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From the Pastor - Sixth Sunday of Easter

May 03, 2024

Our readings today call us to love as Christ loves.

 

In our Gospel, Jesus says, “Love one another as I have loved you.” The ways Jesus has loved us and continues to love us are endless.

 

We are called to imitate this love. And He tells us the greatest way to do this when He said, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

 

It is difficult to live that out in our humanity. Yet, it is made much easier when we faithfully love Christ. The fact of the matter is, as our love for Christ increases, so too does our capacity to love others.

 

There are countless moments when we can do just that — for instance, waking up Saturday morning to attend daily Mass instead of sleeping in, or talking to God in the car on the way to work instead of listening to music. These are simple ways to express our love for the Lord by laying down our lives for Him.

 

The more we find ways to love the Lord, the more we will find it easier to put aside our selfishness and serve others.

 

Christ’s command to love others may seem daunting. Yet, Christ would never ask something of us that we cannot live out. All we need to do is take baby steps. Ask yourself, "How can I better love Jesus right now?" for it is in loving Christ that we will better love others, and it is in loving others that we love Christ Himself. © Catholic Stewardship Consultants, 2024

 

Pastoral Pondering

Last week I had the opportunity of spending the afternoon with my childhood pastor, the Reverend Fred Thompson. He served as the pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Newton, NC for over 30 years. He is now 91 years old and continues to live a fairly independent life. We lost touch when my family moved from Newton to Hickory as I began grammar school but reconnected during my undergraduate studies at Lenoir-Rhyne College. We have stayed in touch since then. Such connections from the past are very important. At least in my case, Fred knew things about my parents and my adoption that I never did, and he is always happy to share a story or two.

 

I bring this up because memory, what we refer to in the Mass as anamnesis, is essential not only to our faith but to society as a whole. Our collective memory is important. Significant events of the past are passed on from one generation to the next, and we hopefully learn from our mistakes so that we don’t repeat them.

 

In the Catholic context, we are being obedient to Christ’s command at the Last Supper, do this in memory of me.” And it is through that remembrance that we cannot the past with the present and look with hope to the future – Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again. This is why Sacred Tradition is so very important to our understanding of the Faith. That which is handed over (traditio) is essential because it forms the framework upon which the Church travels throughout the centuries.

 

The same is true in families. In the past multiple generations would live together or in close proximity to each other. Children learned about life from a variety of family members with varying degrees of lived experience and a wealth of memory. With our society becoming more transitory and human interaction being impoverished by the reality of technology, families need to be very intentional about connecting with the past. It helps us all understand who we are, why we are here and for what we were made.

From the Pastor

From the Pastor - Pentecost

By John Putnam • 17 May, 2024
Our Easter season culminates with the glorious feast of Pentecost. We can imagine how incredible that moment was for the apostles and all who witnessed it. The Holy Spirit was alive and working. The Holy Spirit is just as alive and willing to work here and now in our day-to-day moments as back at our first Pentecost. Our First Reading bears witness to the first Pentecost. During this encounter with the Holy Spirit, the apostles and Mary felt a driving wind, there were tongues of fire on the heads of each of them and the Spirit allowed them to speak in different tongues proclaiming acts of God. We might hear this reading and wish the Holy Spirit worked that obviously in our lives each day. The truth is, the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives is obvious — we just might be blind to it, or it might be that we have closed ourselves off to the Holy Spirit’s wonderous works. Our tongues of fire might be a profound conversation with a friend, something that you needed to hear in that exact moment, or even a closed door to an opportunity for something much, much greater. These are movements of the Holy Spirit in our everyday moments. The more we take time to recognize them, the more we become aware of them. On this Pentecost Sunday, let us give thanks to God for sending us His Holy Spirit. And let us strive to be in tune with the Holy Spirit by looking for the ways God has been working in our lives. © Catholic Stewardship Consultants, 2024 Pastoral Pondering This weekend we are welcoming our Baptized candidates who have been preparing through the OCIA into the full Communion of the Church. Those who were not yet baptized were initiated on the Vigil of Easter. Those who have already been joined to Christ through baptism in another Christian community, are received at Pentecost when they will receive Confirmation and the Holy Eucharist. Please keep them in your prayers. There have been lots of questions regarding the upcoming ordination of Father Michael Martin, OFM Conv., our new bishop. The final week of May will be a bit hectic around here! There has already been a lot of work going on to spruce the buildings and grounds up. And because St. Mark is the locus of two of the Ordination events, our weekly schedule will be impacted. The first event is a Holy Hour at St. Mark at 7 pm on Tuesday, May 28. The Kerin Center, including the Adoration Chapel , will close at 5 pm on May 28. Adoration will resume at 5 pm on May 29. On ordination day, there will be no daily Masses at the parish. The ordination begins at 1 pm and is a ticketed event. Each parish has been allocated several tickets for the church as well as tickets for the overflow seating in the Kerin Center. On Thursday, May 30, Bishop Martin takes possession of his office at 10 am at the Cathedral and all priests are expected to attend. Hence, there will only be a 7 am Mass that day. Please continue to pray for the Bishop-elect and the Diocese as we prepare for the ordination of our 5 th Bishop!

From the Pastor - Ascension of the Lord

By John Putnam • 10 May, 2024
We often cite Jesus’ quote from today’s Gospel of Mark: “Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature.” This was not a suggestion from the Lord. It was quite frankly a command, and it is one which still holds for each of us. Being an evangelist, being a disciple, being a steward is not a matter of choice for those of us who are Catholic and Christian. It is something the Lord expects of us. Often, we may like to spend time debating how to do that, but that does not lessen the fact that it is something we are supposed to do. We need to acknowledge that even the original Apostles and followers of Jesus did not do that immediately. We learn that they stayed in Jerusalem for some time, and it seemed to be only when the Church and its followers were persecuted that they began to reach out and truly share the “Good News.” Once Christians accepted that charge from the Lord, they did indeed take the Word of God to all corners of the earth. Look at the Church today. It is incredible how this Church has grown from one Man/God and a small group into what it is today. That does not, however, get us “off the hook.” As much as we may argue about how to carry out this command from Jesus, the fact remains that our very lives need to stand as a representation of what it means to be a Christian, what it means to “love one another,” what it means to live and to work as a disciple of Christ. © Catholic Stewardship Consultants, 2024 Pastoral Pondering Over the past couple of weeks, there has been a lot of attention in the news cycle concerning various pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses, including UNC Chapel Hill. Some have become violent and most, at the time I am writing this, have been addressed by law enforcement. However, I thought it would be a good time to recall the conflict in the Holy Land which is ongoing. As a member of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulcher of Jerusalem, a papal chivalric and philanthropical order, I have a special concern for the plight of the Christians in the Holy Land. These brothers and sisters of ours are, in a very real way, caught between Scylla and Charybdis, the monsters of Odysseus Book XII. The Christians in the Holy Land are for the most part Palestinian, so they are often caught between the Islamists on the one hand and the Jewish community on the other. Their plight at times is very difficult. The conflict that arose because of the atrocities perpetrated against Israelis on October 7 th by the terrorist group Hamas, was to be expected, but we must always remember that in these conflicts, there are always innocent victims. The Holy Father, Pope Francis, has been consistent in calling for some type of settlement both in this conflict as well as the one in Ukraine so that deaths might be minimized, and the innocent might not become victims. There are any number of forces who want world conflicts to be ongoing; some for ideological reasons, some for financial gain, and some, I’m sure, who operate out their own sense of righteousness. For us Christians, however, we are always called to pray for peace. We must do what we can to in instruments of peace in the world that seems more and more determined to self-destruct in one way or another. Please pray for the Christian community in the Holy Land. Pray that they might be protected in the midst of the fighting and pray that peace may soon be restored.
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