Woven into Our Faith

Dear Friends,

The Sunday before the liturgical feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (Sept.14), Sixty Minutes aired a segment on Christians in the Mosul area of Iraq. cross. The anguish of Christians in these towns and villages is compounded by the replacement of the toppled cross atop their churches by the black ISIS flag. The cross is the rallying symbol for these suffering Christians, and they weep, lose heart when its prominence is lost.

The cross is a symbol that is used and misused, treated lightly or warped into what it is not. Some elements of society have adopted the cross as part of their theatrical jewelry. Young rap stars are bedecked with crosses as they sing of raping others.

The cross is woven into our life of faith like no other symbol. We were baptized in water with the sign of the cross. We bless ourselves with water and the sign of the cross when entering church. Parents rooted in faith will often bless their children at bedtime with a prayer and sign them with the cross. We begin and end our liturgies, celebrate each sacrament with the sign of the cross. Throughout the historic visit of Pope Francis last week, we saw him carry a crozier with a cross at its top at liturgies, sign people with the cross, wear it openly on his white papal clothing.

For believers, the cross is a universal symbol, a triumph of love over hate, a triumph of faith over cynicism, a triumph of embrace over rejection.  It is also a symbol of contradiction. How could this instrument of execution used in the Roman Empire as a penalty reserved for lower class criminals  be for us a symbol of redemption? Talk of the cross sometimes makes us squirm. It makes us think of suffering and death, and these are realities people try to avoid. Our age, in particular, wants no part of pain and suffering. We don’t want to experience it and we don’t want to see it.  Here in the USA, at our southern border and across Europe this summer, suffering people are being turned away or treated harshly. Yet, ironically, it is only through suffering that we, individually and together, come to fullness. We make life decisions through our experiences of suffering. To put it another way, through suffering, the meaning of life becomes clear to us. We become refined through suffering.  God is committed to us in the goodness of our lives, laced as it is with loss, bewilderment emptiness, pain and suffering of all sorts.

The cross reminds us that God’s love does not protect us from all suffering. Rather, God’s love is a shelter in all suffering. With Jesus who went before us to the cross and His resurrection, we are encouraged to go on. Pope Francis last week, urged us to grow in depth of living our faith. Let’s let the cross be a symbol of  our willingness to do so.

Do you have a cross hanging prominently somewhere in your home? That used to be the case in many if not all Christian homes.  If you hang a cross in your home, it will be a reminder to all who live in this house that faith that supports your life and a non-verbal way of proclaiming to all who enter that believers live here. Why not have a household meeting and decide whether you should do this?

~Sister Joan Sobala

He's Coming!

Dear Friends,

He’s coming.

Pope Francis will be in our country from September 22 to September 27.

You can be sure that the cities, churches and people of Washington, New York and Philadelphia are preparing. So is the Pope with his 18 talks, his remarkable energy, love of God, all the earth and humanity. Spin doctors, commentators, authors, groups with their laudable causes or not, have already put out their views, analyses, desires, plans for these days of grace, wonder, amazement, discouragement, disagreement and distress. We may already be tired of all the preliminaries. Weary, we may miss the event itself. How do we make sure it’s fresh to us?

Since most of us will not see him up close and personal, here’s my suggestion to make the most of the Pope’s visit. Shut out the ambient noise and instead, concentrate on Pope Francis. Watch him, pray with him,  listen to him and draw out your own insights and conclusions. Writing in a recent issue of the National Catholic Reporter, Thomas Reese, S.J. offers checkpoints to do this well. He says we ought to look at five things in the visit of Pope Francis:

                                                Francis the man, but it’s not about himself

                                                Francis the prophet, who speaks truth to power

                                                Francis the peacemaker, speaking to all nations, all creeds

                                                Francis the pastor, visiting, touching, speaking, listening

                                                Francis on message. God’s message: Love one another

See how these qualities emerge in the very busy days ahead. Think for yourself. Talk to others about what you see and what you hear. Eventually you will read and absorb the many facets of this trip. Other voices will help nuance what you think and believe about him and his message, but begin with opening your own heart and mind. 

~Sister Joan Sobala

Embrace Jesus with a Love Name

Dear Friends,

In Chapter 8 of the Gospel of Mark, Jesus asks the people two questions important to Him:
“Who do people say I am?” and shortly after that,” Who do you say I am?” In today’s reflection, I offer a few quotes about Jesus for us to mull over, savor, make our own or lead us to formulate our own thoughts about Jesus.

                Jesus is the undistorted image of God and the undistorted image of what it means to be human.            (Canon John Townroe)

                Jesus is the Feast, the Truth, the Life, the Covenant, Light, Freedom, Solidarity, the Good News,             the Pilgrim, the Way, the Beckoner.  (Author unknown)

                Christ is the Wisdom of God.  (Saint Augustine)

These four points about Jesus are the non-negotiables of William O’Malley, S.J.

1.       Jesus is the embodiment of God; God focused all that is God into Him.

2.       Jesus died in order to rise, to remove the curse from death and share His eternal aliveness with us.

3.       If we engraft ourselves into Jesus, we take on His values, which are subversive against all the world holds dear.

4.       We celebrate our oneness with Jesus in a community of service and a weekly meal.

And from the pen of Jessica Powers:

                                                                                    The Master Beggar

                                               

                                                                Worse than the poorest mendicant alive,

                                                                the pencil man, the blind man with his breath

                                                                of music shaming all who do not give,

                                                                are You to me, Jesus of Nazareth.

                               

                                                                Must You take up Your post on every block                        

                                                                of every street? Do I have no release?

                                                                Is there no room on earth that I can lock

                                                                to Your sad face, Your pitiful whisper “Please?”

Now it’s your turn to embrace Jesus with a love-name… and mine.

~Sister Joan Sobala

Building Life in the Post Summer Season

Dear Friends,

My young friend, Mark, learned to drive a year ago. He was so happy to have that license. It represented freedom of movement to him – a milestone in the passage  toward adulthood. Remember that exhilaration? I do. It still shows up sometimes when I get behind the wheel. Six months later, Mark told his mother: “There’s a lot of repetition, isn’t there? Going back and forth over the same expressway or city streets.”

Repetition is an undeniable factor of everyday life. Some repeated and repeatable things become automatic, and they should not take much of our conscious effort: peeling potatoes, washing our hair – routine stuff. The danger is in letting important repeated and repeatable actions become automatic.

Carl Schulz, the creator of the Peanuts cartoon series, looked back over 50 years of producing daily cartoons. His personal challenge, in his own words, was “to do the same thing, day after day, without repeating ourselves.”

The Carmelite Sisters on Jefferson Road in Henrietta, New York and the Trappists of Piffard, New York are monastic communities, committed to a life of prayer in a stable community. How easy it would seem to just get in the groove. But these communities work at remaining vital and fresh, their members committed to seek and find the newness offered by the Holy Spirit.

The dominant culture of our society seeks newness to overcome boredom. Both teens and adults quickly take to new vocabulary, new fads, only to abandon them for the newer new. You have already missed the debut of the new Star Wars memorabilia!

It would seem that newness is better. After all, doesn’t the One sitting on the throne in the Book of Revelation 21.5 tells us “Behold I make all things new!”

Of course God says that to us. God means that all of creation will be renewed and we, scarred human beings, will be renewed in ourselves and in our relationships.

But the old and the daily and the valuable are part of the treasure hidden in the field that Jesus speaks of in Matthew.

Our work, as we begin the new post-summer season of building life is to sort out the “trite- new” from the “valuable- new”, the old and repeatable from the useless and repeatable.

Here are questions worth considering in this new time of year: What do I do daily that is a treasure and is in danger of being lost to unconscious repetition?  How do I make the continuity of purpose essential in my way of living? 

~Sister Joan Sobala

Labor Day and Faith

Dear Friends,

Enjoy this last full week before Labor Day. The first Monday of September, in our national calendar, marks the unofficial end of summer, with a flurry of picnics, reunions and other celebrations. The main purpose of Labor Day, since its inception in 1887, however, is to honor, applaud and encourage American workers. While Labor Day was originally intended to recognize union laborers, we realize today that we are all workers and we all have cause to recognize and draw satisfaction from what we do. While most adults and many youth work for pay, some adults volunteer or are retired, but still work. 

That’s because work is part of what it means to be human. Occasionally we hear someone complain that work is a punishment for sin, but remember how before the fall, God settled Adam in the garden of Eden “to cultivate and care for it. (Gen.2.15)" Adam was given work to do.

In Laudato Si, Pope Francis’ encyclical on the environment, our Holy Father reminds us that “We are created with a vocation to work… part of the meaning of life on this earth, a path to growth, human development and personal fulfillment.  (n. 128)”

Locally, the iconic social activist, Hattie Harris, who died in August 1998 at the age of 101, told the public not long before she died: “Be ashamed to die until you have done something life- giving for the human community.”

From the Philippines comes a story of an initiative that came out of a threat and utilized the very source of that threat in surprising new ways. This story of creativity was featured in a publication of the non-profit, Unbound.

           

In an area near Manila, the waterways fished by local men became overwhelmed by water       hyacinths, fast growing pest which clog waterways, kill fish and deprive native aquatic plants             of sunlight. Fishermen had lost the key source of income to support their families. Charito, wife of a local fisherman, contacted Unbound with a potentially life-giving question “Was there any way to generate income from these water hyacinths/pests?” In fact, the Philippine government was offering training in how to turn the plant stalks into large sheets that could be used as a leather substitute. Currently, about 50 couples work together in harvesting and processing the  water hyacinths, creating backpacks, shoes, wallets, purses and other products. A bonus added  to their efforts is that, with less hyacinths in the lake, fish have come back and fishermen are at   work again, doing what they do best. Everyone who can, works. It all started with formulating the right question, knowing someone to ask and then following up.

While all stories of communities facing hardship don’t always end with such apparent ease and success, the following prayer is nonetheless worth repetition, as God accompanies us through the labors of the day:  "Prosper the work of our hands, O Lord. Prosper the work of our hands. (Psalm 90.17)”

~Sister Joan Sobala