1st Sunday of Lent
135th Anniversary of St. Mark Catholic Church
Catonsville, Maryland
March 9, 2025
Warmest Congratulations
Father Santosh, Father Victor, dear parishioners: As you celebrate the 135th anniversary of St. Mark Parish, I offer you my warmest congratulations and prayers. I am delighted to be with you this morning to share in this celebration, to join you in giving thanks to the Lord for his blessings through the years. It is also a moment for me to thank all of you for your steadfast faith. It is a faith nurtured by the sacraments, above all, Eucharist & Reconciliation, a faith you nurture in your homes, in the parish school, in religious formation programs, in your outreach to those in need. You have kept the faith even when, at times, it was not easy to do so. And now, you are writing a new chapter in the history of this parish under the devoted and energetic leadership of Father Santosh – let’s express our appreciation for his priestly leadership!
What Is the Purpose?
As we reflect on the history of St. Mark’s, let us ask ourselves a question: What prompted 19th century Catholics living in the Catonsville area to spend most of their waking hours each Sunday travelling all the way to St. Paul’s in Ellicott City or to St. Peter’s in Baltimore for Mass? Why did the Catonsville newspaper, the Argus, echo the call of many Catholics for the construction of a Catholic church in Catonsville, and why did Cardinal James Gibbons comply with their request? Think of the generosity of parishioners in days gone by when they constructed what is today the chapel and built a school, and then built a larger school and this present Church as the parish grew. What prompted them to work so hard to build up this parish? Or think of the more recent renovations under Father Watley, and the vigorous leadership of Father Santosh. What’s at the heart of these immense efforts for more than a century & a third?
At one level, the answer is obvious. We Catholics want to have a spiritual home, a place to go to Mass, a place to educate and form our children in the faith, a place to gather. But isn’t there a deeper reason for all the effort and sacrifice? I think we find that deeper reason in the liturgy for the 1st Sunday of Lent, and we find it with Jesus in the desert where he was tempted by the devil.
Jesus Plumbs the Depths of Human Existence
What we know is this: the Church exists to continue the ministry of Jesus, and the ministry of Jesus was anything but superficial. The Lord came into the world and assumed our flesh not merely to validate us or to make us feel better, or merely to help us make the world a better place, important as that is. No, the Lord came in search of us, a straying humanity, the lost sheep. And the only way he could find us, redeem us, and hoist us on his shoulders was to penetrate to the very depth of our existence where rages the battle between good and evil, sin and grace, life and death. That is why the Lord, though sinless, was tempted as we are tempted … so that by his unswerving obedience to the Father he would win for us the victory. Isn’t this why we have a parish—to continue the mission of Jesus to save us! This is the deeper reason for the sacrifices of parishioners past and present, and the deeper reason for our staying with the faith through thick and thin.
Offhandedly, we may think that Jesus’ temptations were not real, or that they are very unlike the temptations we experience. Scripture makes clear not only that Jesus was truly tempted by the devil but also that those temptations persisted throughout his ministry. The devil wanted desperately to derail the mission for which God the Father sent his only Son into the world. And, we shall see, Jesus’ temptations have much in common with ours.
How was Jesus tempted?
Jesus had fasted in the wilderness for forty days and forty nights. Afterwards, he was hungry, so the devil appealed to him not just to eat something but to use his powers to turn stones into bread. Jesus’ immortal answer: “Man does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”
Then the devil imparted to Jesus a vision of the world in its power and might, the sinful world Satan claims as his dominion – and promised Jesus that he would receive honor and glory from a world unredeemed. Jesus’ reply: you shall worship the Lord you God, him alone shall you worship. The devil then tempted Jesus to prove himself to be the Son of God by casting himself from the heights of the Temple, and allowing the angels to guide him safely to the earth. Jesus’ reply: you shall not put the Lord your God to the test.”
Not your typical temptations, I will grant you! But Jesus’ temptations have this in common with our temptations: the devil’s temptations aim to make us relegate God to second place, to put him in a queue behind what we are to eat, what we are to do on Sunday, and to make God prove over and over again that he is real and beneficent. But that’s just for starters. The devil’s real aim is to make us think that God is not real, at least not as real as the bread we eat, the things we love, and the power we exercise.
So Why Do We Have a Parish?
So why do we have a parish? Because we believe with all our heart that God is real, and that we encounter the true and living God in Jesus Christ in whose death we are baptized, in whose power we are forgiven, by whose Sacrifice of self-giving love we are saved, by whose Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity we are nourished. Our forebears knew this, and we know it, and that is why we are here.
So at the urging of St. Paul, let us . . .“confess with [our] mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in [our] heart that God raised him from the dead.” Thus will this parish accomplish its God-given mission, year in and year out, the salvation our souls in Christ Jesus, who lives and reigns with the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God forever and ever. Amen.