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The Gift of Jesus

Forever Christmas has been my favorite holiday. From a spiritual standpoint, it’s the reality of Jesus in His divinity entering into our humanity. With who God is, we witness the humility of Jesus coming to this world in a manger. The story of the three kings. The prophecies of Jesus spoken by many, including from the Old Testament. Without Jesus, where would we be? It all begins at Christmas, with celebration of the Mass, one of the most beautiful Liturgies of the year. 

While there’s so much to reflect on and be thankful for spiritually, I’ve always loved the human elements of Christmas as well. It’s not about the presents but the joy of the season. All the smiles and well wishes. There is more laughing, hugs, and kisses. It seems people are friendlier at Christmas, more genuine, more loving. 

Houses decorated. Lights on trees. Snow on the ground. Christmas cookies in abundance. Family and friends. All the get-togethers and celebrations. It’s a great time. 

Cherished Memories

My Dad’s sister (Aunt Lou) lived right down the street from us. Ten kids in the two families, we saw each other often, us at their house or them at ours’. The annual Christmas tradition took place at theirs’, where my Uncle Pete would have assembled a life-size manger in their front yard. On Christmas Eve, our two families, with dozens and dozens of neighbors, would sing Christmas Carols in their front yard, followed by Christmas cookies and hot chocolate inside. In some years, our family watched theirs’ opening their gifts. We’d often then all go to Midnight Mass. 

My parents would then host a party on New Years Day, where the entire extended family (no small number) and friends would come over for the day, filled with food, fellowship and more fun. 

Fast forward to when I had kids…I remember purchasing a Santa suit. For several years, my cousins Greg and Mike (Aunt Lou’s sons) would alternate, dressing up and coming over Christmas morning. They’d bring for the kids the gifts Santa supposedly forgot to leave the night before. The kids would light up. All of the above are the best of memories. 

I’d invite you to reflect on the good memories from your childhood, your Christmas experiences among them. Think about this time of year as compared to others, then and now. Even the memories you’re making today. If you’re like me, you smile more and are nicer. You’re looking to surprise someone with a gift or nice note. You’re wanting to make someone a little happier, maybe help them with a burden they’re experiencing. 

I think that’s what Christmas is all about. It’s what Jesus is all about…LOVE!!! What would the world be like if every week of the year we were all as generous, compassionate, forgiving, and loving as at Christmas? The love of Christ is the answer…yesterday, today, and tomorrow. 

As we leave this Christmas season and head into a new year, please understand that Jesus loves you more than you’ll ever know, no matter what you’ve ever done. Let us share that love with as many people as humanly possible….all year long. 

I sincerely hope that you and your family had a very Merry Christmas. On behalf of my wife Cyndi and Mary Kate, who does all the creative work, Happy New Year. May God abundantly bless you and your family. 

As always, please email me at Mark@MarkJosephMinistries.com with questions, concerns, comments, or prayer requests. 

God Bless you on your Path to Peace, Joy, and Fulfillment!!!

Remember…God made you for Greatness!!!

Mark Joseph

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Weekly Blog

What to do with Regret

We’re told we can expect two things in life, death and taxes. I often say a third we all experience is human tragedy. It doesn’t skip any of us…doesn’t matter our race or religion, gender, genetics, or socioeconomics. It could be something global like war, terrorism, or a natural disaster. Or it could be much closer to home like death of a loved one, divorce, addiction, or financial hardship. All of us are subject to it. 

One of the other things we all experience, I guess the 4th, is regret. If you’re human, you have regret. If you’re like me, you have regret. Regret is different than resentment, which is most often towards someone else….we typically resent others for offenses committed against us. 

Regret is a feeling of sorrow or remorse for a fault, act, loss, or disappointment. It’s typically what we feel when we’ve done something we wish we could take back…get a “do over”. It could be that we regret something that made a negative impact on us. More common I think is when we hurt someone else. Often times we’ve not done it intentionally. 

Bracketing my life in 10-year increments, I can remember regrets in every decade of my life. When I was single and married. Things I’ve done to my spouse, my kids, parents, siblings, and friends. Even collogues at work or mere acquaintances. Still to this day, I can’t tell you how many times I’d like to pull the words back in my mouth. Ouch!!!

So what do we do with it? You may have heard of Fr. Mike Schmitz. He’s not only a wildly popular speaker for our Steubenville Conferences, but the most popular Catholic podcaster there is, doing both the Bible in a Year and the Catechism in a Year. Not to my surprise, he has some great thoughts on regret. I’d suggest listening to his 8-minute talk here. In summary, he says, 

Have you ever heard the saying “don’t regret the past, because it’s made you into the person you are today?” While there’s truth to this saying, there’s also something that we as Christians should be aware of…we make mistakes, do things we wished we hadn’t, hurt those we love in the process.

While we don’t want to be burdened by the mistakes we’ve made, it’s safe to say that all of us have done things that didn’t make us the people God wants us to be.

Fr. Mike goes on to say…There’s a difference between regret and repentance, and it can best be seen when comparing St. Peter to Judas. Both men sinned gravely against the Lord: Peter denying Him during the time of His Passion and Judas delivered Him to crucifixion. The difference is, where Peter regretted his sins and repented, Judas let his sin consume him.

It’s okay to regret the things we’ve done in the past that took us away from the path of God, but we can’t dwell in this regret. Instead, we have to do something about it. We have to repent. Repentance is what gives us the strength to forgive ourselves and continue striving for the kingdom of Heaven. When we repent, we surrender ourselves and our mistakes to the Lord, and then He can use those mistakes to glorify our lives. God can use everything—even our worst sins—for our path towards eternity. Nothing given to God is ever wasted.

To me, repenting is authentically being remorseful (even apologizing) and trying to change….making improvements to who you are. 

At work we say the Divine Mercy Chaplet every day at 3PM.

One of the closing prayers reads as follows: Eternal God, in whom mercy is endless and the treasury of compassion inexhaustible, look kindly upon us and increase Your mercy in us, that in difficult moments we might not despair nor become despondent, but with great confidence submit ourselves to Your holy will, which is Love and Mercy itself.

God’s mercy is endless and He loves you more than you’ll ever know, no matter what you’ve ever done. He forgives you that much. We need to forgive ourselves.

As always, please feel free to contact me at Mark@MarkJosephMinistries.com with comments, concerns, questions, or prayer requests. 

God Bless you on your Path to Peace, Joy, and Fulfillment!!!

Remember…God made you for Greatness!!!

Mark Joseph

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Weekly Blog

A Time for Everything

Today is the Feast Day of St. Mark the Evangelist, a favorite of mine for obvious reasons. St. Mark was one of the four writers of the Gospels. Among other things, he’s quoted as saying, “For what shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul”. How true. In doing a little research, I found a Prayer to St. Mark: 

O, Glorious St. Mark
through the grace 
of God, our Father,
you became a great Evangelist,
preaching the
Good News of Christ. 
May you help us to know Him
well so that we may faithfully
live our lives as followers of
Christ.
Amen.

Today also marks the 5-year anniversary of when I first began posting these blogs. With roughly 1,600 on our email list, every Wednesday I send out a note of roughly 600 words. Although the topics vary, they most often have to do with real life issues, relating them back to our faith. Over five years, this is my 260th post, most of it being original content. 

Beginning with my conversion experience in March 2006 and based on my journey to date, I continue to believe that in understanding and internalizing the unconditional love and forgiveness of Jesus Christ that: 

  • The unimaginable is achievable,   
  • We can live Heaven here on earth, 
  • There’s a path to peace, joy, and fulfillment. 

As expressed in my book, online course, my talks, videos, and these blogs, I also believe that God made you and me for greatness, putting each of us individually on this earth with a specific purpose, with unique gifts and talents. 

I launched this blog right before my book came out. Having aspirations of sharing my message (really God’s message) with as many as possible, I was doing a fair amount of speaking, mostly local, and promoting myself and the ministry. We created an online course and promoted that too. Then COVID hit and we lost momentum. 

Something else happened over that time. I’m five years older, now sixty, and my priorities have shifted. With expanded responsibilities at work, I’m quite busy, including travel. Since the beginning, the writing and speaking have been done on the weekends and the older I get, the more I don’t want to be running in my off-time. Instead, I prefer hanging out with Cyndi and doing the things we enjoy on weekends. 

In discerning this, a couple questions come to mind. Is this about me or the message? Where can my greatest impact be? At Franciscan University of Steubenville, I have the privilege of leading a team of 30, in addition to being responsible for the 10 partner organizations that put on our conferences across North America. What if my efforts exclusively went towards them? What would the impact be, especially with our exponential reach? Understanding that these things aren’t mutually exclusive, where is God calling me?

There’s a time for everything. Life is made of decisions, and we can only say “no” if we have a stronger “yes”. All this to say that as a standard, we are going to begin posting once a month instead of every week. Given the time it takes to prepare each blog, I think it’s the right decision. My priorities (not the message but the means) have shifted and I feel God calling me in a slightly different direction. That doesn’t mean that we won’t be posting something else periodically, but our original content will be coming out monthly. 

I want to thank you for being on this journey with me. Your support is so appreciated. I know I’m biased but I don’t believe there’s a more important message to share. In fact, I am convicted that if more people knew the love of Christ, that we’d live in a much better country and world. Please pray for me as I do for you. We are experiencing very challenging times and clearly Jesus is the only answer. 

Btw, all my past blogs are on the website at https://markjosephministries.com/blog/. We have an online course as well as my book. If desirous and you have a financial issue, just email me and we’re happy to discount or provide them for free. Lastly, I’m happy to give the occasional talk or do a Parish Mission, especially locally. 

In closing, I want to thank two people. First, I couldn’t do any of this (website, blog posts, videos, etc.) without Mary Kate Cuccari, who’s the creative genius and designer behind the scenes. If you ever have the need, I’d recommend MK in a heartbeat. My wife Cyndi has always supported all of my endeavors, including this ministry. My best friend, I thank God for her every day. Thanks Babe!!!

As always, please email me at Mark@MarkJosephMinistries.com with questions, concerns, comments, or prayer requests. 

God Bless you on your Path to Peace, Joy, and Fulfillment!!!

Remember…God made you for Greatness!!!

Mark Joseph

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Weekly Blog

When the Miracle Doesn’t Come

On February 23, just 4 weeks ago, we lost Amber VanVickle, dear wife to Dave and loving mother of 5 children, including 2 with special needs. Amber was special for many reasons. But she was most special for her love for Jesus and her embracing of the Cross.  

The age-old question of Christianity is how an all-loving God allows tragedy in our lives. Amber eloquently answers that question below, in an article published in the National Catholic Register (NCR), originally in 2019 and then posted again after her death. You can find it and more on Amber at here. 

Before getting to the article, which is well worth the read and reflection (I’ve read it 10 times), I’d like to point you to a couple other things. 

Dave and Amber were interviewed prior to her cancer diagnosis. The subject was “Finding God in the Midst of Suffering” and is definitely worth the 8 minutes. Other articles authored by Amber, all worth reading and reflecting on, can be found at the NCR link above, just after the main post. 

Finally, if you’d like to support Dave and the kids, please go to: 

When the Miracle Doesn’t Come

In Amber’s words…”I remember distinctly a night that had a great impact on my soul, a night that led to a great searching and seeking.

It was late. I was sitting amid beeping machines around the hospital bed of my newborn daughter. She had just had extensive back surgery for severe spina bifida, only a few days old. She was more tubes and bandages than sweet baby-soft skin. I sat with a broken heart in quiet questioning to our Lord. We had prayed for a miracle that had not come, and the result had been nothing less than torturous — physically for our daughter, in every other way for us.

At this same time, a beautiful miracle had occurred for an acquaintance of ours. Like the miracles of old — a life-giving, awe-inspiring, faith-enriching healing. We rejoiced in it with all our hearts. A letter soon circulated that this miracle occurred, firstly, because of God’s great love for the couple. As I read the letter late that night, sitting next to my daughter, my heart broke even deeper. What did it mean for us that the miracle had not come? Did God not love us?

It’s easy for us to read the Gospel accounts and see only the thread of one miracle story after another. But there are hidden golden threads that seem too often unnoticed, and it seems as if our Lord utters them in quiet desperation: ‘You seek me… because you ate your fill of the loaves,’ ‘Unless you see signs and wonders, you will not believe,’ and ‘Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.’

Perhaps the Lord is telling us that his love is not measured simply in the physical, in the miracles and the healings, but perhaps even more so, in the absence of those. That his love is shown, even more deeply, in the crosses, the trials and tempests of our lives, in the seeming absence of his power and love. That God permits sorrow and suffering for the very end of drawing us into himself, for an intimacy and sharing-in that could not be achieved any other way than through a share in his passion: ‘You seem, Lord, to give severe trials to those who love you, but only that in the excess of their trials, they may learn the greater excess of your love.’

Too often the spiritual life, that continuous road of handing our lives, hearts and wills to God, is depicted as an effortless adventure, that when we turn to God all will be well. Many times I’ve heard, ‘Just sit back and wait and see what the Lord does!’ as if a firework show awaits around every corner. But as St. Teresa of Ávila says, “They deceive themselves who believe that union with God consists in ecstasies or raptures, and in the enjoyment of him. For it consists in nothing except the surrender and subjection of our will – with our thoughts, words and actions – to the will of God.”

God is a consuming fire, a fire that ‘breaks, blows, and burns and makes us new,’ as John Donne writes. God’s love is one that enflames but also one that purifies.

‘For you, O God, have tested us; you have tried us as silver is tried. You brought us into the net; you laid affliction on our backs; you let men ride over our heads; we went through fire and through water; yet you have brought us forth to a spacious place.’

The absence of God’s miracles does not signify the absence of his love but the very presence of it, an offering of it and invitation to greater intimacy, a sharing in his life so efficaciously achieved by the stripping and fire of the cross: as St. Teresa Margaret writes, ‘Since Your life was a hidden life of humiliations, love and sacrifice, such shall henceforth be mine.’

Perhaps the sadness and frustration we hear in the voice of Christ is because of his desire for true love, a love that flourishes in the dark valleys as well as the peaks of life, a love that is not dependent on getting ‘our fill of the loaves,’ a love that is pursued and sought not because of signs and wonders but because of who he is, a love that is tested and tried and found pure and true. He gives us this opportunity of love through the cross and sufferings, even more so than his miracles. As St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus prays, ‘O Lord, you do not like to make us suffer, but you know it is the only way to prepare us to know you as you know yourself, to prepare us to become like you… because you wish that my heart be wholly yours.'”

As always, please email me at Mark@MarkJosephMinistries.com with questions, concerns, comments, or prayer requests. 

God Bless you on your Path to Peace, Joy, and Fulfillment!!!

Remember…God made you for Greatness!!!

Mark Joseph