Author: Lana Kaczmarek

Moses said to the people: “If only you would heed the voice of the LORD, your God.” Our listening skills and abilities, like our lives, are full, flooded, active and busy, so overwhelmed and overconcentrated with so much noise. So many people, groups and individuals are vying for our undivided attention. So many voices are speaking at one time, saying so many different things. There are so many different video ads, virtual people to contend with, marketing scammers, seductive websites, porn and phishing messaging, additive gaming, fraudulent apps, email texting, explicit music and horrible lyrics – all shouting, screaming, yelling, “Look at me! Listen to me!” Making empty promises, worthless points, providing unnecessary opinions, poor judgements, little lies, false claims, useless information. Yelling, “Look at me! Pay attention only to me! Listen to us! Trust me! You can count on me! Only listen to me!” With so many voices speaking at one time, at such a fast and steady pace, who can determine what they’re saying, what they mean, who is really speaking and can we trust what is being said – so much information thrown at us, so much noise distracts us. How can we truly hear truth spoken and truly hear and listen to God say what we really need to hear? How can we know the path to follow? Where is the life chosen and given to you by God who only wills the truth and the greatest good for you? It is difficult to think a lie can make us feel good or better. It is unfortunate that there is so much deception in the world and people choose and want to deceive us. They lure us to them and away from the glorious freedom of being in a great, eternal, amazing and intimate relationship and friendship with God. The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola emphasize two main and distinctive voices that either inspire us to beauty, goodness and truth or tempt and lure us with evil desires prone to lies and things that are not good for us nor our family, coworkers or friends. Our voice and the voice of others is either inspired by the One or misled by the other. Either we hear and listen to truth like Jesus, Mary and Joseph, or we listen to lies, intentional deceptions, false advertisements and empty promises from the enemies of our human nature. Listen to God. What He has to say will save you.  

“Hear now, all you who fear God, while I declare what He has done for me.” What has God done for you? Perhaps you revise the question by adding what He has done for you or done for you lately. Consider the original question as is and its need and possible healing it might bring you. Healing provided immediately or perhaps right now. At this moment if you truly considered the question, ponder it like Mary and seriously take it to question, meditation and prayer. What has God done for you? In answering, please do so plainly and honestly after giving it thoughtful, careful observation, examination and prayer. Not by questioning what God has done for you lately as we sometimes and often do to one another. We even sometimes believe that God must provide continual and additional miracles and signs so we can thank Him or say and believe that God has done something for us.

Certainly, not what seems to be something you took notice of recently or something you mention happened some time ago or something you read in some ancient text or something that was handed down to you by prophetic utterances or ancient bible stories you listen to or heard from family members, religious friends or spiritual foes. Please tell me. I really wish to know. What has God done for you? Declare it, give witness to it like Mary, the handmaid of the Lord who graciously exults that her immaculate heart and soul ever magnifies and proclaims the greatness of the Lord and that her glorious spirit rejoices in God our Savior. Mary sings and speaks of God’s generous penetrating gaze and the delightful favor God has found in her and all humanity. She gladly proclaims and declares that the Almighty God has done great things for her and Holy is His Name. She speaks of His blessing, His mercy, His assistance, His help, His aid towards all generations past, present and to come. Mary boldly speaks of God’s blessing of beatitude. God’s favor toward the poor and hungry and the wise who trust, believe and fear Him. Mary cannot help but continually sing about what God has done for her, for us and the whole world.  So, seriously, what has God done for you lately or ever? We have much to be thankful for.  

“I will bless the Lord at all times; His praise shall be ever in my mouth.” There is a huge but such an amazing tremendous word that Jesus uses in scripture, and we celebrate in the rite and holy celebration of the Sacrament of Holy Baptism, “Ephphatha!” It means, “Be opened!” It refers to the incident and encounter of a man who was unable to hear and had a speech impediment. His family and friends brought him to Jesus and literally begged Jesus to lay his hand on him to free and cure him. We hear and experience the personal intimacy of Jesus taking the man off to the side to be away from the noisy crowd and be intimately present to the One who could heal him and set him free. We experience the personal touch of God.  It is personal, intimate. A touch that not only moves one’s heart but also moves impediments and those things that keep us from hearing and speaking with God. The gentle touch and yolk of God that removes all obstacles and frees us from the chains that bind and shackle us from the personal, direct and intimate contact with our Creator.

Note the personal touch Jesus has with the Father as He looked up into heaven, into the Father’s eyes, directly into His heart and Jesus groans, and says “Ephphatha!” And immediately the man’s ears were opened, his hearing restored, his speech impediment was removed, his mouth opened, and he spoke plainly giving glory and praise to God. That is the gift of God and of such a powerful word that really cannot describe the compassion that touched and moved the Sacred Heart of Jesus to look so tenderly in the eyes and heart of the Father and beg that this poor child of God be released from the yolk that prevented him from an intimate union and holy communion with God. Imagine, not being able to hear God or being able to speak directly to him. At baptism, our ears were touched by Jesus to listen to God’s voice and our mouths to proclaim his praise. How often we misuse the gift entrusted to us. Rather than blessing God, at times we use his name in vain. Rather than thanking and praising God, we curse him and blaspheme his Holy Name. Rather than magnify and rejoice in the Lord like our Mother Mary, we speak ill of God and even blame him for our misconduct and misdeeds. Rather than speaking bad of others, bless God instead. 

“Do this in remembrance of me.” What are the things you remember the most, that occupy your senses and consume most or all your day? Do they tend to be heartaches and headaches or grace filled moments that bring a smile to your heart and everlasting light to your day? Do you mostly recall joys and celebrations with your family and friends or recall only the hurts and sorrows and disappointments caused by broken relationships and so-called friendships that devour our precious time and eat up our mental capacity and peaceful space.  Do you tend to focus and spend more time in gratitude, in thanksgiving, in giving thanks to God and to others for the amazing lifelong blessings you can count, the incredible unexplainable successes and accomplishments, those momentous birthdays, anniversaries and joyous moments and milestone celebrations celebrated in the span of a year, two years, ten years, ever since you were born. Or do you tend to dwell in the past, drag it forward in every conversation, remain stuck in the yesteryears, cannot seem to forget or let go the ancient past with all the bad memories, insignificant failures, overly overwhelming concerns, exaggerated exaggerations and overreacting situations that did or did not quite go that way. Our memories can make a smile or a frown appear and disappear in the blink of an eye. We focus too much on negative memories and bad situations that draw us further into darkness, discouragement and despair. However, a happy thought, a wonderful memory can erase and dissipate all that.  We can enjoy a precious moment, a retreat like experience, a joy filled moment, a grace filled effect and in the blink of an eye, the enemy can rob us of the joy and smile, tranquility and peace by distracting and causing us to forget the consoling thought and focusing rather on painful memories and devasting experiences and hurts.  Jesus says, “Do this in remembrance of me.” We might ask do what?  Certainly, faithfully and reverently, celebrate and pray Mass often to recall how God our Heavenly Father sent his beloved Son Jesus into our world and lives to die for the sake of our sins to redeem us, bless us, forgive us, and heal us. To remember that unless you faithfully eat this bread and drink this cup, you cannot have life within you. To remember and know no one loves you more than this, than Jesus. That remembering how much God loves you, will help you forgive and forget those menacing bad memories and unforgiving mistakes.

“The Holy Spirit will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you.” Our memories are so important to our daily lives and such an essential part of our ongoing living and yet they remain so fragile to us. Memories can be precious moments. The kind we wish to remain forever like a sacred keepsake but in reality, memories can also prove to be shattered hauntings that we pray will go away but seem to last and linger like a bad penny that never goes away but keeps returning and turning up when we least expect and desire them. A bad memory can be like that, always wanting you to take notice. Always wanting you to pick it up and recall the last time you experienced that painful bad memory. Always wanting you to continue the endless dialog of revisiting and reliving that painful situation again. Wanting you to pick up where you last left off and experience that unpleasant bad memory once again, forever. A good memory, on the other hand, can prove to be a powerful instrument in a critical moment of crisis. A good, holy, and pleasant memory can aid and shelter us in those unfortunate torments and dreadful moments of life. Those ongoing trials that never seem to end or go away. The haunting memories that tend to sweep us away suddenly, quickly and gradually over time from the pleasant peace that God offers us and hurls us into life’s unfortunate circumstances and storms. A happy memory can help us in those critical moments to forget the unpleasantness of difficult situations. They offer us sacred moments of God’s grace to help us recall and remember a happy thought, a blessed memory, or a pleasant moment to help us forget those unpleasant memories caused by a fall, failure or life’s embarrassing moments. Those unfortunate situations we could not change or control. Those lifelong mistakes we hope everyone forgets. Those situations that never seem to heal. Like a scab, we keep picking at it. The enemy is a master of forgetfulness but God is greater. The enemy is very good in causing us to recall and remember but God is better at it. The enemy wants us to forget God’s love. He wants us to remember our past, to recall all of our hurts, to relive traumatic experiences, to renew our sinful folly and never let go of painful failings or let go of life’s most embarrassing moments. Remember that our gracious God loves us faithfully and unconditionally. When he forgives, he truly forgets.

“Behold, I make all things new.” Most of us, given an opportunity to do so, can from our early childhood years of catechetical instruction and teaching or through the sacramental formation we received, easily recite, probably word for word, the classical definition of what is a sacrament: “The sacraments are efficacious signs of grace, instituted by Christ and entrusted to the Church, by which divine life is dispensed to us.” Nevertheless, what does that mean? What does that mean to you? How would you respond to the text? How would you describe what a sacrament is in your own words? Where is God leading you in thought and heart to consider explaining a sacrament to a child, a neighbor, a person who does not believe or to a person who has lost all hope but wants and needs to believe? Where is God graciously inviting you today to grow, know, change or simply be inspired? Given my own lack of intellectual wisdom, knowledge, and comprehension and in the little ways that I can provide any sort of explanation or can claim any confidence of understanding a textbook definition, I probably would complicate the matter and add further confusion to any definition. Thankful that God has graciously helped me to understand sacraments in simple terms and in a simple language that I can understand and in a language I can share: a sacrament is simply a life giving, lifesaving and life-changing gift from God to make us new again. When we encounter Jesus in his real presence and the gift of sacramental grace, we simply are not the same. How can anyone who truly encounters the real presence of Jesus remain unchanged? We are touched by God, changed by grace, transformed by love, made into a new creation. God makes all things new. He renews us and makes us new in, through and with the sacraments. The Church teaches us that Jesus himself, through and in the power, peace and unity of the Holy Spirit, graciously bestows himself and celebrates the sacraments with and in us. It is Jesus who truly baptized and confirmed you. In and through his poor priests, Jesus consecrates you and gives himself freely as gift to you. Jesus sanctifies you and sacramentally feeds and nourishes you in Holy Communion and through special graces in, and through and with the Blessed Sacrament, the Holy Eucharist, with his Precious Body and Blood conforms you, heals you, loves you, transforms you, restores you, makes you good, holy and new once again; a living sacrament.

“The disciples were filled with joy and the Holy Spirit.” Have you ever experienced authentic joy? That kind of joy that is real and true joy. The kind of authentic joy that simply comes deep from within? The kind of authentic joy John the Baptist displayed in his mother’s womb upon hearing the greeting of Mary’s sweet voice and upon nearing the real presence of the Lord in the holy tabernacle of Mary’s holy body and Immaculate Heart. The kind of authentic joy Mary sang in her beautiful hymn and song of Magnificat responding with great authentic joy of being the lowly handmaid and the Mother of our Lord. The kind of authentic joy that caused the disciples to leap for great joy in knowing they were found worthy to suffer imprisonment and endure harsh words and threats from local and religious authorities for proclaiming Jesus Christ crucified and risen from the dead. Authentic joy is the kind of joy that is real. It is not fake or plastic and cannot be masked or covered over by a fake put on smile, or an impersonal greeting, or a fake good morning. It is simply pure joy. A pure joy that is authentic, truly from the heart, unselfish and lives in the glorious freedom of the beloved children of God. This kind of joy is seriously authentic and childlike. Not childish as in the joy we might get in pulling off the world’s funniest prank or the joy we might get in finally proving someone wrong, or the feeling and sensation we get from embarrassing a friend or foe or even the joy we might get in doing something dirty, deceitful or illegal and never getting caught. That is not joy. We cannot and can never feel good about doing harm or wrong to another. Real authentic joy seeks the good of the other. The real joy found and experienced in doing something authentically good, helpful and truly supportive to another or someone with a special need. The kind of joy we experience from truly listening to the Holy Spirit’s promptings interiorly guide, counsel and direct us from within to the joy we manifest in doing what is truly good in God’s eyes and avoiding the evil he detests. The kind of joy that causes us to sing with our Beloved Mother Mary in knowing we are so loved, have been saved, and are now called by the Good Shepherd to graciously and joyfully follow him as he leads us to authentic joy and profound holiness.

None of the disciples dared to ask Him, “Who are you?” I think how often our person, our identity, the very source of our being, who we really are, is so often misunderstood, questioned, attacked and quite simply misguided and ever put to the test. Challenged and confronted in so many ways and questioned and threatened so many times by so many of His own people, Jesus faced the opposition’s questioning with humility, silence and truth. Those who opposed Jesus constantly questioned His identity and directly challenged His person by asking, “Who are you?” – “Who do you think you are?” Questioning is Satan’s favorite tactic and preferred method of distraction. His direct aim in disturbing our peace, stealing our joy and introducing His chaos in order to bring harm and confusion to the beloved children of God and wreak havoc on God’s glorious kingdom. We certainly know that feeling. Having to prove your own innocence so many times or regularly having to back up your own words or even constantly having your own faith, values, belief or courage challenged because of the fear and insecurities of others. When we are not certain of our own identity, who we are, who we have become, our broken image of self, the fake personas we have created, the identity crisis we interiorly face and cause, we attack others to justify who we want to be or become. This is our false, negative self. Rather than seeking God’s help and assistance to understand and know who we really are, how God wonderfully created us and the joy and freedom of being God’s glorious and beloved children, we seek to destroy the identity of another because we are not sure or certain of ourselves who we are called to become. How often for lack of control or fear of being revealed, unmasked, or properly identified as a fraud, does the darkness of our own wounds directly target and question the innocence of Jesus or that of His beloved disciples in order to feed our unfortunate sinful weakness, in order to lower the esteem of another. Our broken self-image starves our good name and our good nature then seeks to hurt and harm the good portrait of another in order to feed our own sinfulness and relieve the hurt of our own painful brokenness. Knowing Jesus personally, directly and intimately is God’s reflection of who we really are and meant to become. Jesus truly knows who He really is even if others continue to keep questioning Him. He also really knows you.

“The love of God has been poured out into our hearts.” Many times, we are unaware of how much our past, our wounds, our hurts and disappointments guide and direct our thoughts, actions and responses. We tend to avoid the mistakes of others. Avoiding the consequence of being hurt further by their words, thoughts, actions and reactions. However, we often do not want to learn or grow from our own hurts, failures and shortcomings so we tend to do, say and respond in disbelief, negatively avoiding what we know could be helpful, useful, beneficial and true. To avoid further hurt or past utterances, we will make ourselves believe a lie we know is not true or we believe telling a lie is our only option or we say the truth hurts so we told a friend or a loved one a lie. However, that form of thinking lacks love and is far from the truth that Jesus Himself says is easy and sets us free. Telling the truth always and always telling the truth is always the right, loving and only thing to do. The love of God has been poured into our hearts, and this love is righteous and true.  It seeks gently to uncover a lie so that the only way, the only truth and the only life of God can be discovered in us. This love gives us the strength to endure, the confidence to believe, the hope to trust and the love to forgive sins even when they are our own. This love consumes the past, redeems the present, gives way to the future. This love endures all things, conquers all things and is greater than us, our sins, our death and surely greater than any of our enemies especially the enemy of our human nature and will. The love of God never disappoints and never fails. God’s love is constant always, always active, forever healing, always forgiving, life preserving, life giving, life changing, always available. God never ceases to provide grace, mercy, healing, pardon and peace. God never stops loving. He loves always and will always love us and love you even when you do not believe it, cannot feel it, choose to avoid it, pretend it does not exist or believe he cannot forgive you, does not want to forgive, you believe your hurt and disappoint is greater than God’s love. God still loves you, will never abandon you, will always provide for you and has truly forgiven you. True love can never stop loving because love is forever. 

“Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.” We tend to believe forgiveness is the most difficult thing to do and perhaps even to accomplish. Not because we cannot forgive. Certainly we can by the love of God who conquers all things especially sin, death and the ability to forgive, and by the grace and outpouring of the Holy Spirit who sanctifies, heals, reconciles and renews all things making all things new again. With the Lord’s help, we can accomplish all things including forgiveness from the heart for nothing is impossible for God. Just ask our Lady. Forgiveness can feel like the most difficult thing we have to do and perhaps even the greatest impossibility we believe we experience in our own life however, recall and remember not because we cannot do or accomplish forgiveness but perhaps because we are stubborn of heart and resistant in spirit that we tend to avoid forgiveness from the heart, fail to forgive, or simply just do not desire forgiveness for fear of getting hurt or the pain of being used again. Sometimes the people we call friends and family tend to do that. Hurt us the most but Jesus forgives them, and we must as well for the sake of our salvation and our own freedom and happiness. We just do not want to forgive. Even when we know what Jesus said, taught and did regarding forgiveness. He always forgives a repentant sinner even those who blaspheme against His sacred name. Even those who use His holy name in vain. He still forgives them if they ask Him to and truly want to be forgiven. It is not that we cannot forgive another, we just fail to ask Jesus for the grace. We just do not want to. Even though we hear Jesus say from the foot of the Cross, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do,” we seem to ignore Jesus and pretend not to understand or hear the call to mercy or active forgiveness. We choose to neglect the throne of merciful love when it comes to forgiving from our own hearts. We forget that Jesus said, “unless you forgive from the heart, you cannot be forgiven.” We still fail to forgive. Jesus encourages and commands us to forgive as often as He has forgiven us, which is always. However, we still say and believe we cannot forgive or worst yet, we say and believe we can forgive but will never forget. Thank God, He has truly forgiven you.