From the Parochial Vicar - August 5, 2018

August 6, 2018

From the Parochial Vicar - August 5, 2018

I am thankful for our youth. I am thankful for our young adults. I am thankful for our youth ministry and young adult ministry. When I arrived at Saint Mark Catholic Church one year ago, it was a Tuesday. Fr. John told Fr. Becker and me that there was Young Adult Group, and he wanted at least one of us there whenever they met. Also, we were told that we were going to be present Sunday night for Life Teen and Wednesday nights for Fraternus/Fidelis. Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday nights we tried to balance commissions’ meetings and Edge youth ministry for the middle school students. So, yes, Fr. John “volun-told” us to be present. Within one month, however, we shared in his commitment to accompany these young people. Sunday through Wednesday, the parish hall, school gym, and classrooms in the Kerin Center overflow with the parish’s youth: your children. And they all have one desire: to encounter the Lord.

I am thankful for our faith formation staff, youth ministers, Life Teen core team, and K-5 catechists. I am grateful to our school teachers, especially in the religion department, for daily catechizing our youth. I am ever grateful to the adults that give of their time, talent, and treasure to be sure that our youth ministry programs provide opportunities for our children to enter into a relationship with the Lord. Whether someone goes to public school, Catholic school, or homeschool, I have witnessed each one in our youth ministry programs form virtuous friendships together and encourage each other to remain faithful no matter where they will scatter after their youth nights and activities.

It has become clear to me and the other priests here that Saint Mark—a parish that forms intentional disciples—must be as present as possible to our youth and young adults as they navigate a world that has rejected Christ. In hearing confessions, being part of small group discussions, going on outings with our youth, and even meeting groups of our high schoolers at the local coffee shop, the kids share their struggles and burdens in ways that they have never shared with anyone else. I wish there was a magic formula to take away those afflictions. What youth ministry does, however, is instill the hope of Christ and the strength of community. Pope Francis, speaking to youth ministers in 2014, said that youth ministry is “much more than the promotion of a series of activities for young people. This ministry consists in walking with them, accompanying them personally in the complex and at times difficult contexts in which they are immersed. … Youth ministry is called to gather the questions of young people of today and, from them, to initiate a true and honest dialogue to bring Christ into their lives.”

As families are preparing to get back into the swing of school and other academic-year-activities, there has been plenty of discussion in the parish about the relationship between catechesis (faith formation) and youth ministry. While these two environments overlap in some respects, just learning principles and doctrine about Christ and his Church is not enough to initiate a relationship with Christ that is sustainable. In fact, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI said in his Encyclical Deus Caritas Est (God Is Love), “Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.” An ethical choice is made logically from different data points so that one can say, “Aha! This is a good thing for myself and those around me.” But an encounter with the love of God is ongoing, rich, and lived in the wider community. “We cannot love what we do not know,” says St. Augustine; so, learning of Christ and his Church must be coupled with opportunities to grow in love of the event and person of Christ.

What can we do as a parish? First, we can all thank God for our young Church, present in our youth; thank God for their new ideas, fresh perspectives, and zealous hearts. Second, we can pray daily for our youth. We can pray that God protect and enlighten them. Third, we can affirm them. Tell them how good it is to see them participating at Mass and present at the parish. Fourth, we can reach out to the Faith Formation and Youth Ministry offices and ask, “With my gifts and talents, how can I help our young people to encounter Jesus by cooperating with youth ministry?”

The Church needs our youth. The Church needs our young people. The Church needs you and I to provide the opportunities for them to full heartedly pursue Jesus and his righteousness.

From the Pastor

From the Pastor - 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time

By John Putnam • October 16, 2026
Today's readings remind us to be mindful not only of who we are, but also Whose we are. In today's Gospel, the Pharisees attempt to trap Jesus by asking whether it is lawful to pay the tax to Caesar. Their question is meant to force Him into choosing sides. But Jesus refuses to be drawn into their narrow way of thinking. Instead, He asks whose image appears on the coin. When they answer, "Caesar," Jesus responds, "Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God." Those words remind us that while we have responsibilities in this world, our first allegiance belongs to God. Everything we have comes from Him, and through Baptism we have become His sons and daughters. Our time, our talents, our treasure, and our very lives are gifts entrusted to us by the Lord. May we use them each day in grateful response to His goodness, remembering that we belong to Him above all else. © Catholic Stewardship Conference, 2026 Pastoral Pondering With the mid-term elections coming up and early voting beginning this past week, I thought it would be a good idea to remind everyone the importance of Catholics voting and engaging in civil life. On November 3 we will elect members of Congress, state officials, and many local officeholders. Midterm elections draw fewer voters than a presidential year, yet they shape the laws under which we live: the protection of human life, the freedom of the Church to teach and serve, the strength of the family, the care of the poor, and the education of the young. To stay home is not neutrality. It leaves those decisions to others. The Church has long taught that citizenship is part of charity. The Catechism says that co-responsibility for the common good makes it “morally obligatory… to exercise the right to vote” (CCC 2240). Pope Francis put it plainly: a good Catholic does not stand apart from politics, but offers the best of himself so that those who govern may serve the good of all. Voting is one ordinary way we do that. It is also a moral act, not a team sport. Our identity in Christ comes before any party label. The U.S. bishops, in *Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship* (scan code), remind us that we form our consciences by the Gospel and the Church’s teaching, then vote in light of that formation. A well-formed conscience does not support a program that contradicts the fundamental contents of faith and morals. Some acts are always gravely wrong: the direct taking of innocent human life, including abortion and euthanasia; attacks on the nature of marriage; religious persecution; and the deliberate degradation of the poor. Other issues—immigration, wages, housing, care of creation, criminal justice—also belong to the common good and require prudent judgment about what will help people. Not every issue carries the same moral weight, and rarely does one candidate embody the whole of Catholic social teaching. We weigh, we pray, and we choose the path that best protects human dignity and advances the common good. A few practical steps help. Read the bishops’ guidance and, where available, nonpartisan comparisons of candidates’ records and stated positions. Pray before you vote, perhaps with the family. Discuss the issues with charity, remembering that the person across the aisle is also made in the image of God. Then vote. If you cannot get to the polls, use whatever law the state provides. Participation does not end at the ballot box: write your representatives, serve the poor, and keep the Church’s voice in the public square after Election Day. Here at St. Mark we will not tell you whom to support. That judgment belongs to your conscience, formed by the faith. We will urge you not to surrender that conscience to habit, fear, or party. The Lord who will judge nations also judges how we used the freedom we were given. May we use it well.

From the Pastor - 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time

By John Putnam • October 9, 2026
This reflection pertains to the regular readings for the 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time. We have been given so many gifts and blessings by our Heavenly Father. Yet, in our fallen state it is all too easy to take them for granted. Our readings today teach us that we must live with an intentional awareness of our many blessings and use them gratefully to glorify God. In our Gospel passage from Matthew, Jesus uses the image of a vineyard to teach the importance of using our blessings well. He tells the story of a landowner who plants a vineyard and leases it to tenants before he goes on a journey. Instead of tending the vineyard, the tenants mistreat the servants in the vineyard and even the son of the landowner, whom they kill. When the landowner realizes what the tenants have done, he puts them to death and leases his vineyard to tenants who “will give him the produce at the proper times.” By Baptism, we have received the gift of salvation and membership in the Kingdom of God — we are now “tenants” called to work in the “vineyard” and produce fruit for its owner, our Heavenly Father. Jesus makes it clear that if we squander the gift of salvation, we will lose it. It is a sobering truth. So, let us use our intellect to think on these gifts throughout the day and resolve to use all our gifts for God’s glory. ©Catholic Stewardship Consultants, 2026 Pastoral Pondering Why St. Francis still matters to the Church On October 4 the Church honors St. Francis of Assisi, one of the most beloved and most demanding saints in our history. He is not merely a garden statue or a gentle friend of animals. Francis is a living reminder of what the Gospel looks like when it is taken at its word. Born Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone around 1181 in Assisi, he was the son of a wealthy cloth merchant. After a brief taste of knighthood and a season of pleasure, he heard Christ speak from the crucifix of San Damiano: “Francis, go and rebuild my house, which, as you see, is falling into ruin.” He took those words first as a command to repair a crumbling chapel. The Lord meant something larger: the renewal of the Church herself. What Francis restored in the Church Poverty as freedom. Francis stripped himself of inheritance, status, and even the clothes on his back. He called Lady Poverty his bride. That was not a romantic gesture. It was a protest against a Church and a society grown comfortable. Every generation of Catholics needs that protest. When we confuse the Gospel with respectability, Francis stands at the door of the Church and asks whether we still believe that Christ is enough. The crucified Christ at the center. In 1224, two years before his death, Francis received the stigmata on Mount La Verna—the wounds of Christ marked in his own flesh. The Church has always taught that holiness is configuration to Jesus crucified and risen. Francis made that teaching visible. He did not invent devotion to the Passion; he embodied it so completely that the Church could not look away. A family of religious life. From one poor man came the Friars Minor, the Poor Clares with St. Clare, and the Secular Franciscans for men and women living in the world. That threefold family still serves the Church on every continent: preaching, serving the poor, praying, and keeping the memory of the Gospel simple. When we speak of “Franciscan” today—whether a friar, a sister, or a parishioner in the Secular Order—we are naming a way of belonging to Christ that the Church has never outgrown. Creation as gift, not possession. The Canticle of the Creatures—“Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Mother Earth”—is not nature poetry. It is theology. Francis saw every creature as a brother or sister because all things come from the same Father. Pope Francis took that insight into Laudato Si’. Care for our common home is not an optional hobby for Catholics. It is part of the same conversion that led Francis to kiss the leper and to call the wolf of Gubbio his brother. Peace that costs something. In 1219 Francis crossed battle lines during the Fifth Crusade and stood before Sultan al-Kamil. He did not win a treaty. He witnessed to a Lord who is Peace. The Church still needs disciples willing to speak of Christ without hatred and without watering Him down. Francis did both. Why this matters here St. Francis matters to the life of the Church because he keeps returning us to the essentials: Christ poor and crucified, the Church always in need of reform, the poor as our brothers and sisters, creation as a hymn of praise, and joy that does not depend on having more. He is not a saint for specialists. He is a saint for anyone who has grown tired of a faith that costs nothing. As we keep his memorial, I invite you to do one Franciscan thing that is within reach: give something away that you do not need; speak peace where there is friction in your home; spend a few minutes outdoors thanking God for what you did not make; or pray before the crucifix and ask, as Francis did, to know Jesus and to make Him known.  The little poor man of Assisi still rebuilds the Church—one converted heart at a time. May he rebuild ours.