Tag: Love

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Weekly Blog

Mark’s Favorite Quotes (Pt. 1)

I see quotes in different places that I invariably save on my phone and refer back to periodically. Recently looking at them, I thought I’d share what has captured my attention for this week’s blog. In no particular order, here we go.

 

“A perfect marriage is just two imperfect people who refuse to give up on each other”

GodFruits.com 

“God has a reason for allowing things to happen. We may never understand His wisdom, but we simply have to trust His will”.

Psalm 37:5

“God has not called me to be successful; He called me to be faithful”. 

St. Teresa of Calcutta 

“Remember when you leave this earth, you can take with you nothing that you have received, only what you have given: a heart enriched by honest service, love, sacrifice, and courage”. 

St. Francis of Assisi

“Jesus didn’t raise up a million followers. He raised up 12 and told them to go do the same”. 

Curtis Martin 

“Don’t worry about anything; instead pray about everything, tell god your needs and don’t forget to thank Him for His answers”. 

Philippians 4:6

“Few human joys are as deep and thrilling as those experienced by two people who love one another and have achieved something as the result of a great, shared effort”. 

Pope Francis

“Can you remember who you were before the world told you who you should be?” 

Danielle LaPorte 

“The age of casual Catholicism is over. The age of heroic Catholicism has begun. We can no longer be Catholic by accident, but instead we must be Catholics by conviction”. 

Fr. Terrance Henry, TOR

“The future belongs to people who believe in something beyond themselves, and who live and sacrifice accordingly”. 

Archbishop Charles Chaput 

“I am not afraid of tomorrow, for I have seen yesterday and I love today”. 

William Allen White

Few souls understand what God would accomplish in them if they were to abandon themselves unreservedly to Him and if they were to allow His grace to mold them accordingly”. 

St. Ignatius of Loyola

“The more you let yourself compete and compare, the more you forget your own calling”. 

Ann Voskamp

“As soon as I meet people, I pray for them. I welcome everyone as a person sent to me and entrusted to me by Christ. This helps me in all my relationships with people”. 

St. Pope John Paul II

“Don’t wish to be anything but what you are and try to be that perfectly”. 

St. Francis DeSales 

“Do not be afraid. Do not be satisfied with mediocrity. Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch”. 

St. Pope John Paul II

“To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless”. 

G.K. Chesterton 

God did not tell us to follow Him because He needed our help, but because He knew that loving Him would make us whole”. 

St. Irenaeus 

“We’re not here to make memories. We’re her to make Disciples”. 

Ennie Hickman

“From the crisis of today the Church of tomorrow will emerge a Church that has lost much. She will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning”.

Pope Benedict XVI (Fr. Joseph Ratzinger-1969)

“First do what is necessary, then do what is possible, and before long you will find yourself doing the impossible”. 

St. Francis of Assisi 

“Let go of everything that has been holding you back. Push fear out of the way and claim the peace, joy, and fulfillment that are yours. Now is the time”.

Danielle Bean 

“Transforming people one at a time is at the heart of God’s plan for the world”. 

Matthew Kelly

 

Next week I will share a few more of my favorites.

Feel free to email me back with your favorite quote(s).

As always, please feel free to contact me at [email protected] with questions, comments, concerns, challenges, or prayer requests.

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

Remember…God made you for GREATNESS!!!

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Weekly Blog

Secret to Making Others Feel Special 

What is the single greatest way to make someone feel special? Reflect on your interactions. What makes you feel special? What makes your interactions the best they can be? 

For context, with the internet, constant access to wifi and cellular, email, text, and social media, we’re always connected. Yet in today’s world, it seems we’ve never been more isolated. With being so tied to our screens, the art and act of interpersonal communication, one person intimately talking to another, has diminished. My kids are 33, 30, and 27. While incredibly true for their generation and those younger, I think that it’s something that has afflicted almost all of us, no matter our age. 

G.K. Chesterton, in his book St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Francis of Assisi, wrote about St. Francis, “what gave him his extraordinary personal power was this; that from the Pope to the beggar, from the sultan of Syria in his pavilion to the ragged robbers crawling out of the wood, there was never a man who looked into those brown burning eyes without being certain that Francis Bernardone was really interested in him; in his own inner individual life from the cradle to the grave; that he himself was being valued and taken seriously, and not merely added to the spoils of some social policy or the names in some social clerical document”. 

I work at Franciscan University of Steubenville, where our Patron Saint is St. Francis of Assisi. I know of St. Francis for many things, probably most notably him hearing from our Lord, “Go Rebuild My Church”. G.K. Chesterton’s remarks above speak to God’s call on Francis’ life. It’s investing in others, truly connecting with them, that makes the difference. The way we build anything, including organization of people, is one person at a time…one soul at a time. 

My Personal Example 

My Dad, who we lost two years ago next month, had this same gift. He had a compassion and and confidence, especially in others. People felt special when with him; they felt safe. He was other focused, deeply caring about them individually. When you had a conversation with my Dad, you had his full attention. He was locked in on you. This is challenging for many. I’m guilty of not always paying attention, but not him. He made you feel important, valued, and understood. He made you see yourself through his eyes and he saw you with infinite possibility. 

I don’t mean to equate my Dad to St. Francis of Assisi. I sense that like me, canonization isn’t in his future. That said, he had the same gift as St. Francis when it came to his interpersonal interactions. My Mother, Brothers, and I benefited from it…there’s nothing like it. 

Here’s my suggestion to all of us (I’m talking to myself here as much if not more so than you). When talking to someone, anyone, really, really concentrate on them. Zero in. Know the color of their eyes and let them see yours’. Remove the distractions and make them the center of your attention. Really invest. Actively listen (a lost art). Show compassion, truly care. LOVE them!!!

Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care. We live in a lonely world, where although very connected, many (maybe most) are isolated. Jesus instructed us to love God, love our neighbors, and share our faith. Be intentional. One on one…let’s get it done. 

As always, please feel free to contact me at [email protected] with questions, comments, concerns, challenges, 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

The Gift of Our Faith

Do you ever wonder what you’d do without your faith? How you’d experience life? It’s hard to imagine. Having Jesus Christ as my lens through which to see the world is an extreme comfort. After all, we know the end of the story…as they say. We know who wins. 

As I referenced two weeks ago, life can and does get tough. We are presented with many challenges. Some are far reaching and although may not have an immediate personal impact, can create worry nonetheless. Others are very personal and close to home. 

Related to the latter, this COVID thing is crazy. It hits different people in various ways. I have a friend, Ben, who’s been in the hospital with it since June 17th, first on a ventilator and getting dialysis. We would get updates from his wife, Mariely, regularly and for a while they weren’t good. He was in real danger. By the time this blog posts, he will hopefully have had the trach tube removed and is now able to talk. 

I visited Ben recently and he looked amazing, really amazing, especially given what he’s gone through. We prayed together and received Communion from a visiting Deacon. Ben is wearing a scapular and has a Rosary ring. There’s a large picture of Our Lady of Guadalupe on the windowsill. Given the great devotion they have to our Virgin Mother, Mariely was sharing with me the Marian Feasts that take place during August, each one marking a new milestone in Ben’s recovery. Mariely also shared the soothing impact it has on Ben when she prays the Rosary daily, along with the Divine Mercy Chaplet.  

Because of COVID, I had stopped going to daily Mass and was dragging my feet going back. It was Ben insisting that I do so, that got me to go again…never missing. I work with Ben. I love asking him to pray before our meetings, where he always reverently invokes our Lady. Ben is one of the holiest, kindest, conscientious, most compassionate (and btw smartest), men I know and I’m not just saying that because he’s been sick. He deeply loves our Lord, along with his wife and kids. His faith is a part of him. You can hear it in his voice and see it in his actions.  

 

Be Not Afraid

I was on a call this past week, where the person I was talking to said, “be not afraid”, making reference to our faith. I reminded him that it says some derivative of that, 365 times in Scripture. Ben has no fear because he has faith. It was such a joy being with Ben and Mariely, whose faith is so strong. What an example they are. 

Here’s the deal. We are going to have challenges in life…big struggles, even tragedies. They’re going to occur whether we’re in relationship with Jesus or not. Here’s what I know, having done it both ways. Life is always better with God in it. Our faith really matters. It changes everything, including eliminating the fear. It’s a gift. It’s very apparent in those who truly live it, like Ben and Mariely. 

Please join me in praying for Ben (and Mariely), that he soon gets out of the hospital and fully recovers prior to his ordination to the Diaconate this fall. Let’s additionally pray for all of those who lack faith and live in fear. May God bless all of us on our journeys. 

As always, please feel free to contact me at [email protected] with questions, comments, concerns, challenges, or prayer requests.  

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

God made you for GREATNESS!!!

 

Mark Joseph

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Weekly Blog

What’s Your Favorite Prayer?

Last week’s blog was titled, “The Gift of Our Faith”. To realize and maximize that gift, we need to be in relationship with God our Father and Jesus Christ His Son, while calling on the Holy Spirit, who lives within each of us. Prayer is critical to that relationship, in its many forms. 

Do you have a favorite prayer or prayers? How is it that you pray? Rote prayer, reading and praying through Scripture, meditative or contemplative prayer? The Catholic Church offers many prayers for us, including the Mass, Rosary, and Divine Mercy Chaplet. A simple internet search will take you to an exhaustive list of Catholic prayers. 

Yet most people I know, including those actively engaged in our faith, will tell you that they struggle with prayer. I do too. Why is that? I assume your experience is the same as mine…that is that anything you get really good at takes work. It takes dedicated effort. God wants nothing more than us to be in relationship with Him. Given the free will He has provided us, God leaves it up to us. Just like our earthly relationships, where we have challenges, we’re challenged in prayer. Keep at it. It’s what God desires and it’s good for us…just ask anyone who prays regularly. 

My favorite prayers are the Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be, long form of the Serenity Prayer, and a prayer I wrote in 2009, which I call Thank you God; Thank you Jesus!!! For each, I say them incredibly slowly, praying through and hanging on every word. They are my “go to” prayers. I say them daily without fail. 

In reviewing all the blogs I’ve posted over the last 3 ½ years, I’ve done others on prayer, whether it be different types, processes, methods, etc. I hesitated to do so again here, but my wife reminded me that redundancy is good…and that we can all be reminded more about prayer. 

Believe me, I’m far from perfect at prayer. I struggle with it. But the reality is that the more I pray, the more peace I have. The more “right” direction I have to my life. The sin of pride, which I’m a pro at, is less of an issue. So is envy and the many others. I’m a better person when I pray more. 

The mistake people make with prayer is the same mistake many make in other aspects of their lives…”they bite off more than they can chew”. They start too fast, expecting too much. Like with anything else, the more we know about our faith (about prayer), the more we find there is to learn. It is not a race, but a journey. Take it slowly. Five minutes a day to start. Reading a little bit of Scripture and then reflecting on it. Saying a couple rote prayers. Sitting in silence with our Lord, listening for His voice in your life.  

I hope this blog prompted you to think (and pray). Maybe you’re a prayer warrior and the above doesn’t apply. If so, maybe you can share some of these ideas with others. Or maybe it does, and you can add to whatever you’re doing.  If you’d like a special copy on my prayer (noted above), please let us know. In addition, should you desire, we can provide you with a tool we created called, “Simple Process for Prayer”. 

As always, please feel free to contact me at [email protected] with questions, comments, concerns, challenges, or prayer requests.  

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

Remember…God made you for GREATNESS!!!

Mark Joseph