Author: Erin Gonzalez

 

Preparing for my Mom’s 50th Birthday this weekend was one of the most adventurous things I’ve done. In a matter of a week and a half – because that’s when my dad told me he was throwing her not ONE, but TWO surprise birthday parties – my Dad, my sister and myself were able to completely plan the two parties, and I was able to make a cake for my Mom. It became stressful at times,  but nothing made me more stressed than when I left to pick up the food.

When I left the first restaurant, literally about an hour before I had to be back home, the breaks began to fail. Thankfully, they didn’t completely stop working, (Praise God!) but it wasn’t working enough that when I’d press down on them completely, it would still take a while for the van to completely stop. Sometimes, if I pressed down a little too hard, it would stop working completely and the van would slide a bit. I still had to go to the next restaurant, but when I arrived there, leaving me with 30 minutes left (which is how long it takes to get home from where I was, using the highway), I decided that I needed to take the side roads to be safe. Thankfully, I wasn’t alone; my Ninong (meaning “Godfather”) was with me.

So here we were, driving, and I’m looking at the time, panicking, and my Ninong all of sudden said, “Why are you worrying? Let’s pray!” (SURPRISE #1) This was such a blessing to me because he and I never prayed together before, but when we did, he knew just what to say and it began to calm me. And then a little later, he noticed that I was still worried. So, out of nowhere, he suddenly said, “Why are you still worrying? We’ve prayed to the Lord, and He will keep us safe! Remember, ‘For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you,” (taken from Matthew 17:20) (SURPRISE #2) Again, I have never really prayed together with my Ninong before, and not only does he offer to pray and even lead the prayer; He suddenly threw the perfect Bible verse at me, EXACTLY when I needed it!

So the plan for the surprise was that we would set the house up after my Mom left for choir practice and choir at Mass at St. Benedict’s (located directly across the street from our house), but when I came home, I realized ALL of the parents who would help us set up, except my Ninong, were actually also part of the choir practice with my Mom so that left me, my Sister, my Ninong, Ali, Zach, and Jared to move tables and chairs from one room to another, and from the basement to the 1st floor, decorate the foyer and the 1st floor, while I still had to finish the cake. And we only had less than an hour! I don’t know how it happened, but with faith and confidence in the Lord, we still found joy and laughter in the moment which should have brought panic, and it happened so perfectly (SURPRISE #2)! As soon as we were finishing, Zach spotted my Mom, and although it was just us at first, we stood by the door, and as she entered, we screamed “SURPRISE!!!!” (SURPRISE #3) And then, all of a sudden, EVERYONE began to flood in! She suspected something, but she thought it would be for Sunday. And little did she know that there really also is another surprise party on Sunday, but with our relatives.

So Sunday came, and she came back from cash counting (counting the tithes) from St. Benedict’s and when she walked in, she stood there, frozen with eyes wide open as we screamed, “SURPRISE!!!!!!” (SURPRISE #4) Although she expected there would be a surprise, and half expected the one on Saturday, little did she know there was a greater plan behind what she “expected”.

You see, my family has almost always been so tightly knit together. We try to always eat as many meals as possible together, we try to save a day each week or a certain block where it’s just family time – no cell phones, no laptops… nothing that can distract – and we’d either watch a movie together, play a board game, go out to eat, or even clean together. And lately, I began to worry because my Mom wasn’t always happy, and she and my dad would argue a lot, but through this weekend, through the stress, adrenaline rushes, but ultimately above all, love, my parents were able to really put all things aside and mend their bond (SURPRISE #5). I witnessed an expression of love without having to use words, and felt warm with His love, through my parents…

Looking at what my experience this weekend, it made me realize that this is what it is every day with the Lord:

1. In the preparation of things, sometimes, it’s as simple as reminding myself to stop over-thinking. In faith, I must believe everything has been, and always will be in His hands. It has all been planned out. Even the littlest things (like the drive back when the brakes on the van broke) are in His hands, especially when we lift it up to Him in prayer. Sometimes, we just need to have a little faith (as my Ninong reminded me – Matthew 17: 20)!
2. In every moment of celebration… Sometimes, I am so thankful to be in the moment that I’m in, and little do I ever remember that the Lord will ALWAYS have a greater plan for us, and it will ALWAYS be something we do not expect. Because of this, I must always be grateful, even at the times when I reach what I think to be the greatest level of joy, peace, and happiness. Our God is a perfect God, and being a being of imperfection, I will never know what is truly perfect here on earth, except the love of my Father. I must never expect because the Lord will blindsight me with something greater, and if I expect or assume, I will fail to see the greater plan the Lord has set for me.
3. Our God is the only one who can give us a life-long, life-giving, never-ending celebration because with Him, there is always something to celebrate. SUPRISE #6: At the end of the day, after we finished cleaning up for the day, my family and I (just the four of us, with our great Lord) ended the day with a worship… a celebration after the celebration.

I know it’s been said many times, but I cannot stop smiling in saying that OUR GOD IS A GOD OF SUPRISES. Life is a gift from the Lord, and when we take care of it and lift it up to Him, acknowledging that EVERYTHING, including every breath, every victory, every pain, every PLAN is His, He will surprise us, especially when we don’t expect it.

“For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.“
– Jeremiah 29:11

Within the last week, I was able to reflect on the importance of the journey I take with my cross… About how the sufferings that come with carrying my own cross will (somewhere along the way) bring blessings, not only to myself but also to others. And of course, as the days passed, I was tested even more in this reflection.. My cross… in many different ways… became heavier and heavier. But as the days continued, I found myself coming to another realization… What good is the journey… What would it be to me if I carried my cross all this way, only to stop at the crucifixion? 

To boldly say, “Yes Lord, I will carry my cross,” should be an automatic yes to the latter… “Yes Lord, I will be crucified. For Your sake Lord, I will be crucified.” In my family, in all my relationships, in the CFC Youth community, as well as in my journey as an MV, I cannot deny that there were times wanted to give up. In fact, I think I have never been so tested to give up so much in the past 2 years. There were so many times that when things were going well, something else in my life would be up for question and I was only mere inches from trying to take back my yes. But that is not accepting my cross. To carry the burden of my cross solely for the Lord will bring blessings, but it is in the crucifixion that my burden becomes a miracle.

It is in completely binding myself to the cross that the suffering truly becomes love. Blessed Mother Teresa once said, “Love, in order to be genuine, has to have a cost.” My cross… my crucifixion… no matter how much it hurts sometimes, I will always say YES to the Lord, wherever HE calls me because it is out of love that I am willing to suffer for Him. It is out of such a deep love I have for the Lord that I am willing to set my pains and all my gains at the cross for Him. And WHY? Because it is simply at the cross that He suffered for me… it is at the cross that He gave it all for me… at the cross, He saved me… 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00Nci1ATvPg

Throughout years and years of being in the CFC Youth Community, I have often heard the term, “Carry your cross”. But when the busy seasons start to come, the cross becomes heavier and heavier, and sometimes unbearable. Now for some people, “unbearable” might lead to a feeling of wanting to give up, and for others, it might feel like a feeling of being desensitized to everyone and everything around us. “Unbearable” holds a different meaning for every person, but what I know is that what is unbearable starts to feel like a burden, getting heavier and heavier as we go. But if I am created in the image and likeness of God, then as cliché as it sounds, the simple question goes back to the basics… What would Jesus do?

As he carried his cross on his way to Calvary, there is no doubt his cross weighed heavier and heavier by the minute. He carried his cross and fell 3 times because of how heavy it became.. and encountered blessings 3 times, as well as giving 3 blessings in return:

1. Jesus meets his mother. Although he is the Son of God, Jesus was also human. He also had a mother. What child, in the midst of his suffering, would not want to see his mother? In the midst of the crowds, they met each other, and Mother Mary, once again, is the greatest idol of humilty and love, being able to sacrifice her son to bring salvation to the world.
2. Simon of Cyrene comes to help him carry his cross. In this act, Simon became a blessing to Jesus because he helped lighten the cross for him, and in return, Simon learned how to truly serve; how to put someone else before himself. More-so… how to put the Lord above all else…
3. Veronica wipes the face of Jesus. Jesus felt the blessing of love of another who truly cared for him. To Veronica (a name in legend, derived from “vera” and “icon” – greek words, meaning “true image”), it was a blessing at that time, personally, because she was able to touch the face of Jesus in the midst of his suffering as an act of love. It might also be seen as a blessing to us because we are in the midst of verifying the very cloth his face left an imprint on, which might even belong to her.

 

In his suffering, out of His devoted love, God gave Jesus small little blessings to tell him, “My Son, you are not alone.” And in these blessings, Christ’s suffering became a blessing to share… to Mother Mary, to Simon, to Veronica, and even to us all today. The “burden” of his cross brought him blessings, and blessings to everyone around him because of love. Because of God.

Being human, there will always be a cross to bear. I will always have a cross to carry and YES, at times, like Christ, it will feel unbearable. But it is only through God that like the impossible, the unbearable becomes bearable. It is only through God that the burden of my cross will become a blessing. It is only through God that the burden of my cross becomes a blessing I desire.

Often times have I been told that patience is what I need to learn, and often times have I thought that I have finally done it because I learned to be patient. However, when the Lord calls us to be more loving or more patient, or even when we ask to be more of something, it is something that we must prepare ourselves for, for a lifetime. There is no virtue, no trait, no skill that anyone can ask for that will ever be completed in a lifetime. And with patience, I have found that it is not one experience that I need to grow with patience in, but my whole life… every single day, and every single part of it.

How many times have I let each day go by, looking for “the message”? Looking for affirmations of everything? Although it isn’t entirely bad, it also isn’t the greatest. That is something I learned from experience. If I constantly look for the answers myself, how much room am I leaving for God to lead me to them? If I am constantly thinking, observing, analyzing, I will never hear or see the simplicity of His blessings around me. I will fail to see the answers when they’re right in front of me because I have created my own distractions by trying to break down these messages myself. I must admit, there have been many many times that I have done this, agonizing over what the message could be, when sometimes, all He’s waiting for is for me to lay back, settle down, and sit beside Him so I can hear His whisper. Then, it is in that silence that I sigh in relief, laughing at how simple and how much greater everything truly is.

So when the Lord says, “Be patient,” it is not a matter of replying with “Be patient with what, Lord?”
It is a matter of saying, “Yes, Lord,” despite of not knowing exactly what it is because often times, it isn’t about one thing or two. Sometimes, it is simply about discovering the importance of that virtue and how I can personally grow in it in.. Not in one thing, not in two, not even in a million other things, but in everything, big and small.

“Patience is not the ability to wait, but the ability to keep a good attitude while waiting.”
– Joyce Meyer

It is another opportunity to have FAITH, to HOPE, and to LOVE.

“Patience with others is
LOVE;
Patience with self is
HOPE;
Patience with God is
FAITH.”
– Adel Bestavros

It was just this Wednesday that my sister came back from a mission trip with her school to Peru. As she told the family about her experience there, I realized that although her mission trip wasn’t with CFC Youth, the experience of mission was very similar. No, I’m not talking about using the “manual flush” toilets, or not having the luxury of having air conditioning, or having to always carry around wet wipes and rolls of tissue, or having to pay a fee to use public washrooms.

In sharing our experiences with each other, it made me realize more and more that what the world needs isn’t “missionaries” who have been “trained”, but missionaries who live and love. It is a continuous conditioning from the Lord, achieved in His love, that will truly drive mission into the hearts of others. And I believe that this is what we need. What the world needs is the fulfillment of missions. Although each person has a personal vocation to live out, the one mission that we all share is the mission to love.

Ethel was placed in a village named Pacifico de Villa. It isn’t even under the Government’s system because they don’t want to take care of it. So how much of a blessing is it when students like her want to come there for a few weeks to bring support and help build foundations in this village? So inspiring! So when she spoke of her experience in Peru and how it was touching to just hug the children (despite of being told not to come in physical contact with them) and see a smile from the people in her placement, or hearing about the empathy she felt towards the elderly who cried because life was just too hard for them, it made me smile. MISSION BEGINS FROM THE HEART. And because of that, it begins with love. It IS Love. And because God is love, mission begins and continues with the Lord.

Missionaries will be called. They will be trained. They will be placed wherever they are needed, but it doesn’t mean that without missionaries, there is no mission, and it definitely doesn’t mean that without missionaries, we cannot fulfill missions. As children of God, we are born into a unifying mission… A MISSION TO LOVE. “Love one another as I have loved you.”

We are called to LOVE…
without command,
without demand,
and without self.

It is in losing my “self” that I can gain everything, for without loving God in others… without Him, I am nothing. We are called for a mission to love… we are called for a mission to Love.

“I will not bring to the Lord, that which costs me nothing.”
– 1 Chronicles 21: 24

Lately, I find that my eyes have opened even wider to the life of mission. Often times have I subconsciously familiarized the works with mission, and often times have I had to remind myself that mission begins with relationships.

Without relationships, mission would not exist. It has been so long that I had been comfortable where I was that the comfort became something I did not even realize. I always thought that “being comfortable” referred to the comforts of service and my roles and responsibilities, but that comfort also lied within my current relationships. I realized that the people I often hang out with are people that I have become very comfortable with, so I decided to challenge myself. I sacrificed time with them in order to build on new and/ or existing relationships. Lo and behold, I had discovered a mine of hidden treasures.

When I challenged myself to step out of my comfortable relationships and deeper into those that were “uncomfortable” or unknown, I realized that there are things about people that truly show the victory of His love. Treasures that can only be discovered if you choose to look beyond the surface. Behind every person lies a love story with the Lord and if we decide to come out of our comforts, we will discover pieces of one great victory; a victory known as God. Each person is a piece of God waiting to be discovered and it is in treading in these new relationships that I am seeing how each one of us relates more and more with one another. It is in these relationships that I have seen that without knowing these people, there would be no mission.

To be a missionary is to serve those around us. But if we don’t know those around us, then how do we know our mission? This is where I realized that mission begins with relationships. We must understand those we serve to help understand what they need to help bring God to their hearts, but more importantly, we must come to know God (and God in them). Mission is sharing, and it isn’t just sharing logic, but sharing the presence and love of the Lord through personal victories and trials. If we remain with what is comfortable, we will be more tempted to sit back and relax and miss out on whatever opportunities and treasures are around us. That’s why I challenge myself (and yourself) to see what areas in our lives are uncomfortable? Dive deeper in those areas and I can guarantee that beyond all of those things lie treasures we have yet to discover. As Aerosmith sang,

“I don’t wanna close my eyes,
I don’t wanna fall asleep ’cause I’d miss you, baby,
And I don’t wanna miss a thing.”

Don’t miss out on more opportunities grow and love.
Don’t miss out on God.

AMDG.

With the many preparations counting down to the Eastern True North Conference, there was no doubt that there would be challenges along the way. However, most of us don’t think that the challenges would be about time or consistency in the products of our labour. What most people forget is that the challenge may also lie within us.

This year, there is no doubt that the Lord has been personal. Whether it is through messages in our small and simple daily routines or messages that He blesses us to hear through the words of others, or even moments that we “accidentally” catch a glimpse of or witness to in others, the Lord has been screaming LOVE. 

Throughout the preparations for Liturgy, and even as I practice for the creative sessions for TNC, the Lord has truly challenged me to see love in literally everything… the GOOD and the BAD. Love is not always just about having patience in waiting for a loved one, or patience with time, but more importantly, patience with one another. Through the conference preparations, I have been reminded that love is also being able to be patient in our own frustrations by holding our tongue to speak with loving words. Love is lovingly correcting. Love is sticking through when the going gets tough, and pushing through to attain victory in successes for the Lord together. Love is acknowledging that there truly is no I in team. Love is being able to affirm one another despite of whether one is “doing better” than the other because in love, we are made perfect in His eyes. if we are made in and with love, then there is no other way to grow than to grow in and with love, but more importantly, the love of our Father.

With all the different ways to love, there will always be a loving way to approach each other and every situation. And with this year, the year of faith, being so personal, I believe that the Lord is showing us how to love in all the simple and challenging ways. “Now faith, hope and love abide these three, but the greatest of these is love.”  (1 Corinthians 13: 13) He wants us to learn the many different ways we, ourselves, can love, but it isn’t just that. Through the conference prep, I believe He is also challenging us to find the different ways we can love one another. Why? It goes back to something I heard a priest say in his Homily earlier this week:

“We can love our neighbour without loving God, but we cannot love God without loving our neighbour.”

I pray that this is something we can all truly take to heart. Let us not hesitate to EXPOSE OURSELVES to EXPOSE THE LORD. Let us be unafraid to RAK not only as we count down to Conference, but in each and every day, before and after, so that we can always be an EXPOSITION of the Lord and His love. #JesusExpo