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

Living Faithfully in Uncertain Times

Dear Friends,

Remember Chicken Little? In the face of impending doom, she panicked because she thought “The sky is falling in!”

Chicken Little had been dozing in the barnyard, when an acorn fell on her head. In fright, Chicken Little told Henny Penny, Cocky Locky and Turkey Lurky who all became equally distressed. They headed off to give the news to the king when they ran into Foxy Loxy, who inquired where they were going. When Foxy Loxy heard they were going to tell the king that the sky was falling in, Foxy Loxy was helpful, or so they thought. “Come on, I’ll show you a shortcut.” One by one, the birds disappeared into a hole in the ground. We all know what that meant.

All except Henny Penny, who remembered she had an egg in the barnyard ready to hatch. She ran back home, the only one spared the foolishness of fake news and panic.

Only a child’s story? Not really.

History is full of the stories of doomsday preachers who have frightened people by their preaching, crying out that the sky is falling in, meaning that the end of the world is near.

The Thessalonians in today’s second reading expected Jesus’ second coming at any moment. So, they no longer carried their share of the workload of the community. Paul strongly condemned that attitude as unworthy of Christ’s followers. That’s the point of today’s readings. We don’t know, nor does anyone else know when Christ will come again. In the meantime, we must go on with the job of living, the work of building God’s world. Neither panic nor lethargy help in these tenuous times.

These readings resonate for us, because each of us experiences personal cataclysms, earthquakes, uncertainties, wars and insurrections. We live in a complex and uncertain world. Through it all, God is faithful, and even when caught in storms, we can feel the warmth of what Malachi in today’s first reading calls “the sun of Justice with all its rays.”

But to do so, we must be/become attentive to God’s presence.

Today’s Gospel challenges us to examine our lives – to ask demanding questions about our commitments and priorities, to ask ourselves where to expend our time, energy and resources, to become increasingly of what is lasting – what will endure.

In life’s thorny circumstances, we cannot convince ourselves that God is with us with tenderness and constancy, but we do need to be open to the stunning possibility that we are surrounded, held up, shielded, propelled forward, beckoned by a God who loves us.

In essence, Jesus tells us so in the Gospel today: "When you are in deep trouble, do not be afraid. I will give you words and wisdom which no one can contradict. When you are threatened, do not be afraid. Not a hair of your head will be harmed." Jesus concludes this passage with the words: "By your perseverance you will secure your lives."

That’s it. Keep on keeping on in faith and here’s the surprise, with joy, because none of us is alone.

Take courage. Stay with one another and be with our God who is faithful and will not disappoint.

~ Sister Joan Sobala

Symbols of Hope and Connection

Dear Friends, 

I voted early this election year. For me, voting is a way to express my commitment to everyday choices for the common good. This year voting was an expression of resistance to apathy.

For several days after I voted, and on election Tuesday, I wore the sticker I Voted Today! This sticker kindled several conversations, not just about issues and candidates but also about voting. Wearing the voting sticker connected me to others at a time when connection is difficult. We talked about claiming the power of everyday choices in a time when these choices feel less effective. 

The voting conversations got me thinking about paper clips. The paper clip became a national symbol of resistance in Norway during WW2 and was worn as a nonviolent protest of the 1940 German occupation. The Germans attempted to strip away Norway’s culture and replace it with Nazi ideals. Norway’s teachers were told to join the Nazi Party and teach Nazism in the classroom, and the church was told to teach obedience to the leader and the state.

In the autumn of 1940, students and teachers at Oslo University started wearing paper clips on their lapels as a non-violent symbol of resistance. The paper clip was simple in nature and widely available. Its use spread throughout the population of Norway. Norway had one of the strongest Nazi resistances on the entire European continent and the strongest contingent were the teachers and students. Despite their tremendous suffering, they banded together with their fellow citizens, continuing to resist until the end of the war. The paper clips were a symbol of solidarity, first in communicating with each other and, later, as a national expression of resistance. 

I’ve begun wearing a paper clip. It connects me with brave people in history. Perhaps, like the voting sticker, it will connect me with others who now choose to act for the common good.

In hope,
Susan Schantz SSJ

Remembering the Saints and Souls in Our Lives

Dear Friends,

It’s a healthy and life-giving practice to celebrate All Saints/All Souls Day with people throughout our Church. We celebrate our loved ones, people whose faithfulness to God we admire, on a day apart from their own day of death with its lingering sadness. In Mexico, the Day of the Dead finds people building altars in their homes on which to place mementoes of their beloved dead. Family and friends gather to celebrate the loved ones who have died. The celebrations spill out into neighborhoods.

In this way of looking at death, victory has been achieved.

For Jesus on the cross on Good Friday, the victory is also achieved.

Among His last words in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus says,
“It is finished.”

Most of the time, readers interpret that phrase as,
“It is over. I am done.”

There seems to be a tone of overwhelming pain in those words.

But a woodworker, having lovingly created, let’s say a table, rubs it with polishing powders and pastes, waxes and oils to bring out the texture of the wood, its deep colors and essential patterns. When the woodworker is satisfied, s/he says:
“It is finished.”

That means it has achieved its maximum gloss, its beauty has been revealed. It is complete.

On the cross, as death winged its way toward Him, Jesus could say, “it is finished.” He realized He was complete. This side of death, His fullness had been achieved.

Today, find some mementoes of your beloved dead around the house – a photo, a gift given to you, something that was in your household growing up which you claimed for your own. Put these pieces in a prominent place where you can see them for the next week or two and relish the life of the one whose memory they represent.

In the words of today’s psalm, we also pray for our own hope for eternal life:

One thing I ask of the Lord, this I seek To live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life…I believe I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

~ Sister Joan Sobala