If Someone Takes Your Coat, Hand Him Your Cloak As Well
Tango7174, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
When you turn 33 years old, people may tell you that you are entering your “Jesus year,” since Jesus was 33 when he was crucified. In the Spring of 2023, I was entering the season of Lent as a 33-year-old, and so I embraced the sacred season that year with great seriousness. I really wanted to make the most of it, and that opportunity came in the most unexpected way.
On March 16th of that year, I was making my way home after work. I was working for the Diocese of Arlington at that time. I had left the Arlington diocesan chancery at 4:30, rode the Metro from Arlington to my neighborhood of D.C., and was now walking the final couple of blocks to my house. It was the last cold day of the season, and so I was wearing my posh Canada Goose coat to keep warm. I walked up past the local parish and made the sign of the Cross like I always do. I crossed at the crosswalk and began hearing quick footsteps coming up behind me. I figured there were two joggers out for a run, so I moved to the right side of the sidewalk to get out of their way. Suddenly, a heavy hand grabs my left shoulder and I hear an unfamiliar voice say, “Give us your coat.” By instinct, I said, “No!” and pushed away. As I turned around, I came face-to-face with two young men wearing masks, both of them pointing handguns at my chest. “Yeah. Give us your coat,” they say. I was being robbed. Not in a dark alley late at night, but in broad daylight, on a busy street, one block from my home.
This is a true story, and one which I would like to share with you today. I am connecting this moment with my parents’ divorce in two ways: in terms of the anxiety that these two events incurred in me and in terms of how we are called to respond. Let us start with anxiety.
My parents divorced around 2010-2011, when I was a senior in college. In that way, my experience is different from many of yours – I had pretty much spent my entire childhood in an intact family. As a matter of fact, my family was seen by many as the big, happy, Catholic family: my siblings and I all went to Catholic school, we went to Mass every Sunday and prayed a family rosary together, we had close ties to our extended family, we would go to the diocesan summer camp each year, my parents taught marriage prep and NFP classes together… The list goes on and on. I remember thinking to myself as a child, “Wow, I am so glad that I have a good family.” You can imagine my shock when, as a 21-year-old senior at college, I received a call from home that my parents were separating. To be completely honest, there were “tremors” leading up to that moment: I had caught a glimpse of a rift forming between my parents for a few years. Still, I never thought they would get divorced.
My response in those first couple of years after the separation and divorce, from about 2010-2013, was to stuff my emotions down as much as I could, at least in front of most people. I told my close friends what was going on, and I decided after college to go to the John Paul II Institute to find some answers I had about marriage and the family, but at an emotional-affective level, I tried not to feel it. I tried convincing myself that I was confused and needed answers; I was not yet in a place where I could accept that I was wounded and needed healing.
In 2013, I also experienced an abrupt end of a relationship which I thought was heading towards marriage. This, I must admit, is where things fell apart for me. Besides the pain of being rejected, a core assumption of mine began to change: “Wow, first my big, happy, Catholic family fell apart, and now this promising relationship comes to an end out of nowhere… Can I trust in anything?” In those days, I suffered profound anxiety attacks. Every moment of every day, I thought: “When is the next tragedy going to happen? What precious thing will I lose next? When is the other shoe going to drop?” It was awful, and, for several months, alcohol really seemed to help take the edge off. August 2013 was a particularly horrendous time in my life.
Through the next couple of years, I made some progress. I leaned fully into good friendships that I had, I found a spiritual director who had a counseling degree, I joined a young adult men’s group and a coed small group, I began reading about boundaries and all sorts of things. The anxiety attacks subsided, and I lived in relative peace. I went on my first Life-Giving Wounds retreat in 2018, and that opened up new levels of healing for me.
Fast forward a few years: when I was held up at gunpoint in 2023, that familiar anxiety came flooding back. In that moment when the two assailants said, “Yeah. Give us your coat,” a lot of thoughts went through my head. One thought was to call their bluff and not hand over the coat. Another thought was about the book I was reading at the time, which I had with me in my messenger bag. The book was Happy Are You Poor, by Fr. Thomas Dubay, which (ironically) is all about being detached from material things. After a split second of hesitation, I decided to go along with their wishes. I simply said, “Okay,” and began to remove my coat.
They were obviously in a hurry, especially since it was about 5:15 pm and there were a lot of cars passing by, in full view of what was happening. I removed my coat as quickly as I could, even though my messenger bag was in my way. Once I had gotten one arm out of the coat, they grabbed it and ripped it off from me. In that moment, many more thoughts rushed through my mind: “Is this how Jesus felt when he was stripped of his garments? Was the coat really all that they wanted? Did I remove it quickly enough for them? Are they going to shoot me now?” For a moment, I simply closed my eyes and bowed my head down towards the ground. I heard quick footsteps again. I opened my eyes and saw that the two young men had bolted. They were now running back towards the Metro with the coat. They must have spotted me somewhere in the Metro system and tailed me until they could make their move. I called 911 and, eventually, made it home.
For the next few months, my anxiety attacks came back with a vengeance, and I had to go back to counseling. I remembered how badly I had struggled with anxiety after my parents divorced. That, too, had seemingly run up from behind me and taken me by surprise. Actually, in both situations I had sensed warning signs. I had heard reports of Canada Goose coats being stolen in D.C. early in 2023. I continued to wear mine, thinking, “Oh, that happens to other people, but it won’t happen to me.” And yet it did.
I would like to share with you some reflections of mine on the Scriptural passage where Jesus calls us to turn the other cheek, but, before I do so, I would like to just tell you a bit about the days immediately after the robbery, because it was really quite remarkable.
I went to work the day after the robbery and told my boss what had happened. I assured her that I would be going to counseling to work through it, but I wanted to let her know, just in case I seemed a bit distracted or forgetful on the job. She was more than accommodating, and she passed news up the chain to the Vicar General and to the Bishop. The Bishop reached out to me and assured me of his prayers, but it did not stop there.
As I mentioned, this all happened during Lent. Once every Lent and Advent, the Arlington diocesan chancery takes off half a day to spend time together in prayer: coffee and donuts, a talk from a priest, Adoration and confession, a rosary, Mass with the Bishop, and then a catered lunch. After that, we go to work for the rest of the afternoon. Our Lenten Day of Reflection that year was literally a week after I was robbed. I went, thankful to have a mini-retreat. We arrived at the time for Mass with the Bishop, and—I kid you not—this was the First Reading for the day: Wisdom 2:1a, 12-22. It says:
The wicked said among themselves, thinking not aright: “Let us beset the just one, because he is obnoxious to us; he sets himself against our doings, reproaches us for transgressions of the law and charges us with violations of our training. He professes to have knowledge of God and styles himself a child of the Lord. To us he is the censure of our thoughts; merely to see him is a hardship for us, because his life is not like that of others, and different are his ways. He judges us debased; he holds aloof from our paths as from things impure. He calls blessed the destiny of the just and boasts that God is his Father. Let us see whether his words be true; let us find out what will happen to him. For if the just one be the son of God, he will defend him and deliver him from the hand of his foes. With revilement and torture let us put him to the test that we may have proof of his gentleness and try his patience. Let us condemn him to a shameful death; for according to his own words, God will take care of him.” These were their thoughts, but they erred; for their wickedness blinded them, and they knew not the hidden counsels of God; neither did they count on a recompense of holiness nor discern the innocent souls’ reward.
The passage is about Jesus, and yet—as so often happens with Scripture—I could see myself in the passage.
A deacon got up and read the Gospel from John; then the Bishop went to the podium to preach. Bishop Burbidge hardly said a word about the Gospel, as he focused his homily almost entirely on the ways in which God sends His only begotten Son to die in our place. I was bawling in my pew. And yet, because I am surrounded by seventy coworkers, I was quietly trying to hide my sobs and wipe away my tears. Hardly anybody knew what had happened to me, but the Bishop knew, and so took the opportunity to be a pastor to me in that moment. As he preached, he discreetly made eye contact with me—not drawing any attention to me—in a way that allowed me to feel seen. Afterwards, at the lunch, Bishop came over to me briefly and said, “Hey Alex, how about those readings?” I thanked him from the bottom of my heart and gave him a good handshake. I wiped away another tear and got in line for food.
In the months after this incident, I reflected on the passage in Matthew 5 where Jesus tells us to turn the other cheek, to offer no resistance to one who is evil, and that if anyone wants to take your coat, to offer them your cloak as well. As a side note, ‘coat’ in this context refers to tunic, the inner garment, which is to say, one’s clothes. ‘Cloak’ is what refers to the warm outer garment, such as was stolen from me. In any case, I pondered what this command—to turn the other cheek—truly means. It seemed to me that Jesus was not calling me to buy a new Canada Goose and walk through the Metro again, nor was he calling me to somehow experience parental divorce again. By the way, I think that a lot of adult children of divorce are afraid of this passage, for this reason. Rather, I felt as though I was being called to give something where I had lost something.
Our first instinct when someone takes something from us is to try to take it back, or to somehow cut our losses: “I have lost enough as it is; I am not going to lose more because of this.” Or maybe we even think: “I am going to pull back on my charitable contributions until I recoup what I have lost,” thereby making it someone else’s problem. But in my reflections, I felt as though the only way forward in healing was to rise above that instinct. I remembered something I heard a priest friend say once: “When we are unemployed, we have got to volunteer.” Volunteering is often the last thing we would want to do while unemployed, since we so desperately need something to bring in money. Instead, volunteering in that moment can help us grow in holiness, since we would be giving out of our livelihood rather than just our surplus. Applying that same principle in my own situation, I thought: okay, where I have been robbed, maybe I have got to donate. So, having been robbed of a $1,000 coat, I decided to make a $1,000 donation to a local charity. I also prayed in a special way for the two young men who took my coat.
As a 21-year-old, wounded by my parents divorce, I was not yet in a place where I could give back. However, all these years later, I take great pride in accompanying adult children of divorce in their healing journeys. Not everyone is called to active ministry, but there are many ways to respond to the call to turn the other cheek: you could give yourself more fully to your spouse and children, you could volunteer at your parish… or you could make a donation to a charity like Life-Giving Wounds. What is God calling you to do?
In summary, the evil one thinks that he can tear us down by stealing from us. But he does not know the hidden counsels of God. When the evil one steals a coat from us, we may end up going on a mission to give our cloaks as well.
For your prayer, we would like to encourage you to reflection on this passage from the Gospel of John:
And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.” For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. (John 3:14-17)
About the author:
Alexander Wolfe grew up in western Pennsylvania and studied Theology at DeSales University (2008-2011). Through the experience of seeing his parents get divorced while he was in college, Alex decided to study at the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family in Washington, D.C. He completed the Master of Theological Studies degree and coursework for the Ph.D. (2012-2017)
From 2018 to 2024, Alex served as the Assistant Director in the Office of Marriage, Family, and Respect Life at the Diocese of Arlington, where he started the first diocesan Life-Giving Wounds chapter outside D.C./ Maryland. During that time, he also served as the Content and Support Group Advisor for Life-Giving Wounds and as a member of the Life-Giving Wounds traveling team.
In 2024, Alex joined Life-Giving Wounds full-time, and now serves as the Associate Director of Programs and Development. In this role, he continues to help start new Life-Giving Wounds chapters across the country, provide support for the 34+ existing chapters, develop new chapters and programs, assist fundraising efforts, and much more. He continues to be based in Washington, D.C.
Reflection Questions for Small Groups or Individuals
Did your parents’ divorce seem to strike out of nowhere? If so, did you struggle with anxiety as well? What has helped you heal and learn to trust again?
What do you think of the passage where Jesus commands us to ‘turn the other cheek’? Have you thought about it in the way described above, namely, that we are called to give something when we have lost something? What else could this command mean?
Have you ever heard a Gospel reading or a passage from Scripture and seen yourself so distinctly in the drama? This can be a great practice for meditation. For example, placing yourself in the circumstances of the woman suffering from a hemorrhage, or the paralytic whose friends bring him to Jesus. Which passages have you entered into?
How is God calling you to give something where you have lost something? In your vocation? At your parish? In a donation?
Healing happens when we journey together.
If Alex’s reflection resonated with you, check out our guide to grief. If your parents’ divorce or separation left a wound that still aches (whether it happened last month or decades ago), then this free guide was created for you. Grief doesn’t mean you’re weak. It means something deeply important was lost. In these pages, you’ll find a path to grieve with Christ, allowing His love to bring light, healing, and hope into the places that hurt most.
You do not have to carry the darkness alone.
Together, we can walk into the light.
