Watching for Stars

Dear Friends,

Year after year, we Christians unpack and retell the Christmas stories. They are full of darkness and full of stars. This year I am attracted to the Magi’s journey tale. This year, 2025, the shadows and threats in the story remind me of our own world’s shadows and threats. The travelers’ discovery of grace in an unexpected place? That, too, is part of my personal journey. The gospel travelers needed to plot a new route and that resonates with me as 2026 progresses.

The Magi spent time in darkness, studying stars. As the northern hemisphere moves through the dark season, I am drawn to the hours of dusk and dawn. Those are the times I can pause and pray, let go of the day or greet the new day. I can review the day and remember God’s presence. I can welcome a new day and pray to be wise and faithful. I can plot new routes and accompany others on the road. I can hope, morning and evening, that the stars seen in darkness will guide all of us travelers.

In hope,

Susan Schantz SSJ

One World, Under God

Dear Friends,

After the Magi left, Joseph had another dream, this time that Jesus’ life was in danger. Joseph did not hesitate to leave Bethlehem as soon as possible and took little with them: the donkey, whatever the Child Jesus needed, a few necessities. They made the descent from Bethlehem – what had seemed to be a safe place – joining with other travelers along the ancient coastal road from Raffa to Egypt. No one traveled alone. That was helpful in many ways. Since they had no clear destination, talking with other travelers, other refugees, Joseph and Mary heard some helpful things. These travelers shared similar human emotions, the taste of travel weariness, the smell and the stains on their bodies and clothes. Along the way, they knew hunger and thirst and the fears of the unknown.

The liturgists who chose the readings for the Christmas season have, for some reason, not included this account of Mary, Joseph and the child Jesus fleeing into Egypt. But at this time in our world, in our country, it is particularly significant to linger over their story. It has a profound connection to the refugees today who are fleeing violence and possible death. Joseph, Mary and Jesus were brown people, like the many brown people set loose in our own unwelcoming world. In paying attention to this scene – then and now – we see similar characteristics: Refugees learned to… 

…recognize a threat/flee/make do/and when possible, come home. 

Joseph, Mary and Jesus are the patron family of all refugees. They are our reminder, in faith, that we are all one family in one world, hospitable or not.  

On this Sunday, tucked in between Christmas and New Year, before the plight of contemporary refugees disappears from our TVs and social media, before we get back to our ordinary, non-holiday lives, let’s remember that we are one world, under God. In our churches, mosques, synagogues and temples, remember that we are all one world, under God. In the marketplace, the workplace, in government offices, remember that we are one world, under God. 

Will you do that? Will I do that?

If we make and keep any resolution at all in the coming year, let it be this one: to remember and to remind others that we are one world, under God.

No one is beneath us.
        No one is too poor, too dirty, too wrong in their thinking.
        No one is apart from us: the refugee, the terrorist, the pacifist, the doubter. 

We are one world, under God.

On this feast of our most holy refugees – Jesus, Mary and Joseph – will we commit ourselves to remembering this truth and be its messenger: We are one world, under God.

~ Sister Joan Sobala

Guest Rooms

Dear Friends,

Do you ever watch HG/TV? House hunters often look for a house with a guest room. Here they can welcome out-of-town family members or friends for holiday, vacation, or emergency visits. While most of us cannot afford an actual extra room for guests, we share this desire to make room for each other, to make space for shared meals, holiday rituals, and conversations.

Each December, we Christians retell a story about making room for special guests. Like children in a Christmas pageant, we survey the characters and, perhaps, have a first choice for our own dramatic role. Excited shepherd? Loving father? Brave mother? Generous and wise magi? Angel heard on high?

This year of attacks on immigrants, I choose the role of the inn keeper. Like the inn keeper, I publicly profess to be hospitable and welcoming. Like the inn keeper, I am not always gracious to those who approach me. Like the inn keeper, I have a door that opens and shuts. I am influenced by class, racial, and religious biases. I live in a time of political division and violence. I make mistakes. I hurt people. I ignore the knock on my door.

Can you relate to my choosing this character in the Christmas pageant? If you can, I hope you also share my belief that we inn keepers are daily offered mercy and second chances. Weary travelers who need room will show up each day. God creates a guest room when we open the door. Ways to respond will unfold. Pray with me that we welcome those traveling families.

In hope, 

Susan Schantz SSJ

A Season of Movement

Dear Friends,

The Advent and Christmas seasons are times of anticipation and fulfillment.

They are also seasons of people moving from one place to another, traveling by foot or in groups or in their minds and in their hearts. In this swirling world of ours, we have only to think of the times before and after Jesus was born to see fruitful movement everywhere.

Zechariah went up to Jerusalem, leaving his wife behind in the village of Ain Karim, where they lived. Zechariah was a high priest. It was his turn to enter the Holy of Holies to burn incense. There he came face to face with the angel Gabriel, sent by God, who told him he was soon to be a father, but Zechariah did not believe. He left the temple mute, rendered speechless by his unbelief, a long way from his former self-confidence. Back in their home, Zechariah somehow communicated the news to Elizabeth. They came together. Zechariah's seed passed into her womb. Together they waited.

Later in Nazareth, Gabriel came again, this time to Mary. The movement of her heart was so profound that as she said “Yes!,” the Word of God leapt into life, as a human in her. In the face of his own anguish over a love seemingly lost, Joseph moved between two ways of thinking: either to accept the pregnant Mary or to follow the law. In the end, he was moved to pay attention to the dream that came to him convincingly. Do not be afraid, Joseph. They married.

Still later, when Elizabeth and Mary met, John leapt for joy in his mother’s womb at being in the presence of his God/cousin. No one, nothing was still. Everything moved divinely inspired. 

From Ain Karim to back to Nazareth and then to Bethlehem, Joseph, Mary and the babe in her womb travelled along dangerous routes. When Jesus was born, the angels travelled to the shepherds and they in turn travelled to see the newborn Jesus. Still later, the star that had been going before the Magi brought them at long last to His presence. The hatred of Herod caused the Magi to flee home. Joseph, Mary and the infant fled too, travelling down to Raffa, and from there along the coast road to Egypt. Nothing was still for long.

Eventually, the holy family went home to Nazareth for a brief respite. 

How about you? Where in this season of overwhelming distraction do you find yourselves in these sacred biblical travels of body, mind and heart?

In your life, have you felt yourself being moved, drawn to make moves and accept situations that you had not previously considered? How do you respond when your world is turned upside down? Have you discovered grace in what appeared to be chaos?

As you have gotten older, do you believe that new, unexpected things can happen in your life? What do you still hope for, dream about, believe in? Have you experienced a dream?

Where have you found the strength to be sure that nothing is impossible with God?

Where do you and I feel God’s movement in each of us, calling us individually and together, encouraging us to recognize Jesus, newborn in our world today and everyday? 

~ Sister Joan Sobala

Day by Day

Dear Friends,

Each year’s Christmas is rooted in the days preceding the feast. Creation’s images of growth and unfolding come and play with us in prayer: root and branch; sun and star; pregnancy and birth. Advent customs like the wreath, O antiphons, calendar and Jesse tree lead us through familiar scripture prophecies and stories each year.

One such custom, the Advent calendar, originated as a European regional custom. German Christmas markets popularized calendars among visitors from around the world. Wooden Advent calendars often feature little drawers for each day before Christmas. Fabric and paper calendars have spaces for each Advent day. Day after day, children and adults can discover a treat in a drawer or pocket. They uncover pictures related to the salvation story. 

Unsurprisingly, the Advent calendar concept has been adopted by holiday purveyors of yarn, liquor, cosmetics, and pet toys. We believers could bemoan the commercialization of an Advent custom. We could also spend some time appreciating a season that leads us day by day, each year, to a deepened understanding of Christ’s coming. This is the way of God’s continual unfolding in creation. It is the way of cosmic growth and human growth. We know and keep relearning the lesson. 

For the remainder of this Advent, join me in an appreciation of the day-to-day reality of God’s coming to us. Let Advent customs - calendars and wreaths and Jesse trees and O antiphons - tug us toward a deeper appreciation. We could also add to our Advent practices this prayer of St. Richard of Chichester. It was popularized in the musical Godspell:

O most merciful redeemer, friend, and brother,

May I know thee more clearly,

Love thee more dearly,

Follow thee more nearly,

Day by day.

In hope, 

Susan Schantz SSJ

The Door Only You Can Open

Dear Friends,

During the course of an average day, you and I open and close at least a dozen doors. To open and close a door is an easy, natural, unthinking act – unless we have forgotten our key or our arms are too full to manage it.

Doors are an integral part of life. They are passageways from where we have been to where we want to go. They offer us privacy and protection from unwanted elements, like the thief who wants to break into a home that Jesus tells us about in today’s gospel.

Doors are also instruments of power. We shut people out or let them in.

Advent is a season for opening some doors and closing others.

It is time to open the door to a deeper, stronger relationship with our Coming God and to open our hearts to people in new or renewed friendship and reconciliation. It is a time to open ourselves to new attitudes, practices and ways of thinking that birth a future full of hope, and to close ourselves off from destructive tendencies.

The scene portrayed at the head of this blog shows Jesus standing at the door and knocking. At the door of the human heart, Jesus knocks and waits for an invitation to enter. If we take a good look at the door in the picture, we see there is no knob on the outside. The door to the human heart can only be opened from within. We have the power to welcome or refuse entry. In order to hear Jesus’ knock, we need to be awake! Jesus tells us so in today’s Gospel: be awake to His coming here and now, awake to His coming when the kin-dom of God is fully formed, awake to celebrate His Incarnation, His Birth once in history

The knock comes and we react to it in different ways. We may be cautious, curious to see who is there, irritated to be interrupted, ashamed that our house is not in order. We may be curt at the door, guarded, fearful, elated. Or we may ignore the knock completely. Go away, God! I don’t want to see You today.

You may think that this idea of opening some doors and closing others is a mild-mannered approach to Advent. Not really.

Two doors immediately come to mind that require personal, hard work to close:

1. Close the door to noise, even briefly, every day and welcome quiet to let the hidden gifts of the season seep into our beings.

2. Close the door to violence. Isaiah in today’s first reading gives us the appealing image of beating our swords into plowshares. Without urging, violence in our world will continue. We need not support it, participate in it, buy it nor give it a place in our homes.

The divine visitor is at our Advent door.

We need only to open it wide with our welcome.

~ Sister Joan Sobala

Come to the Table

Dear Friends,

We think about tables around Thanksgiving time. This year, whether we eat at a crowded table or at work or all alone, let us name our past meal companions. Reach back to the tables of your past. Set places for past hosts and guests. Remember that everything happens at the table.  

Here is a poem by Joy Harjo, our first Native American poet laureate.

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.

It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.

At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.

Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.

We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.

At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.

https://www.poetrycenter.org/at-table-poems-inspired-by-us-poet-laureate-joy-harjo/

~ Susan Schantz, SSJ