Father Mark entered religious life in March of 1994 and was ordained a priest in October 2003. He grew up in Huntsville Alabama and attended the Colorado School of Mines. He earned a B.S. in Engineering Physics and worked for two years in Huntsville for a small company that specialized in defense contracts for the government. Father Mark is currently the Novice Master and chaplain for EWTN. He is currently host of Life on the Rock.
“We are set free by the truth of love.” It is a packed statement, and Fr. Stan hammered away at it on our last show. ( Life on the Rock- Nov 4th 2010) When God’s love touches us, when we experience it, we are truly set free. Set free to love. Something is awakened in us when we are loved, and we are set on fire to love others in return.
God’s love for us comes in the form of a crucified love. In his suffering for us, we see the magnitude of His love. To reflect and pray about this crucified love purifies our love of selfishness and egoism. We discover His love for us, in a special way, in our suffering. The saints tell us that we draw closest to Jesus in our suffering.
Maybe it gives us appreciation for what Jesus did for us. When we pick up our cross and follow Him, we experience a sharing in the redemptive work of Jesus Christ. We know by faith, we can unite our cross with His and that has merit for us and for others. We are configured more to Christ, and can help obtain graces for others as well.
Our human intellect, alone, cannot penetrate the bewildering mystery of suffering. It is by faith that we know that Christ has redeemed suffering, given it value. By embracing the cross in faith, we die to ourselves and make room for God and others in our lives. It seems like the nonessentials get stripped away, and we experience God in a new way. As Fr. Stan said in a simple way, “We don’t get it, it gets us.”
