During this time of Eucharistic Revival in the United States we are given the opportunity to do many different things when it comes to our faith, understanding and practice of our relationship with God and especially in the receiving of the grace and blessing that comes from an encounter with “the Eucharist” in our daily lives. Our intimacy with God comes from finding a place in our lives where grace flows from God andwhat do with this wonderful gift. It is practicing gratitude within the blessing of God and recognizing how we are united with one another.
Pope St. John Paul II in his Encyclical Letter “Ecclesia de Eucharistia: On the Eucharist in Its Relationship to the Church” was a gift to the Church in 2003 and it’s importance and blessings continue to shine forth. One of the great themes is that of joy in living life to the fullness of blessing. Below are three quotes that help me to tell part of my own story.

“The saving efficacy of the sacrifice is fully realized when the Lord’s body and blood are received in communion. …Jesus himself reassures us that this union, which he compares to that of the life of the Trinity, is truly realized. The Eucharist is a true banquet, in which Christ offers himself as our nourishment. … This is no metaphorical food: “My flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed” (Jn 6:55).” (#16)
Do I/we believe? If we believe then the obligation to receive would be one of joy and blessing. I can remember times when I struggled to “go to Mass” on Sunday and would often wonder why I needed to go. This was especially real in my late teens and early twenties like so many members of our families.
How do we confront this moment of doubt with confidence and truth? The reality is I can’t remember when I came to truly believe. It wasn’t a big bang conversion but it was a conversion. Somewhere in my mid-twenties it became life giving to go and recieve the Eucharist. It was moments like, after a night of having fun with the guys I would get up early, while they all slept, and slip off to Mass. Or when coming back from and all day event on Sunday checking heading off to an evening Mass when I got home. In other words, it was God’s patience and a family supporting the grace-filled conversion

“Saint Ephrem writes: “He called the bread his living body and he filled it with himself and his Spirit… He who eats it with faith, eats Fire and Spirit… Take and eat this, all of you, and eat with it the Holy Spirit. For it is truly my body and whoever eats it will have eternal life.… In the Divine Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom, for example, we find the prayer: “We beseech, implore and beg you: send your Holy Spirit upon us all and upon these gifts… that those who partake of them may be purified in soul, receive the forgiveness of their sins, and share in the Holy Spirit.” (#17)
I love that quote from St. Ephrem…”eats Fire and Spirit”. As a priest I I have watched thousands of people receive and I often wonder how many believe the Fire and Spirit entering and transforming the body. To put it simply, does receiving Jesus change our lives? Sadly for many Catholic Christians it does not. It is not a judgment, just a reality of watching and waiting.
Jesus tells us, “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing.” (Luke 12:49) How different would the world look? The first time I discovered this fire was attending Holy Names College in Oakland at a Sunday Mass. I was a mess. Full of doubt, fears about what was going on in my life. As I sat in Mass after receiving Communion a deep and profound peace settled over me that I had never experienced before. I was still a mess. I still had a lot of troubles in my life. But something else was occurring at that moment too…it was the embrace of love and a healing of the heart I never thought would be possible.
Now does this occur every time I receive the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist…no. But it is also what draws me back over and over again, the reality of what has occurred and will occur again because the Fire and Spirit are real.

The Eucharist is a straining towards the goal, a foretaste of the fullness of joy promised by Christ (cf. Jn 15:11); it is in some way the anticipation of heaven, the “pledge of future glory”… Those who feed on Christ in the Eucharist need not wait until the hereafter to receive eternal life: they already possess it on earth, as the first-fruits of a future fullness which will embrace man in his totality. ….With the Eucharist we digest, as it were, the “secret” of the resurrection. For this reason Saint Ignatius of Antioch rightly defined the Eucharistic Bread as “a medicine of immortality, an antidote to death”.(#18)
We are made for Heaven. The celebration of the Eucharist, not just receiving but celebrating with the Church is the foretaste of Heaven. It took me three readings of C.S. Lewis’ story “The Screwtape Letters” to finally understand how it was in the broken diversity of the Church on earth that gave us the gift of Heavenly unity. Like many young people I struggled with the hypocrisy of the Church, the sinfulness of the Church and the imperfection of each and every person I met in the Church. It was in and through the Eucharist I began to see something quite different because each fault, crack and sin within the Church was also an encounter with Jesus Christ. The hurts didn’t exclude our Savior rather they were the open doors through which his Eucharistic grace flowed with abundance. We can get so stuck on looking at and for the wounds, we fail to see and experience the healings surrounding us.
God Bless and see you in the Eucharist.
Fr. Mark

The Wisdom of Fulton Sheen….short videos

Though the Son of Man expressed His federation with humanity, He was very careful to note that He was like man in all things save sin. He challenged His hearers to convict Him of sin. But the consequences of sin were all His as the Son of Man. Hence the prayer to let this chalice pass; His endurance of hunger and thirst, His agony and bloody sweat…His endurance of worry, anxiety, fear, pain mental anguish, fever, hunger, thirst and agony during the hours of His Passion–all these things were to inspire men to imitate the Son of Man. Nothing that was human was foreign to Him.

A man who makes himself a god must hide; otherwise his false divinity will be unmasked.

He has mercy on those who fear HIm, from generation to generation. Fear is here understood as filial, that is, a shrinking from hurting one who is loved. Such a fear a son has for a devoted father and the fear a Christian has of Christ. Fear is here related to love.

To love what is below the human is degradation; to love what is human for the sake of the human is mediocrity; to love the human for the sake of the Divine is enriching; to love the Divine for its own sake is sanctity.

Conscience, Christ, and the gift of faith make evil men uneasy in their sin. They feel that if they could drive Christ from the earth, they would be free from “moral inhibitions.” They forget that it is their own nature and conscience which makes them feel that way, Being unable to drive God from the heavens, they would drive his ambassadors from the earth. In a lesser sphere, that is why many men sneer at virtue–because it makes vice uncomfortable.

The melody of her life is played just as it was written, Mary was thought, conceived, and planned as the equal sign between ideal and history, thought and reality, hope and realization.

The figure upon the Cross is not a MVD agent or a Gestapo inquisitor, but a Divine Physician, Who only asks that we bring our wounds to Him in order that He may heal them. If our sins be as scarlet, they shall be washed white as snow, and if they be as red as crimson, they shall be made white as wool.

Evil is thus a kind of parasite on goodness. If there were no good by which to measure things, evil could not exist. Men sometimes forget this, and say, there is so much evil in the world that there cannot be a God. They are forgetting that, if there were no God, they would have no way of distinguishing evil from goodness. The very concept of evil admits and recognizes a Standard, a Whole, a Rule, an Order. Nobody would say that his automobile was out of order if he did not have a conception of how an automobile ought to run.

If it be true that the world has lost its respect for authority, it is only because it lost it first in the home. By a peculiar paradox, as the home loses its authority, the authority of the state becomes tyrannical.

It was not enough that the Son of God should come down from the heavens and appear as the Son of Man, for then He would have been only a great teacher and a great example, but not a Redeemer. It was more important for Him to fulfill the purpose of the coming, to redeem man from sin while in the likeness of human flesh. Teachers change men by their lives; Our Blessed Lord would change men by His death. The poison of hate, sensuality, and envy which is in the hearts of men could not be healed simply by wise exhortations and social reforms. The wages of sin is death, and therefore it was to be by death that sin would be atoned for.

How are you doing today? That is a legitimate question that is asked over and over again. The other day I was walking around the parish with a bit of a furrowed brow that was taken to me being “worried” or “angry” or “frustrated” and several people I encountered in my walk asked a little pensively…How are you doing today Fr. Mark?
In truth, I was a little frustrated with something I can’t even remember at this moment but my face and posture gave away an anxiety I was feeling for the moment. A lot of different things effect, “how we are doing” throughout the day some for the good some for the bad but each touches us and moves us in a direction of emotion we may not be able to control but we must not allow to act in a way that hurts others.

As Catholics we believe we are part of something much greater as St. Paul reminds us, “If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.“ (1 Cor 12:26) Pope St. John Paul II in his “Letter to the Families” reminds us of how we are called to the something greater both in the spiritual and the cultural seeing in being part of a greater civilization. Living in community and building a community is part of the greater plan of God. He writes, “Civilization belongs to human history because it answers man’s spiritual and moral needs. Created in the image and likeness of God, man has received the world from the hands of the creator, together with the task of shaping it in his own image and likeness.” (Letter to Families #13)
It is shaping the world around us, the civilization and our relationships with one another that is the work we are called to do; to shape them in the image and likeness of God. And this extends to the world, not just the human beings surrounding us, but the complete world where we hear the voice of God calling to us with those powerful words found in Genesis…”God saw that it was good.” (Gen 1:10) It is a reminder of how the goodness of God is found in the center of everything. The “how are you doing?” becomes “how are we being in the world?” as we look to care for one another but also for the created goodness we live in each day.

Pope Francis in the Encyclical Letter, “Laudato Si’ reminds us to beware the the hubris and false plans that exclude God. He writes, “Following a period of irrational confidence in progress and human abilities, some sectors of society are now adopting a more critical approach. We see increasing sensitivity to the environment and the need to protect nature, along with a growing concern, both genuine and distressing, for what is happening to our planet.” (LS #19)
Care for our common home is care for each other. In the family it would not make sense, for example, to spend hours and hours obsessing over the maintaining the backyard and allow the laundry and cleaning of the house to be abandoned or the trimming of trees to the detriment of fixing a hole in the roof.
In the same way each person within the family is cared for like a treasure, nurturing the soul, the mind and the body to grow together to be fruitful and abundant in producing both the good here and now and producing future generations to show forth the glory of God. In this, the question then becomes, “How are your caring for/serving the other?
In the Letter to the Family Pope St. John Paul continues, “The civilization of love, in its current meaning, is inspired by the words of the conciliar constitution Gaudium et Spes: “Christ… Fully discloses man to himself and unfolds his noble calling”.… The civilization is intimately linked to the love “poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us” (Romans 5:5)” (#13) The civilization becomes a civilization of love when the caring for and serving the other is at the heart of our relationships and interactions with family, community and the whole of God’s creation. We are called to “use” creation to grow and expand but in using we are invited to expand the generosity and abundance of life, through our self-gift to the other first and foremost. It is the recognition that this civilization of love is in direct opposition to the throw away culture and the culture of death that uses the destruction of life and goods as the solution to transitory happiness. We discover who we are when we choose to be in a relationship of sacrificial love, entrusting our life to the greater which can only be found in faithful relationship with God.

“The urgent challenge to protect our common home includes a concern to bring the whole human family together to seek a sustainable and integral development, for we know that things can change. The Creator does not abandon us; he never forsakes his loving plan or repents of having created us. Humanity still has the ability to work together in building our common home.” (LS #13)
How are you doing? A good question…
God Bless
Fr. Mark

The Wisdom of Fulton Sheen…short talks

If it be a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God, it is a more terrible thing to fall out of them.

The good repent on knowing their sin; the evil become angry when discovered.

He came to put a harlot above a Pharisee, a penitent robber above a High Priest, and a prodigal son above his exemplary brother. To all the phonies and fakers who would say that they could not join the Church because His Church was not holy enough, He would ask, “How holy must the Church be before you will enter into it?” if the Church were as holy as they wanted it to be, they would never be allowed into it! In every other religion under the sun, in every Eastern religion from Buddhism to Confucianism, there must always be some purification before one can commune with God. But Our Blessed Lord brought a religion where the admission of sin is the condition of coming to Him. “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are ill”

Unhappy souls almost always blame everyone but themselves for their miseries. Shut up within themselves, they are necessarily shut off from all others except to criticize them. Since the essence of sin is opposition to God’s will, it follows that the sin of one individual is bound to oppose any other individual whose will is in harmony with God’s will. This resulting estrangement from one’s fellow man is intensified when one begins to live solely for the world, then the possessions of the neighbor are regarded as something unjustly taken from oneself. Once the material becomes the goal of life, a society of conflicts is born.

Very harmful effects can follow accepting the philosophy which denies personal guilt or sin and thereby makes everyone nice. By denying sin, the nice people make a cure impossible. Sin is most serious and the tragedy is deepened by the denial that we are sinners…The really unforgivable sin is the denial of sin, because, by its nature, there is now nothing to be forgiven. By refusing to admit to personal guilt, the nice people are made into scandalmongers, gossips, talebearers, and super-critics, for they must project their real if unrecognized guilt to others. This, again, gives them a new illusion and goodness: the increase of faultfinding is in direct ratio and proportion to the denial of sin.

The more He loved those for whom He was the ransom, the more His anguish would increase, as it is the faults of friends rather than enemies which most disturb hearts!

Modern prophets say that our economics have failed us. No! It is not our economics which have failed; it is man who has failed-man who has forgotten God. Hence no manner of economic or political readjustment can possible save our civilization; we can be saved only by a renovation of the inner man, only by the purging of our hearts and souls; for only by seeking first the Kingdom of God and His Justice will all these other things be added unto us.

The Wisdom of Fulton Sheen The soul cannot be seen in a biological laboratory, any more than pain can be seen on an operating table.

Holiness must have a philosophical and theological foundation, namely, Divine truth; otherwise it is sentimentality and emotionalism. Many would say later on, “we want religion, but no creeds.: This is like saying we want healing, but no science of medicine; music, but no rules of music; history, but no documents. Religion is indeed a life, but it grows out of truth.:\

It is not easy to explain why God permits evil, but it is impossible for an atheist to explain the existence of goodness. How could a spiritless, soul-less, cross-less, Godless universe become the center of faith, purity, sacrifice, and martyrdom? How can decency be the decent thing if there is not God? Since god is love, why should we be surprised that want of it should end in pain, hate, broken hearts, and war?

Forgive me Father, for I have sinned….

Surely, I wait for the LORD;
who bends down to me and hears my cry,
Draws me up from the pit of destruction, out of the muddy clay,
Sets my feet upon rock,
steadies my steps, (from Psalm 40:2-3)

When we talk about the spiritual life it can often be described in terms that are jarring to the ear but speak truth to the heart. I was reflecting on Psalm 40 for the past couple of weeks trying to focus my soul on God’s beauty and mercy. A couple weeks ago my penance given to me by my confessor was to pray a psalm and when opened my Bible to look for a particular psalm, not Psalm 40, I noticed several verses underlined in Psalm 40 so my eyes paused and I began to pray the psalm and this has been my reflection and my penance for the past few weeks.
Sin can seem to be like being stuck in a pit and like walking through muddy clay. It at first doesn’t seem to hard to climb your way out or to walk to your destination but the more and more you try the walls become slicker and the boots become more and more caked with heavy mud with each step. And we believe as Catholics that the Sacrament of Reconciliation and pray releases us and give us a “helping hand” to climb out of the pit and shake the mud off the boots.

And puts a new song in my mouth,
a hymn to our God.
Many shall look on in fear
and they shall trust in the LORD. (Ps 40:4)

But this takes time and much spiritual and psychological effort in changing the directions because while the helping hand is extended and the boots are cleansed we still are only beginning the climb and we must continue to walk towards the true destination of holiness and union with Jesus Christ. Trusting in Jesus during this moment is hard but extremely necessary but so very hard to do…
We see Jesus easily ascend from the pit and his steps through the muddy clay don’t seem to make an impression. He, with love and mercy, invites us to climb with him to walk with him, in trust, but how often do we respond, even after knowing his healing mercy, say, “I can do it!” like a petulant 2 year old.

You, yes you, O LORD, my God,
have done many wondrous deeds!
And in your plans for us
there is none to equal you.
Should I wish to declare or tell them,
too many are they to recount. (Ps 40:6)

And yet when I return again to confession, to ask that my particular sins be forgiven: our loving Father will offer us once more full and complete forgiveness. Why? God’s plan for us is so much greater and demands something greater, union with Him, that is wondrous and beyond words but demand to be told by our lives. Knowing his plan for me is a stark and strong reminder of the temptation for complacency or the attitude of permissiveness to enter into the temptations surrounding me and temptations surrounding all of us. To recount God’s blessings is not to live in the sin He has released me from but rather to fully embrace the holiness, the call to be a saint, which is God’s plan for me. Allowing my fears to be replaced by the confidence and trust of allowing the mercy, forgiveness and reconciliation of Jesus to help me to climb out and walk through the traps of life.

Sacrifice and offering you do not want;
you opened my ears.
Holocaust and sin-offering you do not request;
so I said, “See; I come
with an inscribed scroll written upon me. (Ps 40:7)

In the sacramental grace of mercy and reconciliation we can become the scroll upon which is written the laws of love and we live as open books shining forth the generosity of God for all to see. As the writer of Hebrews reminds us in echoing the promises made by the prophets, “The Holy Spirit also testifies to us about this. First He says: “This is the covenant I will make with them after those days, declares the Lord. I will put My laws in their hearts and inscribe them on their minds.” Then He adds: “Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more.” (Heb 10:15-17)
The gratitude and gift of perseverance for the grace and mercy received is life giving and allows us to reach out again and again. Carrying the law of God, the Word of God—Jesus Christ on our hearts strengthens and spurs us on to the greater gifts God has in store for His sons and daughters. The pits of mire and the paths of sodden clay become less deep and drier as we begin to avoid the near occasions of sin and place ourselves in the bright sun light of Christ love. this is our hope and the promise Jesus makes when we in sincerity of heart cry out….Forgive me Father for I have sinned.

Though I am afflicted and poor,
my Lord keeps me in mind.
You are my help and deliverer;
my God, do not delay! (Ps 40:18)

God Bless,
Fr. Mark

Change is always happening and at times it can be a good thing at others it seems the change is just part of life that disturbs the peace we seem to be living in. Last spring I learned that my friend Hra. Silvia Frias MESST had been reassigned by her order from their house in San Jose to their community in Puebla Mexico.
I have known Hermana Silvia for the past 20 years as we began our ministry in the Diocese of San Jose, I as a pastoral year seminarian at St. Catherine of Alexandria and she as a new pastoral associate. During these years we have worked together for six years and have celebrated and prayed together more times than can be counted. You always know there will be change but when it is announced and the reality sets in of the change there are the normal fears, sadness and some doubt.

But in faith I also know something else is occurring beyond my eyes and own personal feelings. It is the Church growing and blessing. One of the great lessons I have learned, and have to relearn again, is the mystery of God’s grace and the movement of the Holy Spirit in the overall big Church and in the daily lives of we who are called to serve God.
First, there is the blessing of newness. Both for Hermana Silvia and the community of San Jose will experience this blessing. In her new community, like all of us who move in life, she will find new blessings in her ministry. The community she enters will find in her a daughter called to serve and be blessed by her ministry. Some of the, “that is the way it is done”, syndrome we can fall into will be unstuck and new moments of proclaiming the Gospel will be open. And these moves aren’t always physical or long distance, sometimes it is a child moving out, a parent dying, a friend getting married or even a change of classroom and teacher for a student can spark this blessing.

Second, there is the blessing of sameness. We are one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church and no matter where we go in the world we will find the same blessings we receive in the place we are now residing. We are called to serve our brothers and sisters in mercy and love through the same baptismal promises universally lived by those who believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. The architecture may be different, the language may be changed but the Sacramental life of the Church remains the same. The foundation is secure and upon this in the changes we may stand in trust and hope.

As we celebrated her farewell Mass earlier this week so many memories and blessings Hra. Silvia has shared with the Diocese of San Jose, her parish communities, her friends came to mind that they may not be counted or all told…but here is one very simple reminder of her joy and service…when we worked together in Morgan Hill at St. Catherine of Alexandria I asked one afternoon, how her day was going…she began by telling me of the many families she had visited that week at their homes. She shared the sufferings, the illnesses, the troubles each family offered in prayer. She talked about the healings taking place, the preparation for dying that had begun and the ongoing heroic struggles. She talked about the faith of the people and the inspiration she gathered from them, the inspiration of hope and blessing she was now sharing with me. This was the ministry she carried out each week that was often hidden but was even more important than the visible ministry at the parish. In hearing and praying with her that day I am thankful for the newness and the sameness of change because in these blessings we truly discover Jesus Christ present and alive.
Adiós Hermana Silvia…buen viaje.
God Bless
Fr. mark