Thursday, July 24, 2025

Treasuring Our Earth


Dear Friends,

Last weekend, the Sisters of Saint Joseph from across the country and abroad celebrated our 375th Anniversary of life and service to the dear neighbor. The gathering, held in Kansas City, MO, brought together Sisters, associates and partners in ministry, all of whom find inspiration in Saint Joseph.

The Saturday morning keynote speaker was Brentwood Sister Elizabeth Johnson, a well-regarded theologian. Now retired, Sister Elizabeth's theological thinking has not stopped evolving over the years. In recent writings and in this talk, she aligns herself with Pope Francis’s encouragement to care for our common home – the earth.

With her, I invite us to enlarge our values to actively include a tender regard for the world in which we live. We have to only pay attention to the daily news to know how much this emphasis is needed: hurricanes, tornadoes, blistering heat, floods, devastating fires. Nature is in pain and so are we. We need to act.

We can send contributions to relief agencies, but that is really not enough. We need to form new personal and communal habits that honor the world in which we live.

Pope Francis wrote ten years ago in his encyclical Laudato Si’:

“Ecological culture cannot be reduced to a series of urgent and partial responses to the immediate problems of pollution, environmental decay and the depletion of natural resources. There needs to be a distinctive way of looking at things, a way of thinking, an educational program, a lifestyle and a spirituality which together generate resistance to the assault on nature brought on by technology. (n.111)

Taking a cue from Pope Francis, Sister Elizabeth Johnson
  • encourages us to become conscious of all of nature in our prayer. When we pray for “all of us” in the psalms and other prayers of the church, we really mean all of creation.
  • invites us to consciously choose to watch nature programs on PBS or read National Geographic to see the remarkable way in which nature expresses the glory of God.
  • reminds us that we can take part in ecological projects, however small, to hold back the overwhelming tide generated by those whose actions do not uphold life to the full.
To paraphrase Pope Francis, we are called upon to protect, restore, improve and beautify creation as something that belongs to everyone.

As he concludes Laudato Si’, Pope Francis invites us to pray

Triune Lord, wondrous community of infinite love,
Teach us to contemplate you
in the beauty of the universe,
for all things speak of you.
Awaken our praise and thankfulness
For every being you have made.
Give us the grace to feel profoundly joined
To everything that is.

This summer, watching the fireflies send out their light, smelling the fragrance of growing crops in the fields, looking up at the vast sweep of stars across the nighttime sky, pledge with me to treasure the earth anew now.

~ Sister Joan Sobala

Friday, July 18, 2025

Visiting Friends


Jesus in the House of Martha and Mary
By American artist Eileen Kennedy

Dear Friends,

Some Sunday readings are so familiar that we can whisper the words along with the reader. This Sunday’s gospel reading (Luke 10:38-42) is one of those familiar stories.
  • A woman whose name was Martha welcomed Him….
  • Mary sat beside the Lord, at His feet, listening to Him.
  • Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me by myself to do the serving? Tell her to help me.
  • Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things.
This story carries such strong feelings. Each time I hear or read it, I am invited to a different perspective, pulled toward one character or the other. I’ve found many words written about this trinity of friends, but in this post I share a painting for your own reflection.

In her painting, North American artist Eileen Kennedy (eileen-kennedy.com) blocks any easy interpretation. Martha moves in on Mary and Jesus, wielding a noisy vacuum cleaner. She looms angrily over Mary. (Has Martha already bumped into Mary’s chair?) Mary ignores Martha, and we suspect that this isn’t the first time she’s done so. Jesus the visitor sits partly hidden by a screen and pretty flowers. A cat settles serenely next to Mary.

You are invited this week to this scene in this room. Here are some questions for reflection.
  1. Is there a figure with whom you identify most? Are you an uncomfortable visitor? A bemused observer? An enraptured listener? An irritated outsider? An unappreciated worker?

  2. Is the room your faith community? Your family? Your nation? Your own divided heart?

  3. Who is an outsider? Who is the one who welcomes? Who prepares space for three friends?
Hoping for welcoming spaces for all,

Susan Schantz SSJ

Friday, July 11, 2025

Celebrating Mary the Tower

Artwork by Eileen Cantlin Verbus

Dear Friends, 

One of our great summer liturgical feasts is the celebration of Mary Magdalen, the Apostle to the Apostles, on July 22nd. We know her, but we don’t know her well.  

Luke alone tells us that Mary of Magdala was first among women to follow Jesus during His public ministry and that He, Jesus, had restored her to strength and fullness (8.1-2): “Accompanying Jesus were the Twelve and some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities [including] Mary of Magdala from whom seven demons had gone out…”  

In Gospel times, to identify someone as being “of” a certain place was not to emphasize a specific location but it was a way of identifying a person with reverence within a community. This Mary: Mary of Magdala, and no other. Twelve times in the Gospel accounts, Mary of Magdala is named exactly that way. One interpretation of Magdala is that Mary was from the village of Magdala. Recent biblical scholarship tells us that a “Magdala” is a Tower, so another way of thinking of Mary of Magdala is a “Mary the Tower.” So we have Peter the Rock and Mary the Tower. Both treasures of early church leadership. Moreover, placement in a list of names, in biblical times was significant. Mary Magdalen is always named first in a list of women present at the death and burial of Jesus and at the empty tomb. 

Nowhere in Scripture is she ever called a prostitute. Her very clear place in the community got conflated in subsequent centuries with the nameless women who anointed Jesus with oil or were identified as prostitutes. Pope Gregory the Great (540-604) was notable in his designation of Mary Magdalen as a public reformed sinner. The image stuck for centuries.  She became a wanton woman in need of repentance and a life of hidden and silent penitence. Gone was the revered title “Apostle to the Apostles,” given to her perhaps as early as the third century by Hippolytus. Enter Mary Magdalen of Jesus Christ Superstar and The Last Temptation of Christ. Not the true Mary of Magdala, the Tower.

Even though Mary of Magdala was at the cross and burial, these alone would not be sufficient to elicit the great regard the early church had for her. Most importantly, she was venerated as the first witness of the Resurrection the first to see the Risen Christ in the Gospel of John.

There in the garden, on the morning of that first day of the week, Mary lingered after Peter and John had departed without seeing Him. She wept and she did not recognize Jesus until He spoke her name: Mary. That she recognized the voice of Jesus calling her underscores that Mary is a true disciple, who then went, at Jesus' command, to tell the others that He was alive. 

“I have seen the Lord” she told them, long before Paul used those words, “I have seen the Lord,” to confirm his own discipleship.

The witness of Mary to the Resurrection was so clearly accepted by the early Church that it could not be dislodged as the Gospel texts were being framed. Who would have thought that God would want the primary witness of a woman to such a defining moment of faith?

Let’s celebrate Mary of Magdala on July 22nd. She is our friend, companion, a faithful woman, a tower of strength and courage.

~ Sister Joan Sobala

Wednesday, July 2, 2025

Summertime, and the Learning is Easy...


Dear Friends,

Here are some online sites that help me connect with other believers. If you visit these sites, you will find news, scripture reflections, interviews, and prayer resources. Enjoy!

God’s Word, Many Voices (godswordmanyvoices.org)
  • weekly Sunday scripture homilies
  • gifted and educated lay Catholic writers
  • home grown in Rochester diocese

United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (
usccb.org)
  • scripture for weekdays and feasts, with daily e-mail and podcast
  • news and official statements by our bishops
  • resource for questions about liturgy and Church teaching

Pope Leo and the Vatican (
vatican.va)
  • pictures and daily news bulletins
  • texts of Pope’s homilies and statements
  • written and visual resources for church history, practice, doctrine

America Magazine Podcasts (
americamagazine.org)
There are several, the latest one being The spiritual life with Fr. James Martin, SJ
  • Interviews on life with God
  • Guests include Cardinal Timothy Radcliffe, OP; Mary Karr; Stephen Colbert; Whoopie Goldberg; Pete Buttigieg

Daily TV Mass (
dailytvmass.com)
  • well produced 30-minute Canadian broadcast
  • excellent homilies and some music
  • our SSJ Motherhouse community has been praying with this community five times a week since COVID

Hoping for your summer refreshment,

Susan Schantz SSJ

Thursday, June 26, 2025

Peter, Paul, and the Path of Compassion


Dear Friends,

Each time June 29 falls on Sunday, the liturgical calendar sets aside the readings of Ordinary Time and invites us to celebrate two giants of Christianity, Peter and Paul.

Peter and Paul were both Jews by birth. Peter was a fisherman by trade, Paul, a tentmaker. Peter fed people and lived under the sky. Paul created shelters for people to take refuge from the elements and the creatures that inhabited it. 

Jesus came upon Peter at his boat and called Peter right then and there. Peter followed Jesus immediately. Paul did not walk the roads of the Galilee and Judea with Jesus and Peter. Paul only came to know Jesus after the resurrection, but nonetheless as intimately.

Paul and Peter received new names from Jesus. Simon became Peter, the Rock. Saul became Paul, the missionary. With them, as with us, new names meant a new call, a new future.

Paul, the fiery, fearless preacher, and Peter, the acknowledged leader of the early Church, were not without faults. Paul hunted down the early Christians and sent them to prison. Some of those who stoned Stephen left their cloaks at Saul’s feet. Peter ran away as Jesus was arrested. A short time later, Peter denied that he knew Jesus. Peter and Paul were leaders who knew what it meant to be human, fragile.

It’s good to keep this fragility in mind in our times since the sexual abuse scandal broke in 2002. Then, the weaknesses of our current Church leaders came to the fore. The pain and humiliation touched us all.

I suspect that, even today, the anger, bitterness, and cynicism about the church lingers in many of us. It makes us lose our taste for Church and all it offers. Some of us leave.

But let’s stay the course. Let’s suffer with the abused. Compassion means precisely that, “to suffer with,” and let’s hold them in prayer, that they might experience a healing of memories and restored hope, dignity and joy in their lives. That is compassion to which we are called.

But we are also called to be with the perpetrators, the abusers, and the bishops as well. This is hard to hear. This is the real test of our compassion. Can we stand with another when it doesn’t feel good or look good?

From the example of Jesus, we find the courage to attempt this way of being. Jesus was crucified between two thieves. There wasn’t one cross, but three. To bystanders, Jesus was painted with the same brush as the other two: tainted and guilty. Jesus carried everything without protesting his innocence, though he was.

Can we help carry one of the darker sides of our Church’s history without protesting its unfairness or distancing ourselves from it?

This is the challenge of living compassionately in this community of God’s people.

May Peter and Paul, who knew fully what it meant to be human, be with us on the way.

~ Sister Joan Sobala

Friday, June 20, 2025

Body and Blood


Dear Friends,

As we move toward the end of June, the Catholic Church celebrates the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ, also known as Corpus Christi. The stark words "body and blood" evoke images of our June 2025 news reports. No one reading this blog post is ignorant of the news of broken bodies and spilled blood.

Ukraine. Gaza. Israel. Sudan.
Minnesota. Texas. New York. California.

These deaths spring from violence and conflict. They are born of division and prejudice, racism and intolerance. What place do these harsh images have in the celebration of Eucharist? Our sacred meal commemorates the death and rising of Jesus and celebrates our baptismal unity with him in this mystery. In this feast day mass, a portion of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians recalls Jesus’ words and action,

"This is my body that is for you….
This cup is the new covenant in my blood."

The early Christians knew these words by heart, as do we. The words articulate our faith and remind us that we are one in Christ. However, when we read the verses ahead of this passage, we recognize a divided community. Paul points out separate food and seating for rich and poor, slave and free. He writes of neglect of some members’ needs. Was not the first Jesus community free of such separation? Were they not one in mind and heart in their prayer and their ministry?

Our own Eucharistic celebrations contain the same contrasts, the same light and shadow, the same love and indifference. When we hear Jesus’ words repeated at Mass, let us also hold space for the words of Paul. He and other preachers and prophets through the ages call us to share Jesus’ body and blood that we might attend to the suffering of his beloved community.

In hope,
Susan Schantz SSJ

Friday, June 13, 2025

Gazing at God: A Trinity Sunday Reflection


Dear Friends,

Today is Trinity Sunday, the only day in the liturgical calendar when we, as a faith community, gaze at our God in wonder. God: community of being. God, who has been misunderstood over the centuries, as uncaring, immune from our suffering, too hidden for us to know, who evokes fear and watches us from afar as an impartial observer. God who keeps a list of our sins. This God does not exist, says the American theologian, Catherine Mowry LaCugna (1991).

No. This is not the God we celebrate today, appreciate and hold close. Today’s feast leads us to honor and treasure “a personal God who is as close to us as a heartbeat, as near as the breath we breathe.” (LaCugna)

“God,” my friend, Father Gary Tyman, says “is a verb. God happens. When people who are adversaries come together in understanding, forgiveness and reconciliation, that is God happening. When someone suffering from alcohol or drug addiction decides to enter treatment, that is God happening.” I think further. When our relationships become more than just the two of us, God happens. Whenever profound things occur in human life, God happens.

The spiritual writer, Macrina Wiederckehr, speaks directly to this God who wraps us in a daily, unending embrace:

You are extravagant with your love.
You drown us with devotion and understanding.
You leave me breathless, thoughtless.
Master, Teacher, Friend, Lover, Parent,
Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer…
I try to encompass all Your names, but they slip from my grasp.
When I hold nothing, I hold You.
When I hold You, I hold everything.                          Seven Sacred Pauses, 2008

This way of celebrating the Feast of the Most Holy Trinity makes it a feast of affection for our God who embraces us and welcomes us into the family of God. Once we were not. But once we came into being, we belongedto our own families and to the very family of God.

Our life stories are interwoven with the very life of God. We are continually being drawn into the life of God. Today, together, we welcome this call.

~ Sister Joan Sobala