Gabe's Testimony - In his own words

I was almost as pleased and excited for my brother Gabe's commitment to Christ as I was for my husband Al's. Recently I asked him to write it down, and here it is in his own words. God often uses suffering to bring about His perfect and glorious will. Gabe's testimony is an excellent example. 

At that moment, I fell to my knees and accepted for the first time that I was not in control and could not think my way, act my way, or will my way forward. The only path forward was in God through the divine intervention of His only Son and my savior Jesus Christ. I surrendered my fate and my life to Him.

Gabe being fearless

Wait, lets back up a little. For months prior to this moment and in the months that followed, grace would provide the opportunity to open my eyes and recognize salvation in this life and in the next, through Jesus Christ.

Months before this moment I had attended a party for my friend who was getting married again. At the party I met a priest, the pastor of St. Peter’s Church. This church was well known to me because it was the church my parents were married in, and was my mom’s home parish when she was growing up. This friendly priest and I met only days after I was separated from my corporate position in what was termed “a realignment”.

When I met Father Ivan that night, I was 59 years old. I was a confident and gregarious professional. I knew in advance about my coming separation from that job and had prepared for it with all the professional zeal that I would need to secure new employment within a month or two at the outside. I was at the peak of my career and needed only to put the word out to my friends in the industry and start applying for open positions.

Things didn’t go exactly as I had planned. Weeks turned to months and interviews were few and far between. I was still confident that I could wait it out and keep searching until the right opportunity came along, any day now.

Finally, something. It wasn’t in my field but it was well within my skill set, so I took the risk and started the new position without fully vetting the details of its financial compensation. I wanted to get back to work. I had been unemployed for only five months but it felt like five years. I had never been unemployed. Moreover, I had always been at work at something – since I was a kid. Employed is what I am. My identity, my love and my hobby, was my career. I had money enough to weather unemployment for quite a while. What I didn’t have was patience. I wanted to get back to work doing anything. This new job was a new challenge and an opportunity to gain my identity back. Within a few weeks the financial reality of my new position became clear and after a brief reckoning with the boss, I was again unemployed. Luckily my unemployment insurance was unaffected and it picked up again, at least for a few more months.

Sleepless nights followed. Then one Sunday morning shortly before dawn I awakened suddenly with the thought that I had to get up and get myself to church without delay, and pray. Groggy, I threw on a pair of pants, shoes and a coat and got in the car and sped off. The only church that I could think of was Sacred Heart Cathedral in Newark. When I got there, I parked right out front and ran up the stairs in my slippers.

Every door was locked! There’s a special little door on the far side that is reserved for desperate wretches like me. I certainly qualified. That door was also locked. I hadn’t been to church in 30 years and even when I had, I hadn’t really paid much attention. I started to think that my disturbed awakening that morning was just one more dead end and false promise of hope. I couldn’t much argue with whatever cosmic practical joke this was. I certainly deserved it. I was down and out and deserving of it because of the arrogant assumption that I was in control of events. As the sun slowly rose, I sat on the church steps a short while before heading home.

Between the Cathedral and home, I passed St. Peter’s Church. Better than no church at all, I went into that empty church. I knelt in the 2^nd or 3^rd pew from the front and focused on feeling sorry for myself. After a while I heard music rise up from the organ. I must have been so preoccupied that I didn’t notice the organist take his seat and the 7:00 am perishers fill in behind me. I wanted to leave but didn’t have the nerve.

The very same Father Ivan, who I had met a few months prior, proceeded up the center aisle. As he turned toward the congregation, our eyes met. He could see that I was not the same man. He saw a very different man from the one he had met several months before. I had come right out of bed, in old pants, pajama shirt and slippers. With a mis-buttoned out of season coat over the top. I hadn’t even washed my face, so propelled was I to get to the Cathedral, not knowing really why. I was also visibly anguished which is why I was there in the first place.

After mass Father Ivan and I talked for a time on the church steps, those blessed steps of St Peter’s. He listened and offered no advice accept that I return the next week or whenever I wanted to talk. I did return each week and we talked again and again on those steps.

Sunday mass for me became a welcome and essential refuge that I needed to recharge my relationship with Jesus and explore the liturgy, the gospel and the traditions of the church, as if for the first time. It really was the first time that I had actually listened and paid attention.

Something else had caught my attention for the first time - other people. I’d noticed them before but never paid them much attention. Now all of a sudden, they were real. With smiles and sometimes not smiling, with troubles of their own. I find myself caring about them while not even knowing them. I watch them before services solemnly praying, kneeling in pews and at the tabernacle, and receiving the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. It’s very moving to see such faith in action.

On the Sunday prior to Holy Thursday, on those blessed church steps, Father asks if I would be one of the 12 that sits near the alter to have my feet washed at the Holy Thursday evening mass. I had no idea what that even was. That Thursday night I participated in the mass - and began to understand what Jesus’ lesson to the apostles was all about.

During this time Father announced a mass for us to prepare for reconciliation with the Lord prior to Easter Sunday. Now it had been 45 years since my last visit to the confessional. I attended out of curiosity but was very apprehensive about confessing my sins. Everyone at that mass was there to reconcile their sins with the Lord. I finally mustered the nerve to reveal them to Jesus in the form of the priest, and sincerely repent of my sins.

Then with the grace one only reads about in books, that I thought could never be real, I was at once absolved of all my sins. Some, I had carried for over 40 years. It was a profound moment that changed my life. After reflecting on this experience, I knew that what I felt was not only real but that it was the only real and true thing in the universe. My life since has never been the same.

During all this I still had a problem that was no closer to a solution. I needed to find work! One morning shortly before dawn, again I awoke suddenly. This time with an urge to walk up the steep hill leading to the lake at the top of Ramapo Valley Reservation. It was a park that I had visited on my lunch hour from time to time when I worked nearby, years before. At the back of the park there’s a steep trail that was almost a mile long. It opened at the top of the little mountain at MacMillan Reservoir. I had climbed this trail on many occasions but never with the urgency I had that cold early morning. I didn’t know why I was so anxious until I got to the top.

When I got there, I knew exactly what I needed to say and to whom. I prayed God, “help me find my future, in my life’s work and in my life.” I cannot move forward despite all my strenuous effort and diligence to find a new job. All my business contacts and all my skills and all my experiences, were not getting it done. I needed God’s help, but knew that I had to do something first. I had to surrender my yoke to Him. I had to give this problem to God in the name of His Son, Jesus Christ. I had to trust that He would deliver me from this dilemma, and that not mine but His will be done. Admitting and surrendering control to God felt strange. I’d never even thought about such a thing let alone consider actually doing it. I was in control of me. I was capable of finding a job. I was in control of finding myself in the tangled confusion of my life. Or, maybe, I was in control of nothing and that my perception of control was an illusion, because on the big things, God is in control.

I fell to my knees in tears, accepting for the first time that I was not in control and could not think my way, or act my way, or will my way forward. The only way was God through the divine intervention of His only Son and my savior Jesus Christ. I surrender my fate and my life to Him.

Descending the long trail back through the park to my car took moments as I considered what had just happened. Nothing had physically changed yet I felt free and at peace. My problems were still there but I wasn’t worried or anxious for the first time in months. For the first time in my life I really trusted that God would deliver me in whatever form He chose and that I would be happy doing His will.

A week later I received a call from my old company of which I had been having conversations for a week or so. They wanted me back. Not in my old position but one two levels below where I had left five years earlier. I accepted immediately. That job led to a series of events that turned out to be the most satisfying of my personal and professional life. And to think that if God had not put that sequence of events in front of me, I might have passed on it.

It all sounds too convenient, doesn’t it? Jolting daybreak awakenings. The chance meetings. The precise timing of events. It all seemed strange to me too. Then I started to think about a lot of other chance meetings and good timing and moments of clarity that I’d been quick to attribute to my own good luck and super-genius-hood. No “luck” or super-genius-ness seemed likely now. I had been given a view of a rolling miracle in action. Not that I obtained a new job. That was the least of it. It was everything else. It was that for the first time I saw and I believed that what was happening was not of man. It was of God. That He had shown me a way to salvation that He provided through His grace and His suffering on the cross in my place, for my sins. Thank you, Jesus. All glory be to God. How great Thou art!

St. Thomas Aquinas said it best, “Thank You Lord, for having been pleased through no merit of mine, but of Your great mercy alone, to feed me, a sinner and Your unworthy servant, with the precious Body and Blood of Your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.”