From the Pastor - 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time

August 16, 2024

Jesus said to the crowd, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life...” We can hardly blame the crowd for their shock at this statement — eating the Flesh and drinking the Blood of our Lord should cause us a bit of a shock. Yet how easy it is to show up at Mass Sunday after Sunday, receiving the Eucharist as simply part of a weekly routine.


If we really spent time contemplating the gift our Lord is offering us in this sacrament, we would be awestruck at the love and power in this gift. Through it, our Lord is giving us the very best He has to give — Himself. Not even the greatest theological scholar or the holiest of saints can fully understand this mystery.


Thankfully we don’t need to be a saint or a scholar to receive this gift. But we should do our best to receive the Eucharist with gratitude. And we can look to today’s readings to glean two fundamental principles for becoming better Christian stewards.

The Eucharist is the foundation for a stewardship way of life. Through His gift of the Eucharist, God fills us with His love and strength. This love and strength empower us to live as generous stewards — to be faithful to the ministries we serve in, joyful in material giving, and offer our very best to our families and secular work.


The Eucharist is the ultimate inspiration for a stewardship way of life. When we contemplate this gift of God, we will want to make a joyful return to Him. Mass will become anything but routine and we will live each day as His passionate disciples. © Catholic Stewardship Consultants, 2024

 

Pastoral Pondering

If you are like me, it seems that the summer has flown by. Be that as it may, summer vacation is quickly coming to a close and with the start of school later this week, “normal” parish life will begin again. In addition to the beginning of school, Faith Formation and Youth Ministry are gearing up for another year. This, of course, includes sacramental preparation. If you have children who are moving in to sacramental years (1st grade for First Communion & 7th grade for Confirmation) make sure that your child is registered with our Formation Office. If not a sacramental year, all children who are not in Catholic schools (MACS, Private or Home) should be registered for Faith Formation. The parents are the first teachers of faith in the lives of their children, but this is not an isolated role. It is shared with the community of faith, the parish. Ongoing formation and catechesis is essential to the spiritual lives of our young people. A life of faith must be encouraged, modeled and formed among the young; otherwise, they will have little to hold on to as they mature. Parents often lament when their adult children abandon the faith, but children must be connected to a faith community when they are young. Such connections maintained throughout childhood and into adolescence provide the best possible support for a child’s ongoing engagement with the Faith.


Next Saturday we will have our annual ministry fair. This provides a great opportunity for you to get involved in some aspects of parish life and ministry. Our faith has to be concretely lived in our daily lives. Ministries and apostolates provide opportunities to put faith into action. St. Mark offers a wide-range of possibilities. Please take advantage of these because, as St. James reminds us, “faith without works is dead.”

 

From the Pastor

From the Pastor - Fifth Sunday of Easter

By John Putnam • May 16, 2025
Today’s readings on this fifth Sunday of Easter contain inspiring but challenging messages for us Christian stewards. The Gospel from John includes this well-known verse: “My children…I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.” What a succinct description of a stewardship way of life. It sounds so simples. But simple does not necessarily mean easy. How exactly is Jesus Calling us to love? As He, Himself loved. Jesus loved (and loves) by serving us and by making a sacrifice of His very life for us. That is a tall order. Living a life of service and self-sacrifice is not easy because it requires us to continuously fight against our selfish inclinations. But the more we empty ourselves of “self” by serving others, the more room we make in our hearts for God to pour His grace into us. Amazingly, the more we give our lives away to others, the more He fills us up with Himself who is love itself. And amid the inevitable challenging moments this way of life entails we can be assured that the Lord who loves us so much that He died for us and established the Eucharist to be our strength and nourishment, is right here with us every step of the way. As we face the hardships that come with living as Christian stewards, we can continue to rejoice in the wonder of the Resurrection this Easter season, finding great joy in following in our Lord’s footsteps and in loving as He loves. © Catholic Stewardship Consultants, 2025 Pastoral Pondering  As you have probably noticed, the original St. Mark building, the old rectory on Ranson Road, has been torn down. Preparatory work has begun on the lot for the new rectory. In the next couple of weeks, we will be meeting with the Diocese and doing some value engineering. Once that is accomplished it will be decided when we can move forward with groundbreaking and construction. On the Campaign front, we thank all of those who have extended their pledges or moved a one-time gift into a multi-year pledge. In order to reach the goal of $9.7 million, we still need to raise a little over $400K before June 30 th . Percentagewise, there are still a large number of parish families who have not participated in the Campaign. We need your help to reach the goal. Whether we accomplish that goal will determine what we can do next. As June approaches, we are preparing for the ordination of some of our seminarians to the Diaconate and then the ordination of our transitional deacons to the Priesthood. Please keep all of them in your prayers. One of those to be ordained deacon, Seminarian Michael Lugo, has been assigned to St. Mark for the summer. We look forward to working with him and know you all will make him welcome.

From the Pastor - Fourth Sunday of Easter

By John Putnam • May 9, 2025
Throughout the Easter season, our readings have given us glimpses into the life of the newborn Church and the bold witness of the early disciples in spreading the Good News of Jesus Christ to all who would listen. The disciples were the first to live a stewardship way of life, and their example is as relevant today as it was 2,000 years ago. In the First Reading, from the Acts of the Apostles, we catch up with Paul and Barnabas in Antioch. While they certainly have some success in reaching many people there with the message of salvation, others are downright infuriated by their words and send them packing. Yet, we read that “the disciples were filled with joy and the Holy Spirit.” Overall, it seems as if Paul and Barnabas had failed in Antioch. But seeing failure has not robbed them of their joy. What’s more, they are filled to the brim with the abundant gifts of the Holy Spirit. How is this possible? It is only possible because Paul and Barnabas saw themselves as nothing more and nothing less than stewards of Christ and His Good News. This realization brought them freedom — to offer themselves and their lives to others for the sake of the Gospel. The “results” of their efforts were up to God. This Spirit-filled, joy-filled life is available to us all today. It can be achieved when we recognize, as did Paul and Barnabas, that all we have and all we are is a gift from God, meant to be shared with others for His glory. Of course, living as God’s stewards does not guarantee a life of ease or a life free of sacrifice. Sometimes the steward’s life involves challenges, requiring all the strength and love one has to give. In the end, there is simply no more satisfying way to live. © Catholic Stewardship Consultants, 2025 Pastoral Pondering Because of the time limits placed on us by the bulletin company, this is being written before the conclave begins but will be published after the fact, so we may actually have a new pope (and I hope we do) by the time you are reading this. It is a good reminder that there are still limits on our modern efficiency. Over the past couple of weeks, in addition to praying for the repose of the soul of Pope Francis, we have also had the opportunity to celebrate confirmation with Bishop Martin with a little more than half of our confirmands (99), the remaining 80 or so will be confirmed this week. We have also celebrated two of our First Holy Communions with the remaining two being celebrated next Saturday. May is always busy!  It is always a great blessing to celebrate these sacraments with our young people. Celebrating with the second graders is a special joy because they are so open to God’s presence in their lives. We are also praying for those candidates (folks baptized in another Christian church) who will be received into the full Communion of the Catholic Church on the Vigil of Pentecost. Please keep all of these folks in prayer as they grow in the sacramental life and in their walk with Christ.
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