Amazing Catechists

Teaching and learning the faith together

Following Christ is a Series of Commitments

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In the Gospel reading for Sept. 8, Jesus tells us that truly following Him requires a series of continuous commitments.  But for many, such commitments are simply a bridge too far.

The commitments Jesus lists include “hating” our family, bearing our cross, and planning our path (LK 14:25-33).  Christ is telling us that following Him requires sacrifice, suffering, dedication, commitment, dedication, and planning.  This teaching ties back to previous readings where Jesus tells us we need to be humble (LK 14:7-14) and that we should strive to enter the kingdom through the narrow door (LK 13:22-30).

Following Christ

Many people are ‘turned off’ by the word “hate” in this reading.   But as Msgr. Charles Pope explains, “The use of the word “hate” here does not mean that we are to have contempt for others or to nourish unrighteous anger toward them. Rather, this is a Jewish idiom. For some reason, the Hebrew language has very few comparative words such as more/less and greater/ fewer . . .  So, what Jesus means is that we cannot prefer anyone or anything to Him.”

Our Lord was merely telling us that following Him must be our primary mission in this life, above all other commitments and missions. The ironic part of this concern is that the word “hate” is one of a litany of words so thrown about in our modern speech that it has somehow undergone a diabolic distortion.

Today this word is often used as a weapon of political, social, and media manipulation.  If an opponent does not agree with us, we call them a hater.  If anyone dares to express reservations regarding others’ actions and attitudes, we call them a hater.  Pretty soon, we will resort to calling anyone who gets in our nerves a hater. In this superficial and often lazy society, the mainstream media has taken over the mantle of description and perception of reality. Whomever the media calls a hater is, in fact, a hater.  No further explanation or justification necessary!

Some ‘Hatred’ is Actually Required

In truth, to hold Christ above everything else in our lives, we must develop a hatred, an aversion, or at least a disregard for anything and anyone who dares to stand in our way toward Christ. That of course includes sin but, beyond that, it includes not allowing the ingredients of sin to fester in our daily lives. Things such as resentment, bitterness, revenge, lust, and jealousy, for example, cannot be allowed to become squatters in our hearts, minds, and souls lest they become permanent squatters and, eventually, possessors of who we are.

Any strong feeling toward someone or something implies a passion or a love for that person or thing.  Likewise, any strong aversion or hatred for someone or something implies a total distaste and a commitment to avoid and distance ourselves from that person or thing.  Unless we find sin, toxic things, and toxic people revolting, we will leave ourselves vulnerable to those very sins, things, and people.  Ultimately, unless someone or something brings us closer to Christ, we must push that person or thing away on our journey and mission to help ourselves and others toward Christ.

Following Christ is About Genuine Sacrifice

While we have all heard that we carry our crosses in order to follow Christ, many of us brush this challenge off.  We have not seen too many folks hanging from crosses in our neighborhoods lately. We think of crucifixion as an ancient and primitive torture and punishment.  So we do not take it too seriously in our so-called enlightened world.  We do, however, understand that carrying our crosses means being willing to suffer and sacrifice.  But many of us now equate this with not eating chocolate during Lent.

In truth, the level and kind of sacrifice and suffering that we must equate with carrying our cross has never been watered down since Calvary. What has often been diluted, however, is our perception of what that cross actually means.  This is not about sacrificing chocolate or high fat diets.  It is about pushing away the false values and superficial concerns of this world. It is about placing Christ above anything this world promises and, in fact, above ourselves and our own personal agenda.

Following Christ Cannot Be an Accident

This reading also reminds us that following Christ cannot be an accident or a coincidence.   Being a follower of Christ is a serious and profound commitment.  We cannot possibly turn that dedication into a whimsical fancy to be followed only on odd days or whenever we are in the mood.

Our Lord compares this to building a serious structure or responding to a serious military situation.  If we seriously want to build something of value or be a soldier for any worthwhile cause, we do some serious planning.  Then we must dedicate ourselves to that which we plan to build or fight for.

We must also note that this building and fighting does not, however, imply random, headstrong, or mindless full-speed-ahead thinking.  We must be willing to take a step back, to pause, to assess our strengths and weaknesses, and to adjust our original plans. Temporary retreat is often the best response to immediate obstacles and setbacks if one is to obtain ultimate, long-term success.

Failure to Plan

In truth, sin is the result of accidental thinking.  When we do not plan, we fail to prepare. We fall to the whims of human weakness and nature. In our quest for Christ it can truly be said that if we fail to prepare, we prepare to fail.

If we consider the temporary shine of sin threatening our eternal salvation, we begin to get a sense of just how foolish and mindless sin really is. Assuming that we actually care and want to save our souls, then it makes absolutely no sense to lose that treasure by committing any sin.  Yet we do it every day.

Sin is the epitome of foolishness and of stupidity.  Yet we engage in such stupidity all the time. Are we, in fact, stupid?  No, we are just weak;.  And that weakness causes us to accidentally slip into the utter failure of sin.

My meaning here is that God has given each of us enough intelligence and common sense to realize that sin is the ultimate stupidity.  However, He has also given us freedom of choice. So too often we choose to be stupid and vulnerable to our own human weakness.

If we would approach every day like an intelligent and careful builder or a general constructing our path to Christ and confronting the forces that pull us away from Him, our God-given gifts would put us on the path to eternal salvation. Sadly, we tend to stumble through each day, oblivious to the forces that threaten us.  And we inadvertently build our eternal resume on flimsy ground.

Christ’s Lesson

Ultimately, if we do not put Christ above everyone and everything else, we are putting ourselves above Christ.  If we are not willing to fully sacrifice and suffer for Christ, we are also putting ourselves above Christ.  All sin is about putting ourselves above Christ.  If we fail to plan and prepare to do what we have to do to follow Christ and serve God with our God-given gifts, we are again putting ourselves above Christ.

Given all of this, this Gospel reading is really telling us that reaching eternal salvation means putting away our mirrors and stopping our fascination with ourselves above Christ.  Following Christ is about keeping our eyes on the prize and that prize is not a selfie.

 

Are You a Yada Yada Catholic?

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The phrase Yada yada has been around for a long time, with varied origins proposed, but the phrase’s popularity was re-ignited by a 1997 episode of the Seinfeld sitcom.  The double use of yadda implies a shorthand way of fast-forwarding boring or expected parts of life or speech. It is literally the equivalent of et cetera or blah blah.

For example, a student might tell her absent classmate, “The professor did her usual lecture on the scientific method, yada yada, and then she cancelled class early.” The implication is that the yada yadapart is the usual, mundane, unimportant, and/or redundant stuff already experienced by the parties involved.  The idea is that such parts are so predictable that repeating them is a waste of time since people could figure out what was implied anyway.

Part of the irony and attempt at humor was that one party thought that Yada yada was appropriate, practical, and self-explanatory in a given context and the other party was only further confused by the phrase.  Rather than save everyone a lot of thought, the phrase only threw the confused party into a sea of unanswered questions and unsure assumptions.  A life immersed only in the secular can often be a paradox of such ironic tragedy in the midst of patronizing presumption. Such a life is pulled between satisfying flimsy and changing societal conventions and trying to grasp effective and fulfilling self-perceptions.  We are often pulled between satisfying others and ourselves by a society that idolizes popularity and self at the same time. Like the townspeople pretending that the naked Emperor is wearing clothes, we are often too obsessed with looking right to do what is truly right.

Yada Yada Catholics

I am fairly certain that this might be the first use of Yada yada to describe Catholics, so embrace my pioneering spirit. As I see it, many of us might be tempted to fast-forward, assume, practicalize, and short-hand our Faith. Why would we do this?  Perhaps, whether we admit it or not, we have allowed our Faith, or at least our perception and experience of it, to grow stale, mundane, predictable, and even boring.  We have lost the transcendent power and meaning of our beliefs and practices to the point where we now see the practice of our faith as nothing more than commercials we want to fast-forward through on the DVR of our lives. This tragedy explains parents missing mass with their kids in order to take them to swim meets and soccer games.  It explains folks treating the most Blessed Sacrament as nothing more than a weekly white cookie.  It explains hordes of Catholics too ignorant about what their Faith is about to explain much less defend it.

The Five Culprits of Catholic Yada Yada

I believe that there are many reasons for Catholic Yada yada, but the five main ones are, in no particular order:  1) Ignorance   2) Distraction  3) Arrogance  4) Defiance and 5) Distance.

Thanks to a diluted and sometimes distorted religious education system, many Catholics have been raised increasingly ignorant of core Catholic beliefs and the relative importance and centrality of those beliefs.  Many Catholics, for example, do not know, understand, or care about the Divine Presence.

Secondly, modern society embodies so many distractions, from technology to twisted values, that many Catholics are easily confused and readily blend truth with subjective whim and myth. Third and fourth, current social values promote and foment rampant personal arrogance and defiance against any absolute moral code.  Morality is what each person defines as morality.  Anyone who even attempts to guide others toward ethical behavior is labeled an intolerant and divisive threat to society.  It is troubling that increasing numbers of Catholics stubbornly and cluelessly latch unto distorted, warped, and very subjective interpretations and applications of their Faith.

We see scores of Catholics encouraged and convinced that attending a wedding between two divorced Catholics without annulments is acceptable to “maintain the peace” and exhibit “love and acceptance”.  Finally, all of these things and more cause many Catholics to grow distant from their faith.  Their beliefs become nothing more than distant relatives they admit to being related to but barely know.  All too often, many Catholics become Peter at the fire warming himself while Christ, their Faith, is interrogated.  We too may deny Christ many times through our words, actions, and omissions merely to avoid trouble and criticism.

The Surprising Meaning of Yada and Its Implications

The most surprising part of my preparation for this piece was the discovery that a single Yada is a Hebraic word meaning a knowing dedication and sharing often based on love, mercy, and justice which is often referenced in the Old Testament. The obvious question is how can such a beautiful and positive word suddenly become so negative and dismissive when doubled?  I think that the answer may lie in the idea that we often take what is most important for granted out of convenience, impatience, and a warped search for what I will call external novelty.

The process by which this terrible thing happens might begin with expecting core, profound, and central ideas to continually inspire and radiate their own wonder. Rather than embracing our responsibility to cultivate and refresh the wonder of the most transcendent, we tend to sit back and expect the transcendent to entertain and inspire us.  It is almost as if we have come to equate greatness with the innate ability to generate greatness without any effort or participation on our part.  A fantastic health speaker may provide us with a wonderful diet and exercise strategies, but our health will not improve unless we take, apply, and make those ideas work in our lives. Similarly, we are the hands of Christ in this world, not merely his audience eating popcorn and waiting for the next miracle or magic trick.

We tend to exhibit the obnoxious trio of lazy impatience leading to an obsession with finding the most convenient path to anything.  In our rush to get to the next great thing which is often not that great at all, we tend to overlook the very greatness right under our noses.  Ultimately, we seek external novelty, automatically assuming that new is better and new must come from outside of what is presently before us.  In this context,  the Hebraic Yada’s power and beauty are dismissed when we lump all of the Yadas in our lives into a convenient pile while impatiently looking elsewhere for the freshness and wonder we already have before us if we only care to look.  Many Catholics, for example, are too distracted with the cares of the day to truly consider the majesty of the Divine Presence. Similarly, many folks go the bathroom exactly during the elevation of the Eucharist at the Offertory. Lastly, how many Catholics truly consider that we are just as present at the Last Supper, Passion, Death, and Resurrection of our Lord as the Apostles were when we attend mass?  For far too many Catholics, the Holy Mass has conveniently become a weekly social ritual.

One Yada is Enough

Given what we know about the meanings of Yada as opposed to Yada yada, we can perhaps conclude that one Yada is more than enough when it comes to our Faith.  We must see our Faith as a knowing dedication to Christ and sharing of that dedication with others in love, mercy, and justice.  That view, however, invites us to continually seek the internal novelty of ways by which we may practice and apply such dedication, sharing, love, mercy, and justice. The answer does not lie in the society and world around us, for to believe so would imply that the value of our Faith is dependent upon this world and its values.  Rather, the beauty and power of our faith are to be found within the Faith itself and our ability to discover, extract, and apply what we find to a needy world.  We cannot be lazy observers of our own Faith merely waiting to be entertained while continually handcuffing our beliefs to the whimsical chains of this world. Rather, it is our duty, mission, and purpose to draw out from our Faith the necessary tools to both glorify God and bring Christ to everyone we meet.

One Yada is enough because one Yada tells us all we need to know and use to follow Christ.  Once we let this world convince us that it has the prescription to improve our Faith, we will become Yada yadaCatholics who think that convenience, entertainment, external novelty, and compromise will ever bring us closer to our Faith much less to Christ.  The internal novelty of our Faith is simply its transcendent ability to provide us with new insights and applications through Christ and his example. By necessity, any external novelty will be subject to the superficial and distorted values of this world.  Ultimately, when it comes to the Yada in our Faith, less is more!

2019   Gabriel Garnica

This Lent Crucify Your Despair to Christ’s Cross of Hope

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Scripture teaches us the difference between despair and hope in the persons and reactions of Judas and Peter. Peter denied even knowing Our Lord three times, felt great sorrow over his actions, and sought Christ’s mercy in loving, selfless, surrender to the Hope synonymous with Divine Mercy ( Mk 14:66-72). Judas, however, wallowed in self-pity and despair, too obsessed with self to fathom that Christ would or could forgive his sin and perhaps so proud that he preferred guilt over redemption and death over humility and contrition for his sin ( Mt 27:4-5).

Join the Club

I have often heard comparisons between Peter and Judas in terms of how they each betrayed Jesus, but only recently did I really consider just how large this betrayal club really is.  After all, did not all of the apostles, except for John, betray Jesus.  Running for the hills and scurrying under the bed when your friend and loved one is in trouble is not exactly loyalty and dedication. Did not half or more of the people in Jerusalem betray Jesus as well?  After all, they welcomed him with open arms less than a week earlier and gladly accepted his miracles curing their various ills only to either turn on him at the slightest suggestion or cower in corners as he was led to his most unjust death.  Don’t we all, in fact, betray Our Lord every time we pompously pump our chests declaring total allegiance to him only to pathetically fall for the same tired sinful script which has brought us down in the past?  Common sense, and human nature, would indicate and dictate that the club of Jesus betrayers reads more like the universal phone book than anything else. Sure, Judas messed up big time. However, he was clearly too self-obsessed to look at Our Lord in humble contrition and simply allow Christ’s Divine Mercy to defeat even the greatest of sin.  Simply put, Judas preferred to die with self than to die to self and actualize everything Jesus had taught him over the previous three years.

The Comfort of Despair

You may wonder how despair can ever be comfortable.  Do we not associate despair with extreme stress and crushing  hopelessness?  Yes, we do, yet I suggest to you that we often prefer such stress and hopelessness because it both fits our secular model of self and selfish model of resolution on our terms.  We only feel hopelessness and despair when we wallow in our own situation as compared to the situation we envision for ourselves instead.   Who feels greater hopelessness, the student who sees everyone else getting As in math while he fails or the one surrounded by failures just like himself? Satan wants us to focus on how we fall below the standards that Christ calls for us. He wants us to become immersed in just how we fall below everyone else and simply give up.  Christ, however, wants us to focus on how merciful and loving he can be and how we can believe in that mercy and love and get up when there are hundreds of reasons not to.

However, despair is comfortable despite its pain. It fits our secular and self model of martyrdom in self.  Look at my pain and sorrow, feel my stress and emptiness, and taste my hopeless situation. It is all about me and my pain and suffering.  Despair is convenient. Once we despair, we have a ready and willing excuse for drowning in self-pity and doubt. Loving God and following Christ, however, is not about feeling this world’s comforts.  If anything, this world makes such love and service very hard. Therein, however, lies the value of rejecting the comfort of despair.      We see and feel the ready-made excuse of hopelessness that the devil gleefully offers to us and push away from it in favor of reaching out to a God this world ignores, mocks, patronizes, and disrespects regularly.

The Discomfort of Hope

Again, here we see an ironic reversal of the expected.  How can hope be uncomfortable?  Is not hope synonymous with comfort, convenience, satisfaction, and relief?  Would we not rather have hope than be without it?  The true answer is yes and no.  If we buy into Christ’s message of trust, love, service, and mercy, then hope is everything. However, if we subconsciously or consciously buy into this world’s message of self, excuses, and taking the easy way out,  hope is a heavy burden to bear.  With hope comes accountability, responsibility, expectation, and even demands.  How?  Which team is expected to fight hardest to win a game, the one down by one point or the one down by twenty points? Nobody expects anything from a team down by too many points to have a chance and many, if not most, would not be too critical of that team mailing it in the rest of the game and giving up.

Compare this, however, with a team down by one single point giving up a game and one can see how the reaction would be so much harsher.  Giving up when there is still hope is considered cowardice. Giving up when there is no hope is considered surrender.  Refusing to give up even when there is little or not hope is considered noble and even heroic. Hope is indeed a cross to bear for anyone embracing it. The difference is that those whose hope lies in trusting Christ believe that their hope is both justified and practically assured of fulfillment.  By contrast, those whose hope lies in trusting self are prone to the doubts and weakness of the human condition.  In both cases, there are potentially crushing expectations.  For those hopeful in Christ, however, that heavy cross is borne with the support and inspiration of Our Lord’s example.  Those hopeful only in themselves, others, or this world will bear the heavy burden of expectations alone.

True Hope in Christ is Surrender to Love and Mercy

The Via may be Dolorosa, but the ultimate reward is so great that any pain on the way is more than justified.  Lent and Calvary call on each of us to push away the easy excuses, the ready-made rationales, and the convenient surrenders to human nature and the values of this world. We each have the opportunity to pick up the cross of  hope in Christ and turn it into the final resting place of our despair.  We can nail that despair and hopelessness to the hope that Our Lord offers to each of us.  Divine Mercy is the transcendent assurance that no sin or sinner is beyond the hope of Christ.  The devil is the pathetic purveyor of the lie that reaching for Christ is an exercise in hopeless futility.

It is truly ironic that the devil, the prince of self, happily offers each of us the easy excuse that we have no hope in saving ourselves. Lifting ourselves in the hope of Christ’s Divine Mercy should be an easy fulfillment of our loving trust in Our Lord.  This world, however, paints that hope as a burden too heavy for our defective and weak shoulders to bear. Once we surrender to this world’s distorted sense of hope, despair is the ready substitute. The second irony lies in the fact that despair only brings more despair as it pushes us further into the slippery slope of sin.

In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus asked those arresting him “Whom are you seeking?” ( Jn 18:7).  That is a question which each of us must answer for ourselves. If we surrender to and embrace Christ’s example of love and mercy, we will find a true hope in Christ on which we may nail our despair forever.  However, if we are merely seeking ourselves, we will be enslaved by that despair forever as well.

2019  Gabriel Garnica

The Silence of Christmas Speaks Loud and Clear

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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

This Just In: God Wants Us to Re-Gift!

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The recent Gospel on the poor widow’s mite ( MK 12: 38-44) reminds us that loving God means giving Him everything we have at all times.  The 3 poorest folks in Christ’s time were the handicapped, beggars, and widows. Given this reality, many would snicker at any poor widow foolish enough to give what little she had to corrupt men running a corrupt temple. However, we might do well to consider three valuable lessons from this Gospel and the widow’s example.

Keep Your Eyes on God and Nowhere Else

The widow must have been a pathetic sight in the eyes of a superficial and judging world. Clearly destitute and likely desperate looking, she must not have inspired much admiration to earthly eyes. Many in her state would have been too ashamed or too self-conscious to even approach the place of offering. However, this woman only had eyes for God and nobody else.  Inspired by a true love of her Lord, she merely wanted to express that love in some tangible way. Needing every coin she could get her hands on, she nevertheless trusted that God would provide as she sacrificed.

One thinks of Cain murdering Abel (Gen 4:1-8) because Abel gave his best to God while Cain did not and resented God being more pleased with Abel’s total giving. Abel gave God his best because God is all that mattered to him.  By contrast, Cain clearly loved himself more than he loved God because he kept his best for himself. Likewise, one is reminded of Abraham preparing to offer his only son Isaac simply because God asked him to do so (Gen 22:1-19).  What greater love, obedience, faith, and trust can one have than to be willing to offer one’s only child to please God? My youngest daughter is mystified that God would ask anyone to do such a thing, but I have told her that it was all a test and Abraham passed with flying colors.  Abraham’s willingness makes sense if one keeps one’s eyes on God. However, the more we let our gaze stray toward this world, the more absurd Abraham’s actions appear to us. Keep your eyes on God because He is all good, all just, and all loving–and let your faith and love do the rest!

God Will Multiply Our Humility and Subtract Our Arrogance

Let us note God’s majestic irony!  Abraham offered his only son and God rewarded his obedience by multiplying his descendants.  The boy offered Christ his only food of five loaves and two fish and Our Lord rewarded his unselfishness with food for everyone (Jn 6: 9-14). Now, that boy brought that food either for himself or to sell it to a hungry crowd. Either way, he scrapped his self-interest to serve God and set the stage for a miracle of multiplication.

If God blesses our humble offerings, we may expect Him to reject arrogance and self-interest. In the case of the poor widow’s offering, we note that Christ dismissed the ample offerings of the rich and scribes as so much empty self-affection.  Again, no matter how much we give, if our intentions are merely to look good or appear holy, that giving is not genuine and sincere but self-interested and superficial.  We should only seek to impress God and, even then, more with our motives and actions than with our mere words.

Over 140 years ago, a little, poor Philadelphia girl named Hattie May Wiatt discovered that her church needed a larger Sunday school building to accommodate the many children who were unable to fit into the smaller structure that existed then. She wanted to do something to help but, sadly, died very soon afterward. Her mother gave the pastor Hattie’s purse containing 57 cents (the equivalent of     $15 dollars today) which little Hattie had saved to help.  Moved by her unselfish and humble generosity, the pastor informed the congregation.  Soon, newspapers spread the news of this little girl’s actions, inspiring many donors. As a result, not only a larger Sunday School, but also a hospital and an expansion of Temple University resulted. From this little, innocent girl’s unselfish love of God’s Word, a multiplication miracle occurred.

God Has Given Each of Us The Right Gifts to Offer

As a New Yorker, I have seen just about everything.  One day, a man entered a subway I happened to be taking to work and began singing. He was easily the worst singer I have ever heard.  Now he was clearly trying to sing well, but his voice was just terrible.  The people began giving him money, so he would go away. Despite his hefty haul that afternoon, I would argue that this man was not offering the right gift to others.  I am fairly certain that my singing would make that poor man sound like Frank Sinatra but, thankfully, God has given me a few gifts to offer back to Him and others. I can write, speak, and teach well enough to offer these to Our Lord, and I will continue to try my best to offer these humble offerings. I know that I have a long way to go and that I need to keep trying harder, but I am ready to keep up the effort as best I can.

We all have a responsibility to discern what gifts God has given us.  We all then have a responsibility to figure out ways to offer these gifts for the love and service of God and others in that order. Any gifts we use merely for ourselves, much less to harm others or ignore God, are not fulfilling God’s purpose. The right gifts, then, are those gifts clearly given to us by God based on our talents and aptitudes. People who cannot stand the sight of blood are not called upon to be doctors, and folks who hate math are clearly not called to be engineers. However, all of us are called to serve God through the gifts He has given each of us.

Our duty as children of God can best be summarized by one of my favorite saints, St. Therese, “The Little Flower,” who once said that one’s goal must be to present oneself before God with empty hands because one has given away all of God’s blessings to others.  This great, humble, yet profound saint also said that when one loves, one does not calculate.  Let us each love God and others so much that we do nothing but offer our talents and gifts in service and love leaving all calculations and judgments to God Almighty.

2018  Gabriel Garnica

 

The Sinner and The Hypocrite are Not Twins

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https://atheisttochristian.wordpress.com/2012/12/11/the-prodigal-son-reflections-on-teaching/

The Struggle Is Real

William Gurnall once stated, “While the Christian commits a sin he hates it; whereas the hypocrite loves it while he forbears it.” We have all felt the frustration of falling into sin the same day as attending Mass or praying.  The truth is that we all play many positive and not so positive roles in our daily spiritual lives. If you are anything like I am, you unwittingly focus more on the negative roles than the positive ones. You may tend to beat yourself up more for the slips than celebrating the wins.

That is not what Christ is all about. Surely, he wants us to see our faults. However, Jesus also wants us to be uplifted by our accomplishments as well. In fact, one of those accomplishments can often be gaining clarity amidst our stumbles. Such was the case when I called myself a hypocrite during confession. The priest gently corrected me, pointing out that hypocrites pretend to be something they are not while sinners merely fall. Hypocrites are liars and sinners, whereas sinners are usually not liars and hypocrites. Sinners fall a lot in a feeble effort to pursue his example of love and service.

Falling Is Not Hypocrisy

Do not consider yourself a hypocrite because you are a sinner. Rather, consider yourself the beneficiary of such a loving God that your sins can be washed away by your sincere desire to improve out of love. Do not scrupulously obsess over your falls. Rather, embrace the gift of hope and immerse yourself in the sea of love and mercy which Christ offers to all of us who fall on a daily basis.  The devil wants you to wallow in shame, frustration, doubt, despair, and hopelessness.

Shed yourself of these negative and self-destructive lies. Christ chose you to glorify God despite your imperfection because he knew that there was greatness beneath your falls.  Remember that Saul lost an S and gained a P in his name precisely through his greatest fall and proceeded to change the world. Remember that Paul fell because God loved him and wanted his greatness to emerge from that fall. We all have greatness just waiting to be discovered through our falls.

Hypocrisy Is Conscious Pretense

The person who pretends to be impartial while secretly favoring one side over another is a hypocrite. Individuals who pretend to love animals while secretly abusing them are hypocrites. People who pretend to follow Christ while promoting everything he spoke against act hypocritically. However, a common misconception in our society, especially among those who bash Catholics and Christians in general, is to call anyone who preaches following in the example of Christ while falling far from that example a hypocrite. It is not hypocrisy to promote and aspire to a standard and conduct one fails to obtain for oneself.

One’s imperfection (which we all possess) does not, therefore, tarnish, diminish, or destroy the virtue and value of one’s message of virtue. It is hypocrisy, however, to consistently promote a message which one consciously and purposefully rejects or ignores. The sin is not in failing to live up to one’s own message or supposed standards but, rather, in consciously rejecting that message and standard for oneself while applying it to others.

Many today turn this issue into a political one, conveniently bashing opponents and defending their own side regarding hypocrisy claims. Some of these even argue that this is all about a failure to self-reflect. I suggest that we begin by separating the validity and virtue of the message from its imperfect messengers. I also suggest that we distinguish between consciously pretending to that which one is not versus merely promoting a message one often fails to uphold through one’s own imperfection.

Scriptural Perspective

Many cite the Bible which speaks on the evil of judging others and pointing imperfect fingers (Mt 7:1-5) and of seeing oneself as better than another (Lk 18:11-12). Another point is judging over small matters while ignoring much more important issues (Mt 23:23).  Ultimately, hypocrisy is found where one holds different standards for oneself than others (Rm 2:21-22),  boasts outwardly or does things merely for show (Mt 6:2), holds others’ imperfections as proof of their supposed inferiority, or says one thing for outward appearance while internally believing something else (Ps 12:2).  Hypocrisy exists where one has no sincere intention to change and even a desire to define one’s own standards apart from God’s (Rm 10:3).

A common thread in the Bible’s views on hypocrisy is that it is insincere and self-righteous.  The sinner who sincerely aspires to and promotes that which he falls short of but never stops struggling to reach is not a hypocrite. The key issues are sincere intent and attempt as well as humble reflection and admission of imperfection. Hypocrites possess outward superficiality with no intent or attempt to change.

In the course of my teaching, I am often called upon to teach students the principles of logic and reasoning. One of the most common errors in this area is thinking that a good message is faulty or useless simply because the messenger is imperfect or even contradicts the very message he or she is conveying. Smoking causes cancer whether or not the one telling us so actually smokes.  If imperfection disqualified us from bringing Christ to others, all of us including all saints would have to find another purpose in life. Our Lord knew all too well that he was gathering from imperfect ranks.

The Best Teachers Are Those Who Have Fallen

One of my many hats is tutoring people on how to pass the Bar Exam. Most students are shocked when I inform them that I failed the Bar Exam three times before finally passing it! After all, they reason, why would anyone admit to failing that which they now propose to help another pass? I proceed to inform them that my stumbles are the logs from which I burn the fuel of experience. By failing, I learned what not to do as much as what is simply a waste of time.

By failing, I learned how our own warped sense of perfection actually distorts our perception of humanity, practicality, compassion, mercy, and hope. Ultimately, those who have fallen are the best teachers on how to avoid some falls. More importantly, they teach us how to fall gracefully and rise masterfully. God knows that our falls can shape our greatness if we allow them to do so.

Falling is an Opportunity, Not a Failure

It is with all of the above experiences and revelations honed through setbacks and stumbles that I slowly realized that the ultimate sin is not in falling or often failing to practice what one preaches.  Rather, the worst sin of all is failing to rise after one’s falls out of a combination of despair, lack of faith, pride, shame, or simply not loving enough. Yes, you must love to get up from your falls.  You must love yourself enough to believe that you can rise and aspire. You must love others enough to realize that your rises can inspire them.  Above all, you must love God enough to throw all pride and shame aside.

The hypocrite and the sinner are not always one and the same.  Hypocrites lie while sinners simply fall. Our world obsesses over results. Our Lord, however, favors sincere effort to overcome falls. When the world sees a fall, God sees a potential for greatness. What becomes of our falls is up to each of us. Your sin is not hypocrisy unless you stop trying to change, start judging others harshly, or start lying to yourself. The best methods to fight hypocrisy include humble acceptance of your faults and sincerity to amend your life.

2018  Gabriel Garnica

The Freedom to……………….Shoes: Reject The Comfort of Sin

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St. Teresa of Avila once stated, “We always find that those who walked closest to Christ were those who had to bear the greatest trials.”

Shoes, Comfort, Sin, and Appearances

I recently saw a woman wobbling down the street and having great difficulty walking. The other woman she was with kept pointing to this woman’s shoes and shaking her head. Ultimately, the stumbling woman simply took off her shoes and began to walk barefoot.   From what I could decipher from a distance, it appears that the woman had been sacrificing comfort for appearances. While the shoes looked great and clearly fit the rest of her outfit, they did not fit her feet and proved more trouble than they were worth.

This recent Lent provided me with many opportunities to think about comfort, sin, and appearances.

Comfort is a Relative Thing

According to St. Paul, “For there shall be a time when they will not endure sound doctrine; but according to their own desires, they will heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears. And will indeed turn away their hearing from the truth, but will be turned unto fables.”  (2 Tim 4:1-4)

Our world tells us that we can never have too much comfort.  After all, what rational person would ever reject a more comfortable chair in favor of an uncomfortable one? Comfort is often equated in this world with money, such that most see having a lot of money as the way to find greater comfort.  In the sense, many of us would question the sanity of someone like St. Francis of Assisi, who turned his back on a great fortune to live a life of poverty and want.  Having too much money or too much comfort will not get anyone in this society any sympathy.

However, comfort is a relative thing.  We probably all need at least some of it to function on a long-term basis.  On the other hand, too much comfort may do us as much, if not more, harm than good. Comfort tends to slip us into the mentality of forgetting God and His blessings. Comfort tends to make us complacent and lukewarm in our faith. Comfort even fools us into believing that our happiness is wholly our own doing.

Comfort is a vicious cycle into self-obsession.  The more comfortable we feel, the more selfish and self-absorbed we tend to become.  Content in our own convenient abundance, we tend to forget the need and suffering of others.

We need only look at Christ to remember that comfort and Christianity are often polar opposites in this world.  Our Lord was born into and regularly faced poverty, rejection, and inconvenience. If we aspire to follow Christ, we must likewise aspire to, and even embrace, discomfort as the price.

Tolerance for Sin as Compromise for Comfort

Fulton Sheen said, “Tolerance applies only to persons, never to truth…or principles. About these things, we must be intolerant.”

Psychologists tell us that people tend to seek stability and consistency in their lives while instinctively pulling away from discomfort and chaos.  It would be wonderful if this all meant that everyone lined up in neat lines marching toward heaven and salvation and away from the chaos of sin. However, human nature is an arrogant fool. Sadly, we find that this world increasingly views sin as sanity and rejection of sin as chaos. Charity and mercy call on us to be tolerant of the sinner, but intolerant of the sin—most especially our own.

Increasingly surrounded and enticed by sin, we often find it much more comfortable to accept, rationalize, and even embrace sin as the path of least upheaval and greater acceptance by this world.  We wear the distorted shoes of sin so often that we soon see our limp as the accepted way to walk.

Reject the Appearances and Moral Fashions of this World

This society immerses itself in the notion of tolerance as a universal good without accepting the reality that not all tolerance is a good thing.  What would happen if we tolerated murder, rape, and other violent crimes?  Is it even rational to be a Catholic who supports abortion? Obsessed with appearances and superficial morality, we too often stumble along in shoes of sin we got in the habit of wearing.

We cannot be tolerant of sin in our lives. We must foster a personality and nature that rejects the sin that will surely come across our way with each passing day.  Being weak and inconsistent human beings, we will often fall in some way during this year. Rather than spend all of our time and efforts avoiding the falls, we must dedicate a good portion of our preparation and fortitude to constructively dealing with the falls that will surely come.

Conclusion

As members of this society and world, we can all fall for the lure of acceptance, popularity, and group pressure. If we get too used to wearing the warped shoes of sin, we will eventually become so accustomed to their fit that all confession, contrition, or remorse will seem useless and unnecessary.

Lukewarm compromise and those who sold out their morals become increasingly tepid in our faith. The greatest evil and lie is feeling hopeless under the weight of our sins. Divine Mercy reminds us that Christ will always reach out to us if we reach out to him. We reach out to Our Lord by frequent confession and Communion, prayer, and good works for others.

Stop stumbling along in the distorted shoes of sin just for acceptance or the sake of appearances.  Do not seek the comfort and convenience of this world over the struggles of following Christ. Embrace the discomfort of your sin as the sign that you have not compromised your faith and values.  Likewise, embrace Divine Mercy as Our Lord’s promise to reach out to you as long as you find sin uncomfortable in your life. Above all, love God so much that you will always see sin as an intolerable and uncomfortable pair of shoes you simply refuse to wear.

2018  Gabriel Garnica

We Call This Friday Good

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I have a friend who moved to the United States some twenty years ago.  Although she speaks the language fluently, she hasn’t quite lost her accent, and a colloquialism will occasionally still mystify her.  That’s how I am with the Catholic church.  Twelve years ago I came into the Church as a young woman.  Though I feel at home here, I still stumble upon meditations that strike me as so strange that I realize I am a foreigner.

This was the first Lent since I started praying a daily Rosary, and somewhere along the way it was suggested to me that I pray only the sorrowful mysteries in Lent (except Sundays).   So day after day I have meditated on the Agony, the Scourging, the Crowning with Thorns, the Carrying of the Cross, and the Crucifixion.

What has jumped out at me is the juxtaposition of these mysteries with the phrase of the Hail Mary: “Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.”

Blessed are thou among women….said again and again as I contemplated His agony, His body slick with bloody sweat, His face in the dirt he made.

Blessed art thou among women…as I contemplated the whips tearing at his flesh, furious lashes that end only when his executioners have worn themselves out from the effort.

Blessed art thou among women…as I saw her Son humiliated, scorned, spat upon, and struck repeatedly so that the thorns of the grotesque crown impale his head.

Blessed art thou among women…as I watched Our Lady watch her son’s battered, mutilated body stumble under the weight of the cross, a spectacle to the indifferent and an abomination to the contemptuous.

Blessed art thou among women…as she stands by Him crucified, witness to His struggle to breathe, His enduring of the unfathomable torture.

Blessed is she?  Blessed?  What mom dreams of the day when she will stand beside her son while he is tortured?  On the face of it, it seems like a mockery to repeat this over fifty times in the face of His Passion.  At any rate, it is a jarring enough paradox that it gave me pause.  I knew then that I am still not a native to the church.

Forty days’ meditation gave me time to reflect.  That she is blessed, I believe.  So, as in so many teachings of the church that I didn’t immediately grasp, it was time to dig deeper.

How can it be that Our Lady is blessed in these days of Holy Week?

We see the world upside down, so writes Father Michael Scanlan in his book Let the Fire Fall.  I believe that Mary’s blessedness in the face of the Passion is the right-side-up way to view it.  I need to adjust my vision.

As in so many things, I was looking at the Passion in primarily the physical sense.  Material being that I am, this body is so present to me that it usually constitutes my first consideration.  But what if I were to look at the Passion in primarily spiritual terms?  What if I thought about it as Fr John Riccardo presents it in his meditation on the Rosary (found here)–as the world’s greatest athlete gearing up for the single most important competition in history?  What if I saw the spiritual implications of the Passion first–Jesus about to save the world from the rule of Satan?

Here, Jesus, though he looks like the defeated, is actually victorious, for he, as a priest said in a meditation I once went to, had enticed the devil to do the one thing the devil could not do–kill God Himself.  It was a chess match, and while it looked as though the King had been taken, he had actually set a trap that would end in checkmate against his opponent.  It was a daring, heroic, stupendous, awe-some, all-in kind of plan.

Did Our Lady understand the Passion on the spiritual level–as a supernatural match for which the prize was the human soul?  Spouse of the Holy Spirit, the woman who will crush the serpent under her heel, the mother of God, I imagine she herself very well may have undergone severe temptations and wrestling with the devil in her own hidden life.  She must have been clued into the spiritual realm of the Passion, even if she did not fully know what would happen three days hence.

Blessed indeed was she!  She saw her son undergo bodily torture, yes, but through that, she saw him win the war.  She saw him, fully human as well as fully God, not recoil from the agony of body and soul but instead stand victorious in the redemption of our human nature.

That one there is my son.  The one who is wrestling all of the powers of hell but who stands–bloody, yes–but triumphant.  That’s my boy–the one who whose suffering gives historic and eternal witness to the profound love of God.  That one hanging there is mine, the one who is willingly giving his very life to save the eternal souls of the human race.  Jesus is my son.  I am blessed.

Our Redemption and Memory

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As we proceed through Lent, the recurring themes of redemption and forgiveness bubble to the surface of our thoughts. We understand redemption as literally being saved from our own sinfulness through the blood of Christ.  Left to ourselves, we would surely fall under the repeated weight of our imperfection and weakness.  Through God Almighty’s love and mercy embodied in the Parable of the Prodigal Son, however, we aspire to a salvation we would not otherwise be capable of attaining.

A critical, core component of this second chance for salvation is the willingness of both sides to forget a sinful past.  By this I mean that our redemption is possible only if both God Almighty and each of us as sinners are willing to forget our past sins.

God Almighty’s memory of our sins

God’s willingness is especially supported by a trio of scriptural references. In The Book of Hebrews (8:12) God tells us

For I will forgive their evildoing and remember their sins no more.

In The Book of Psalms (103:12) we find David’s wonderful expression that

     As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our sins from us.

Finally, in Isaiah (43:25) we find God’s powerful assurance that

It is I, I, who wipe out, for my own sake, your offenses; your sins I remember no more.

People often have difficulty with the notion of a perfect and omniscient God forgetting anything. Scholars debate whether this simply means that He chooses not to act on our past sins or that He, as all-powerful, chooses to forget. Here we must insert one of my favorite saints, St. Therese The Little Flower, who reminds us to trust God with child-like innocence immersed in love.

Our memory of our sins

Having confirmed God’s part in this dual forgetting, we must turn to ourselves. It is ironic that the same imperfection which leads us to sin likewise prevents us from forgiving ourselves for the very sins that God is willing to forgive us for!  How many people avoid confession altogether out of fear or shame?  How many others turn their very confessions into further sin by concealing sin? Finally, how many of us leave the confessional doubting God’s mercy?

Recall the lesson of Judas and Peter. Judas let his pride and doubt lead to hopelessness, despair, and ultimate, final surrender to the Devil after his sin. In contrast, Peter’s love of Christ overwhelmed his pride leading to humble contrition and surrender to Christ’s love and mercy.  Both men’s ultimate destiny was not shaped by their respective sins but, rather, by their response to their own sin. What better example of such mercy can we find than Our Lord’s promise of paradise to the contrite thief in Calvary?

Conclusion

Scripture confirms God’s promise to forget our sinful past. The harder question as we move through Lent is how willing we are to forget that past ourselves as we reach out to a lovingly forgiving, and forgetting, God.

2018  Gabriel Garnica

Lent Should Be a Moving Experience

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I find it powerful and transcendent that Lent is a moving journey toward the Cross and beyond.  This “moving” however, comes in three distinct contexts.  Each context has its place in the Lenten message.

Powerful Emotion

The first context of moving evoked by Lent may certainly be the strong, somber emotion of following a friend through great suffering. The closer that friend, of course, the more intimate and proximate to ourselves that suffering should be. While we may be moved by attending the funeral of a friend’s relative we never met, we would expect to be even more moved in attending the actual friend’s funeral.  In the first instance, our love for our friend moves us to feel compassion and sympathy for that friend’s suffering.  In the second instance, that same love moves us to suffer at the loss of a loved one.  The more something touches us, the more it moves our emotions.

As followers of Christ, therefore, we should be moved by Our Lord’s great suffering leading up to and through his ultimate loving sacrifice for us.  We should be moved by being so loved while falling so short loving in return.  We should be moved by the way we have contributed and continue to contribute to the suffering of a such a loving Lord every time we offend him.

The Crucifix as the Proactive Cross

Our image of the cross is as static and fixed as to be a mirage.  We barely discern a difference between a cross and a crucifix.  The cross is love promised and the crucifix is love proven. Christ accepted his cross out of love for us and proved his love by turning that cross into the ultimate sacrificial altar.  As Catholics, we should see the cross as the setting for love and the crucifix as that love actualized.

The cross sets the table and the crucifix provides us with the meal of Our Lord’s body and blood. Without the corpus on the crucifix, the cross remains a passive symbol. It may evoke our reaction in some way, but that reaction pales in the face of what happens when we add the corpus of Christ.

The crucifix, on the other hand, turns the passivity of the cross into the action of loving sacrifice opening our path to salvation. Through the cross, our reactive passivity is transformed into proactive love. The symbol becomes the signpost.  Our Savior on the cross redefines love from simply emotion or reaction into action.  It is fine and good to love, but true love demands we act on that love. If we truly love Christ, then we will want to authentically follow him in actions and not merely words.

In this second context, then, Lent implies moving out of our comfort zones and acting on the love we have for Christ and others.  Ash Wednesday reminds us that we are made of dust but Lent calls on us to turn that dust into a windstorm of love and sacrifice.

Calendar Dates

A friend recently lamented that this year Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day fall on the same day, as do Easter and April Fool’s Day. His concern was that people might forget to receive ashes in their haste to buy flowers and candy. In fact, his teenage daughter who usually proudly wears her ashes to school was going to get them after school because she did not want to “mess up” her Valentine’s celebration in school !

Likewise, many may fear that Easter will receive a greater dose of secular mockery since it falls on the day when fools are celebrated. The irony is that Lent truly should  begin with love and call us to be fools for Christ in the eyes of this world. In a way, this year’s odd coincidences merely parallel how we should view Lent when confronting this world’s values and priorities.

It is fitting that Lent varies from year to year because following Christ is not about comfortable and predictable routines. The true follower of Christ is like a bride or groom promising love in the face of an uncertain path to a treasured goal.  While Christ should be our fixed target, the world around us often provides a moving context which we must overcome.  The ultimate message is that Christ is our fixed GPS through the changing contexts of this world.

As we move through Lent this year, let us be moved to move out of our comfort zones and help move others toward Christ.

2018   Gabriel Garnica