Tag: Sunday Mass Readings

How to Persevere In Times of Despair

April 1, 2020 / Greg Garda

Auschwitz survivor and author, Corrie Ten Boom once said the following:

“When a train goes through a tunnel and it gets dark, you don’t throw away the ticket and jump off. You sit still and trust the engineer.”

When we find ourselves in a place of despair it’s hard to see any purpose behind it, or if any good can be brought out of it. When we are being suffocated by darkness it’s extremely difficult to think of the light, just as someone drowning finds it difficult to pull air into her lungs.

My Brush with Death

In 2009, for the first time in my life I swam in the ocean at Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I made the mistake of carelessly going deeper into the water where the waves were bigger and more unpredictable. Without warning, a giant wave swept me off my feet and dragged me under the water. As soon as I poked my head above the water, another wave came and once more dragged me under.

Perception Is Not Always Reality: Reflecting on the Eucharist

August 20, 2018 / Greg Garda

By Insight Not by Sight

Perception is not always reality. In other words, our eyes can sometimes deceive us.

In his second letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul famously writes, “For we live by faith and not by sight” (5:7). Is Paul telling us that we should just put on blind folds and blindly walk through life hoping that everything will turn out fine? Not at all! At the time of Paul’s writing Corinth was a wealthy metropolitan port with several “shiny” distractions that were not too different from major metropolitan hubs today, like my own Toronto.

Photo by Yeshi Kangrang on Unsplash

Emerging from the subway steps onto Dundas Square in the heart of downtown Toronto we are immediately bombarded with shiny colourful advertisements, loud music, and several restaurants, cafes, and outlet stores swarming with people. All these distractions can easily lead us to miss a reality that exists under the surface.

Homeless men and women begging for food and money, drug addicts, the garbage in alleyways, police attentively scanning the area for any possible crime and those things that are even hidden from all our of our senses, like the inner brokenness or happiness of the people who fall into our sight. These are all things that lie under the surface of regular sight.

January 22, 2018 / Greg Garda

Discipleship and The Privatization of Religion

A Reflection on Mark 1:14-20.

Weekend Scripture Reflection: What is Holiness?

February 17, 2017 / Greg Garda

If I were to ask you if you consider yourself to a holy person, how would you respond?

I think it’s safe to say that most of us would hesitate labeling ourselves as holy because over time “holiness” has come to be associated with images of hypocrisy in the Church.

Courtesy of Unsplash.com by Aaron Burden

Desire Jesus

Holiness is the desire to be like Jesus. Holiness is less of a state of being and more of a disposition of the heart. Do you desire to be more like Jesus? If the answer is “yes”, then you are holy. If holiness was dependent upon perfection, then no one would be holy.. Pope Francis refers to the Church as a “hospital for sinners.” If everyone had the capacity to be perfect there would be no need for a church and we would still be living in the Garden of Eden. It is possible to be holy and yet still find ourselves being hypocritical. In fact every time we sin, whether it’s visually apparent to others or not, we are being hypocrites. If you’re a hypocrite then you’re in the right place. Jesus established the Church for you and for me.