Looking out at the dark sky on a starry night is an incredible spectacle.  It is beyond comprehension to think that God chose our little planet in this galaxy to send his son, a babe, as the light of the world. Afterall, the scene on this Epiphany is puzzling.  So much is going on behind the scenes of the Manifestation of the Christ Child to the Magi.

It is like CSI Judea.  King Herod hears there is a newborn king and one coming from the Jews.  He is troubled.  Anxious. His investigation immediately begins.

-He then got all of the chief priests together and the scribes and asked where this Christ was to be born. “In Bethlehem of Judea” Right in his backyard.  How threatening is that? Then he called a secret meeting with the Magi to find out the child’s exact location and to do a reconnaissance search for this new king.  He was a bit paranoid to say the least. He was expecting a full report and what he got instead was a royal snubbing. The Magi were warned not to report to the king and they sneaked back into their own country by a clandestine route. This enraged the King who eventually decided to kill all first born males in the census year. But Christ who is the light to the world, the star that never grows dim shined brilliantly for all to see.  Not even a rival king like Herod who was taken with worldly things could darken this magnificent light, a light that no darkness could ever extinguish.

This feast of Epiphany celebrates just that: The Manifestation of the Christ Child as the light to all nations, even to the Magi from afar. In a darkened world the light of our savior, our king dispels all evil from the world.  He uproots selfishness, pride, absolute power, and prejudice. To bring in the light of kindness, the light of humility, the light of sacrifice, the light of acceptance, the light of joy and the light of eternal salvation. This is indeed, one of my favorite feast days of the year.

Once again, I thank God for the great opportunity to serve you and to bring the light of Christ into your hearts. Every time I Baptized your children the light of Christ came into their hearts for the very first time. When I heard your Confessions, the light of Christ dispelled sin from your souls. In giving First Eucharist to your children I witnessed the glow of God’s presence in their faces. Watching the young people grow and become Confirmed allowed me to experience the flame of God’s Spirit inspire them with hope. Joining couples in Marriage gave me the joy of seeing two people be united in the light of Christ’s love. Anointing your loved one’s near death gave me a glimpse of the light of Christ’s everlasting life. Celebrating the funerals of many members of this parish family and my own, taught me to appreciate the fragility of life and the awesome reality that Christ conquers even death, so that His light will prevail in eternity.

Having the privilege of serving you these past four and a half years and listening and attending to your many needs, my advice to you is: Continue to be Christ’s Light for one another, to be the welcoming light that you are to newcomers to the parish, to be the light of Christ for those who are poor and needy, to be the light of Christ to those who mourn, to be the light of Christ to the sick and lonely, to be the light of Christ to the lost and unbelievers, to be the light of Christ in His Eucharistic presence that you carry out these doors of St. Agnes.
***MAY WE ALWAYS PRAY FOR ONE ANOTHER THAT HIS LIGHT MAY SHINE OUT FOR ALL THE WOLRD TO SEE.

Fr. Mark

Blessings on all of you as we celebrate the great feast of Mary, the Holy Mother of God.

I’ve been asked by Bishop Michael Cote to make an announcement at all the Masses this weekend. Bishop Cote has appointed me as the next pastor of St. Joseph Parish in New London effective January 9, 2012. It is with mixed emotions that I leave St. Agnes to take on this new post. It has been a great joy serving each of you and getting to know you over the past 4 and half years, especially since this was my first parish as a pastor.   The Good News is that you have a very good priest who is intelligent, kind, compassionate and faith-filled who will be following me here.

Fr. Greg Mullaney is the pastor at St. Thomas Aquinas Parish on the campus of UCONN and will continue to bring a great deal of stability to the parish community here at St. Agnes.  I will remember you all in my thoughts and prayers and would ask you to pray for me in my new assignment. Thank you for all that you have done for me and for sharing your deep and abiding faith.

May you have a Happy,Healthy, and Holy New Year.

God Bless you and keep you always.

Fr. Mark

What words best describe Christmas? Humble faith? Immense hope? Great joy? Endless Peace? Perhaps, all of these?
I would like to add these earth shattering and shocking words: Out of Ordinariness and Poverty comes the Miraculous. These words convey at a very deep level, the meaning of Christmas.

Recently, I read the story of an ordinary young man named Sam Schmid, an Arizona college student who was critically wounded in an October 19th five car accident in Tucson, when a van hit his jeep head on and he went careening into a telephone pole.

The 21 year old’s brain injuries were so severe that the local hospital could not treat him and they had to airlift him to St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Pheonix where surgeons performed surgery for a life- threatening aneurysm. As hospital officials began palliative care and broached the subject of organ donation with his family, Sam began to respond, holding up two fingers on command. Today, he is walking with the aid of a walker, and his speech, although slow, has improved. Doctors say he will likely have a complete recovery. He even hopes to get a day pass from the hospital to celebrate Christmas at home. Susan, his mother who is a Catholic said: “I tell everyone, if they want to call it a modern-day miracle, this is a miracle.” “I have friends who are atheists who have called me and said, ‘I am going back to church.”

My brothers and sisters, on this Christmas Day, recognize in Jesus, that in poverty and ordinariness, miracles can and will emerge to the wonderment of a world found waiting for a sign. In her strong faith and love for God, Mother Theresa insisted on her sisters living a life of poverty because they could more easily identify with the absolute poverty of those they helped on the streets. Mother Theresa wanted to be like Jesus who was born into a poor family and in a manger because there was no room for him in the inn. Out of this beautiful love for the poor was born the miracle of many terminal lives that she and her sisters helped as they die with dignity and care.

To see our troops arriving home from Iraq after so many years is nothing short of a miracle. Especially, thinking that this war would never end. Even now instability is creeping back into the country. After 800 billion dollars spent, 4,487 of our soldiers dead and 30,000 wounded, along with 100,000 Iraqis believed to have died, it is nothing short of a miracle that they are now home. Some home in heaven and others here in the U.S.

The God who is born into our world is born into a world that has little or no room for him. It is still the same today. Our society at this moment is trying to take Christ out of Christmas with “holiday trees” and “happy holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”. The pace of our own lives can be so busy, that we don’t have time for prayer, worship, a sincere confession, perhaps even each other at this time of year. It is easy for our priorities to get lost and for us to become distracted and confused. Because our world is selfish, sinful, in love with power, wealth and status, Jesus must come into it uninvited. Because Jesus is meek, gentle, forgiving and pure love, just the opposite of what the world wants, he cannot be at home in this world.

Yet as God, he needs to be in it, so his place is with the others for whom there is no room – the poor, the discredited, those who are marginalized as persons. That is a message our culture doesn’t want to hear, but needs to hear. The poor more easily make a place for God in their lives. Their stables and mangers are more available for God’s birth than our hotels, boardrooms, casinos, bingo palaces and palatial homes.

In our lives and in our world, so often, there is no room at the inn, no place to welcome God who wants to be born in it. As it was at the first Christmas, the Christ child had to be born in a simple manger on hay in a feeding trough for animals. So, to find him ourselves, we must let ourselves be led by the poor, the children, our own brokenness and poverty, to the mangers in our world today that hunger for Christ.

Another striking characteristic of Mother Theresa was humility, her desire to be hidden, to not seek attention, to be ordinary, to avoid the spotlight. She asked that her letters be kept secret and burned after she died. Those in charge of her affairs, however, realized that the world needed to hear about this extraordinary woman who thought herself nothing out of the ordinary. And now we learn from her letters a tremendous spiritual lesson – that God works in the dryness and ordinariness of daily life, not necessarily in sensational and spectacular ways. People thought that this woman, who was so close to God, must be experiencing visions and spiritual highs as a matter of course. Her letters reveal just the opposite – she emerges as a classic mystic whose inner life burned with charity but whose heart was tested and purified by an intense trial of dryness in prayer and an apparent absence of God for over fifty years – a true dark night of the soul.

That too, is the message of Christmas. Christmas is that out of the ordinary comes the miraculous. The birth of Christ is just that: God made himself small, in the flesh, one of us, that Jesus could show us the way to the Father and provide us with the miracle of salvation by giving his life up for us. God is also found where we live – in our kitchens, at our tables, in our wounds, and in each other’s faces. That is what Mother Theresa experienced and lived fully, in faith.

This is hard to believe and has always been hard to accept. When Jesus was on earth, virtually no one believed that he was the Messiah, precisely because he was so ordinary, so unlike what they imagined God to be. They had expected a superstar, a king, someone who would turn the world rightfully upside down. Preaching meekness, gentleness and unconditional love, Jesus did not live up to those false expectations. It is interesting that the bible does not tell us what Jesus looked like, nor even if he had any outstanding psychological traits.

In terms of appearance, he was too ordinary, not worth describing, nothing out of the ordinary. He looked like everyone else. Even after the resurrection, he is mistaken for a gardener, a cook, a traveler. Things haven’t changed much in two thousand years. Seldom does Jesus meet our expectations today. We are still often looking for him beyond the ordinary, beyond the gardener, the neighbor, the stranger, trying to find a miraculous Christ. We go to places where he might be appearing, or where his mother might be shedding tears in an apparition, yet we pass by and miss the tears shed at our own breakfast table. We are intrigued by the wounds of a Padre Pio, yet we often ignore the wounds of those we hurt in our own family, or even our own emotional wounds.

We look for Christ everywhere, except where he is to be found – in the ordinary – right around us, in our families, community and workplaces, in our own healing journeys, where the incarnation took place – in our flesh. St. John of the Cross puts it this way: “God has spoken so completely through his own Word that he chooses to add nothing. He spoke partially through the prophets, but has now said everything in Christ. Anyone seeking some new vision or revelation from him would commit an offense, for instead of focusing his eyes entirely on Christ he would desire something other than Christ, or beyond him. Fix your eyes on Christ alone for in him all is revealed and in him you will find more than you could ever ask for or desire.”

Through the Incarnation, God crawls into ordinary life and invites us to meet him there, in our own poverty and the poverty of those around us. The shepherds returned to their lowly work and obscure life. Nothing had changed, yet everything had changed. Life went on as before but with one major difference: now their hearts were filled with wonder. They now had a new vision, a new hope, a new sense of the love of God for them and of his presence with them. Their lives, which a short while ago were dim, now miraculously glowed with new meaning. The old world had become like a new country where everything glistened anew. Our challenge is to find that newness in the ordinariness of our lives.

The Eucharist we celebrate today is another powerful hint at this mystery – Christ is found in the poor and the ordinary. These poor, ordinary gifts of bread and wine will be transformed, through the prayer and faith of the priest and the community, into the Body and Blood of Christ. If we receive them with humble faith, then we are transformed into the Body of Christ, sent to be light to the world. So, may our faith and our celebration of Christ’s birth today, help us to recognize and experience Christ who is born into our poverty and our ordinariness. Christmas is about being poor enough to recognize our need for Jesus, and that out of the ordinary comes the miraculous.

May God bless us all with his forgiveness and healing; his peace and joy, this Christmas and throughout the New Year.

Fr. Mark

If God were to invite you to ask him for one gift which you could take along with you on the journey of life, through all the problems, challenges, joys, sorrows and unexpected difficulties you will most certainly encounter if you haven’t already, what would it be? What would you ask for?

Well, there is one thing God promised to each man and woman he called into his service. He never asked them to do anything for him without making this promise. It was to be their greatest source of strength and encouragement and confidence and it would never fail them. It was a simple promise but an unimaginably great one.

To Isaac God said: Be sure that I am with you; I will keep you safe wherever you go, and bring you back to this land, for I will not desert you..

To Jacob God said: Go back to the land of your forefathers and to your kindred; and I will be with you.

To Joshua God said: As long as you live, no one shall be able to stand in your way; I will be with you as I was with Moses; I will not leave you or desert you.

To Gideon God said: I will be with you and you shall crush Midian as though it were a single man.

To Solomon God said: …I will be with you and will build you as enduring a House as the one I built for David. I will give Israel to you.

When Moses objected to God that he was not the right man for the job of freeing the Hebrews from Egypt God said: I will be with you. When they crossed the Sea and began their long trek through the wilderness God made it abundantly and repeatedly clear to the people that he was with them. He fed them with manna from heaven and brought forth water from the rock for them. He let it be known: I am with you.

The Hebrews carried a tent with them in the desert, the Tent of the Presence. It contained the Ark of the Covenant which signified that everywhere the People journeyed God was with them.
When the Hebrews entered the Promised Land and had to fight various savage tribes for possession of the land God said to them: I will be with you.

To Samuel, David, Jeremiah, Jonah, Daniel and so many others God said: Do not be afraid, I will be with you.
This was God’s greatest promise, the greatest gift he could bestow – his own presence.

To Mary the Angel said: The Lord is with you. Surely this is the secret of the celebration of Christmas that, in the coming of the infant Jesus in Bethlehem 2000 years ago, God comes as a man to be with us. The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son and they will call him Emmanuel, a name which means: God-is-with-us.

In Matthews Gospel what did Jesus tell the disciples on the hill, after his resurrection, when he sent them out to preach the Gospel to every nation? I am with you always … until the end of time. My dear parish family, in these last hours before the celebration of Christmas only one question remains. It is a crucial question. It has to do with us and where we are right now.

Do you remember what Jesus told us on the 1st Sunday of Advent? Stay awake! Do you remember what John the Baptist’s cry was on the 2nd Sunday of Advent? Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is close at hand. Do you remember on the 3rd Sunday of Advent how Jesus said: Happy is the man who does not lose faith in me? We know that God is with us but an important question remains. Are we, are you, with God? Are we awake? Have we repented? Have we kept the faith?  Have we shared that faith? Each one of us must ask himself or herself this question as we prepare for the celebration of God-with-us. If we are conscious that some sin stands between us and the Lord let us hasten to the confessional before the feast dawns so that when he comes he will find us in his friendship. Join us at St. Matthias for a Communal Reconciliation Service on Tuesday at 7:00 p.m. and experience God who is always with us.

-God’s promise that he will be with you and us is so evident in your life and mine:
-When you held your newborn in your arms
-When you held your loved one in your arms, when you had to
say goodbye in death
-When you held on to your last hope and God came through
unexpectedly.

In my life, I remember God’s promise that He would always be with me when:
-Car in trip to Maine
-Seeing the reflection of the Lamb of God in the Monstrance here in this Church.  The stained Glass was reflected in the Luna of the Monstrance

As Advent comes to an end, let us raise our eyes to the heavens, let us feel the yearning in our hearts for the Saviour who is coming, and let us allow the knowledge of his love-filled presence to take from us all fear and apprehension, all anxiety about the future and ourselves. For God is with us and we need not be afraid.  He promised us that he would never abandon us and said: “I will be with you until the end of time.”

Fr. Mark

Bulletin for December 25th, 2011
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Bulletin for December 11th, 2011
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Bulletin for December 4th, 2011
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Bulletin for November 27th, 2011
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Thomas Merton put it perfectly:

“Mary”, he wrote “was as pure as the glass of a very clean window that has no other function than to admit the light of the sun.” And he explained: “If we rejoice in that light, we implicitly praise the cleanness of the window.”

I can’t think of a more beautiful way of considering Mary on this feast of the Immaculate Conception. Looking around this church, we see the light these windows cast, the ever-changing colors, and we see, too, the ever-deepening reminders of Mary’s devotion. The golden light of a mother’s love…the blue of her sorrow…the red of her son’s own passion. But through it all there is light. Radiant, limitless, streaming light.

The light of the world. And Mary is the window through which that light shines.

We are surrounded by the light of Mary in this Church Today. The statue of Mary in sanctuary, the apparitions of Mary in Knock and CZ, the tabernacle tells the Christmas story, Candles Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Rosary Group who prays to Jesus through Mary, Stations of the Cross, and other images etched in our minds.

Even with all these images of Mary, this feast is one of the more misunderstood in the Church – a lot of people think that because it is close to Christmas, it must be about the conception of Jesus. But no. It marks Mary being conceived in her own mother’s womb – conceived without original sin, spotless, immaculate, so that she could one day welcome into her own womb the son of God.

Beyond biology, though, there is a wonderful symmetry in this feast falling during Advent. Just last Sunday, we heard John the Baptist crying out in the desert, “Prepare the way of the Lord!” And that is exactly what God did with the Immaculate Conception of Mary.

God prepared the way for His son by preparing a perfect vessel, Mary, to bring His son into an imperfect world. God really is “preparing the way of the Lord.”

And how does Mary herself prepare? What is her Advent? When Gabriel announces his incredible news in Luke’s gospel, her reaction isn’t just meek submission. She doubts. She questions. She challenges the angel. And only when her curiosity is satisfied does she give her assent.

“May it be done to me according to your word.”

Mary’s Advent is one of wonder – and extraordinary trust. All of us in one way or another, at one time or another, feel the confusion and even fear that Mary must have felt. That phone call we didn’t want, the letter we never expected, the diagnosis no test could predict. Faced with that, we challenge God, and demand answers.

But it all comes down to one phrase – the one that, I think, convinces Mary and that changes the course of history.

“Nothing is impossible with God.”

All arguments after that are fruitless. Doubt vanishes. Reason submits. Faith surrenders. There is simply nothing else to be said. Here in Advent, after all the rains the last two days, we gaze out at the darkening skies. We are almost at the moment when our hemisphere is tilted the furthest away from the sun. But along comes Mary. The curtains are drawn back. The light pours in. Pure, perfect light.

We may wonder and we may doubt. We may be apprehensive about what lies ahead. But Mary, in her simple perfection, offers us something more than purity, more than saintliness. In our own confused time – like that window letting in the light – she offers us clarity – the clarity of an angel’s assurance to a worried young girl. It is an assurance to our own worried world. It is an assurance where we need not fear.

That “Nothing is impossible with God.”

This Advent, may all of us hold onto that – and as Christmas nears, may all of us truly see the light and all the possibilities that light holds for us who believe.

Fr. Mark

Have you ever had the experience of waiting at the train station, bus station or airport terminal? It seemed like an eternity before your train, bus or plane would arrive with delays announced due to weather or some other unknown factors.

We ask: “Am I ever going to get out of here.” This is going to take forever. Especially, at the airport where security is ever so present and every precaution is taken. They expect you to be there for an early flight around 6 a.m. and you have to arise at 4 a.m. to make sure you are at the airport an hour ahead.

You are then forced to take off your shoes, take everything out of your pockets, take out electronic devices for further inspection, making sure you don’t have any sharp objects in your bags or liquid beyond so many ounces, and then you may have everything screened again by a TSA agent.

People’s patience wears thin under scrutiny and pressure and I’ve seen many people lose it at airports and other transportation centers. Even in the workplace, it sometimes takes everything in your power to hold your tongue when someone is pushing your buttons and your patience and emotions are pushed to the limit.

Or waiting in the long lines at the grocery or department stores during this Advent Season, it puts our patience on the test. Waiting for the long anticipated return of a loved one from Iraq or Afghanistan seems like an eternity. Everyone of these situations test our patience and our ability to truly learn to pause and take a deep breath and wait. Advent is the time to stop, wait and breathe in the fresh air of anticipation as Mary did.

Our readings today are all about having patience and waiting in expectation. In Isaiah, the chosen people were waiting in exile, to return to the promised land. The Babylonians were holding them captive. Their patience was tested, but God reassures them through the prophet that they shall be delivered: “Like a shepherd he feeds his flock; in his arms he gathers the lambs carrying them in his bosom, and leading the ewes with great care.”

St. Peter admonishes his people to be prepared, be ready for a time you do not know that God will come: “Beloved, since you await these things, be eager to be found without spot or blemish before him, at peace.”

In the Gospel, we find John the Baptist preparing everyone that one mightier than himself is coming. Get ready, prepare and watchfully await him.”

Waiting always has demands on our patience or lack thereof. In this busy season we need to stop, wait and breathe in the fresh air of patience. It may mean: letting another person go before us in the grocery line. Allowing a car to take a spot in the parking lot that I wanted to occupy. Holding our tongue when someone is giving us an uninvited tongue lashing, or simply praying when under pressure, by closing your eyes and repeating your favorite scripture passage

“The Lord is my shepherd there is nothing I shall want.”

And slowly feel the release of all stress. Take the opportunity this Advent to stop, wait and breathe, by attending the Advent Mission beginning tomorrow night and Tuesday evening from 7-8 p.m.

And on December 20^th at 7 p.m. come and celebrate the Sacrament of Reconciliation with other parishes in the Deanery at St. Matthias parish in East Lyme. Remember too the opportunity every Saturday from 3:00-3:45 to come to confession here.

May this Advent be for you a time to stop, wait and breathe in the air of patience.

Desiderata Poem:

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons.

Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant, they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit.

If you compare yourself to others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the the world is full of trickery. But let not this blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass. Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore, be at peace with God, whatever you conceive him to be, and whatever your labors and aspirations in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all it’s sham drudgery and broken dreams; it is still a beautiful world.

Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

Max Erhmann

Fr. Mark