Issue of November 23, 2006
Front page

Singing from the heart, singing for life

By Barbara Fitzgerald
Special to the CS&T

Mark Forrest was Broadway-bound. Gifted with a booming Irish tenor voice and an ability to hold notes as long as Pavarotti, he had dreams of becoming a household name. But God had other plans.

So began the story Forrest told during the recent Stand Up for Life dinner at the Sheraton Hotel in Philadelphia. The event was sponsored by the Pro-Life Union of Southeastern Pennsylvania.

The ballroom was filled to capacity by a crowd of about 1,400, who seemed enraptured by Forrest’s faith journey. He recounted his tale with his native Irish wit and interspersed it with song.

To make a long story short, as Forrest said, rather than seeing his name in lights, he became a father of six children, one who died shortly after birth from a defective heart, and two who are blind and deaf and confined to wheelchairs because they were born with a metabolic disease.

Without God, Forrest said, he could not have made sense of it all: “I can tell you, it was my best friend, Jesus Christ, who took me through it.”

Forrest said everyone is given crosses in life, and it is what we do with them that counts. Tapping into the grace that attends each cross is the key, he said.

“My father always taught me — he said, ‘Every cross you have in life is a custom cross, and it’s designed specifically for you. And no matter how hard it gets along the road, God will put in your place different people at different times, and He will speak to you through them.’

“But that only happens in your life when you are open to receiving Him, and letting Him be the center of your life,” Forrest said.

Accepting the grace of his crosses, he began a non-profit organization with his wife, Muriel — the Faith and Family Foundation — and he uses his gift for singing as a way to raise money for it.

The foundation helps parents with special-needs children and the disabled. Im doing so, it helps the Forrests share their Catholic faith with others, and let people in similar situations know they are not alone.

“At the end of the day — and at the end of our life — when Peter meets us at the gates of heaven, his question won’t be, ‘How are you? Come on in — you got in,’” Forrest said. “But he’ll say, ‘Who did you bring with you?’”

“If you’re willing to let go of your own agenda in life, and bring Christ in, you will receive a tremendous sense of purpose, a greater sense of peace and a greater sense of fulfillment,” he said.

Forrest came to the United States from Dublin in 1990 after being offered a scholarship to Catholic University in Washington, D.C. His high school sweetheart, Muriel, was offered a scholarship six months later at Trinity College, right across the road.

Forrest graduated with a degree in musical theater and stayed on for a graduate degree in liturgical music. He then decided to launch his career and his family simultaneously.

“It was my dream to travel all over the world,” he said, recounting various Broadway shows he imagined being part of. But those aspirations collapsed in the dizzying days after he learned his second son, John Patrick, was seriously ill: “All of a sudden, my dreams to go to New York and travel meant nothing at all, and the desire to become a household name was not to be.”

For the first two years of John Patrick’s life, the Forrest family fought to keep him alive. He survived the early years and now is a delight and a gift to those who know him, his father said.

“For those of you who have a special-needs child or, indeed, for all of us who know a special needs-child, you know the blessing that they bring in their presence,” Forrest said. “I always believe although my son is in a non-communicative state — other than a smile and a hug he doesn’t talk — [that] if you’ve ever received a hug from a Down’s Syndrome child, it is unconditional love, and it is the love our Lord talks about [as] unconditional love.”

Forrest said he was reluctant to have another child, knowing the odds were good that another child could suffer from the same disease. But flying back from San Francisco to Washington on a red-eye flight, he saw a movie that brought tears to his eyes about a couple who was trying to conceive and “had totally locked Christ out of the equation.”

He decided to move forward with faith. Shortly after his wife became pregnant, they found their child had a defective heart, not related to a metabolic disease. The couple decided to do whatever procedure they could to save the child, but shortly after he was born, the doctors said the baby's heart would not be able to withstand any operation. Forrest and his family had to struggle helplessly as they watched their infant die.

“I share this with you today because I know that a lot of us who have lost a loved one — whether it be a father or a mother, a brother, a sister or indeed a child — and wonder why,” Forrest said. “We say, ‘God, why me?’ I wish I could stand before you today and give you the answer to that question. But I will tell you that without Jesus Christ in your life there is no chance of healing.”

He challenged his audience to bring Christ to others in the workplace and in everyday life through charity and good example, and to encourage more Catholics to embrace their faith beyond merely attending Mass on Sundays.

Forrest also said Mary was an integral part of his ministry, and he saluted the seminarians in the crowd and dedicated his interpretation of Schubert’s “Ave Maria” to them and to all the consecrated religious in the room.

Later, Forrest noted that the pro-life cause, which brought so many people together, is the primary cause of unrest and trouble in our society, and urged pro-life advocates never to give up.

“Fighting for the sanctity of life is always the center issue,” he said before concluding his performance with a rousing rendition of the song, “The Impossible Dream.”

For many, the song resonated perfectly.

“For Mark to end with that song from ‘Don Quixote’ was so great," said Kim Savage, president of Generation Life. Still, she said, “We’re not chasing windmills. We will win this.”

After the dinner, Auxiliary Bishop Joseph P. McFadden said in a separate interview that it was important, “tonight, to witness people who have taken to heart the Gospel of Jesus — that we really are our brother’s keeper and that we must continue the work of Jesus in proclaiming the value of every human life” Bishop McFadden added, “The values that Jesus teaches us really are values that will give us ultimate joy and peace, even with the crosses we may sometimes have to carry in carrying on human life, itself.”

Pro-life workers need not lose hope based on each turn of political events, the Bishop said: “We must be confident that our cause is right. The Lord doesn’t work always with a splashy display. It’s quiet and slow, but the Lord will accomplish His work, and we always have to be confident about that.”

Chastity advocate Molly Kelly, who shared the duties of mistress of ceremonies with Savage, said the evening was a “picker-upper” after for the recent national election in which two pro-life Pennsylvania incumbents lost their seats.

One of them, U.S. Rep. Michael Fitzpatrick, was in attendance, and was given a standing ovation by the crowd, along with the unsuccessful pro-life candidate John Williamson.

“The fight isn’t over,” Fitzpatrick told the crowd. “I look forward to continuing to fight to protect innocent unborn human life in the days and years to come.”

After the dinner, Forrest told the guests, “It’s very hard, sometimes, for us to keep positive when we constantly feel we’re being bashed around.

“But the reality is, there are a lot of ground troops. There’s a huge surge of young people getting involved in the pro-life movement across the country,” Forrest added, “and I think it is a matter of time before we swing to where we need to go.”