From the Pastor – 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

November 15, 2019

From the Pastor – 33 rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

This weekend is the 33rd and last numbered Sunday in Ordinary Time for this liturgical year. Recall that Ordinary does not refer to “average” or “normal,” but to time outside our two great seasons of celebration — Lent and Easter, and Advent and Christmas. Next Sunday is the Feast of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe (Christ the King).

The readings for this weekend ask the stewardship question, “What are the obstacles which stand between you and holiness, between you and lives of stewardship?” The Liturgical year more or less follows Jesus’ life on earth. Therefore, it is appropriate that the Gospel for this Sunday is drawn from Luke 21, which is Christ’s last discourse with His Apostles and us prior to the Passion (which in the Gospel of Luke begins with Luke 22).

All three readings are complex, and we must listen carefully to grasp the stewardship significance of them. There is a finality to them. The first reading is from the prophetic Book of Malachi, the absolute last Book of the Old Testament. Malachi is also the 12th Book of the Minor Prophets, the number 12 having particular implication in Scripture from the Twelve Tribes of Israel to the Twelve Apostles.

Malachi means “God’s messenger.” The Book was written to address what was seen as a laxity among the Israelites in relation to their practice of their faith. It thus also reminds us, especially as we prepare for Advent, of our need to sharpen our senses, our prayer lives, and our faith lives. God has made promises to us, but for us to reap the benefits of those promises we must delve more deeply into our faith as good stewards and good Catholics.

The second reading from Saint Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians augments Malachi’s call to put our faith lives in order. Paul says in effect, and this again is germane to our preparations for Advent, “This is not time to be idle.” We have often said that stewardship is active, not passive. As good stewards our preparations for Advent and Christmas should provide opportunities for more prayer, more contemplation, and more dynamic outreach to those in need. Paul reminds us that there is time enough to rest in Heaven, not while here when we can have a positive impact on those around us.

The Gospel from Luke pinpoints some of the major obstacles to stewardship as a way of life. He focuses on two in particular: wealth and power. As is usually the case in Scriptural teachings, wealth in and of itself is not judged to be bad. However, when wealth and the accumulation of wealth detract us from being good stewards and sharing with others, it can be adverse to our spiritual health. Jesus prompts us that spiritual endurance does not come from human strength but from God’s love and the power it provides us. Our desire for power is not good, but our willingness to allow God’s love and power to help us live out stewardship is virtuous.

It is worth mentioning that this Gospel passage immediately follows the Lesson of the Widow’s Mites (Luke 21: 1-4). Consequently, we can clearly see the stewardship statement here: Do not aspire to wealth or power, but like the widow, strive to give from your want, your poverty, not from your excess. That is excellent preparation for the glory of Advent and Christmas.

©Catholic Stewardship Consultants

Pastoral Pondering

Next week we will celebrate the Solemnity of Christ the Universal King and come to the last Sunday in the Liturgical year. The feast provides us an opportunity to evaluate how we are allowing Christ to be the Lord and King of our lives. There are more than ample distractions in the world in which we live that are quite happy to pull us away from things that matter eternally. We have to always be on guard so that our eyes remain “fixed on Jesus”.

I mentioned a few weeks back the Pew Research Poll that indicated a lack of Eucharistic faith among those identifying as Catholic and noted some of the ways we are trying to address this at the parish. One of the things we have implemented, when we have the servers to do it, is using the hand patens to accompany those distributing Holy Communion. Some folks have asked why this is necessary or important, so I thought I would address it here. The revised liturgical norms (those issued after the Council) actually indicate that retaining the patens is praiseworthy; although, certainly, it was abandoned on a widespread scale in much of the USA. However, because we believe that the entire Christ is present in every particle of the Consecrated Species, then the reverence we show in its distribution communicates the centrality of this belief. As an aside, as one who purifies the patens after Communion, I can tell you that there are always particles on the patens. This, of course, raises the question of what happens to those particles when the patens are not used. It should make us conscious of insuring that, when receiving on the hand, all particles are consumed. The more reverent we can be in matters surrounding the Most Blessed Sacrament not only communicates the centrality of our belief and devotion in the Eucharistic presence, but also offers fitting and proper worship to God the Father who continues to nourish and strengthen us by the offering of His Son in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar. O Sacrament Most Holy, O Sacrament Divine, All Praise and All Thanksgiving be Every Moment Thine!

From the Pastor

From the Pastor - Feast of St. Francis of Assisi

By John Putnam • October 2, 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.

From the Pastor - 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time

By John Putnam • September 25, 2026
As Christian stewards, we are called to a high and holy standard — living as Christ’s disciples every day and with every person the Lord places in our path. But we can move towards this goal in “baby steps.” Jesus demonstrates this comforting truth through the parable He tells in today’s Gospel from Matthew. It is the story of two sons whose father instructs them to go out and work in his vineyard that day. While the second son agrees to his father’s request, he does not follow through — he fails to obey the father’s will. The first son tells his father, “no.” At least he is honest! And in the end, he reconsiders and obeys his father. The first son’s honest, less-than-perfect response is consoling to us Christian stewards. Haven’t we all felt this way at times when God’s will for us seems to be just too hard? We can be honest with God at these times. He knows our thoughts already, after all. But when we stay engaged in a real relationship with Him, even if it’s just to say, “I don’t think I can, Lord,” He will supply us with just the grace we need to change our minds and do what He is asking us to do. We can even take a step backward from time to time because our Father is merciful and kind. What matters is that we keep baby-stepping along, assured of the grace we need to more closely imitate the actions and attitudes of Christ. This is the beauty of the stewardship way of life. ©Catholic Stewardship Consultants, 2026 Pastoral Pondering On the Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, the other priests, seminarians, and I, had the opportunity to attend the Final Solemn Profession of Sister Mary Lucia, DVM. It was a moving experience, and I thought it a good occasion to reflect on the importance of religious life in the life of the parish and the life of the Church. Every Sunday we gather as one family: families in the pews, single adults, children, the elderly, deacons, priests, seminarians, and, often quietly among us, men and women who have given their whole lives to God by the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. They are not a side chapel of the Church. They stand at her heart. “The consecrated life is at the very heart of the Church as a decisive element for her mission.” — Pope St. John Paul II, Vita Consecrata What does that mean for us here at Saint Mark’s? It means that the Church is poorer—less herself—whenever we forget those who have left everything to follow Christ with an undivided heart. Baptism already consecrates every Christian. Consecrated life is a further, public, stable response to that same baptismal grace: a way of making the face of Jesus—poor, chaste, and obedient—visible in the middle of an age that is often restless, acquisitive, and self-directed. A living sign of the world to come The Catechism teaches that those who profess the evangelical counsels “signify and proclaim in the Church the glory of the world to come.” In other words, a sister who owns nothing, a brother who lives in community, a contemplative who prays through the night, a consecrated virgin living in the world, a missionary who goes where no one else will go—each of them is a living reminder that this world is not our final home. Their lives preach what our words sometimes only hint at: God is enough. That witness is not a luxury. In a culture that measures worth by productivity, possessions, and personal autonomy, consecrated men and women quietly insist that love can be total, that freedom is found in gift, and that joy does not depend on having more. They are, as one religious recently put it, a kind of medicine for the whole Body of Christ—an antidote to our easy compromises with comfort and control. Many forms, one gift Consecrated life is not one mold. From the earliest centuries there have been hermits and virgins, monks and nuns, itinerant preachers and teachers, nurses and missionaries. Today the Church recognizes religious institutes of contemplative and apostolic life, societies of apostolic life, secular institutes, consecrated virgins and widows, and the eremitic life. Some live behind cloister walls. Some staff our schools, hospitals, and missions. Some remain in ordinary workplaces while belonging entirely to Christ. All of them exist for the holiness of the whole Church. History itself testifies to this. The faith was planted and the poor were served in large part because religious families poured themselves out. That work continues. When we thank God for Catholic education, for care of the sick, for quiet hours of adoration offered for souls we will never meet, we are often thanking consecrated persons we may never see. What this asks of us First, gratitude. If a religious sister taught you the faith, if a priest of a religious order heard your confession on retreat, if a contemplative community has prayed for this parish, thank God for them—and, when you can, thank them. Second, prayer for vocations. The Lord still calls. He calls from our families, our youth groups, our college campuses, and our pews. Parents, do not be afraid if your son or daughter begins to wonder about religious life. That question is not a loss to the family; it may be one of the greatest gifts a family can offer the Church. Young people: if the thought of giving everything to Christ will not leave you alone, do not smother it. Speak with a priest or a consecrated person you trust. The Church needs the diversity and richness of these charisms. Third, our own fidelity. Consecrated life does not replace the vocation of marriage or the single life in the world. It illuminates them. The vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience are a concentrated form of what every disciple must live in some measure: detachment, purity of heart, and obedience to the Father’s will. When religious are faithful, the whole parish is strengthened. When we in the pews are faithful to our own state of life, we honor the same Lord they serve. The Church will never be without this gift, because Christ Himself is poor, chaste, and obedient, and He continues to draw men and women into that pattern of life. Let us esteem it. Let us pray for those who live it. And let us ask the Lord of the harvest to send laborers—not only priests, but sisters, brothers, and all who will make His way of life visible among us.  We thank God for the witness of the Daughters of the Virgin Mother who serve here at St. Mark and for all of the religious in the Diocese of Charlotte who give witness to the beauty of consecrated life.