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The Good Samaritan Revisited

By Gabe Garnica

 

 

One of the hallmarks of what I will call relentless holiness is the drive and desire to go steps beyond the convenient, obvious, and practical. Thus, we often heard how Padre Pio advised his flock to pray many decades of the Rosary daily instead of the perfunctory single decade. It is with this spirit that I suggest we revisit the famous story of the Good Samaritan ( Lk 10:25-37 ).

We are All Travelers

The victim in this famous parable is a traveler who has been robbed and lies beaten on the side of the road. I do not know about you, but I have not come across any beaten and robbed folks sprawled across the sidewalk lately. We would like to believe that most, if not all, of us would try to help such an unfortunate person in some way. One would like to think that we would prove those cynics who believe that technology does not help us be better people wrong by using our cell phones to call for help.

This all reminds me of speaking about the Fifth Commandment to Fourth Graders in Catechism class.  Left at face value, there would be nothing to talk about since these children are not usually involved in murder. However, one can tell them that mocking, gossiping, criticizing, and isolating people for sport murders their spirit and well-being and can kill their chances of overcoming adversity.  In the same way, let us consider that we come across many unfortunate travelers on our daily journey who are prime candidates for some Christ-like assistance.  Ultimately, we are all travelers on our journey through life and, hopefully, toward God.  If we fancy ourselves true followers of Christ, we will see many opportunities to be Good Samaritans helping those struggling around us.

A Tale of Two Real Estate Professionals

A famous line in the real estate industry is the value of location, location, location.  Given this mantra, we may ask where our priorities,  hearts, and compassion are located.  Are we truly willing to help others whenever possible or do we just love to say that we do?  Do we only help people for a price in money, fame, business, or some other immediate benefit we crave?  Do we wax poetic about serving Christ and bounce around pollinating our own agenda even as we look the other way when we can help a fellow traveler?  To illustrate these points, I submit the following story of two real estate professionals.

Adam is a successful real estate professional with a well-established portfolio of accomplishment in many avenues and facets of his field.   He has managed to develop both traditional success in investment and resale but has also managed to achieve in online, publishing, speaking, and marketing areas as well.  His story reads like a textbook guide to starting from little and achieving much. By all parameters and indicators Adam is a very successful person helping others achieve their dreams. Ben, on the other hand, is just starting out in the real estate arena. He clearly has talent and a desire to help others, but he has been unable to make the most effective networks much less gotten any help at all from established pros like Adam.

Realizing and eager to achieve, Ben reached out to Adam in the hopes that Adam would help him become established. Ben also wanted to write books and do presentations in his field as Adam had done and he figured that a little help from Adam could help him get his foot in the door.  Now Adam charged high fees from clients and others wishing to learn from his experience and knowledge.  He justified those fees by arguing that nobody had really helped him break in and knowledge does not come cheap.  Ben could not yet afford those fees and he really struggled with getting connections and building a network like Adam had managed to do.

Words are Cheap

Ben repeatedly asked Adam for help and made his intentions of achieving the kind of success Adam has clear, but Adam turned a blind eye to those overtures. At one point, Ben directly asked Adam to have Ben do a presentation as a warm up to one of Adam’s speaking engagements. Ben also asked Adam to help him get published.  Adam ignored all of these overtures, requests, and opportunities to help Ben.  At one point Ben even directly asked Adam to mentor him a bit to which Adam began shifting the conversation to taking on Ben as a client for a fee.  Adam often expressed great faith and confidence in Ben’s ability to succeed and achieve in the field they both shared but, ultimately, he did nothing to help Ben along.

Eventually, Ben had some success, but with much less impact and extent than Adam’s achievements. Despite this modest achievement, Ben did his best to help others like himself find their footing in the field. He mentored others and even invited some to speak at his speaking engagements in the hopes that they too, would find a following.  When asked why he was so willing to reach out to and help others succeed, Ben simply stated that he had been given a gift to help others but that gift would be lessened or tainted if he also did not use that gift to help others to help others moving forward.

Do Not Be a Smiling Hypocrite

Given the above two men, I ask you to consider which, Adam or Ben, is truly an example of what Christ meant by the Good Samaritan.  Which of these two men is truly using his gifts to help others and to make a difference in the world. Which of these is all talk and hot air and which truly tries to live the kind of selfless, generous, and compassionate help that the parable of the Good Samaritan entails?

My friends, do not drone on about how much you love and care for others unless you are willing to help others selflessly and generously. Do not wail on endlessly about how much faith and trust you have in others’ road to success unless you can honestly say that you tried to contribute to that success within the means of your ability to do so.  In short, be a Good Samaritan, do not just sell yourself as one.

 

2019   Gabriel Garnica

 

Read all posts by Gabe Garnica Filed Under: Catechism, Catholic Spirituality, Discernment, Evangelization, Featured, loving the poor, Scripture, Technology, Values, Vocations Tagged With: Gabriel Garnica, Luke 10:25-37

The Silence of Christmas Speaks Loud and Clear

By Gabe Garnica

 

 

In his wonderful book, The Power of Silence: Against The Dictatorship of Noise, Cardinal Robert Sarah tells us

Without silence, God disappears in the noise. And this noise becomes                                                             all the more obsessive because God is absent. Unless the world rediscovers silence,                                        it is lost.

We might rightly ask, what does Cardinal Sarah mean by silence and noise?  The answer, my friends, is all around us right now.  Cardinal Sarah refers to silence as that environment by which we can encounter God, Who is Divine Silence. Only by placing ourselves in the silence that is God can we ever hope to hear Him in our hearts, minds, and souls.  I was once told that God always answers our prayers but that we often are not listening or do not want to listen to His answer.

If God is true silence, then what is this noise that we speak of?  Is it the sirens and whistles that invade our daily lives?  Is it the clamoring of crowds and busy streets?  Is it the blare of alarm clocks and bells that dictate our hypnotizing routine toward ends we may no longer even know?

For Cardinal Sarah, noise is anything which distracts us from God, and so that kind of noise is far beyond the sounds that disrupt our quiet moments of meditation and reflection. We all have our favorite sounds and songs. Some love a bubbling brook or birds chirping. Others enjoy the sounds of a forest or soft background music.  Ultimately, inevitably, sounds surround us with such frequency and intensity that we become oblivious to their power over us. The loud sounds of a factory or office fade into the distance the longer one works in those environments. Eventually, we internalize those sounds so that they become part of who we are and, for that matter, part of who we become to others. If we allow this world to become our priority, we will invariably allow the sounds of this world to become the background music of that priority.

Faced with such variety of sounds, we indirectly choose which will become noise and which will remain simply sounds.  Sounds are those things that we hear through our ears, but noises are those sounds that we hear through our minds, hearts, and souls which distract and even distance us from God.  Most people will agree that alarm bells, whistles, busy streets, and bustling workplaces by themselves do not really distract us from God.  I do not necessarily distance myself from God when I hear an alarm clock or enter a busy office.

So when do sounds become noise for us?  For many of us, a sound becomes a noise when it is annoying, unpleasant, unwanted, or distracting, and that is a valid, earthly view of noise.  Earthly noise inspires us to escape, avoid, or distance ourselves from the source of that noise.   Listening to songs or music that we do not like is often noise to us because we do not find these pleasant or to our liking. In fact, things we do not understand, care about, or relate to often become simply noise to us.

However, for Cardinal Sarah, the worst kind of noise is that which pushes us away from God and what God is about.  This noise is contradictory to the love and essence of what God truly is.  The silence of God is not found in criticism, judgment of others, gossip, vulgarity, arrogance, or mockery.  Neither is this divine silence found in idle, useless talk about superficial things.

As we proceed through our yearly Christmas journey, we may ask ourselves if this journey has become a mundane routine, a robotic ritual, or a remote control duty to fulfill.  Do we do Christmas or do we truly experience its  essence?  Do we treat Christmas like some shopping list to finish or do we embrace Christmas as a beautifully profound opportunity to re-connect with what really matters?

There is nothing inherently wrong with Christmas music, shopping, decorations, parties, family gatherings, and all of the exciting preparations we make each year as long as we do not allow these things to define Christmas for us and therefore distance us from God. The sounds of Christmas become the noise of Christmas to the extent that we forget Christ as a result.  There was a time when celebrating Christmas and getting closer to God went hand and hand.  That time is past and lost.  We are surrounded by a word and society  immersed in very temporary, superficial, distracting, and even destructive spiritual noise.  We live in a world which no longer inspires us toward God but, sadly, seems to make every effort to drag us away from Him. Whether this world succeeds in that effort is up to each of us.

God is Divine Silence, but He speaks to each of us loud and clear if we are willing to listen.  We encounter Him in our prayer, in our kindness and love toward others, and in the eyes of the fragile elderly,  frightened sick, confused young, and marginalized homeless. If we engage in the daily struggle to push away this world’s noise and simply listen to God’s divine, not-so-silent call, we can  encounter the child Jesus on that silent night each and every day of the year.

 

2018  Gabriel Garnica

Read all posts by Gabe Garnica Filed Under: Catholic Spirituality, Culture, Featured, loving the poor, Prayer, Social Justice, Spiritual Warfare Tagged With: Cardinal Robert Sarah, Gabriel Garnica, noise, silence, The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise

Love For God = Love For Neighbor

By Sherine Green

Last Sunday’s Gospel Mark 12:28-34, is a challenge for us to examine what it means to love the other and also what it means to love our God.

In 2018, we have many opportunities to love with all our mind, heart and strength. The challenge is to prayerfully reflect,  find and take advantage of the opportunities to love the poor, the victimized, the lonely, the sick, the orphaned, the immigrant and the marginalized.

How can we practically love God and not know our neighbor: their suffering, their pain, their fear? The gospel challenges us to do what’s right, help others even when it’s inconvenient or difficult for us, and to be a blessing in another’s life!

Teach Love for All People

  • To love another is to get to know them through the outstretched arms of Jesus.
  • To get to know another means it will take much energy, much strength, much of our heart to deepen and solidify that relationship.
  • To help another means vulnerability has to be offered to those we meet. It is in relationship building that we understand what it means to love: in the gifts and the challenges; through the hard stuff of life. In the circumstance of pain, we are called to love others in their own suffering; we are called to love in the moments of joy.

Bring Friends and Those We Meet From Different Backgrounds Together

  • What if your dinner table at Thanksgiving could include people from many faith groups or religious groups?
  • What if we could serve love and offer hope to another person in need of hope?

 Volunteer: Serve the Poor

  • Each year we embark on a mission trip to a mission organization called Mustard Seed. In our encounter with the poor, we become wrapped up in their joys and pain.
  • Loving God and neighbor is a challenge to volunteer, to serve the poor and to receive the blessings of the poor as well.

Visit Places of Desperation

  • Visit prisons, detention centers, hospitals, impoverished urban cities, or rural areas.
  • Join mission trips to Third and Fourth World Countries

Theological Reflection

What does it mean to love God?

What does it mean to love our neighbor as ourselves?

How do we love our neighbors near and far: ones who are like us and ones who are not like us?

 Ponder

Love for God and love for neighbor is our Catholic response to all who we will encounter today.

Read all posts by Sherine Green Filed Under: Catholic Spirituality, Evangelization, Featured, High School, loving the poor, Scripture, Social Justice, Sunday's Gospel Tagged With: Gospel reflection, service

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