‘Jesus is the reason for everything’

Bishop Mark Beckman shares stories of his youth, family, and vocation

By Gabrielle Nolan

In the 1800s, German immigrants fashioned oak high altars and made the clay bricks that stacked to form the neo-Gothic-style Sacred Heart Church in Lawrenceburg, Tenn.

It was in this parish, more than 100 years later, that Bishop James Mark Beckman would come to know God through his sacraments of baptism, first Holy Communion, and confirmation.

“The atmosphere of faith being raised in that little parish was definitely handed down to me, most especially of course through my parents and grandparents,” Bishop Beckman said.

“I immediately felt, when I walked into the church, a sense of the sacred in that place. And that memory of dipping my hand in the holy water and making the sign of the cross, of genuflecting,” he continued. “There are nine statues in the high altars; the Sacred Heart of Jesus is in the high point behind the altar. But I remember being fascinated by the saints because of those statues. As a very young child, I didn’t know where the sound came from for the bells being rung, and I thought it came from the Lord’s sanctuary lamp that hung above the altar, the tabernacle candle. So, I do remember that.”

He remembers the “hushed silence” inside of the church, filled with prayerful men and women saying their rosaries, as well as the beauty of the church during the holidays.

“At Christmas, they had a very beautiful, large nativity scene that was placed in front of the altar, and poinsettias, red poinsettias, all over the high altars, and candles burning everywhere,” Bishop Beckman recounted. “I think I was a junior in high school, maybe a sophomore, I remember I volunteered to be a lector at the Easter Vigil. And it was the first time I saw adults being baptized, and I will never forget the joy that brought me. … They got clothed in a white robe, and I was a fairly shy teenager, but I just felt like I’ve got to go congratulate them for joining our Church. So, I took the initiative and went and welcomed them to the Church.”

Bishop Beckman praised his parents, Jimmy and Lois Beckman, for being “faithful, committed Catholics.”

“We went to Mass every Sunday,” he said. “I remember praying with them before I would go to sleep at night, and I just remember their example of just ordinary, solid, Catholic faith growing up. So, that definitely impacted me greatly.”

The Beckmans enrolled their son in Sacred Heart School, where he attended first through eighth grades.

“I would say that the pastors and the Sisters of Mercy who staffed the school also had a very positive impact on my faith, especially Father John Kirk, who is actually a native of Knoxville,” Bishop Beckman said. “He arrived when I think I was in the seventh grade and was pastor for four years. He probably was a significant inspiration in my choosing to become a priest.”

Bishop Beckman described himself as shy during those school years, but that proved to be an opportunity for growth among his teachers.

“Our Sister who taught us in the seventh and eighth grade was Sister Laura Marie, and she said to us as a class, all of you are going to be doing readings at the school Masses. And I never said no to Sister, but I raised my hand and said, ‘Sister, I cannot do that.’ I was too afraid, you know. And she looked at me and she said, ‘Not only can you, but you will,’” he remembered with a laugh. “So, she made me do that reading at the school Mass. I went to do the reading that day; I was so petrified I was shaking, I think. Afterwards, she said, ‘That wasn’t so bad, was it?’ Of course, it really was bad for me, but I said, ‘No, Sister.’ She said, ‘OK, I’m going to put you on the schedule regularly.’… And I look back now, and I think had she not really insisted, I wonder if I would have been comfortable enough to be a public speaker and then to consider ordination. An important seed of vocation was planted there, I think.”

When it came time for confirmation in the eighth grade, Bishop Beckman was chosen as the reader for the Mass with Bishop James D. Niedergeses.

For his patron saints at confirmation, Bishop Beckman chose to call on the saints that shared his baptismal name, James and Mark.

“In those days, they encouraged us if we had saint names for baptism and we liked them, to use them for confirmation to show the bond between those sacraments of initiation. And I liked both of my names,” Bishop Beckman said.

Because Lawrenceburg was too far away from a Catholic high school, Bishop Beckman attended Lawrence County High School, which at the time served around 1,300 students.

“My graduating class senior year had more than 300 students,” he said. “Sacred Heart Elementary School had less than 100 students first through eighth grade, so a much bigger school.”

“The thing I found very interesting was it was the first time that I was regularly around non-Catholics,” he continued. “Because most everybody that went to Sacred Heart was Catholic, most everybody in my family was Catholic, now some of my neighborhood friends were not. … So, most people were Christian but not Catholic. That was sort of a fascinating thing when I got to my first homeroom, someone asked me and they said, ‘So, you’re Catholic?’ And I said, ‘Yes.’ And he said, ‘Are you Christian?’ And I said, ‘Yes, Catholics are Christians.’ It was like, Coca-Cola is a soft drink, you know. So, it was good for me, I think, to have the opportunity to go to school with such a great variety of kids from other churches. … So, I really did feel an enormous respect from my peers who were not Catholic toward me as a Catholic, so that was for me a positive experience.”

‘A great place to grow up’

Bishop Beckman grew up in Lawrenceburg, which was a city of about 10,000 at the time of his childhood, living on the edge of town in a community “surrounded by forests and pastures.”

Born on Oct. 19, 1962, he is the oldest of six children, having three brothers and two sisters. His parents welcomed their children over a span of two decades.

“My youngest brother is 21 years younger than I am, so we’re spread out over a generation. [Ben] was born the summer after my last year of college,” Bishop Beckman shared. “With Ben, it’s interesting. Even though he was born after my graduation from college, and I went to Belgium to study to become a priest, he and I have been very close through the years. There was a real bond between the two of us. And both he and my brother Bruce and I, the three of us really enjoyed backpacking and hiking. So, we’ve done a lot of that together.”

“My next brother down younger than I, Bruce, is only 10 months younger than I am. And Robbie is two years younger,” he continued. “The three of us all came along at the same time, so we were always playing together, the three of us. And my sister (Melissa) came along when I was 10, and for me that was just a delight to welcome a new sibling in the family. That whole thing about ‘the more the merrier,’ that’s how I felt as a kid growing up. Every time a new brother or sister came along after the first three of us, for me it was always a wonderful gift. And then Jennifer was about 15 years after me.”

Bishop Beckman’s mother is an only child, but his father also is one of six children, so the bishop grew up surrounded by many first cousins in addition to his siblings.

“Close to a lot of cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, so big extended family down there,” he said. “They’re all mostly still living down there (in Lawrenceburg).”

Bishop Beckman said that his hometown was a “great place to grow up.”

“There were lots of kids in the neighborhood, and we had the run of the whole neighborhood,” he recalled. “So, Dad would whistle at night to have us come home for dinner. But we’d be playing in the pine woods and down by the creeks and somersaulting down the pastures. We loved being outside. Dad would play spotlight with us at night, and I remember one winter we got this big snowstorm, and Dad built this huge bonfire on the side of the road. We lived on top of a hill, so we—my brothers and I, my neighbors—we all sledded down the hill all evening. I remember catching lightning bugs as a kid. I just remember growing up in summertime having those wonderful endless weeks of summer to play outside wherever we wanted to play.”

The bishop preferred playing in nature rather than organized sports as a child.

“I loved water skiing, I loved swimming, and as I mentioned, I loved being outside hiking, playing in the woods, that kind of thing. So anytime I have the chance to do that sort of thing, I enjoy it very much,” he noted.

Another favorite hobby he had as a child that carries over to this day is reading novels.

“If you’d ask most people around me what my favorite thing to do was when I was a kid, it was to read novels,” Bishop Beckman shared. “When I was introduced to a novel by, I think it was my third-grade teacher, she read a novel aloud to us at the end of the day if we got all of our work done, and the imagination of hearing a story being read aloud captured me. So, I became a very avid reader of novels, and mysteries especially. You know the whole thing, like the Hardy Boys or The Three Investigators series. I loved those, and in fact, when I was in high school, I wrote some mysteries for my friends. That was probably one of my favorite things to do.”

Bishop Beckman also loves “all forms of music,” noting that his family had eight-track tapes, a record player, and cassettes before CDs became available.

“I was a pop-music listener growing up as a kid,” he commented. “My dad loved country, so he listened to Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson, so I grew up hearing him play those songs from his pickup truck. Now, I love some of those songs. When I was a kid, I liked pop music more. And I’ll tell you, I was never drawn to bluegrass until I was teaching at Father Ryan, and one of the students invited me to their home for a Friday evening. Their family had invited a group of folks together to do live bluegrass music, and when I witnessed and experienced live bluegrass music for the first time, it sent chill bumps down my spine. I love bluegrass music and the Appalachian sound. And it’s Celtic in its origins, and my dad’s side of the family is both German and Irish; my grandmother was half Irish. My Mom’s side of the family is Italian. So, yes, I like all forms of music.”

In addition to their playing outside, the Beckman siblings had their fair share of household chores, too.

“Oh, yeah, we all had our chores to do, so we all helped with—when we got old enough—cutting the grass. One of us (boys), since the three of us were so close in age, we would rotate through lawn-care responsibilities. We would be on the riding mower or the push mower or clipping before Weed Eaters came along. We would rotate through those outdoor responsibilities. Then we had chores in the house like doing dishes, and we would rotate doing those kinds of things, washing dishes or drying or putting them away. We made our own beds, and we were expected to help with various things like that. We had a garden, we would help with the garden, either putting it in or helping weed it, that sort of thing,” he shared.

Bishop Beckman recalled a funny memory about doing household chores.

“My mom said we were going to start helping with dishes. We told her, me and my brothers, ‘Boys don’t do dishes.’ And we went over to a friend’s house that weekend, and he and his brother were doing the dishes in their house. Mom looked at us and said, ‘It looks like boys do dishes,’” he said with a laugh.

Growing up in the 1960s and ‘70s, Bishop Beckman commented that he sensed his parents “trusted us, and they gave us a pretty, I would say, a wide latitude of freedom growing up.”

“Of course, we were on the edge of town, you know, and everybody knew what everybody was doing. All the neighbors knew who we were, so I think it was a time when things were still very safe. I never had to have a curfew because I never came home that late,” he said.

During his junior and senior years of high school, Bishop Beckman worked his first job at the family business.

“My Dad’s dad, Pawpaw, started a sawmill in Lawrence County and a pallet-making shop called Beckman Lumber Co. It’s still operating. My grandfather started it. My Dad took it over when we were kids, and my brother Robbie took it over, and his son, Cain, is taking it over. So, it’s now in the fourth generation,” he said.

His tasks at the lumber company included feeding lumber into the saws, stacking pallets, and stapling the pallets together.

“That was my first real job. In those days, when we were juniors and seniors in high school, you could get a work release for the second half of the day. You had to fulfill your morning credit requirements, but you could do work-study in the afternoon. So, I worked my junior and senior years of high school for half a day at the mill during the school year and then also in the summertime. It was hard work physically. Most of it was fairly repetitive in nature, so the challenge for me was that I would be daydreaming about things,” he recalled with a laugh.

‘Being with God being with me’

Serious considerations for the priesthood first began when Bishop Beckman was a junior in high school.

“I mentioned that Father John Kirk was the pastor; he had been since I was in the seventh or eighth grade. The thing that struck me as a kid about him was that he seemed very prayerful, very close to God, but he was also very connected to us in the community. And he really had a great outreach to the youth, so he included me as an altar server for funerals,” the bishop said. “He took us out to the state park for outdoor Masses and hikes. He took us, by way of appreciation days, to the wave pool in North Alabama, to Opryland in Nashville. His connection with us and with God was so clear to me. I think that really planted the seed in me that, you know, if I could be that close to God and that close to people, I would love to be a priest. I think that was really the seed.”

When he was a high-school junior, one of Bishop Beckman’s homework assignments was to write a career commitment paper. He decided to write about becoming a biologist.

“I humorously said later, the only thing I knew at the end of the project was that I didn’t want to be a biologist, but I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do,” Bishop Beckman recounted. “And I prayed about it one night, and I opened the Bible at random, and it was the call of Jeremiah the prophet. And I felt that God was calling me to be a priest when I read that. So, I told Father Kirk about it, told my parents about it, and went to a retreat program they had in Nashville called The Search for Vocations and heard priests talk about their ministry. … And there were other juniors and seniors in high school from throughout Middle and East Tennessee at that time who were thinking about the priesthood, and many of those guys I ended up studying with at St. Ambrose in Davenport. That’s really how the seeds got planted for priesthood.”

While a senior in high school, Bishop Beckman visited seminaries and ultimately chose St. Ambrose College in Davenport, Iowa.

“The thing that drew me to St. Ambrose was it was a small liberal-arts Catholic college, so about 2,000 students at the time, and there was a seminary dorm on campus that had about 30 guys discerning their priesthood. I liked being part of a co-ed regular college experience and discerning priesthood together. That turned out, for me, to be a very healthy environment,” he pointed out.

After four years at St. Ambrose, Bishop Beckman received his bachelor’s degree in history. Then, from 1984-88 he attended the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium.

“It’s the oldest continuous running Catholic university in the world,” he noted. “Archbishop Fulton Sheen at one point studied there … some famous historical figures. And many of the professors that taught there were very instrumental in the work of the Second Vatican Council. That was one of the reasons I wanted to study there.”

After receiving his master’s degree in religious studies at Louvain, Bishop Beckman delayed his priestly ordination by two years.

“I was still discerning,” he said. “I should have been, was scheduled to be, ordained to the priesthood in the summer of 1988. The one big question in my mind at the time was would I be happy living a celibate life? I had a fear that I might have loneliness. After four years in Belgium, I wanted clarity about that. I asked Bishop Niedergeses if I could do a pastoral year as a deacon at a parish.”

He served as a deacon at St. Stephen Parish in Old Hickory and also taught at Father Ryan High School in Nashville. Upon completing that year of discernment, Bishop Beckman desired more time. Bishop Niedergeses gave him permission to take another year, and he was sent to Notre Dame High School in Chattanooga to teach religion.

“It was during that year that I got clarity, that God really was calling me, and I had peace about it,” Bishop Beckman explained. “And I remember, I think it was Tuesday of Holy Week or maybe a little before that, a little before Holy Week, I called Bishop Niedergeses and said, ‘I would like to meet with you next week to talk about being ordained to the priesthood.’ And he said, ‘Come to the cathedral rectory on Friday morning, April the 13th, Good Friday, and we will talk.’ And so, I thought, now what will I have to do because I delayed for two years? I thought, what is he going to ask me to do now to be ordained? But his first response when I called him was, ‘Praise be to Jesus Christ.’ Literally, he said that, ‘Praise be to Jesus Christ.’ And then when I walked into his office on April the 13th, he said, ‘You will be ordained three months from today on Friday, July 13, and that’s when I was ordained at the cathedral in Nashville.”

Because they are from the same hometown of Lawrenceburg, Bishop Beckman shared that he has always felt a “special bond with [Bishop Niedergeses].”

“He confirmed me in the eighth grade; he accepted me in the seminary; he was my bishop throughout seminary year; he ordained me as a priest (in 1990); and he was the first bishop that I had as a priest for the first two years. I always felt very close to him in that regard,” he said, noting that he used Bishop Niedergeses’ crosier for his episcopal ordination.

Since the beginning of his priestly service to the Catholic Church, Bishop Beckman said he had “absolute peace” about the decision after receiving the clarity he needed.

“I’ve never looked back. I jumped in,” he said. “I was given a dual role year one as associate pastor at Holy Rosary and teaching at Father Ryan High School. I loved teaching, so after my first year of priesthood I was full-time at the high school. In fact, after my first year they named me the associate principal for pastoral ministry. I quickly moved into pastoral administrative leadership in the school, so I taught and was a key administrator for five years. Loved working with high-school students.”

When he became a pastor in 1996 at St. Michael Parish in Cedar Hill, Bishop Beckman also was named the director of the youth office and the SEARCH high-school retreat program.

“For 13 years I continued to work, as one of my primary ministries, with high school students in SEARCH and youth leadership workshop. I would say the first 20 years of my priesthood were defined a lot by working with youth and teaching,” he said. “I loved that, still love teaching. Love teaching adults now.”

In 2002, he took a sabbatical and studied at Gonzaga University.

“Then, I was invited to become pastor of St. Matthew (in Franklin), which had about 1,100 or 1,200 households, and a new Catholic school had just started the year before. I loved that, loved going into that bigger parish. It was a thriving time, growing time in that community; really energized me, loved it, and after 13 years there I was asked to come … to St. Henry, which is twice the size of St. Matthew and the largest elementary school in the diocese (of Nashville). … Then, six or so years ago when Bishop (J. Mark) Spalding came, was asked to be the chairperson of our priest personnel board, so I’ve been helping at the diocesan level while being pastor.”

A lover of directed retreats in the style of St. Ignatius of Loyola, Bishop Beckman would describe himself as a “contemplative by nature.”

“I’m very drawn to the prayer of stillness, of simply sitting with God,” he shared. “I pray my Liturgy of the Hours. But a big chunk of my morning prayer is sitting in stillness with God, so that contemplative being with God being with me.”

During his episcopal ordination at the Knoxville Convention Center on July 26, a selected “Litany of Saints” was sung over the bishop and those in attendance.

“St. Ambrose has been an inspiration for me since I went to St. Ambrose in college and learned about his life as a bishop,” he said, explaining his choices for the litany. “Thérèse of Lisieux, I loved her Story of a Soul. When she said when she got to heaven she wanted to pray for priests, especially troubled priests, so when I am troubled about something I will turn to her. Love St. Francis of Assisi, but he’s already included in the regular litany, and then definitely the popes that have shaped the 20th century. John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul II have been inspirations to me in my priesthood.”

For his episcopal motto, Bishop Beckman chose “Jesus Christ Yesterday Today and Forever,” which derives from Hebrews 13:8.

“That was the first thing that really came clearly to me, and the guy who designs the crest said, ‘That’s probably too long.’ I was in a bit of turmoil about it and tried to think of some alternatives. I have a good friend that I went to seminary with who is really good with that sort of thing, so I sent him a list of things I was considering, and that was on the list, and I put in parentheses, ‘They told me that this one was probably too long.’ He e-mailed back and he said, ‘I think this is the strongest of them,’” Bishop Beckman shared.

“The first time I remember [the verse] being sung was at Holy Thursday Mass when I was pastor at St. Matthew, and it was while we were carrying the Eucharist out of the church at the end of Mass in solemn procession. I remember chills going down my spine and thinking, yes, we’re carrying Christ in the eucharistic procession, and He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. So, I introduced that Taizé chant at St. Henry, and we sang it again this Holy Thursday, equally moving to me. And the memory of that chant and the melody of it and the words came back to me as I was praying with what should my motto be.

“I thought, Jesus, it’s all about You. Everything is about You. That’s why I’m a priest, that’s why we’re Christians, and that’s why I want to be a bishop. For me, Jesus is the reason for everything. So, what else could I pick?” he said with a laugh.

As he enters into a new stage of life and service as the fourth shepherd of the Diocese of Knoxville, Bishop Beckman will reside at yet another Sacred Heart Parish; this time, a cathedral: the Cathedral of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus.

“There’s a bond there,” he said. “Going from a church that was Sacred Heart where I was baptized to one where I’ll be … bishop.”

Bishop Beckman mentioned that he is passionate about sharing two things in his new role.

“I am profoundly and deeply convinced that God loves every single one of us with an unconditional love. And I’m convinced that that is why He became human and died and rose from the dead for us. My passion is that every single person in the world would be able to know that,” he said. “Pope Francis wrote that document The Joy of the Gospel, but for me that is the heart of what we do as priests. We are witnesses in the lives of our people of the profound work of God in our lives, and we assist them in that sacramentally. Preaching the Gospel for me is … a joy and a delight. And for me the proclamation of the Gospel is awakening people to what God is doing in their lives. And so, for me, being a man of prayer, taking time to be alone with the Lord each day, doing my annual retreat and spending that sacred time with the Lord, that’s where I am reminded of who God is. And that gives me the vision, the gifts, and the grace that I need to help others to find that. So that’s been very important.”

“The second thing that’s been very important to me is a deep awareness about all human beings who are all wounded in some way,” he continued. “This is a fallen world, and because of the wounds of sin, every one of us needs the healing of the Lord. For me, being a healer is a very important part of what we as priests and bishops do. I feel very called to be present when people need pastoral counseling, spiritual direction, profound moments when they’ve lost a loved one, they’re approaching the hour of death. To me those are privileged moments that God is inviting us in to be a healer and to be a reminder of His presence in our lives. That gives me a great deal of passion.”

On a practical level, Bishop Beckman said the move from Nashville to Knoxville was “enormously challenging.”

“I’ve never moved this distance in my life since my 20s, so big move,” he said. “It’s a whole new life in a whole new city for me. And so, all the details of finishing up as a pastor of a very large parish, saying goodbye to people, and to prepare to move and to get ready for Knoxville. I’ve been on many Zoom calls; I’ve been copied on many e-mails; I’ve been on the phone with the secretary in Knoxville, so there are a million things to learn about, much information already that I’m trying to absorb, so that’s part of the process, just the sheer volume of preparing to try to hit the ground running. That’s been a big part of it.”

Bishop Beckman shared a poignant moment of his emotional journey after receiving the call to become a bishop.

“The day after I got the call to become a bishop, in the morning as I began to pray, I began to weep. I was thinking about saying goodbye to the people that I love here. Very hard,” he shared. “And it so happened that while I was praying, when I finished prayer, the archbishop called, Archbishop [Shelton J.] Fabre from Louisville. And he said, ‘How are you doing?’ And I told him, ‘I’m weeping.’ And he said, reconstructing from memory, something like, ‘I’m glad to hear that; you have to say goodbye well if you want to say hello well.’ That’s been very important to me to say goodbye well [in Nashville].”

“When you are a priest, and when you’re human, you connect with people; they matter in your life. And so, saying goodbye and transitioning, it brings a whole set of emotions of grief and sadness. I feel all of that while at the same time feeling the joy and excitement about going to a new place,” he noted.

“And one of the great things that gave me peace was when I arrived in Knoxville and began to see all of your faces and the joy on your faces that I had said yes. So, it really is the people, the diocese, when I arrived and the warm welcome I received so far and the happiness on the part of so many people, that has made me simultaneously joyful and excited about going to Knoxville and being bishop there. So, sadness, fear, and anxiety at times, but a great deal of hope and joy and excitement,” the bishop concluded.