Father with his mom.
“Don’t forget in the darkness what you
learned in the light.” The big struggle
of any Christian is smiling even when our hearts are breaking. On Sunday, I attended Mass in Spanish after
my RCIA talk. Father Sergio was
celebrating and though his mom passed on earlier last week he was as cheerful
as usual. He gave the homily with the
same amount of joy and funny sense of humor that characterizes him. He even invited us to the viewing &
funeral services coaxing us by promising that we would meet all sixteen of his
siblings. Leaving I thanked God for
allowing me to witness such complete trust and powerful witness in my church
leader. My desire is to have such an
intimate relationship with God that no matter the struggles, the pain, the
rejection- not even death will rock my faith & trust in my powerful
Creator. All my hope, all my ambition is
(as Pablo Neruda put it) to be so close to God that His hand in my chest is my hand, so close that if He closes His eyes I
fall asleep.
Father Ordained by JP2
The truth is we all hurt- for different reasons
we mourn and we ache. Lately I have been
feeling a bit blue myself, but our emotions should never cloud our hope in our
Risen Savior! This November is the tenth
anniversary of my brother’s death and though I have found a way to continue it’s
still such a sense of loss when I think of my sibling being absent from my
life. Sometimes we have to keep living
until we feel alive again. This life is
full of loss and disappointments because it’s a fallen world. The enemy attacks in areas that are valuable
to us like the loss of a job, an illness, a heartbreak, a death in the family… Sometimes when I am hurt I want to retaliate,
to get drunk or to succumb to my depressive emotions. At times I am so self-focused that my
problems and distress look bigger than my God.
Why? Because I have taken my eyes
from God and placed them on my limited self.
That’s why seeing Father so strong in God really inspired me to trust
the Lord more, to lean on the Him more and to hope in the Lord even when things
look rather hopeless. That instead of
reacting to a negative situation negatively I NEED to rest in the hope and
strength God has promised.
I was talking to a friend about how life as
a single Catholic person (past thirty) at times seems quite the hopeless
situation. Especially during breakups or
the beginnings of relationships.
Romantic break-ups are almost equivalent to a death because usually one
needs to get away from the beloved to heal and to move on. And beginnings are confusing because one must
risk rejection. Life is hard! It throws obstacle after obstacle and hurt
after hurt; and we as Christians need to learn to smile and trust in the Lord
during these stumbles. We need to handle
difficulty with grace and dignity. That’s
why studying the lives of the saints is so important and having friends and church leaders
that through example show one that no matter the painful hurdle - it’s a choice to rely
on God and it's a choice to shine His light as testimony of our great hope in
Him.
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