From the Pastor - Baptism of the Lord

January 8, 2021

Our Christmas season concludes with the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord. Jesus was not baptized because he needed to repent — rather, He was revealing who He is and what He came to do.


It is from His mission that we can receive the sacrament of baptism — when we become adopted sons and daughters of God. From that moment, we belong to Christ — we become His stewards. Our lives should be a reflection of this relationship. The way we live should reveal Whose we are.


In our First Reading, the prophet Isaiah shares a message of hope, “Why spend your money for what is not bread, your wages for what fails to satisfy?” We should ask ourselves, "Who is the king of our hearts?" As Christian stewards, it should be God. We often fill our lives with things that satisfy us only for a moment. If we truly do belong to Christ, then we will make Him our top priority. What we fill our lives with should reveal that He is King.


In our Gospel, Mark reveals the intimate relationship between God the Father, God the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus and God the Father proclaimed, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.” We, too, have access to an intimate relationship with God. But like all good relationships, it flourishes with effort. How we spend our time and share our gifts says a great deal about Whose we are. © Catholic Stewardship Consultants, 2020.


Pastoral Pondering

Covid Vaccines — I have continued to receive questions about the morality of receiving the COVID vaccine due to it’s connection with human fetal cells obtained following abortion. Both the USCCB and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith have issued guidance in this regard. Both indicate that while no one is obliged to receive the vaccine (or coerced to do so), due to severity of the pandemic and the remoteness of the moral cooperation, it is morally licit to receive the COVID vaccine. Each individual must still evaluate his or her own personal objections and concerns and decide what to do accordingly.


Adoration — I have said before that I believe our parish commitment to perpetual Eucharistic Adoration has been the fundamental “power” that allows us to accomplish all that we have been able to in recent years, but certainly, during a very difficult 2020. Father Richard Heilman, the author of the Grace Force Podcast and other efforts says the following: “I am convinced that a movement of restoring Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament is the spiritual therapeutic for cleansing our country of demonic influence and opening the floodgates of grace that will heal our land… bringing our country back to the spiritual health of being One Nation Under God once again.”


No reasonable person of faith can deny that over the past several years, we have seen an increase of activity that can only be described as evil and even diabolical. It especially manifested itself during 2020 in a negation of the importance of the spiritual and eternal for a focus on the physical and temporal. This of course is completely contrary to Christian faith and history. As followers of Jesus Christ, we have an obligation to have as our first and most important reason for living in the vale of tears to love and serve the Lord here so that we can be with Him forever in heaven.


With this in mind, I want to encourage you all to make Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament an intentional decision for all of our families. While we have a core of very dedicated adorers who cover the hours of Adoration during the week, far too many are left with only a single adorer signed up and committed. We are to be the leaven in society, and we cannot fulfill this mission if we do not first recommit ourselves to fitting worship and prayer of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. This certainly takes place when we assist at Holy Mass, but Adoration is the sacramental that leads us to ponder what we are offered at the Holy Sacrifice. I hear countless people lament and complain about the state of the world. Yet, rather than first having recourse to the source of True Power, we often turn to worldly solutions such as political or judicial structures and institutions in hopes that they can solve our problems. This is simply fanciful thinking. Because of our fallen human nature, the merely human and temporal will never cure what ails our nation and our world. Our first recourse must be to the Almighty.


I encourage and even beseech you then to be intentional Adorers of the Most Blessed Sacrament. Commit yourself and your families to set times of adoration so that the outflowing of grace that comes from this pious and devout practice might pour forth not only here in the parish but far beyond. In Luke 6:38, the Lord says the following: “Give, and it shall be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over shall be poured into your lap.” God wants to pour out His graces upon us if we will just cooperate with Him and accept all that He desires for us. Please sign up for Adoration. https://www.stmarknc.org/adoration.


From the Pastor

From the Pastor - Fourth Sunday of Advent

By John Putnam • December 19, 2025
As our Advent preparations draw to a close and Christmas fast approaches, it is fitting that today’s readings demonstrate the intensity of the Father’s perfect and passionate love for each of us, culminating in the gift of His own Son, Jesus Christ, on Christmas Day. As we reflect on the enormity of this gift, let us ask ourselves what we can offer in return. In our first reading, from Isaiah, the Lord invites King Ahaz to “ask for a sign from the Lord, your God.” And not just any sign. The Lord says, “let it be deep as the nether-world, or high as the sky!” Ahaz, though, cannot arouse himself from his bleak and limited outlook, and actually refuses this invitation. Undeterred by his negativity, the Lord says through the prophet Isaiah, that he himself will provide the sign: “the virgin shall conceive and bear a son” and his name will be Emmanuel which means, “God with us.” What great love and patience our heavenly Father has shown his people throughout all ages! In the second reading, from Paul’s letter to the Romans, St. Paul sends a blessing of “Grace…and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. This — grace and peace — is precisely the gift we celebrate on Christmas Day. Through his incarnation, Jesus brings the intimate love of God right into our midst; and through His death and resurrection, He saves us from our sins and restores us to right relationship with the Father. This is the peace that the world cannot offer. In response to such an overwhelming gift, what can we do except offer our lives as a gift in return, embracing a stewardship way of life with all the love and strength we have to give? In our Gospel passage from Matthew, we find an unparalleled example of one who embraced this way of life in St. Joseph, as he responds to God’s call to him through the message of an angel. St. Joseph immediately and humbly obeys the instruction from the angel: “Do not be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home. For it is through the Holy Spirit that this child has been conceived in her. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” Open to this extraordinary role, he did as the angel commanded and “takes Mary into his home.” We never hear St. Joseph speak, but the Scriptures tell us he was always listening, attentive to the leading of the Holy Spirit for his family. It was Joseph who found the stable where the baby Jesus would be born. No doubt it was Joseph who cleaned it up and prepared it for Mary and Jesus since we know that Mary was about to give birth. Joseph protected the family, guarded them, and tended to their safety, their comfort, and their well-being at the expense of his own plans and preferences. Though we do not hear any words from St. Joseph his actions clearly show that he offered himself, his whole life, as a gift to his family through his strong guidance, protection, and service. Let us imitate St. Joseph, then, as good stewards, giving our very lives to those around us in love and gratitude to God who has given us everything we have, especially His own Son, Jesus Christ. We will no doubt find that the more we give ourselves away, the more our generous Father will fill us with His grace and peace — these are truly the best Christmas gifts we could receive. © Catholic Stewardship Consultants, 2025 Pastoral Pondering Christmas is upon us and as we enter into these last days before the celebration of the Lord’s birth, I wanted to take this opportunity to express my heartfelt gratitude for the myriad ways each one of you makes St. Mark a wonderful place to pray, to worship and find a parish home. As I speak to people who visit us from other parts of the country or parishioners who, due to trips away, visit other parishes, it is nice to hear that St. Mark has something special about it. That “something special” has a great deal to do with the people who call St. Mark home. Christmas is a time to share the love of Christ, and over the past several weeks, you have done just that in our various charitable efforts, most recently our Christmas Giving Tree. Lives have been impacted for the better because of your generous response, and I know that God will bless you because He is never outdone in generosity.  Finally, please know that Fathers Angermeyer, Martinez, Huber and I wish each and everyone of you a very merry and blessing-filled Christmas!

From the Pastor - Third Sunday of Advent

By John Putnam • December 12, 2025
Good news, Christian stewards — we are gaining ground on our Advent mountain climb and it is time to take a moment to rejoice in the Good News that our Savior will come again in triumph one day. Today’s readings on this Gaudete (“Rejoice”) Sunday are filled with reminders of God’s final victory over suffering and injustice, and encouragement to remain steadfast in our mission to live as faith-filled disciples. Such a day almost seems too good to be true, especially when we look around at the dire circumstances we face in our world at present. But by faith, we know this day is coming. Lest we grow weary as we await the glorious day of Christ’s return, St. James, in our second reading, offers wise counsel. “Be patient, brothers and sisters, until the coming of the Lord.” “Make your hearts firm… Do not complain, brothers and sisters, about one another, that you may not be judged.” This is excellent advice for us Christian stewards as we face the challenges of everyday life in our broken world, especially in the hectic days that precede Christmas when stress can make us and those around us less than our best selves. St. James reminds us that we can choose our response to both the great strains and the minor annoyances of life. In other words, we can be good stewards of our attitude, “making our hearts firm” by practicing patience with others and refusing to give in to the temptation to complain. We can choose to see and rejoice in God’s presence with us, no matter the circumstances surrounding us. © Catholic Stewardship Consultants, 2025 Pastoral Pondering Prior to the Hamas attack in Israel of October 7, 2023, I was planning to lead a pilgrimage to the Holy Land with our seminarians. The events of that day put that pilgrimage on hold even though we had already raised funds for the pilgrimage. Now that relative peace has been restored, we will be embarking on the pilgrimage on December 26 th . I wanted to thank all of you who supported the effort and wanted to let you know that we are finally preparing to go. Pilgrimages to the Holy Land are very special opportunities for everyone, but such a pilgrimage is especially significant for a man preparing for priesthood because it provides a completely different perspective on the Scriptures and is able to inform his preaching and teaching. Christopher Cross is organizing this for us, and I would recommend one of his trips to anyone who would like to go. Chris brings a unique blend of humor and deep faith that makes the experience come alive in a wonderful way. I have been on a number of pilgrimages, and those with Chris have been the most impactful by far.  Please keep all of us in your prayers as we prepare for the pilgrimage and certainly know that you all will be in ours as we spend the Christmas Octave in the Holy Land.