Thoughts From Fr. Mark

This past week America Magazine published an article where they reported from a survey they had conducted a finding I did not find surprising at all. It stated priests feel overworked, isolated and lonely. The overworked is from the fewer number of priests and the reason they cited for the feeling of isolation is the continuing abuse crisis within our Church. It certainly wasn’t surprising because I too often feel many of these things in my own priesthood and when talking with my brother priests they also talk about many of these same symptoms…but there is also a response our faith in Jesus Christ asks us to embrace…it is the hope of life where we recognize how the relationship of love helps us live in a broken and suffering world.
It is the intimacy of love Jesus lives and invites us to live within which reminds us of how our feelings are fulfilled and we find peace in true relationship to an other. It is making an act of faith in another, God first and foremost, but also importantly those we know and love. It is the faith that God and others care enough about me as a person to listen, take time and share their hearts with us in an interchange of love and hope. It is the hope that I can be known better and deeper in the sharing of myself with God and enter into His Sacred Heart in the offering of my heart. This is the true intimacy of relationship and life.
Now, I know these are easy words to write but very difficult to live and do because to accomplish true intimacy is hard work and constant works of love. It was appropriate that a few days after this article was published that the morning Mass proclaimed this in the Gospel reading, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Mt 11:28-30)

And here is my commercial…one of the ways I discovered I could combat the feeling of overwork and isolation is my involvement in Worldwide Marriage Encounter. It is here that I can share my feelings with married couples and families who truly care for me and have those relationships where there can be the deeper and more profound intimacy of love which we all need to be truly satisfied. Is there “work” involved with Marriage Encounter…yes…but it is the work that gives purpose to all the other things that happen in life and in the caring for others. It is in the relationships we share as children of God where I grow in peace in the chaste celibate life God and his holy Church call me to live.
I am not a pollyanna but I do know and trust God gives us the gifts necessary to live happy and joyous lives even in the midst of the struggles and pains that surround us. I also know that loneliness, isolation and overwork is not only found in the priesthood and I would highly recommend a Marriage Encounter weekend to any husband and wife…even those who may have attended a weekend many years ago.
So, a few things you can do to help your priests: invite them for breakfast, coffee, lunch or dinner…they will often say “no, I am too busy” but be persistent. Before I went on my original Marriage Encounter weekend, I was asked over a dozen times. When they do say yes, don’t make it another Church meeting…just talk about normal things.
Second, volunteer at your parish. It is amazing how an active and alive parish feeds the souls of a parish priest to do more.
And…pray for your priests, pray with your priests and pray for grace filled priests.
God Bless
Fr. Mark

May your mysteries, O God,
kindle in us that fire of charity
with which St. Francis Xavier burned for the salvation of souls
so that, walking ever more worthily in our vocation,
we may obtain with him the reward you promise
to those who labor well in your harvest.
Through Christ our Lord.

How do we prepare for the coming of Jesus at Christmas? It is an important question at this time because preparation is what the season of Advent is all about. So, how are we preparing? Earlier this week the Catholic Church celebrated the memorial of one of the great Jesuit missionaries, St. Francis Xavier and I would like to use the prayer the Church offers us at the end of the celebration of the Mass before dismissal as a template of how we can prepare for the birth of our Lord and Savior by following the example of Francis Xavier.
May your mysteries, O God, kindle in us that fire of charity…what better way to begin our journey of preparation than to peer into the mystery of the Incarnation and find in it the fire of charity. God sent his only Son into the world so we may be saved, so we may inherit eternal life…the great act of charity. It is an act of charity we are called to live, become and share with others. It is looking outward towards others and discovering how best we can share the blessings of God’s love in stewardship of the gifts we have received from our Heavenly Father.

A few days ago a friend was sharing how he was putting up some Christmas decorations around his yard. Unexpectedly, a father and his children came across the street and volunteered to help him. This small act of charity on the part of the family relieved my friend, who is getting up there in age, of a small burden and also gave him much joy as he watched the young children excitedly go about the work of stringing some lights and setting up the decorations…which then led to some hot chocolate and cookies and the growth of neighborly friendship.
Burned for the salvation of souls…as sons and daughters of the living God we desire all to know Jesus Christ and to live in the grace and blessing of God’s love. Sharing this love, sharing the good news, sharing a small act, like the one described above, opens the door to God’s saving grace. People may get tired of me saying this…but…our work is to invite others into the great mystery of God’s presence, to be a true bearer of God’s Word, in the example of our Blessed Mother Mary. This means we must have courage to share our story and invite others into the mystery of God.
Walking ever more worthily in our vocation…we are reminded that the universal call to holiness is a call to live fully our vocation, whether as married, single, priest or consecrated religious and (here is the commercial) Creating a Culture of Vocation within our family and community is vital for building God’s kingdom. Charity at the center of our lives flowers in joy and the gift of love when we accept fully the blessing of our call to serve and sacrifice in the love of brother and sister. How do we practice this during this time of Advent preparation? Choosing words and actions which build up the holiness within our family and community.
Finally, We may obtain with him the reward you promise to those who labor well in your harvest. We look forward to Christmas morning with so much anticipation as children. We are literally bursting with excitement and joy in so many ways…this should be the same attitude we have for heaven…eager anticipation and joyful hope of the dawn of eternal life. Choosing to live life within the great mystery of the Incarnation, serving in charity, inviting others into the same joy of sacrificial love and growing in our vocation of holiness is the preparation of Advent and also of a life pointed towards heaven. May St. Francis Xavier and all the holy men and women who have gone before us help us to live our lives in the peace and blessing of the coming birth of our Savior Jesus Christ.
Through Christ our Lord.
Fr. Mark

“To you, I lift up my soul, O my God. In you, I have trusted; let me not be put to shame. Nor let my enemies exult over me; and let none who hope in you be put to shame.” (Ps 25:1-3)

As we celebrate our Thanksgiving and as Catholics begin our time of preparation for the birth of our Lord and Savior in the season of Advent we hear and pray the words of Psalm above as a sign of ordering our lives towards the gift of thanksgiving and of sharing our lives and the blessing of our time, talent and treasure with others.
I found this Psalm above as I prepared my homily for the First Sunday of Advent. It is the “Entrance Antiphon” for the Mass and point us in the direction of how we can better understand God’s call to serve. We begin with the lifting of the soul, the blessing of God with praise and Eucharistic life in which we find truth and love. It is the recognition in thanksgiving of the gift of life, the precious foundational gift where the very breath of God enlivens our souls and how we are called to share this gift in creating a culture of life as we follow God’s call to serve. This is because we recognize a creative goodness because we are made in the image and likeness of Love.
When we place our trust in God we see and experience an opening of relationship with others. We find our joy in the company of God and those in whom we see the presence of Jesus Christ (which should be everyone) in sharing who we are and what we have been given. It is the work (yes, relationships are work) of reconciling our hearts to another, the true gift of thanksgiving.
I have listened to parents, children and brothers and sisters describe the difficulty of Thanksgiving or other holidays because of a hurt in the family that remains unreconciled or not forgiven. This is the true enemy the Psalm above speaks of, when the shame of un-forgiveness over shadows the desire for unity and love placed in our hearts. It is the blessing we understand in the Incarnation and how the world of life is surrounded and imbedded in the world of love where grace is the tonic of healing. It is the image of the father welcoming the son home with an embrace of forgiveness that flows into a meal, a celebration and a greater invitation into healing mercy. (Lk 15:11-32) It is a reality of the ongoing nature of thanksgiving intertwined with the need for reconciliation. A gift that is found only in communion with God and others.
This week many people will travel great distances to be with family and friends, to be in company with them as they share time and a meal…the sharing of life. It is the same impulse that should draw each of us towards the sharing of the Eucharist with the family of the Church. Even in our travels let us not forget to give thanks to God for all the good things we have received.
God Bless
Fr. Mark

“If we cherish the Word of God, then we should reverence all words, knowing their power to hurt or heal.” (Fr. Timothy Radcliffe OP from “What is the Point of Being a Christian)

Words are important for human beings. We convey thoughts and desires through the use of words and while this in not the only manner in which we convey thoughts and feelings it is powerful because of how a words or phrase can take on such power in our lives and the lives of others. But it is also in finding the “right word” we become better able to seek the good in others and we enter into greater and deeper relationships.
We can be careless with words or intentionally deceitful with our words in a variety of ways. One of the most common sins I hear from young people in the Sacrament of Reconciliation is telling lies to their parents, friends and teachers. This sin seems to disappear from the confessional when people get older and it is not because they no longer lie but because they have become comfortable with lies and thus see them as normal, natural and necessary to get through the day.
Because, as we see in the quote above, words have power, then to cherish and hold to the truthfulness of words as an important way to seek God becomes life-giving and something to celebrate and not to be afraid of entering into conversations of truth.

“The moment that religious people start to talk about truth, then people become nervous. This is understandable. All over the world violence is associated with different faiths quarreling about the truth.”(Fr. Timothy Radcliffe OP)

If we believe truth is discovered in the Word of God, in a deep and intimate conversation with God, then our words need to reflect God’s Word in the life of Jesus Christ. They must at times be words of gentleness and healing and at other times words of steel and strength calling for the better and the conversion of the other in life. Each parent and child knows this experience which is why the image of the Father is such a powerful expression of God’s presence daily in our lives. Knowing and discerning the time and place is a discovering of the life of the other and how in relationship finds its unity in love. It is trying to enter into a conversation with the eyes of the other as we are reminded, “But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”” (1 Sam 16:7)

“(W)e believe that the truth may be sought, patiently and with humility. If not then we shall be stuck in our differences.” (Fr. Timothy Radcliffe OP)

How do we learn the patience and humility necessary to hear the other in our lives. Even within families these differences can begin to gnaw away at the trust we have for one another. This coming week at Thanksgiving we are often warned to not talk about politics or religion…but if we are truly living a life of faith we can and should express our faith not simply in the words we speak but the words we live and the words we hear listening with an open heart to find God’s presence even when we may disagree. To be stuck in our differences is to be isolated from love.

“For Augustine, telling the truth to a stranger is part of building the human community constructing the Kingdom.” (Fr. Timothy Radcliffe OP)

To welcome the stranger. Are we happy when we see the stranger sitting in our place in the pews? The truth of our faith is simply…welcome to our home. In the days and weeks to come we will be challenged to speak the truth of welcome and the call to come and know our Lord Jesus with greater love. Telling the truth to the stranger is to hear God’s word…”Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Lk 12:32)…and to do his work “’Well done, good and faithful servant!…Come and share your master’s happiness!’” (Mt 25:23)

God bless
Fr. Mark

We can all fall into routines in many different ways. In the same thought our routines are often interrupted and disrupted by inner and outer sources that seemingly come at us when least expected. There is one great routine interrupter that occurs twice a year and comes along like clockwork. It is the dreaded “spring forward and fall back” disrupter that is a particular form of anguish and may I dare say evil that enters our lives.
One of my routines is my early morning prayer time followed by my morning exercise/walk. This past “fall back” a few weeks ago I noticed something different…when I began my morning walk down Railway Ave, through downtown Campbell and up the street before circling around and heading back to the parish…I saw lights that slowly disappeared as the days and then weeks continued. The routine I have is pretty peaceful and quiet and the people I see on this early morning jaunt around town are almost always the same but it is also the houses…now the houses don’t move…but you begin to notice, after four years, the ones that have the early morning lights on and those that remain in darkness. What I noticed, especially in the first few workdays after the “fall back,” was how many of the houses and apartments had early morning lights. How many more people where getting an early morning coffee at the local coffee house and more importantly (and dangerously for someone walking) how many more cars (often driving too fast) were on the road. It certainly made me look differently at the neighborhoods I was walking through and being much more attentive and careful in crossing the streets.
But as the days and weeks have gone slowly by the new lights have darkened, the coffee shop has few early morning customers and the cars have lessened, slowed down and the walk has fallen back into the routine.

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” (Will Durant)

The breaking of routine is beneficial for the renewed appreciation for what is around us. Where we once more have a new look at the gifts and blessings with which God surrounds us and we can begin to take for granted. It can make us unsteady and more attentive to the steps we take and the words we use. This can be good. But at the same time routine allows our minds to relax, to quiet the cacophony of noise, to silence the intrusive desire for the always new and hear a voice whispering truth and love. And this is where our routines and the breaking of routine sit side by side in the life of faith.

“Not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.” (Hebrews 10:25)

My morning routine of time before the Blessed Sacrament and then my walking Rosary open my heart to listen and speak to God about my hopes and dreams, about my doubts and fears as well as the blessings I give thanks for each day. The daily Mass, as I wrote last week, becomes the time of placing myself before God, as the prayer known in my bones, slowly unwinds around me. But when something breaks this routine I am challenge to discover God once more as the Holy Spirit moves my heart to recognize the presence of Love where we see the sparkling lights of life shine brightly, where the movement of the world call us to a new attentiveness and where God’s presence remains constant in the invitation to walk with Him in our journey.
God Bless
Fr. Mark

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God,
who, by the will of the Father
and the work of the Holy Spirit,
through your Death gave life to the world,
free me by this, your most holy Body and Blood,
from all my sins and from every evil;
keep me always faithful to your commandments,
and never let me be parted from you.

The prayer above is the silent prayer the priest prays in preparation for receiving the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus in the Eucharist. During this week where we have been asked to pray for vocations, this prayer has been on my heart as I go about my daily prayers. Often in my Holy Hour, or when I pray the Rosary or the Liturgy of the Hours this prayer has slipped into the routine of prayer when I recite my consecration to the Sacred Heart, my prayer for vocations and the prayer for the bishops and priests of the Diocese of San Jose.

“and never let me be parted from you”

The final line of the prayer reminds me of the unity we all wish for in life and death. It is an invitation be become more Christlike in our journeys of faith. But most importantly for me it informs the body of the prayer where in the consuming of the Body of Christ and the drinking of the Blood of Christ we express how much each person is loved by God.
When I was first ordained in 2005 I had studied the Mass in seminary and had heard and prayed the Mass for almost all of my life. I don’t remember the Latin Mass and the Ordinary Form had and continues to be the spiritual food that feeds my soul daily. Throughout the years the prayer of the Mass has become more intimate and more like taking a breath as the labor of the Mass flowed into the prayer of the Mass. Don’t get me wrong, I am not a perfect presider and I make my fair share of errors…but the Mass now moves through my heart, soul and mind with joyful blessing. It is something that has gradually occurred and something I barely noticed until a few years ago when a parishioner remarked how tired I had looked before celebrating the Sunday evening Mass but, as she commented on, she could see life flowing into me as the Mass continued.

“Through your Death gave life to the world.”

How do we find life in the celebration of the Mass? The phrase that Mass is boring that I often hear from people breaks my heart but it also reminds me of when “Mass was boring for me.” When I truly discovered life within the Mass was when I was teaching in New Mexico and began attending daily Mass in the morning before school began. In the quiet ritual of daily Mass the rhythm of God’s grace began to fill me more and more. Daily Mass became a prayer and my presence before God. The intuition was confirmed when as a priest I overheard a student in our Catholic School telling his teacher how much he liked going to daily Mass with his class because it was so quiet and peaceful. This becomes the place of life, where we quiet our minds and allow the soul to be filled with the presence of God in the sacrifice of the Mass.

“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God”

To recognize how much God gives to us in the gift of His son Jesus Christ is always a moment of pause. To know we hold Divine life in our hands, to know we take Divine life into our body, to know we become Christlike in this Eucharistic gift is simply amazing. To love Jesus is to love the Mass. To love Mass is to love the Church. To love the Church is to love our neighbor. To love our neighbor is to know how much God loves each one of us as a beloved son and daughter.
God Bless
Fr. Mark

Saints didn’t set out to have everyone follow them. Saints set out to follow Jesus, and others followed them in their pursuit of Him.
Mark Hart

Today is the Solemnity of All Saints where we lift our voices in prayer and thanksgiving to God for these examples of holiness which we are all called to aspire too in our lives. I have a great love for many saints and getting to know them through study, prayer and fun has helped me to be a better disciple of Jesus Christ. Saints come into your lives at very odd times and are often surprising in their entering and helping in a variety of situations in our lives. A few weeks ago I wrote about a newly canonized saint, St. Marguerite Bays, who captured my heart with her simple but powerful witness to her local parish and community.
There are the big saints, the famous saints and those everyone has heard about, and of course the Blessed Mother who is a category unto her own. Whether it is St. Jude for a desperate cause, St. Anthony when I can’t find my keys again, all saints are true friends. But let me share with you a few of my saintly friends.
My very first encounter with a saint came as a small boy when I was told St. Christopher was no longer an “official” saint. This broke my heart. My middle name is Christopher and how could I live without a saint in the middle…and besides when Mom or Dad got mad at me would they still give me the three name command…Mark Christopher Arnzen come here now! This went away quickly because in my boyish heart I guess I figured God would take care of this problem.
My second major blessing came at Confirmation when we were asked to take another saint name. I chose St. Nicholas because he exemplified the virtue of generosity. This was the first time my prayers with the saints were for a very specific purpose other than the routine “pray for us” that rolled mindlessly off my tongue. Asking and being with a saint in prayer seeking a certain virtue or need is one of the powerful parts of prayer of petition or intercessory prayer where our sister and brother saints pray with and for us in life.
When I was at Holy Names College I found another saint dropping into my life, St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein) a Carmelite nun who was murdered in the Nazi death camps because of her Jewish heritage. Discovering the courage of conversion and the following and trusting in Jesus Christ opened my eyes to a deeper gift of saying “yes” to God’s call to follow him. Of course when you find one Carmelite you can’t miss St. Teresa of Avila, St. Therese of Lisieux and St. John of the Cross to name a few who trickled into my life.
When I began my time as a missionary in New Mexico I had the pleasure of learning the lives of St. Bonaventure (the name of the mission) and then Blessed and now Saint Kateri Tekakwitha (the name of the school) where she opened my eyes to the many young saints who dedicated their lives to Jesus at such a great cost and how I am, as we all are, challenged to follow Jesus in a like manner where sacrificial love extends deeply into the service and caring for others.
The last saint I will share is St. Arnold of Soissons, the patron saint of beer brewers. I don’t know how I missed him during most of my life because I do enjoy a good beer and I don’t know why I never thought of him but he visited me from facebook where “Buy your Priest a Beer Day” popped up a couple of years ago. St. Arnold and his patronage has given me great joy over the past few years as friends and parishioners have shared in his prayers for good beer and has allowed me to receive and share a many good beers.
Saints are wonderful companions to cry with, to laugh with and to walk with on our journey of faith. Getting to know the saints of our Catholic tradition helps us to know who Jesus is through their lives and service. I would challenge you to learn about the saints (I will have a link below) and share what you learn with your family. Perhaps make it a weekly activity where everyone shares a little biography about a saint from the week or just from the greater canon of these holy men and women.
God Bless
Fr. Mark.

Saint of the Day Calendar

Consult not your fears but your hopes and your dreams. Think not about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled potential. Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed in, but with what it is still possible for you to do. (Pope St. John XXIII)

Saturday Morning: The baptism of three wonderful, beautiful children.
Saturday Afternoon: The wedding of a happy and holy young man and young woman.
Wednesday afternoon: The anointing and prayers for the preparation of death for an elderly gentleman.
Wednesday Evening: The anointing blessing of a young woman whose child died in utero and prayers of blessing for the child.

Life and death are part of the normal pattern of life. Although we often don’t dwell too much on the latter and in truth most people don’t want to think too much about death even with the reality that it will come to us all. Our faith tells us death is part of life and in death we enter eternal life. As you can see above life and death flow through the daily ministry of our parish communities with the blessing of God entering into the joy and sorrows, the excitement and heartbreak of families.
Thankfully my weeks aren’t always filled with these great highs and lows of joy and sorrow but they do occur in all families and in all places. Of course, with the coming of All Souls Day, we will be talking more and more about death as we remember those relatives and friends who have gone before us. It will bring up a variety of emotions. Some may be the tears the family of the older gentleman shed as we blessed him and prayed that he would be gathered into the arms of Jesus. These tears were of the many memories of love, the actions and details of life recalled with blessing. They were tears of remembrance and presence recalling the moments of grace that are shared in life. And for others they may be the tears of this young woman and her family where the heartbreak of dreams that wretch at our hearts. Where the hopes seem to be filled with the black emptiness swallowing our cries that feel empty and without resolution.
With all this said, this is where family life and the blessing of love comes into and helps to heal the brokenness and hurts of life. It is the baptism and weddings, the birthdays and holidays, the normal weekday routines and the dinner table conversations that inform the holiness of life and allow us to move through suffering and sadness, not forgetting or masking them, but proportioning them into the greater picture God has painted us into. It is where laughter breaks into tears. I remember coming home after my father had died and with my brothers and cousins sitting around having a drink, one of my brothers remarked, “Well, dad knows about the ewe now.” It was an inside joke, several years earlier, one morning one of the ewes had broken out of the pasture and we had the brilliant idea of scaring her back in by shooting at her. This made much more sense than chasing her. Well, we missed her by at least ten feet. She jumped up, turned and ran for the pasture and fell over dead. We assumed from a heart attack. Never had the courage to tell dad…but now he knows. We all laughed, fell silent and healed a little bit from that silly shared story.
“This is what the LORD says: “A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and great weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.”” (Jeremiah 31:15) I cannot fathom what this young mother feels but I do know that as we prayed together that night and then again blessed the body of her child the next day that she was surround by a family of love. And that is the first step of healing because she is loved…and that love is founded in God. It is also true for the family of the elderly man, they wept as they surrounded him with love as he moved into the eternal life of love.
Both of these families will hold the blessing of All Souls Day a little closer and a little more painfully this year but they will also be healed by our prayers as a Church, as the Body of Christ.
God bless
Fr. Mark

Have you ever had anyone step into your life and change everything? That someone special who opens your eyes to see the world differently or reawaken the heart to be more receptive to the blessings of love? It almost always happens out of the blue, in truth most probably 100% of the time, because it is not something you can plan or look for but it is like the invisible gust of wind knocking your hat off your head.
Well, that someone special stepped into my life last week…her name is St. Marguerite Bays…who entered my mind and heart as I wrote and talked about her last week in celebrating her canonization in the Catholic Church. As I wrote last week and talked about in my Sunday homily, she was a woman of great faith who lived a life of service, prayer and devotion in her parish and her neighborhood. So why is this woman so special (other than she is a Saint, if that were not special enough) that I would feel such an instant love and joyfulness in getting to know her through the blessing of her story of saintliness? Well, it might come as a surprise to you…but…wait for it…her prayer life.
In my homily at Sunday Mass I asked you to think of someone who needed your prayers…and to lift that person up in prayer during the Mass but also daily, because we all need prayer. So, what happened? I guess it was one of those Holy Spirit moments when he moves you to see the world as God sees the world. As I looked out upon St. Lucy a thought popped into my mind…”How many St. Marguerite’s do we have in our parish?” In truth I didn’t think about it long because I needed to focus once more on the celebration of the Mass but it has been a thought that has reentered my mind over and over again: at prayer, at rest, at play and at work.
We know that we are all called to be saints but: do we actually see the saints around us or do we see what we do as holy and blessed leading us to sainthood in our own right? The first part of the question is often answered in the affirmative. I can list dozens and dozens of holy men and women I have encountered at the many parishes I worshipped at as a lay man and those I have served at as a priest. I encounter them daily in ministry doing the quiet work of God, not seeking the spotlight but silently going about the work of caring for and serving others in their lives. I am always moved to grace walking into the silent church building during the middle of the day and finding God’s children in prayer; praying for others, for themselves, for the silent petitions unknown and yet brought to God in faith. They are the living stones upon which the Body of Christ lives and breathes daily.
And this is where we come back to this special beloved woman who slipped into my life, casually opening my heart to see the blessing of love surrounding me and asking me to pray with more patience and grace for God’s Church as I promised on the day of my ordination. It is the intercession of a saint that invites me to a great and more fervent intercession of love.
Who are the saints in your life? Who are you called to intercede for in prayer today?
St. Marguerite Bays….pray for us

God bless,
Fr. Mark

This Sunday our Holy Father Pope Francis will canonize five new saints. Much as I wrote earlier when I discussed other new saints from last year, the big names St. Paul VI and St. Oscar Romero, can overshadow the “smaller” saints. I point this out because the stories of these men and women who are recognized for the heroic virtue are powerful and teach us many things. Pope Francis will elevate five people to sainthood. The big name is John Henry Newman a 19th century convert to Catholicism who was a great thinker and writer who helped to shape the intellectual discourse of the Catholic Church for the century to come.
Who are the other saints? Well they are four women: three religious sisters and the fourth was a member of the Third Order of Saint Francis of Assisi.
Marguerite Bays was a dressmaker by trade and her biography tells us she spent her entire life working as a dedicated lay person in her parish and never left her own neighborhood. A simple woman who received a miraculous healing and experienced a mystical union with God. We are reminded by her life how much we, through being dedicated to our faith and sharing it with joy, can have great effect in both our family, our parish and in our communities. Recognizing how sharing our faith in creating a Catholic culture within our own families and neighborhoods we evangelize the joyful presence of God’s grace.
Sr. Dulce Lopes Pontes was a member of the congregation of the missionary Sisters of the Immaculate Conception of the Mother of God. (That is one long name for a congregation) With that being said, this 20th century saint, much like St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta, was known for her service to the poorest of the poor in her native Brazil. A woman of humble service she worked to bring dignity, especially through healthcare, to all people. Her work in founding a charitable organization, which annually serves over 3.5 million people, “famously began with just 70 patients, a chicken coop, and one determined nun.” (see link below) Sr. Dulce reminds us of how small seeds planted with great care and love often lead us to God’s blessings beyond imagination.
Sr. Giuseppina Vannini is the founder of the Daughters of Saint Camillus who in her short life, she died at 51, was an example of charity and sacrifice. Orphaned at an early age she chose to enter religious life and eventually decided to found a religious order whose work was caring for the sick and elderly.
Sr. Mariam Thresia was born in Thresia Mankidiyan in Kerala, India. Raised in the Syro-Malabar Rite of the Catholic Church, one of many Eastern Rite Churches in union with the Roman Catholic Church. She founded the Congregation of the Holy Family where she and her sisters dedicated their lives to praying for the repentance of sinners and carrying for orphans and the poor. Sr. Marian Thresia died at the age of 50 after having received the gift of the stigmata (the wounds of Jesus)
When I read the short biographies of each of these holy women I was reminded of three marks of each of their lives:
They each had a deep love for God’s people, especially the poor and vulnerable. Each of them chose to do small things with great love. The lesson we can learn is, while we may not be called to the consecrated life or the priesthood, we are all called to seek God in serving the other in our life. How do we seek to serve God in our daily lives may be the question these soon to be saints would ask?
You don’t need to go far to serve God. These four future saints pretty much stayed at home. None of them were missionaries going far and wide to find how best to serve God. Blessed Marguerite never left her “neighborhood” and she and each of these woman changed the lives of so many people around the world. Who in your “neighborhood”, at home, work, school or wherever needs the blessing of a good neighbor?
Lastly…yes you guessed it, each was a person with a deep and profound prayer life. Each found their call to vocation through prayer. They each persevered through the trial of life through prayer. They each rediscovered their mission over and over again through a deep and personal conversation in prayer with God. This didn’t happen by accident but rather through seeking and finding God in prayer. Do you take time in prayer each day to share with God your life?
The links below are short biographies of these five soon to be saints.
God Bless
Fr. Mark

http://www.savior.org/saints/bays.htm

https://saltandlighttv.org/blogfeed/getpost.php?id=93278

https://saltandlighttv.org/blogfeed/getpost.php?id=93093

https://saltandlighttv.org/blogfeed/getpost.php?id=93080