St. Paul gives some sage advice in this Sunday’s second reading: “Have no anxiety at all, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God.” The tendency for our restless minds and hearts is to ruminate and to feel resentment. In essence, St. Paul says to entrust those things that weigh heavily on you to the Lord. The action of entrusting is...

Fr. Dave decided that our Giving Tuesday 2025 fundraiser would create an art gallery of God’s covenants. From Sacred Scripture, we chose to paint eight covenants between God and us. The story of our salvation is made in God’s covenants with Adam, Eve, Noah, Abraham, Moses, the twelve tribes of Israel, King David, and, finally, the new and eternal covenant with Jesus Christ. Each of these covenants changes everything about your life. The painting of the eighth covenant, throug

While out with a couple of priests this past week, we struck up a conversation with a gentleman we happened to meet. At one point he asked us what we did for a living, and we responded that we were priests. After the initial surprise, he disclosed that he was Catholic and, as a boy, served at Mass every day. Then, when he was sixteen years old, he stopped practicing and hasn’t been back to church since. He is now sixty-seven years old. As we conversed, he opened up that his..

On September 14 the Church celebrates the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. This feast focuses on the mystery of Christ’s passion and death which redeemed and liberated us. As the most brutal form of Roman execution, crucifixion was associated with utter shame, defeat, pain and death. Yet Christ’s Resurrection transforms the cross into a symbol of...

The Church celebrates the memorial of St. Teresa of Calcutta on September 5. As a young religious sister traveling by train in India in 1946, she received a vision from Jesus ordering her to serve the poorest of the poor. She heard Jesus’ words from the cross, “I thirst,” and she spent the rest of her life responding to...

In many ways, it's great to be a kid. This week school began again for St Martin's. Almost 200 children began a year which will be totally focused on learning. Highly dedicated teachers, faculty, and staff work together to teach them important subjects like...

Champions give up everything to win. Any great athlete, musician, or artist makes incredible sacrifices to get to the top. The slightest loss of focus can cost a game, a match, or a performance. Are their sacrifices worth it? The prizes and honors are always temporary; but the...

The painting of the seventh covenant, with the house of David, is now hanging in the parish hall. King David wanted to do something for God. He said to the prophet Nathan, “Here I am, dwelling in a house of cedar, while the Ark of God dwells in a tent” (1 Samuel 7:2). David’s heart always sang for God. In our painting, this is shown by...

One of the most beautiful moments was my prayer at the tomb of St. Oscar Romero. He was the archbishop of San Salvador from 1977 to 1980. The “Martyr of El Salvador” was assassinated while celebrating Mass for speaking out against the repressive government. The government perpetuated economic and political injustice. When I met the saint at his tomb...

This Sunday’s gospel of the multiplication of the loaves and fish is Jesus’ only miracle that is recounted in all four evangelists. This miracle points to the Eucharistic feast which Jesus institutes at the Last Supper, and in which we participate at every Mass. Here are some of the key elements of...

The opening prayer of the Mass, which follows the Gloria on Sundays, is called the Collect, because the priest collects or gathers the prayers of the congregation as he addresses God the Father. If you pay close attention, the priest pauses before he starts the...

Jesus uses various parables that have to do with plants, whether its wheat or weeds, mustard trees or figs. Evidently, he saw the spiritual life as a process of continual growth culminating in producing fruit. I think many of us have held an erroneous view of our religious and spiritual life as merely avoiding sin. According to this way of thinking, if I just avoid sins, I’m in God’s good graces and...

Confusion about marriage is one of the issues I deal with most frequently as a priest. There are many false assumptions about what the Church teaches, so it is best to be as clear as possible without beating around the bush. Marriage is the...

As we celebrate our 250 anniversary, we give thanks to God for the gift of our nation and ask him for the gift of wisdom to avoid the pitfalls which threaten our freedom. When Pope Benedict XVI visited the United States in 2008, he identified three threats to our society...

I would like to use this bulletin article to give an update on facilities and projects at St. Martin’s. In the next month, I would like to have the parish hall kitchen renovation complete. Although it won’t be used as a cooking kitchen, we have bought a...

The Israelites had broken the covenant they made at Sinai by worshiping the golden calf, which is depicted behind Moses to the left. That generation wandered in the desert for forty years and died there. The graves of Aaron and Miriam – Moses’s brother and sister – are marked by piles of stones behind Moses to the left. Yet the...

On Friday, June 12, we celebrated the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and on Thursday, June 11, the bishops of the United States consecrated the nation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. In honor of this consecration for our nation’s 250 anniversary, we dedicated our Saturday morning holy hour to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. In the same vein, we also invite families to...

This Sunday we celebrate the Feast of Corpus Christi, also known as the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ. Without a doubt, the Eucharist is the heart of our parish. Your priests work hard here: ten Sunday Masses and two or three daily Masses, with confession multiple times a day. What is all that for? It’s so an increasing number of people may receive the Eucharist worthily for their eternal salvation. It is such a joy for a priest to see people who are well-disposed and

A friend of mine who is an older gentleman and lifelong Catholic tells me that in the past decade he has experienced a renewal in his faith. For most of his life he lived his Catholic faith as a series of rules to be followed, as if it were principally a moral code (with the emphasis being on negative commands). After he got involved in a program called...

We’ve just celebrated nine (yes, nine) sacramental Masses for children and teens over the past two weeks. All told, about three hundred children received sacraments, which is about ten percent of our weekly Sunday Mass count. We pray that these children continue in the practice of the faith, especially the celebration of Sunday Mass. One of the reasons that Sunday Mass is so important is that it reminds us that the goal of life is heaven. If Sunday becomes just a day of rest,