Fr. Mark Murphy's Blog

2/24/2012 - The First Friday of Lent

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The Catholic TV Mass - 2/24/2012

2/22/2012 - Ash Wednesday

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“Repentand believe in the Gospel.” On this Ash Wednesday, as you come forward toreceive the blessed ashes on your forehead, these are the words that you willhear: “Repent and believe in the Gospel.” How important and true of a statementthis is, for it gets at the heart of what this season of grace, Lent is allabout. Well, let’s contemplate that first word for a few moments: Repent. Theword repentance means to voluntarily have sorrow for our sin because it offendsGod, together with the resolve to amend our conduct by taking the necessarymeans to avoid the occasions of sin. To repent is to be sorry for sin. TheLatin word repenitere means to be very sorry, to regret intensely. Weknow what repentance means in our relationships with others, for if we hurtanother person through what we say, do, or don’t do, we should be sorry andrepent for what we have done. This repentance involves sorrow for our offense,and it includes our hope that the relationship can be restored. We go to that person and say we are sorry, and we move forward in hope. It’s exactlythe same way with God. When through our sinfulness we have turned away fromGod, in sorrowful repentance we turn back to the Lord and with his grace aimtowards having that relationship restored. As St. Paul exhorts us in today’ssecond reading, “We implore you on behalf of Christ,be reconciled to God.”

Two essential components torepentance are contrition and penance. When we repent we should be sorry forour sins. This is contrition. The other essential aspect of our repentance ispenance. Penance can be interior or exterior. Interior penance is theconversion of our hearts toward God and away from sin, which implies ourintention to change our lives because of our hope in God’s merciful love andforgiveness. Penance also can be external, which include acts of prayer,fasting, and alms giving. Penitential practices are so important in our livesof faith, and they are a precept of the Church because they help us to love Godand our neighbor more and more. Penance helps us to be other centered insteadof self-centered, and in turn draws us into greater union with God. So how dowe repent this Lent? Maybe we repent this Lent by going to the sacrament ofreconciliation to receive God’s healing forgiveness. Maybe we repent by finally saying sorry tothat person we hurt in the past but have been too proud to apologize to. Maybe werepent this Lent by praying more, fasting with love, and selflessly givingalms.

So that’s the first word that we hear as we receive the ashes:Repent. This is how we start off Lent 2012: with contrition in our hearts andour resolution to do internal and external acts of Penance we open ourselves toall the graces God wants to give us during this Lent. So what’s next? Werepent, and are then empowered with God’s grace to believe in the Gospel! Byrepenting we are disposed to then grow in our faith and to develop our resolveto believe fully in the truths of the Gospel. This orients us this Lent to whatthe ultimate goal should be in whatever we have decided to give up or take on,the ways that we have decided to pray more for these 40 days, or the acts ofcharity or alms giving that we plan to do: it’s all about conversion,transformation, and ultimately growing in our faith, growing in our ability tobelieve wholeheartedly in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

It says in the first reading fromthe Book of Joel, “Even now, says the Lord,
return to me with your whole heart.” We can do that this Lent; sinful, broken,and wounded as we are, we return to God with our whole heart, so that we may growin our faith and love of Him. With repentant hearts may we have an entirely newexperience of God’s merciful, forgiving, and restorative grace this Lent, sothat that we will be strengthened to believe wholeheartedly in the Gospel, theGood News of Jesus Christ.

Repent and believe in the Gospel!

2/19/2012 - The 7th Sunday in Ordinary Time

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2/5/2012 - The 5th Sunday in Ordinary Time

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“AndJesus cured many who were sick with various diseases.” We see in today’s GospelJesus the miracle worker, Jesus the Divine Physician who takes the hand ofSimon’s mother-in-law and heals her fever. We encounter Jesus the healer as hedrives out demons in those who are possessed by evil spirits. In a certainsense Jesus was the first great health care provider, one who could lay handson the sick and heal them, one who could bring peace of mind and heart to thoseunder the grips of the devil, the one whose teaching with authority broughtspiritual light and healing to those who listened to him. And one of the bestparts about this health care plan of Jesus is that it if freely given withoutcost, no health insurance premiums, co-pays or deductibles, and no endlessamount of paperwork to be filled out in order to be included in his spiritual healthcare plan.

On this topic of health care we allneed to aware of something going on in our country that is extremely dangerousand toxic to our liberty and freedom of conscience. It’s never easy to speak onsuch a controversial issue at a Church or at the pulpit, but a priest I respect very much told me right after I was ordained, “Father Murphy, tell the world not so much whatthey want to hear, but what they need to hear.” As a newly ordained priest Ilaid on the Cathedral altar and promised to preach the Gospel whether it’s easyor not. The United States Department of Health and Human Services announcedlast week that almost all employers, including Catholic employers, will beforced and required to offer their employees’ health coverage that includessterilization, abortion-inducing drugs, and contraception. In addition, almostall health insurers will be forced to include these “services” in the healthpolicies they write. As a result, almost all individuals will be forced andrequired under law to buy that coverage as part of their policies.Unfortunately, the administration fully supports this plan. This decision is amajor blow and slap in the face to the First Amendment to the Constitution ofthe United States, denying to Catholics what is our first and most fundamentalfreedom in this country, that of religious liberty. An integral aspect of ourreligious liberty includes our freedom of conscience, which is informed andsustained through the religious beliefs of our faith. We believe in faith thateach and every human life is sacred, from the very moment of conception untilnatural death. Each person has the law of God written on their hearts and is aprecious temple of the Holy Spirit. This is why we believe that abortion,contraception, and sterilization are morally reprehensible and not orderedtowards the good of the human person or a just society. With our conscienceillumined by God’s loving and healing grace we can come to know these truths.To force and require citizens and employers to violate their consciences todirectly or indirectly give support to what they believe in faith and truth tobe morally wrong is an all out assault on freedom.

Our forefathers and mothers’ haveliterally fought to the point of death to preserve, protect, and defend ourfreedoms, including our religious freedom. This is not a political issue, butis a religious freedom, human rights, and social justice issue. We are seeingbefore our very eyes, in our country right now, the persecution of the CatholicChurch as the religious freedom that those who fought so valiantly to protectis being stripped away and insulted. We know very well that persecution has alwaysbeen present in some form in the Church, from Christ Himself being sentenced toa bitter Crucifixion and death, to the early Church persecutions, down throughthe ages to our own time. Today we can quite literally identify with thatstatement from Jesus when he said, “If they hate you, remember that they hatedme first.” In a special way today, on this our patronal feast day of St. Agatha, letus remember how she witnessed to the truths of the Gospel by acceptingmartyrdom rather than allowing her purity to be violated. We are Saint Agatha, she is our saint, andshe prays for us as we struggle through today’s persecution. While thepersecution of the Church has always been a reality in the world, just becauseit’s going on doesn’t mean we should just sit back and excuse it. This isauthentic social justice – to stand up to those in power who think it isacceptable to trample upon our freedom of religion and our freedom ofconscience.

Unless this ruling is overturned, weas Catholics will be forced and required to either violate our consciences orto drop health care coverage for our employees (and to suffer the penalties fordoing so.) Well, what can we do? First we must pray. Just as it says in ourGospel that Jesus, “Rose very early before dawn and went to a deserted place,where he prayed.” We must pray for the conversion of the hearts and minds ofall people who would seek to eradicate our freedom of conscience and religiousliberty, especially those in power who support this legislation. We must praythat true wisdom and justice will prevail. Secondly, we can go to the UnitedStates Conference of Catholic Bishops website to learn more about this assaulton religious liberty, and that website is www.usccb.org/conscience. On that website you can also obtain more information about how tocontact Congress in support of legislation that would reverse theAdministration’s decision.

It is no coincidence that thisdecision came down 2 days before the March for Life in Washington D.C. lastmonth, where hundreds of thousands of people, many of them young people, marcheddown to the Capital building in order to witness to life and the dignity of thehuman person. Very few media outlets gave the march any coverage at all, whichspeaks volumes. But it is no surprise that this decision came as people from allover the country went to Washington D.C. to witness to what they believe to betrue in their faith and their conscience, for it’s a not so subtle way for theAdministration to say they have no regard for true dialogue and there is noreal respect for our most sacred of freedoms. The Gospel, the good news ofJesus Christ is a Gospel of truth and life, for Jesus Christ came so that wemight have life and have it more abundantly. It is in this spirit that St.Paul, enlightened by the Holy Spirit, is able to proclaim in his letter to theCorinthians, “All this I do for the sake of the gospel, so that I too may havea share in it.” With the grace and strength provided by God may we proudly stand up for the Gospel of truth and life withunwavering hope and trust - even in the public square, even in the face ofhatred and persecution. We can witness through our prayers and what we say anddo that religious liberty matters, and that our freedom of conscience matters.May Jesus Christ the Divine Physician, the One who knew so well whatpersecution is, heal and cure those whose minds and hearts have been darkenedby a culture of evil and death, that the eternal light of Jesus Christ mayovershadow them with His eternal light and everlasting truth. Amen.

1/22/2012 - Holy Hour for Life

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1/22/2012 - The 3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

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1/15/2012 - The 2nd Sunday of Ordinary Time

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1/8/2012 - The Feast of the Epiphany

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1/1/2012 - The Solemnity of Mary Mother of God

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12/18/2011 - The 4th Sunday of Advent

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Aswe come together on this fourth Sunday of Advent we hear the Annunciation inLuke’s Gospel today. The Annunciation is very familiar to us. We heard it a week and a half ago at the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception. We think of itevery time say the Hail Mary and we borrow the words of the Angel Gabriel everytime we say the angelus. Every time we pray the joyful mysteries of the Rosarywe think of the Annunciation to Mary when the Angel Gabriel said, “Mary, Godwants you to be the mother of his Son.” And her glorious response, “Be it doneunto me according to your word.”

What can we learn from this Gospel? I would propose that there arethree core lessons or themes that we can learn from the Annunciation. The firstis that of holy presence. The Angel Gabriel says to Mary, “Hail, full of grace,the Lord is with you.” The Lord was with Mary; his holy presence was within herfully. This is incredible if you think about it, for even before the Divineplan was laid out and explained to Mary the Angel first articulates the holypresence of God already with Mary, the Lord is with her, she is full of grace.The notion of holy presence is so important in our lives of faith. The holypresence of the Lord lives and dwells in the soul of the Baptized believer. Wehave the life of God within us, we’re his Temple, we are his home, we are his sanctuary,we are his dwelling place. The Lord’s Spirit is with us. That good news we callthe doctrine of sanctifying grace. Sanctifying grace means we have the verylife and Spirit of God within us, he can’t get any closer, and he loves livingin us. And his holy presence stays with us unless we kick him out throughserious sin, and when we do he’s always there waiting for us to invite him backin.

One Sunday morning before Mass was about to begin I was standing inthe back of the Church and a young girl came up to me and said, “Hi God.” Whata humbling moment for me. While I’m not God, I am called (as we all are) tobring the holy presence of God to others through our life. The Annunciation toMary displays the holy presence of God in a special way within the BlessedMother.

The second great thing that the Annunciation can point us towardsin this fourth week of Advent is faithfulness, fidelity. Mary of course wasunderstandably confronted with fear at the coming of the Angel Gabriel; she was“greatly troubled.” Even after the Archangel encourages her to not be afraid,she still has difficulty, for she asks, “How can I be with child? I’m aVirgin.” What does Mary do with this fear and difficulty? She listens. Shelistens to the holy presence of God through the Angel who comforts her bysaying, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you and overshadow you…nothing will beimpossible for God.” After havinglistened to the Angel and being open to God’s will, Mary responds will trustfilled faithfulness, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done tome according to your word.” Faithfulness. We are called to be faithful to ourfriends, our loved ones, to our families, and ultimately to God. Sometimes we,like Mary, get filled with fears and difficulties throughout our lives. Itprobably isn’t from an Archangel telling us we will be with child, but it couldbe fear of failure, fear about our finances or about a loved one we see goingdown the wrong path. We may have difficulties at work, in our relationships, oreven difficulties and struggles in our faith. But how are we called to respond?With faithfulness. Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta once said, “God will notjudge us on how successful we are, but on how faithful we are.” To be faithfulto going to Mass each week, faithfulness to our daily prayer, and fidelity tothe Church, for example, is how we emulate our Blessed Mother in being faithfulhandmaids of the Lord.

Our third Annunciation theme isgrace. This shines through Mary, who was open to the transformative power of God’sgrace. As Blessed John Paul II said in his encyclical letter RedemptorisMater, “If the Church is the sign and instrument of intimate union withGod, she is so by reason of her motherhood, because, receiving life from theSpirit, she generates sons and daughters of the human race to a new life inChrist.” This new life in Christ that Blessed John Paul references is grace.St. Paul echoes this truth in his letter to the Romans today, for he mentionsthe God, “Who can strengthen you.” This is what grace does - it unites us toGod in a special way and strengthens our faith, our hope, and our love. Godwill never call us to do something without giving us the grace to do it. Thispromise is tried and true, from the Old Testament prophets to our great Adventpersonality St. John the Baptist, God gives grace. From our Blessed Mother toour parish patron saint, St. Agatha, God’s holy will prevails. God calls youand me to be saints, and if we are open to this God with strengthen us with hisgrace to become the saints of the 21^st century. God called Mary tobe the Mother of our incarnate Lord, and he gave her the grace to do this, forshe is “full of grace.” Through our Baptism and our frequent reception ofEucharist and Confession God gives us grace, he fills us with his peace,strength, and love. Mary’s Annunciation shows us the power of God’s grace, thathe will never call us to something without giving us the grace to do it.

As we prepare for the blessed feastof Christmas next Sunday, Holy Mother Church presents before us thismagnificent story of the Annunciation. It hits so close to home for us asdisciples of Jesus Christ. Remember the themes. First, holy presence: God’spresence and Spirit is with us and we are called to bring the presence of Godto others. Secondly, faithfulness: even in the face of fear and difficulty wemust be faithful to God, always trusting him. Thirdly, grace: God’s grace cantransform us from the inside out and dispose us to do God’s holy will. As weapproach the celebration of the Nativity of our Lord this week, through Mary’sintercession may we be filled with God’s holy presence, his faithfulness andhis grace, so that we may prepare to receive Jesus with open and loving heartsthis Christmas.

Fishers of Men

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2011 Archdiocese of Boston Celebration of the Priesthood Video

Check out the above video from the 2011 Celebration of the Priesthood dinner. It is a very inspiring video!

As he was walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon who iscalled Peter, and his brother Andrew, casting a net into the sea; they werefishermen. Hesaid to them, “Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.” At once they left their nets and followed him. He walked along from there and saw two other brothers, James,the son of Zebedee, and his brother John. They were in a boat, with theirfather Zebedee, mending their nets. He called them, and immediately theyleft their boat and their father and followed him. Matthew 4: 18-22

Jesus calls to Peter and Andrew to “Come after me, andI will make you fishers of men.” The amazing thing about this in my estimationis the reaction of Peter and Andrew, for they immediately drop their nets andfollow Jesus. Imagine how powerful of a call this must have been, how much themere presence of Jesus had to have on them to exhibit complete trust that thisis what they must do and this is who they must follow. Sometimes we know andrecognize God’s presence in our lives through a mere experience, aconversation, by saying a simple prayer, or seeing a sunrise or sunset over theocean. Very often people come to follow God when something extraordinaryhappens in their life, such as the death of a loved one or if they werediagnosed with a serious medical condition. However, Peter and Andrew’s callfrom God and their motivation to follow Jesus did not seem to be extraordinary,for they did not even know who Jesus was when they decided to follow Him. Yetthere was something deep within their heart and soul that told them they had tofollow Christ, this is what they were destined to do. What was this interiordrawing that caused them to embrace Jesus’ call to follow Him?

Deep within all of our hearts and souls there is a desire to knowGod. Because God created us in His image we are built in our very human natureas spiritual beings, and for this reason in every age and civilization thehuman person has affirmed that God exists. There have been many expressions andbeliefs behind this core affirmation that God exists, but it nonetheless hasalways been an essential aspect of every civilization. With the incarnation andJesus’ subsequent life, death, and Resurrection the revelation that Jesus isthe Son of God was made known to the world. This Good News that we proclaimevery Sunday from the lectionary teaches us who God is and what He calls us to.By listening to the Scripture readings and how God has revealed Himself to usin the Old and New Testaments we can come to know a lot about who God is andhow we are called to follow God. By doing this we are strengthened with God’sgrace to love God, for it is impossible to love something or someone you do notfirst know. Thus, by learning more about who God is through listening to theWord of God, having a relationship with God in daily prayer, and seeing God inothers and through our every day experiences we come to love God more and more.

We come to a great knowledge about Jesus and who He is through allof these things. With this knowledge and subsequent love of God many of us woulddrop everything we were doing if Jesus asked us personally to come and followHim. However, Peter and Andrew did not have all of this knowledge. All theyknew was this man, Jesus, who was walking by the Sea of Galilee and asked thatthey come and follow Him, for he would make them fishers of men. In addition,James and John end up doing the same thing, dropping what they were doing tofollow Christ. What trust this must have taken. We can look at these Apostlesand be amazed by the great trust and openness to God they must have had to dropeverything in their lives to follow Jesus, and we should be amazed. However,this happens also in our own day, and quite possibly among many of us.Sometimes we just know when God is calling us to do something and when we mustfollow Him unreservedly. Think of the married couple who knew right away thatGod meant for them to be together for a lifetime. Think of the man who entersthe Seminary to become a priest and his interior trust that God will not beoutdone in generosity, for he has called him by name. Think of the Christian manor woman who just knows that God is calling them to go do service work in a thirdworld country for some time and the tug they feel to drop everything to followGod’s will. Peter, Andrew James and John did not know exactly what God wouldeventually be calling them to do, but they still knew that they had to followJesus. As we know the Apostles will end up making some mistakes along the wayin following Jesus, yet they are still called by name to do incredible thingsin His name. The Apostles somehow knew deep down, even if they couldn’t expressit in words, that this was God’s will for them. Even if there was some fearabout following this call, they still knew it was what they were destined to do,so they had to follow Christ. Through God’s grace they somehow knew that Jesuswas their real light and their salvation in the flesh.

Many of us sometimes just know what God was calling isto do in life and in certain situations, like Peter, Andrew, James, and John.However, we cannot forget the second part of Jesus’ call, for he also said hewould make them fishers of men. With the call God has given to you and to mehow is He calling us to share that with others? With the call he has given toyou and to me how is he calling us to bring others to the Catholic faith orback into the Catholic faith? How can each and every one of us be fishers ofmen, people who lead others to come to know and love Jesus, to be friends ofGod? We are all called to this, regardless of whether we are married, single,deacons, or priests. We must follow God’s call in our own lives and with thislove and knowledge of God to then give that to others, so that they may come toknow and love Jesus. Just as God desires for each and every human person tocome to know and love Him and to be saved, we too must desire this for others.All of us here know how important it is in our own lives to have a relationshipwith God, we know how crucial it is to be friends with Jesus. We mustcontinually invite others into this kind of relationship with God, for thehuman person cannot truly and authentically be happy in life if he or she doesnot have a relationship with God and does not give God worship above all else.Thus, it is from our love for our brothers and sisters, our neighbors andfriends that we desire them to come to to love the will of God for us, which is to be saints. This is so crucial, for in God’s will isour peace. It is God’s will that every person come and follow him, and may wealways through our words and most especially through our example witness toChrist every day as authentic friends of God, who desire nothing in life but todo God’s will, even when we don’t know where that will take us.

12/8/2011 - The Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception

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Afew summers ago I attended the United States Army Chaplain School in SouthCarolina for training to become an Army National Guard Chaplain. At this Schoolthere were many chaplains and chaplain candidates of all different faith backgrounds,and most of them were Protestant. For some of those Protestant Christians,especially those from the South, I was the first Catholic they had ever met. Wehad many fruitful discussions about all different aspects of theology, why webelieve what we believe and what the differences and similarities were of ourfaiths. In one of these conversations, one of my Protestant friends asked me,“So why do you Catholics worship Mary?” I had to correct my friend and tell himthat we don’t worship Mary, but we honor and venerate her because of herspecial role in the history of salvation, her call to be the mother of our Lordand Savior, Jesus Christ. Everything about Mary and her life points and leadsus to Jesus. When we honor Mary, we honor God, for as the angel Gabriel proclaimsto Mary, “Hail, full of grace. The Lord is with you.”

We must be reminded that in thismagnificent solemnity of the Immaculate Conception we celebrate the fact thatMary was immaculately conceived, that from the moment of her Conception she waspreserved from any and all stain of Original Sin, so that she would be a holyvessel of the bringing forth of God with us, Emmanuel. God knew from the momentof Mary’s conception, and even before, that she would be the Theotokos,the God bearer, the mother of Jesus. This feast day is all about grace, for itis through the grace of God that God gave his life and Spirit to Mary andcalled her to this incredible vocation. Mary didn’t become holy on her own outof nowhere, but God in His goodness bestowed these gifts and graces upon her.We don’t want to fall into the mindset, however, that Mary was wasn’t human,that she was some kind of super-hero. In her humanity, when the angel Gabrielannounces that she will conceive and bear a Son, she asks a very good question:“how can this be? I am a Virgin.” Even before that the angel had to tell Maryto not be afraid. Upon listening to the angel though, Mary knew this was fromGod. She knew that the impossibility of this was somehow possible through God’sgrace. After her initial fears and questions, she then is able to proclaim fromthe depths of her being, with all the grace, trust, and strength provided byGod, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according toyour word.” Can you see the transformative power of God’s grace at work in thelife of our Blessed Mother? This is God’s promise that He will never call us tosomething without giving us the grace to do it. If we are receptive God will always give us the grace to do His holywill.

Well, my Protestant friend also hada follow up question. He asked “why are you Catholics obsessed with so manypictures, images, and statues of Mary?” He thought they were "idols." I then asked him if he had pictures ofhis friends and family that he displays throughout his home and he said, “ofcourse.” I then replied, “If Jesus is our Lord and the best friend that wecould ever have, shouldn’t we honor the people who were important to Jesus?Shouldn’t we love his own mother?” It’s the same way with the friends we havein life, for we want to get to know their other friends and family, the other peoplewho are important to them. Images of Mary raise our hearts and minds toHeavenly realities and the power of God’s transformative grace. Again,everything about Mary and her life draws us into a greater experience and unionwith her son Jesus. And Mary wouldn’t have it any other way. She regardedherself as the handmaid of the Lord, always leading us to her son. And whatbetter person to be praying and interceding for us here on earth than Mary, whoknew well the joys and sorrows of life, and who can show us what it means tolisten for God’s will and to follow it with steadfast hope and trust? Maryshows us what it means to be disciples of Jesus Christ.

On this wonderful feast, as we celebrateMary’s Immaculate Conception, it’s all about the transformative power of God’sgrace. How are we open to God’s grace? We too can be handmaids of the Lord, aswe bring Jesus Christ into our community, our workplaces, into ourconversations, and amongst our families and friends. Mary’s whole life, fromher conception, to saying yes to be the Mother of Jesus, to seeing her own sonundergo a bitter crucifixion and death, to her being assumed Body and Soul intoHeaven, God shows us through Mary that anything is truly possible with God’sgrace. May we too be always open and never afraid of how God’s transformative gracecan make us handmaids of the Lord as we strive to bring the presence of JesusChrist into our world.

12/4/2011 - The Second Sunday of Advent

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11/27/2011 - The First Sunday of Advent

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11/20/2011 - The Feast of Christ the King

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