HappyValentine's Day

Dear Friends,

Happy Valentine’s Day to each of you and to all the people who make your heart happy. Here are some thoughts about this cultural winter celebration which reveals the Holy One, too.

Valentine was a real person who lived in Rome in the third century. He was a priest and a physician who was beheaded in a religious persecution. The date was February 14. Valentine caught the attention of people in medieval times. Myths grew up around him and the belief was common that birds began to mate on February 14, the date of his martyrdom. This gave rise to the custom of sending Valentines on this day.

In its historical context, Valentine’s Day was meant for lovers: someone would send a Valentine in the hopes of enticing the recipient to think of the sender in a new way. Valentines celebrated a budding love, a faithful love, a new love.

But Valentine’s Day has also become a time when friendship, too, is celebrated. In friendship, when two hearts beat in time, words are superfluous, secrets are kept and comfort given. Friendship arises between people unbidden, sees us through turbulent times and makes us secure.

Friendship is an unlikely thing to find in an inconstant, inconsistent world. The wonder of  friendship is that it is God’s gift to a broken world, a truly “amazing grace” that defies the laws of likelihood and challenges changes that are thought impossible. It is remarkable how friends can create something where there was once nothing. 

The Gospel can be read as a story of great friendship. Jesus did not wish to work alone. At the very beginning, Jesus chose others to walk with him – first Simon Peter, Andrew, James and John. Later Mary Magdalen joined him as well as Joanna and Susanna. There were others, too. Friendship brought together a most unlikely collection of people – with Jesus at the center. 

Jesus taught them that they could have a new relationship with God. He taught them to love people and to put things in their proper place. Jesus taught them by his example: compassion not pity, inclusion rather than rejection. It was in their daily living with Jesus that they grew to love him and one another. It is only in the daily living with the people of our world that we grow to love others as Jesus did.

Occasionally, we run across a person who is without friendship. Friendship for this person may be judged unnecessary, or dangerous or beyond control. Unpredictable. This person is like a splendid house filled with treasures – a house that is locked against everyone who might want to come in. 

But friendship is available, not just to the perfect, but to every person who is willing to be open to it, work at it and not be afraid of the spills and hurts that are part of working out friendships.

In the warmth of someone’s friendship, we discover our hidden capacities and unsuspected values. Friends are like salt: they bring out the flavor in us. But please – don’t hold a friend too close, lest the fragile bud of friendship be squashed.

Friends like to think they choose each other. Perhaps.  More likely, however, is that friends are given to us as reminders of God’s abiding love.

The columnist Colman McCarthy one Valentine’s Day wrote in The Washington Post: “It’s either an Irish mystic or poet who said that a friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and plays back the words when you forget how they go.” All week long, red hearts will appear everywhere we go, reminding us to love and offering some tokens of that love. If you have a few someones in your life who can’t remember the words of their song, sing it for them. It’s better than chocolates. And while you’re at it, sing a new song to the Lord, too.

~Joan Sobala, SSJ

Faithful Diversity

Dear Friends,

Our church  is a big church. I know you’ve heard that before. Big, in the sense of being worldwide, but big, also, in the sense of embracing people with great love of God, or a tiny struggling love of God. Big, because the points of view of our members is diverse, and we have a wealth of insight, experience, attitudes and practices.

Beyond our mutual acceptance of the Creed, beyond our immersion in Word and Sacrament, diversity has always been part of our church – from Peter and Paul to Benedict and Francis, from the faithful of South Sudan to the Catholics of Seattle.

One such group of stand-outs was the Corinthians, with whom Paul interacted with vigor. The people of Corinth were religiously diverse, but as Paul reminded them when they embraced the Lord, they were “consecrated in Christ and called to be a holy people.”

Diversity marks us, yet we are one holy people.
Recently I came across a book title and I thought Yes! This applies to us as a church. The phrase is faithful diversity. We are a church of (I hope) faithfully diverse people.

Some of us say: prayer is all. Others claim: No, prayer happens when we are in the service of others. Some of us put great energy into pro-life issues. Others say: We do need to do that, but shouldn’t we also work at eliminating poverty and other evils in the world. Some want everyone to follow the letter of the law. Others hold that the spirit of the law is more important.

I was challenged one day after saying, as part of a talk, that not all ideas that are held by believers are of equal weight. The voice from the audience passed the judgment: “You’re a cafeteria Catholic!” No. There’s a breadth to the scope of Catholicism. It is important that we respect the spectrum – respect faithful diversity.

Jesus did not melt his disciples down into one mold. If anything, he called his followers to a fruitful diversity. They were to bear fruit in God’s name, put their lamps on a lampstand, be salt, leaven and encouragement for others to follow the Spirit.

Diversity we will always have with us.
Divisiveness happens when we believe that my way is God’s way, and that we do not allow others the freedom to follow the Epiphany star by a different route.

This is the work of ordinary time, indeed, the work of every season of the liturgical year, to develop ways of being and doing that allow and encourage our brothers and sisters in Christ to grow as individual believers, and for our whole church to grow strong.

Saint Augustine dealt with analogous issues in the 4th and 5th centuries. His words are a rich formula to shape our own attitudes toward others who belong to our church but who differ from us:

In essentials, unity.
In non-essentials, freedom, and
in all things, charity.

~Joan Sobala, SSJ

Where Does Everybody Know Your Name?

Dear Friends,

We almost always ignore the geographic references in reading the Scriptures. Just as we didn’t know Kabul
and Khandahar until our troops were there, Scriptural geography means nothing to us until we relate to these places. Today, let’s do just that. For the Third Sunday readings (this last weekend,) Jesus moved from Nazareth to the Sea of Galilee to the rest of Galilee, called Zabulon and Nephtali, and beyond.

Nazareth is Jesus’ home town – the place where he experienced the love of his family, where he grew, made mistakes, learned to earn a living. It was the place where he first became a people-watcher and learned how to live from observing children and adults alike.

Where is your Nazareth? Where did you learn to give and receive love? Where did you get your image of what it means to be a spiritual man or woman or to be a believer in the Holy One?

There’s a one act play about Blessed John XXIII in which the Pope muses about himself:
One of my earliest memories- my father hoisted me up on his shoulders to see a parade. It was one of my best memories of him. He must have cared more than I realized. Would a father hold his son on his shoulder, if he didn’t care? How many people in my life have carried me on their shoulders? On whose shoulders have you climbed?  Take time later today to think of your own Nazareth…and the people who held you up so you could see.

Jesus also spent time at the Sea of Galilee. To this day, it is a welcoming place where fishermen work the waters. It was here that Jesus called Simon and Andrew, James and John. They followed Jesus, immediately, Matthew says.

The seashore is a place of friendship made firm, a place of care and concern. Capharnaum, on the Sea of Galilee, became Jesus’ adopted home.  Where is the place where people love you so much that they stop what they are doing when you arrive, just to spend time with you? Where is the place you feel most at  home. Where does the world feel tender to you? And where is it that others feel this way with you?

Remember this line from Cheers : “Everyone needs a place where everyone knows your name.” Is that place where everyone knows our names in our distant past, or do we still go there, if only in our dreams?

Not all the places we visit in life are places of nurturing, love and friendship. We have our own faraway places with strange sounding names, like Zebulon and Naphthali, where people have been living in darkness and are in dire need of healing. How did we get there? And why?

Where are the dark places of your life? The places that make you feel tense? The places where people need healing? It’s not easy to go there or to be with these people. It wasn’t easy for Jesus to leave his comfort zone. It’s even more difficult to take the warmth and good feelings of the Nazareths and seashores of our life to live these out in an unwelcomed environment. Heartfelt sharing happens easily in a friendly place, but when I enter the dark regions of my life, do I give any of me away? Do I bring light into these dark places or do I hoard the light, save my light for places already well lit?

Eventually, Jesus traveled to other foreign places: Samaria, Decapolis across the Jordan, Judea, Jericho and Jerusalem, itself. In some of these places, he found kindred spirits. In other places, he was rejected. Some people wanted everything he could give, as if it were their due. Some tried to trip him. Others believed in him.

Wherever he went, Jesus was faithful to his father, to who he was, to all that he was at Nazareth and the Sea of Galilee. As his followers, we are called to be no less faithful, wherever the journey of life takes us.

Will we?
~Joan Sobala, SSJ

Pass It On

Dear Friends,

One of our parishioners at the church of Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Brockport is a woman named Piera: willowy, an eye-catching dresser with a big smile, totally devoted to the Lord and her parish. Piera  is working through a protocol of chemotherapy  to get at the cancer that moved in without her notice. On a recent visit, as we sat in her living room, Piera’s thoughts and questions turned to…evangelization. I could hardly believe it! We could have gone anywhere in our conversation(faith, sickness, personal growth), but she had become absorbed in Pope Francis’ call for all of us to be evangelizers. What did that mean – to evangelize? And could she do it even now?

Evangelization probably doesn’t grip our minds in the same way, because it’s an unknown. Or if we know it at all, we push it off to the church professionals.

But evangelization means simply “Pass it on.” Pass on what we have “ come to believe”, as Peter  in the Gospel of John  (Chapter 6)  puts it. That’s  something you and I already do. Matthew Kelly, in his book, The Dynamic Catholic, says that every time we pass on to another person a book or article about some aspect of faith, we are doing evangelization. When we point someone in the direction of a Faith-filled website, or talk with someone about God’s Presence, recognized in a given moment, we do evangelization. Perhaps we will go beyond these small steps, but they are impotent steps with which to begin, and often, the people who need to hear and experience our words are none other than other Catholics who have lost interest or connection.  By virtue of our baptism, we are called upon to evangelize.

The word ”ministry” also comes to mind, as we talk about what we are called to by virtue of our baptism.  Here’s what a young theology student and writer named Jamie Manson has to say about ministry:

“Whenever in our work we honor the dignity of a human person with deep presence, we’re doing ministry. Any kind of work can be ministry in that way. What makes ministry particularly Catholic is when we do our work with a sacramental view of the world. In other words, we do it with an understanding that God can break through in any place, in all of creation…”

God breaks through- through us- as we offer our friend, neighbor, co-worker a fresh, unexpected glimpse of God.  We minister. We evangelize. We are God to the other.

Blessed week!

Joan Sobala, SSJ

Explore New Labels

Dear Friends,

I have been thinking, with some measure of irritation, about labels and glue. I mean the labels companies put on various products before they get to store shelves. Some people use these products without taking off the labels. In the attic, I recently found labels on package of Christmas accessories that are at least twenty years old. People also leave them on waste baskets, laundry baskets, cups, bottles. On and on. And then there’s the other side of the reality. The glue is often such that the labels don’t easily come off, especially when they labels have aged. Some need to soak in water, some require hefty doses of goo-gone.

What has any of this to do with living lives of faith? What labels do we wear, labels we haven’t taken off in years? What ideas, practices, beliefs, habits are glued to our everyday lives? And do we even know they are still in our personal world? What do we purchase, keep, hoard (maybe) or at least accumulate without testing its value against the call of Christ to study our own hearts and discern what is really of God? I was recently standing with a cousin who opened a closet door in his home to get something. Along the whole back wall, ceiling to floor, were stacks of audio tapes. Hundreds of them.  What internal glue keeps him hanging on to these things? Is his label ”collector?” Is it a label he treasures?

In a recent homily, Pope Francis encouraged his listeners with these words: “Let us prevent our hearts from becoming marketplaces. … vigilance is necessary,” he said. “The Christian is the man or woman who knows how to keep watch over his or her own heart. And many times, our heart with so many things that come and go, seem a local market:  everything ,  you can find everything there.. No!   We need to test things… this is from the Lord and this is not.”

So now that the cold of January is upon us, and the distractions of the Christmas season are past, let’s cast a look around our closets, attics, and shelves, as well as the closets, attics and shelves of our minds.

What do we need? What do we crave? What is sufficient? What enhances our vanity? What is of the Lord? What is not? What labels do I wish to carry into the still- new year? Will I dare to live simply so as to be one with the Lord? I join you in this exploration!

~Joan Sobala, SSJ

Greetings fellow- journeyers after the star, and Happy Epiphany!

All kinds of stories have been told about the Magi. The Christian centuries have passed on their names and homelands, something about their background and what happened after they left Bethlehem. There was even a story about a fourth Magi who got to Jesus only in time to see him hanging on the cross.

However charming or gripping these stories might be, they are stories. We know almost nothing about the personal lives of the Magi. Neither are these stories the substance of Epiphany. Read the story on your own (Matthew 2.1-12). Walk along with the Magi. Stand with them before Herod. Go with them to the house where Jesus can be found.

For now, we want to focus on what the magi symbolize for us in the human search for God. Like the Magi, we wonder where God is to be found in our life and in our world, as if it is up to us alone to find God.

We try to discover God’s purpose and make it our own. We puzzle over how best to use our gifts in helping the reign of God to happen fully. There may be long periods in our life when the directions are not clear – but like the Magi, we find companions with whom to share the journey –strangers or acquaintances, and sometimes friends, with whom we can talk about things that really matter. We, too, if we are wise, ask others for their insights and seek out spiritual guides to see us on our way.

We have our own epiphanies – times when we recognize the revelation of God in some ordinary or surprising moment. Sometimes, there are only the faintest signs, like a star against a night sky – but as TS Eliot reminds us

‘The hint half guessed,
the gift half understood
is Incarnation.”

If Epiphany is the feast of the human search for God, it is also the feast of finding God. Epiphany assures us that God can be found – wants to be found, wants to be revealed to us. God is always the end of our journey.

Epiphany is the feast of the impractical. Practical people don’t just drop everything and set out as the Magi did on a journey so lacking in clarity. But people with an openness to God do that.

Epiphany is the feast of the unexpected: God calling the Gentiles to be co-heirs with the Jews, as Paul says  in the second reading for the feast. Who would have thought it?
God is for everyone- Jew and Gentile, women and men, prisoners and the free, the young, the old, the embattled, the peaceful. God is for Pope Francis, for Syrians and South Sudanese, for infants and the dying, for you and me, for all we love and for all we don’t.

Go out the first night this week that the sky is clear and the stars are visible. Look up! And thank God for including us among the Magi.
~Joan Sobala, SSJ

As Another Year Comes To a Close..

Dear Friends,

Here’s a prayer I found and then edited. Edit it more, if you wish, and use it as 2013 slips away:

Gracious God, father and mother of us all,

We thank you for the year that’s behind us and the year that lies ahead.

Throughout the coming year, help us to fret less and laugh more. Let us take time to teach our children to laugh and love, by laughing and loving with them.

Help us to hear your love song in every sunrise, in the chirping of sparrows in our backyards, in the stories of our old folks and the fantasies of our children.

Thank you for new chances every day and second chances when we need them.

We pray for peace, light and hope for ourselves, and that we might spread these gifts to others.

Forgive us for falling short this year that is passing.

We leave the irreparable past in your hands,

and  step out into the unknown new year  knowing you will go with us.

We rejoice that Jesus the Word Incarnate is with us.

We promise to follow the star.

We embrace the cross and the Risen One.

May You Spirit be welcome in our world of violence and greed.

In the year about to unfold, may we know when to say  Yes! No! Welcome! Enough!

Amen!  Amen!