Are You a Yada Yada Catholic?

By Gabe Garnica

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

Christ’s Seven Last Words: Another Side

By Gabe Garnica

As we make that powerful turn into Holy Week and Beyond, we reflect on Our Lord’s Seven Last Words as Seven Balances we each must make on our own journey toward our crosses.

First Word

“Father, forgive them , for they know not what they do.” Luke 23: 34

We understandably take Our Lord’s first word as reflecting his Divine Mercy and compassion. Who among us could ever pray for, much less forgive, those who hate and hurt us? Yet this is yet another clear indication that Christ is the ultimate paradox to this temporary, superficial, secular world. He asks us to love so much that we can forgive so much and forgive so much that we reflect only love for the other regardless of how the other has treated us. However, there is another side, a balancing aspect, to this First Word.

Christ asks that his Father forgive his murderers due to their ignorance. They are teeming with hatred for him precisely because they are confused and misguided. In a word, they are lost. The balancing side to Christ’s compassion and Divine Mercy then, is our duty to seek, to search out truth, clarification, reality, and a better understanding of ourselves, others, and the situations we face. Ignorance may be bliss to some, but it is not so for the true follower of Christ. As such followers, we are called to relentless responsibility grounded in love and service. Cowards and fools find comfort in ignorance, but courageous followers of Christ have an unflinching passion for truth because they have a relentless thirst for Christ, who alone is truth.

Let us seek, then, to embrace Our Lord’s Divine Mercy with a wrap of personal responsibility and relentless pursuit of truth. Let us welcome the mission of destroying ignorance and bringing light to others so that they may seek Christ as well. Let us reject the excuse of ignorance for such tactics do not work with God. The ultimate responsibility of being a christian is that we look to Christ and not to excuses.

Second Word

“Amen I say to thee, this day thou shalt be with me in paradise.” Luke 23: 43

Again, we see Our Lord’s transcendent Divine Mercy which has no clock and only shows relentless love and compassion. Here, he forgives a sinner with two strikes, two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning using baseball terms. How often do we measure contrition, compassion, and forgiveness as if doing our taxes? Our Lord’s mercy once again points to the paradox of his love for us. He is truth and justice personified and embodied, yet he is also mercy and compassion epitomized as well. However, yet again, there is another, balancing side to this Second Word as well.

Our Lord practices what he so often preached regarding the importance and joy of finding the lost sheep. Yet, this second word challenges us to pursue Christ consistently and not be content for last minute reprieves. If we do our best to be Christ to others, we will be able to love and serve those others throughout our lives and not be mired in simply saving ourselves. Yes, Christ’s promises are as good as gold. However, this second word invites and challenges us to be humble and shun overconfidence that Our Lord will save us. Confession and Our Lord’s Divine Mercy are not some mere get-out-of-jail cards on Monopoly or a Free Spin on Wheel of Fortune. The challenge of this second word is to follow Christ because we love him and not merely because it is nearly twelve midnight and our carriage is about to become a pumpkin.

Third Word

“When Jesus therefore had seen his mother and the disciple standing whom he loved, he said to his mother: Woman, behold thy son. After that, he said to the disciple: Behold thy mother.” John 19: 26-27

Many see this Third Word as a call to take The Blessed Mother as our own, loving and following her example of humility, faith, and obedience. However, once again we need to see the balancing aspect of this Third Word as well.

Every Christian should see Christ as the ultimate GPS to the ultimate destination of salvation in heaven. Beyond this, however, we are challenged here to see Mary as the GPS to Christ himself. In order to do this, we need to embrace and embody her example of loving and serving God even when we do not fully understand what God wants us to do. Mary combines faith and trust in God’s Will in a beautiful and humble way that we all should follow.

It is clear and true that This Third Word invites us to love and honor Mary as our mother and see ourselves as her children. However, the second, balancing side of this Third Word is that, like Mary, we are called to bring Christ to a world which desperately needs him. Following Mary’s example is not a spectator sport lined with rosaries. Rather, it is an active, participant mission calling us to be ministers delivering Christ to everyone we meet.

Fourth Word

“And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying: Eli, Eli, lamma sabacthani? that is, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Matt 27:46

Jesus is both fully human and fully divine, and his divinity allowed him to know that his suffering would achieve its purpose. However, his humanity allowed him to feel the despair that we can all feel when things seem hopeless. Many take this Fourth Word as a representation of that difficult situation, and of the idea that following God’s Will can often not be an easy thing to do. We all can certainly relate to feeling abandoned, betrayed, or forgotten by those around us, especially by those we assume love and care for us. Beyond these ideas, however, we can find two other, balancing sides to this Fourth Word as well.

First, despair and hopelessness is a normal part of being human we can all and will feel from time to time. Following Christ means falling on the way to our mission as he physically did three times. The key, however, is that following Christ does not truly begin when we merely fall, despair, or feel hopeless on our journey toward salvation. Rather, following Christ most truly begins when we get up from those falls that come our way as Christ got up.

Second, when God is our goal, all despair and hopelessness will yield to hope, faith, and anticipation. We all experience fear, regret, sorrow, despair, hopelessness, and even a temptation to give up, to surrender and throw our hands up. However, if we keep Christ in our sights and hearts, all such feelings will fade before the majesty of Christ’s relentless and transcendent love for us. Despair is followed by hope and faith when Christ is involved.

Fifth Word

“Afterwards, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled, said: I thirst.” John 19:28

A few years ago, I read for the first time how this Fifth Word represents not only Our Lord’s physical thirst but also his third for souls to save. I thought that this idea was such a beautiful and touching representation of t his Fifth Word. However, here too one can see a second, balancing aspect to this Fifth Word.

God has prepared a cup for each of us. Our mission and purpose in life is to drink fully and lovingly from that cup. The cup will contain happiness and joy as well as sorrow, pain, and disappointment. Many of us either refuse to drink the cup altogether or merely try to drink the cup partially, sipping from what seems like good things and avoiding the tough stuff. If we truly love God and seek to serve Him and follow His Divine Will for our lives, we need to fully and lovingly drink all the His cup for us means. It is not enough for us to be willing to drink of that cup as if it were some homework assignment or chore. In fact, it is not even enough for each of us to welcome that cup and all it brings. Rather, we must actively thirst to drink that cup, to serve and love Our Lord, and to please God Almighty despite our many faults.

Ultimately, our lives must reflect that thirst. We must see our journey as a continuous struggle to satisfy the thirst of loving God and following Our Lord and helping others do so as well. Christ expressed this thirst for souls when he had accomplished his mission. We are called to embody this thirst for serving and loving God and others in order to accomplish our mission.

Sixth Word

“Jesus therefore, when he had taken the vinegar, said: It is consummated.” John 19:30

We all understand this Sixth Word to show that Christ was nearing the end of his earthly mission to enable our salvation. However, perhaps we can also see the other, balancing side of this Sixth Word to mean that following Christ and fulfilling God’s purpose and mission for our lives is something we must fully accomplish to the best of our ability. We are each an investment of God’s wonderful gifts, blessings, and graces. The true question is whether or not we will each yield the interest and gain of that investment as God intended us to be. Regardless of how large our pool of resources is to fulfill our life mission and purpose, we are each called upon to fully actualize whatever potential for love and service God has given each of us.

In a way, fully following Christ means we are never finished by the standards of this world. This is so because our measure and standard is found in heaven and follows different quotas that this world’s merely superficial and temporal standards represent.

Seventh Word

“And Jesus crying with a loud voice, said: Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit. And saying this, he gave up the ghost.” Luke 23:46

Certainly, we will see this Seventh Word as Christ willingly and obediently giving up his spirit to his Father. It is a reminder that we begin service of God with obedience, faith, trust, and a willingness to wrap our will with the Holy Will of God. However, yet again and in a final balancing perspective, we may see this Seventh Word as confirmation of the idea that all we are, do, say, think, and achieve in this world is of no consequence if it is not done for the glory of God and serves God’s Will and purpose for our lives.

Regardless of how this world sees us, what ultimately matters is how God sees us. We can find no better satisfaction that satisfying our Heavenly Father with what we have done in this world. Let us see each season of Lent as a reminder that our lives are lent to us by God and we will each be called to give an account of what we have done with this gift of life we have been given. In the end, we must each return this gift back to the Creator Who alone gives life and Who alone should take it.

Conclusion

Each Lent we each struggle to stumble behind Our Lord’s example of loving service and obedience to God and loving service to others. With varying success, we each try to carry some sort of cross or consider that crosses we may carry in this effort to justify our designation as so-called followers of Christ.

Ultimately, however, it will be how sincerely, humbly, lovingly, and purely we carried out that struggle that will determine if that label of follower of Christ is justified. Let us see these powerful Seven Words as further guides in that effort.

2019 Gabriel Garnica

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

By Gabe Garnica

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

My Way is Not Always The Answer

By Gabe Garnica

I Did It My Way…..

We all know the story of how Abraham and his wife Sarah tried to sidestep God’s promise that they would have a child despite their old age ( Gen 16:1-16). Rather than trusting and waiting on God to fulfill His promise, these two used her maid Hagar to result in that long-awaited child only to end up with family jealousy and turmoil that still rages today through their descendants.

This initial story of a fall reminds us of a very familiar human tactic with God. We ask Him for something and then set a subconscious, unstated deadline on that request. This time limit may not be express or concrete as in a certain date, but it will at least be an openness to finding some sort of shortcut to our desired goal. We ask God to find us a mate and then go on 45 online dating sites to sift through pathetic examples of potential mates which will either lead nowhere or, worse, somewhere worse than where we are now.

Others will ask God for a job and grab a job God clearly would not want them to have. Still other folks will pray for something and then grow impatient and even bitter when the desired result does not come. I have often been guilty of this, using my supposed petition more as a purchase order than a humble request from a Creator to Whom I owe everything I have and am already. Therein lies the core problem: we should spend most of our day thanking this wonderful, generous, and loving God who invites us to trust and love Him enough to ask for more. However, our weak and defective humanity leads us to go overboard and either ask for too much or, just as bad, please-mand, which is my new word meaning demand with a please on top.

Abraham and Sarah were so wrapped up in what they wanted, what they probably felt that they deserved, that they did not stop to consider what God wanted and deserved from them: simple faith and patience. All too often, we sing Frank Sinatra’s hit My Way, proud to have handled things our way on our time and on our terms. However, is that what God deserves from us?

Close Your Human Eyes and Practice Blind Faith

As defective people moving in a defective world, we need to close our eyes from time to time and ask ourselves who or what our daily GPS is or should be. All too often, we will find that expediency and practicality often push us to find our own way on our terms without even asking God to chime in. We will fool ourselves into pretending that we are doing a very busy God a solid by handling things ourselves. After all, how sick of you would your plumber be if you called him every single time your sink was slow?

The truth is, God wants us to be assertive and independent in many ways, for that is how we will grow as human beings. However, God’s definition of those traits does not include brushing Him off like some meddling uncle. Our Lord wants us to always have Him on speed dial when we need Him. It never hurts to ask for God’s help and give God time to respond, His way. That is not to say that we will foolishly wait four decades for something we need to decide soon. What it does say is that we should give God a reasonable time to respond. That response by the way, may be no response, which may still be a response on God’s terms. Begin with the conviction that God knows what is best for us and run with that. Abraham and Sarah did not do that above; they gave God the keys and then used a brick to open things their way.

The Gideon Pill

I refer to the Gideon Pill as God’s way of showing us who is boss. He will wait beyond our patience or beneath our means to accomplish miracles, just so we know who performed those miracles. The Israelites had to wander in the desert forty years before entering the Promised Land due to their disobedience and lack of faith. God waited until there was no doubt He was doing the work for them and until He had stamped out the last of the disobedient doubters (Num 14: 1-21).

One of my favorite Bible stories is that of Gideon; a military leader, judge, and prophet chosen by God to defeat the Midianites and avoid slavery for his people. God reduced Gideon’s army to 300 men against a vast enemy in order to leave no doubt who was responsible for the victory( Judg 7:2-8). We all need the Gideon Pill from time to time, being put in situations where seemingly God is the only way out just so we can grow in faith, appreciation, and obedience to such a wonderful God.

Abraham’s Recovery

An even more famous story than those noted above is Abraham’s great response of obedience to God’s request that Abraham sacrifice his only son Isaac ( Gen 22: 16-18). God knew how much Abraham waited for and loved his son, so He put Abraham to the test of sacrificing everything for God which, of course, Abraham passed with flying colors. Abraham had learned his lesson from the Hagar mistake. He knew that loving and trusting God is not something you dip your toe in. You are either all in or you should get out. Nothing of this world is worth losing God.

Conclusion

This world tells us to show off and prove we can handle everything ourselves. Certainly, one of the signs of maturity is the greater ability to be independent and self-reliant. However, regardless of our age, we all need God at all times and need to remember that. Like Abraham and Sarah, we sometimes think we know all the answer but, like Gideon, we all learn soon enough that God is pulling all the strings one way or the other.

This world tempts us to run everything in our lives our way, on our time, on our terms. What we need to avoid, however, is that we are not running away from God in the process.

2019 Gabriel Garnica

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

By Gabe Garnica

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

We Call This Friday Good

By Amanda Woodiel

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.

Power Perfected in Weakness and Failure as a Pathway to Grace

By Lisa Mladinich

St. Paul speaks quite a bit about boasting!

In his second letter to the Corinthians, he mentions that he has been the recipient of many revelations and could well boast. After all, Jesus himself has spoken directly to Paul, on the road to Damascus. Paul is a beloved preacher and has won many souls for God. But instead of boasting of his achievements, which he recognizes as a distraction, he boasts because the Lord has permitted him to be a weak and troubled vessel. An “angel of Satan,” he says, torments his flesh.

Three times I begged the Lord about this, that it might leave me, but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” I will rather boast most gladly of my weaknesses, in order that the power of Christ may dwell with me. (2 Cor 12:8-9)

Here’s my weakness.

I rather casually gave up complaining for Lent, right at the last minute, because I hadn’t really given it much thought. But I know that I complain too much, so it seemed like a great idea, and honestly, I really didn’t expect it to be that hard.

But the Lord saw fit to allow me to go through a period of intense suffering that has consumed my Lent.

An old emotional wound that I thought was healed broke open and my life became profoundly dark. The pain was unrelenting and terrible. I was raw and weak. To say that I was overflowing with complaints and loss of temper is an understatement. I was a total mess for most of Lent, which got me going to confession a lot more than usual, which brought me more graces than usual.

The Crucifixion, Francisco de Zurbarán, 1627

In agony, I clung to Jesus and contemplated the cross. I was in desolation.

But that desolation is a privilege, according to the saints. Hard to accept, but it’s so revealing. I felt so intimate with Christ. One day, I looked up at the cross at Mass and the thought came to me, “He felt this. So it must be a good thing to feel.”

I didn’t get a rush of good feelings—the pain remained—but I had a deep sense of calm that I knew was His voice in my soul, and it has not left me.

And I learned something that is probably the biggest grace I’ve ever received in any Lent in all of my 58 years as a Catholic:

It was strangely empowering being so weak and so desperate.

I had nothing to boast about but the cross.

But may I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. (Gal 6:14)

Total failure was the place where Jesus met me, this Lent. Failure cleared away all my pride and showed me that the cross could truly be a place of victory.

In the eighth century, St. Andrew of Crete wrote that the cross is “both the sign of God’s suffering and the trophy of his victory” because the cross is “the means by which the devil was wounded and death conquered.”

Chris Tomlin sings a song called, “At the Cross,” and my favorite line says that the cross is “a place where sin and shame are powerless.”

Jesus rendered my sin and my shame powerless: through the cross, through the consecration, and through reconciliation. So that when I was weakest, I received a gift that I don’t think I would have received if I were having a “perfect” Lent and feeling good about myself.

Yesterday, I was at an RCIA review session, and one of the team members was describing the moment of the consecration, at Mass, when the priest elevates the host. She told the catechumens that as we enter into the one-time sacrifice of the cross, Jesus is lifted up and offered to the Father for all of our sins, for all time.

But she added that, as baptized members of the Body of Christ, at the moment of the consecration, we too are lifted up and offered to the Father, and that bestows on us an astounding dignity.

In Holy Week, we will walk with Jesus through the failures of those he loves. Contemplate his response when the apostles all flee him and when Peter denies him three times. Jesus never stops working to save them.

Even the crucified thief, who squandered his life in sin–St. Dismas, whose feast day was today (March 25)–received the gift of paradise that very day. Why? Because, in the depths of his failure, St. Dismas recognized that he needed mercy and that Jesus was the Lord. And the response of Jesus went beyond his wildest imaginings. Paradise. THAT DAY.

My major offering for Lent was to avoid complaining. During the previous five weeks, I have complained more than I have in many years. To say that I failed is an understatement. My sin of complaint and ingratitude was magnified; it exploded and expanded and became epic in its power to color my days.

And yet, that sense of powerlessness drew me closer to God and increased my trust. At a particularly low moment, when the pain was almost unbearable, I felt God urging me to count blessings—which felt like sprinkling a thimbleful of water on a blazing fire. To turn my thoughts away from complaint and refocus on what was beautiful in my life was like walking head-on into a hurricane. I recognize that this powerful resistance within me was partly my own weakness and sin but also a sign of a spiritual battle taking place in my soul.

And yet, when I yielded grudgingly and started counting the beauty of the day, my comfortable home, my family and friends, my health—simple things—strength returned, and my mind began to clear. What had seemed unrelentingly dark faded and receded. It was like breaking a spell.

Our failures can bring us closer to God; they can make us more aware of our dependence, more ardent in prayer, and more childlike.

It is not the failure He focuses on; it is the disposition of our hearts.

Are we reaching for him? Learning from our falls? Resting in mercy?

For God so loved the world he gave his only begotten Son, that believers would not perish but would have eternal life. (John 3:16)

Our Redemption and Memory

By Gabe Garnica

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

Forgiveness Beyond the Grave

By Amanda Woodiel

My father died last week. It was unexpected. He had had health issues the last couple of years and had never seemed particularly robust, but he was never near death, either.

My mom passed away eight years prior. Here I am, in my 30s (barely!) with five small children and no parents. It’s not a common status among my circle of friends, but it could be far worse.

I mention this simply to show that I have a frame of reference when I talk about grieving deceased parents. This isn’t my first rodeo. What is different this time, however, is that my father was, well, a different man than what he seemed to be. Over the last few years we had uncovered surprising details about his life–details that I will spare you, dear reader.

So the grief I feel is an alloyed grief. There is sadness that the opportunity has passed for our relationship to transform coupled with confusion over details that keep popping up (such as the bewildering claim he apparently made that he had been sent on a secret mission for the Department of Defense) commingled with utter dismay that his last note to us–intentionally placed in a spot where we would find it–was as efficient as a corporate memo and as warm as a ransom note.

The question I am left with–aside from the question of what is true regarding his life–is the question of forgiveness. How do you forgive someone who lies in his grave and whose lies extend beyond the grave? (The last sentence of his last note to us was, in fact, untrue.) How do you forgive someone who betrayed his family but who genuinely believed he could fool everyone–and who maybe, in the end, fooled himself?

As I have pondered these questions, a specific path to forgiveness and healing keeps coming to mind. Think back to Cana, the site of Jesus’ first public miracle. The hosts had run out of wine, and Mary, with the compassion of a mother’s heart, knew the embarrassment they would face. Her son is at the same wedding feast, so she hurries to him and tells him the problem. At first, Jesus seems to resist her urging. But she–great Jewish mama that she is–brushes aside his response and turns to the servants. “Do whatever he tells you,” she says with complete confidence in him. Jesus is moved by his mother’s urging and by her faith. Jesus acts, in this instance, because of his mother’s intercession.

This intercessor was given to us from the cross when Jesus gave her to John. John stands there in history as the faithful disciple but also stands in for us when Jesus gives Mary to his care: “behold your mother.” She is our mother as well, our dear compassionate mother, who is also, in evangelical parlance, a “prayer warrior.” Mary, just as she was at Cana, is a compassionate intercessor for those of us who face complicated situations.

Mary is known by many names. One such name comes from a meditation by St Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons in the last quarter of the second century and a Church Father. Drawing out a comparison between Eve and Mary, he noted:

“And thus also it was that the knot of Eve’s disobedience was loosed by the obedience of Mary” (Against Heresies, Book III, Chapter 22).

Man’s fall from grace due to original sin–what knot could be more complicated than that? Original sin, endured since our first parents, was loosed by the obedience of Mary to the will of God when she gave her fiat to become the mother of the Holy God. And so she is known as “Mary, Undoer of Knots.” Mary, undoer of the knot of original sin. Mary, undoer of whatever knot is in your life and the big knot that is in mine.

I once had a lovely little card that had printed on it “The best way out is always through.” The best way out of the pain is to walk through it. And so I have been given the answer to my question of how do I forgive: pray a daily Rosary alongside Mary, Undoer of Knots, for my father’s departed soul and for my wounded one.

What does this prayer do? Two things. When we pray in good faith for someone who has hurt us we cannot help but love that person more. It is hard for us to love the person whom we do not know. I have only done this prayer for the last week, and already I am looking at my father through more compassionate eyes than ever before; somehow, it is giving me more knowledge of him.

Secondly, praying the Rosary has a way of showing us who we are. Contemplating the mysteries of the God-Man being scourged or crowned with thorns gives me pause to think about the ways in which I have unleashed my own contempt for my Savior. The prayer becomes, then, less about offender (dad) and victim (me) and instead becomes two sinners contemplating God’s passion and his love and mercy.

And then, of course, the prayer is the outpouring of hope that God will and does redeem all things. Everything else in my life–my mother’s terminal brain disease, for example–has shown itself to be a gift. Perhaps the gift is a severe mercy, but there is always mercy. There is always the great Divine Act of turning evil on its head to bless–witness the crucifixion itself.

Praying a daily Rosary for those who have wounded us alongside our great mother and intercessor is ultimately an act of hope, an act of humility, and an act of love. By focusing daily and for a sustained time on the life of Jesus in the company of Mary, Undoer of Knots, I have confidence that I will find healing and peace.

Playing the Ordered Toward Game

By Amanda Woodiel

God bless the woman from our parish who comes to my house weekly to help out with the children. Not only does she give me a half day out of the house, but she, who also happens to be incredibly well-read and steeped in the Catholic faith, enriches my home with a wisdom culled from years of mothering and reading Catholic philosophy.

So when my six year old son asked her if he could stack a doll stroller on top of a mini folding chair on top of a dining room chair and so on to see if he could eventually get his Tower of Babel to touch the ceiling, she was armed with a much better answer than I would have given when he asked, “Why not?”

“Because,” said the sage. “That is not what those things are ordered toward.”

When I came home, she told me the anecdote, laughing that she had given my budding six-year-old philosopher something to chew on.

But she gave me something to chew on as well. While I outwardly nodded and smiled, my inward self was as happy as a child treated to a new flavor of candy. I quickly saw how brilliant this tack is, calculating how very often I can use this line of reasoning to forestall disaster and reasonably answer questions.

Why can’t I swing this metal pole around like a baseball bat? Because that’s not what it is ordered toward.

Why can’t I climb the door frame like an American ninja warrior? Because, my dear, that’s not what the door frame is ordered toward.

Why can’t I step on the baby’s sippy cup? Because. That. Is. Not. What. It. Is. Ordered. Toward.

****

I’ve been reading the book The Benedict Option, in which the author traces the historical shift in the metaphysical understanding of matter from something that possesses inherent meaning and structure to something that has no meaning at all until a person assigns meaning to it. We see this shift dramatically demonstrated in our current culture’s (dis)regard of the sex of a human body.

Before recent times, a person’s body informed the person’s identity. The body itself had inherent meaning and structure. My body has female parts; therefore, I am a woman. Compare this with the present-day “understanding” of the body as something that has no inherent meaning whatsoever. The fact that I have female sexual organs, runs this way of thinking, in no way determines my sex. Instead, I assign meaning to my body based upon whatever I want for that day.

How extraordinarily confusing is this way of thinking! To live in a world in which everything has no inherent structure, no inherent meaning, no inherent order is to be lost at sea in a cosmological ocean–and lost at sea alone. For if nothing has inherent meaning, then what common ground is there for two people to stand on?

So as a way to bulwark against the prevailing cultural view, we play the Ordered Toward game at my house. It is a simple game, born of that day when my wise friend introduced the concept to us.

Everyone from the 8 year old to the 2 year old loves this game. We simply name things around us and talk about what they are ordered toward. Sometimes I name the object (what is a car ordered toward? To get us from one place to another), sometimes I play the game silly (is spaghetti ordered toward decorating your head? Noooo!), and sometimes I name the purpose and the children name the object (This is ordered toward giving us shade and oxygen. A tree!).

It’s a fun game to play in the car or in a waiting room to pass the time. The children giggle because children instinctively know that objects do have inherent meaning.

Start this little exercise at your house and you will be amazed by how useful it is. When someone throws a toy: “that toy was made to spin; it’s not ordered toward throwing.” When someone sticks his feet in another child’s face: “is that what your feet are ordered toward?” When a child tries to put his sister’s underwear on his head: “that’s not what it is ordered toward!” [Are you getting a picture of life at our house?]

At the same time, I’m laying groundwork for Theology of the Body before I get anywhere close to teaching about the mechanics of sex. The point is that our bodies are ordered toward something. We already talk about what our stomachs are ordered toward (to digest food) and what our eyes are ordered toward (to see), so when we get to the point of talking about our reproductive organs, for example, we will have a solid foundation upon which to lay the Catholic theology of the body, which is to say, that the reproductive organs are ordered toward creating and nourishing life.

Of course, as the children grow older and enter into the rhetoric stage of life, I’m sure we will have conversations about secondary uses and innovative uses of existing things, at which point we will discuss ethics and morality. The first place to start when one encounters something, though, is in discovering what its primary purpose is–and this is a fun way to begin.