Little Catechism of the Curé of Ars)
This is an important fact: we are meant for love, for God and for Sacrament. This is the truly Christian part and why the Incarnation of Jesus is life changing when we choose to embrace the sacramental life. Our very physical being requires the blessing of touch and to withhold this touch is destructive to all relationships. I remember in my first assignment as a priest visiting a couple. Watching for several years as the wife fell deeper and deeper into Alzheimer’s and the struggle it was for her and her husband and the entire family. But one image is burned into my memory. I was visiting them after they had moved into an assisted living facility and as I walked into their room he was gently rubbing her feet as she was more relaxed and at peace than I had seen in several months. He simply remarked, “She always likes when I do this.” A simple act of fidelity to love. Sharing a sacramental grace of serving the other without expecting any return…we are made for love, made for God, made for Sacrament. This is the binding power of sacramental love. Fr. Ronald Rohlheiser describes it like this, “The Eucharist is God’s kiss. As Andre Dubus so succinctly put it, “Without the Eucharist, God becomes a monologue.” He’s right. We need more than words, we need to be physically touched. This is what happens in the Eucharist and it is why the Eucharist, and every other Christian sacrament, always has some tangible, physical element to it—a laying on of hands, a consuming of bread and wine, an immersion in water, an anointing with oil, an embrace needs to be physical, not only something imagined.” (p 33 from “Our One Great Act of Fidelity” Fr. Ronald Rolheiser)
Knowing the other, whether it is in sacramental marriage, ordination or consecrating ourselves to God are vows of unity and hope where when we “begin with the end in mind” focuses us not just on the immediate response but on the trust of a response that will come out of love. It is the moment of the Incarnation where we joyfully embrace the cross because we feel the kiss of the beloved in the very depth of our soul. I recently saw a post on facebook where a young man began to doubt his Christian faith because he thought Christianity was about “caring” for others. This only touches the surface…it is about loving the other, even the enemy, because caring can easily be abandoned but loving gives over the heart to another in a deep and passionate gift…even when it is refused.
I would invite you to listen to the words below…this is a love that flourished in binding grace and hope into a passionate offering of self without needing a response.
“With her small hand resting in his, just as it had on the day they were married, Maggie breathed her last breath. “Until death do us part.”…They embraced the secret of purpose. They knew he goal, where they were heading. Wisdom teaches, “Begin with the end in mind.” In other words, know where you’re going. Carlton and Maggie did just that. They knew their purpose (to get to heaven), and they pursued it together in marriage for more than sixty-six years.” (p 24 from “The 21 Undeniable Secrets of Marriage” by Dr. Allen Hunt)
Memento mori (remember you must die) or “Begin with the end in mind” because we are meant for love, for God and for Sacrament.
God Bless
Fr. Mark

Perfection and cheating: how do lies continue to corrode our love and trust in something greater?
We are only a couple of weeks into the New Year and baseball has had a lot to talk about. The first began with perfection. On the first day of the year Don Larsen died. In baseball terms he had an average career. A pitcher with a lifetime loosing record with the exception of a magical day, on October 8, 1956, when he threw a perfect game in the World Series against the Brooklyn Dodgers. He will be forever remembered not for the career but for the one exceptional moment which no one has ever done before or since. He stands alone.
Then there is the cheating. This past week Major League Baseball has begun to hand out punishments to the Houston Astros for their cheating in the 2017 World Series in beating the Los Angeles Dodgers in seven games. It’s a complicated story that begins by using a television camera to see the “sign” given by the opposing catcher, relaying the sign to the batter by banging a garbage can, so the batter will be tipped off on what the pitcher will be throwing. It sounds weird but it is true. It is complicated because “sign stealing” has always been part of the game but this went beyond what is “accepted” because it used an electronic medium that gave an unfair advantage.
As a Dodgers fan, I am frustrated and hurt at this cheating scandal. As a baseball fan, I am disturbed and troubled at the response of Baseball and those involved who have spoken publicly. As a Catholic Christian, I recognize how sin has infected the integrity of the individuals who know what they were doing was wrong and yet excused it in so many different ways.

“Wealth obtained by fraud dwindles, But the one who gathers by labor increases it.” Proverbs 13:11
What can one do in the face of cheating? We are reminded of how choosing to do wrong diminished any accomplishment we may secure. Whether the wrong is discovered or remains hidden in continually lurks in the dark corners of life haunting any accomplishment with the weak foundation of doubt. Integrity matters in life because it helps to build the self confidence of not only succeeding but also the reality that in failure lessons are learned and new paths are discovered in the growing grace of life.

“Can I justify wicked scales And a bag of deceptive weights?” Micah 6:11
Part of the statement by A.J. Hinch, the now fired manager of the Houston Astros, reads, “While the evidence consistently showed I didn’t endorse or participate in the sign-stealing practices, I failed to stop them and I am deeply sorry.”
Accepting responsibility for our actions and seeking forgiveness and reconciliation for our failures to follow right and avoid wrong is living the gift of fortitude and courage. Knowing wrong is occurring, as the leader of the team, and failing to stop the wrong is a great moral failure. One of the most important things we have learned from years past is if we sit by and permit evil to occur only allows the sin to grow ever deeper in our hearts and the life of the community around us. If you are sitting on the bench and hearing the bang of the can, knowing what it is, are you not participating by the inaction? A lower echelon employee my not be able to stop it…but the manager of the team?

“As a partridge that hatches eggs which it has not laid, So is he who makes a fortune, but unjustly; In the midst of his days it will forsake him, And in the end he will be a fool.” Jeremiah 17:11
It talking with another Dodger fan, yes there is more than one, he reminded me of the ripple effect of the sin, the cheating, the degrading of integrity. It may have, as the report suggests, began as an idea of someone other than the “manager” but the action infected the character of each and every member of the team, just as sin does to families, parishes, communities and the world. Each and every person, from the General Manager to the batboy, began to participate, willingly or unwillingly, in the ripple of the sin. This becomes the insidiousness of the sin, each action of moral corruption makes the next one easier to grasp.

Moreover, they did not require an accounting from the men into whose hand they gave the money to pay to those who did the work, for they dealt faithfully. 2 Kings 12:15
Perfection and cheating: what are we to do? What does it matter? Just a thought…if Don Larsen had been pitching against the Houston Astros on the magical day when everything aligned for a pitcher who would never be remembered for his career numbers but is remembered this one day…Would that day have happened? Would the cheating have erased a magical day, a good man’s accomplishment, a moment of history into nothingness?

On a parish note, this is one of the reasons why we are using “A Parent Who Prays” talking and building up our child’s, our family’s, our own integrity in virtue is part of living our vocation of holiness.

God Bless
Fr. Mark

Over the past two weeks the reality of “vows” and the fidelity to vows has been at the center of my heart. Several weeks ago a story was floating around the Catholic internet of an article in the New York Times which romanticized the killing of a terminally ill wife by her husband and then his suicide. As a priest, the reality of this situation of a spouses illness and the struggle of care and dignity of care is something I confront regularly and heartbreakingly. But what is more gratifying is the experience of walking with, praying with and blessing the spouses and families who choose to care for the other with a peace and dignity that see the hopefulness of life even in the midst of suffering which often seems to be too long and the questions that come from this suffering.
I hope to share with you a second time on this subject with some personal stories of blessing and how these moments have impacted my priesthood and my understanding of the vows I am called to live. As a priest who serves in the Worldwide Marriage Encounter movement I see the vows of married couples playing out each day in both blessings and struggles and how these vows of Holy Matrimony enrich my vows of Holy Orders in serving God’s people. About five years ago I read the book “Project Holiness: Marriage as a Workshop for Everyday Saints” by Bridget Burke Ravizza and Julie Donovan Massey. (I highly recommend it to everyone, married or single or ordained) And much as with my work in Marriage Encounter, as I read the many stories that are shared in the book, I began to notice how often their experience of sacramental sacrifice and love mirrored my own sacramental experiences, which gets me, after a long introduction, to my kick-off point.
I know I have written several times on why I chose the particular verse from Sacred Scripture on the back of my ordination holy card from Psalm 56:12 “I am bound by the vows I have made, God, I will pay you the debt of thanks for you have saved my life from death.” The authors share this quote from Cardinal Walter Kasper where he writes in the proclaiming of the vow were we, “give the other person a claim over me, that I will perform the action to which I have committed myself…as a pledge…It claims my faithfulness, my constancy, not just because I have spoken it to myself, but because it now calls to me from the other person who has received it.” (p102) Being called by another to love and be loved is such a powerful blessing. In sacramental unity we are called by another, God, our spouse, our Church, to be faithful and constant in our care and love of the other. It is moving from the feeling of being in love to the actions of love that occur and are done even when suffering is present and becomes an act of sacrificial grace given and shared with us daily. When we commit our life to a vow, we must practice the vow whether it is my vow to pray, obey and live a chaste celibate life or the husband and wife with their vow to love, honor, care for and to be with the other in all parts of life. To practice the acts of love daily in blessing the other where we calling out from our spouse the very best in who we can be in life. This is the practice of faithfulness, the choice of constancy and not the intermittent flashes of passion which the world often mistakes for the vow of love.
This is the practice of sacramental love, the vowed love of life that moves, grows and flourishes in the changes of life. As Ravizza and Donovan point out, “We oblige ourselves to love and honor our beloved now and into the future, understanding that he our she will inevitable change, that our relationship will change, and that faithfulness must be lived in ever-changing circumstances. Once vows and rings are exchanged, spouses are bound to one another and have a claim over each other; future choices are henceforth choices of either fidelity or betrayal.” (p 102) The prayer of Psalm 56 proclaims this truth of being bound…not bound as in captivity but bound in a unity of choosing the better. This is symbolically done at many Marriage Masses with the Lasso that is placed over the shoulders of the newly married couple after their vows are prayed but it is also in the living symbol of the rings that adorn each hand as a crown does the newly blessed monarch. It is where the choice of fidelity is becoming the holy, the blessed, the beloved in the changing growth of sacramental love. If our primary vocation is a call to holiness, unity with God, then the vocation we lead should lead us closer to holiness and one of the prayers we should speak with God about each day is this very simple phrase, “Have I helped my spouse grow closer to you (God) today?” If the answer is not in the affirmative (something other than yes) then making the promise to do better is the movement of changing love towards the other.
The authors say it better than I, “Theologian Margaret Farley explains that when we make a commitment to love and be faithful in our marriage vows we are effectively committing ourselves to “do the deeds of love” in the future. One promises to be willing to do what is best for the other in the future: care for the other, meet the needs of the other, serve the other—in essence do “all that one can” to affirm and support the other’s life and well-being.” (p 118)
Pray for happy and holy marriages and happy and holy priests…they go hand in hand.
God bless
Fr. Mark

Anticipation is one of the hardest feelings to deal with in our lives. It is a normal feeling especially this time of year as we watched both young and old on pins and needles waiting for the Christmas blessings of presents, family and vacations being part of the celebratory anticipation. Then there are the things that bring about anticipation like change and challenges ahead…like the renovation of a home/church.
For almost 2 years we have been planning to update the lighting and bathrooms in our church building and school and on the work began in the second day of the New Year. I wish I could say that my anticipation had not caused me restless nights nor worried days. I wish I could say that my trust in the planning and preparation led me to be calm and not filled with anxiety. But if I said that I would be a liar. It is neither good nor bad to have the worries and anxieties in the anticipation of things to come…it is our humanity. It is however bad when we allow our anticipation to narrow our focus away from the good, the blessings, the problems or anything else that may arise as we become frozen in fear and worry.
So, what are some of the practical things I have learned (again) about anticipation and the feelings that go with it in life.
First, know who you are. One of the things the preparation and anticipation has pointed out to me once again: I am not a detail person! The small minutia of most things in life is beyond me. I like looking at big details, the ideas of what we are doing and not necessary the small things which I have discovered is both good and bad and can be very frustrating to those who thrive on details. Knowing who I am, allows me to hand over to those who have eyes for such tiny (or not so tiny) details to allow them to help me see how to move forward in joy and peace rather than excessive worry.
Second, have a robust prayer life. I know what you are thinking…he’s a priest and he has to say this at least once in everything he writes. And it is true, but I discovered this long before I entered seminary or was ordained a priest. Especially as a teacher I found the practice of prayer before each day of class, to offer a blessing for my students and their families in daily Mass and seeking time in prayer when things went disastrously wrong in some part of the school day. Each and every time my anticipatory worry and anxiety went into over drive, the praying of the Rosary or reciting St. Theresa of Avilas simple prayer, sometimes at 2:00 or 3:00 a.m., helped me to place all the worst case scenarios into the perspective of what they truly were…just nightmares.
Lastly, that funny phrase we often hear: Let go and Let God! In other words, you got to have trust. You cannot control every aspect of life, the project or the relationship. Sometimes anticipation comes with wanting the end to come before the beginning. That just is not going to happen. There will be ups and downs, unforeseen problems but also blessings. Life will happen, so go back to the first, then practice the second because the lastly will happen. This is life.
God Bless
Fr. Mark.

Please pray for our parish and the lightning project and all the adaptions and changes that this will bring in the coming two months. Thank you again for all your support and blessings.