A Halloween Reflection

 

Dear Friends,

Whether you go out to a Halloween party this year or remember Halloween celebrations from times past, “going as someone else” is part of the ritual involved. We wear clothes that transform us into someone else we have chosen to become and we wear masks. We are temporarily other than who we are.

Beginning with ancient times and cultures, people, taking part in rituals native to their clan, wore masks. The mask allowed them to become the fire god, the demon, the holy one, the alpha ancestor. Those who wore masks found  themselves  thinking  and acting like the figure they personified. Wearing masks temporarily takes us off the hook for answering for ourselves and our actions. One Halloween, when I was dressed as a pumpkin, with padding that enlarged and changed my look, several  masked  people pushed me deliberately and rudely. They would have been chagrined to know who they were really pushing around. I didn’t expect that, but am not surprised. Masks allow us to be intemperate, to do things which we would think twice about doing in our ordinary lives. But masks do not necessarily bring out the worst in us.

The Lone Ranger, Batman, Wonder Woman and the Avengers are among the many masked figures of our culture.  They worked for good in their own way. Masks do not always diminish us.

I think of the Scriptures, where some characters wore disguises. That’s how Jacob, instead of Esau, won his blessing from his father. Levi (Matthew) and Zacchaeus wore the mask of the tax collector. There must have been some core of goodness and openness to God that Jesus perceived in them that caused him to welcome them despite their public image. Names can be considered masks of  sorts.   

At the time of deep interior change, being given a new name is a way of announcing to the world that the mask is off.  Saul to Paul, Simon to Peter.

In our families, we sometimes wear masks. Do they hide or reveal who we are – who we are striving to be?

With our public face, do we reveal  who we really are?  Think of the microphones, hidden backstage, which revealed the political figures true thoughts not said onstage.

Jesus wore no masks. He was who he was. Before God, we can wear no masks. We can try, of course, to wear one, but that only shows how little we know of the God who knows us through and through. (Psalm 138. Read it all.)  

~Sister Joan Sobala 

PS. Don't miss these upcoming Fresh Wind In Our Sails Programs.

Wednesday, November 4, 7 – 8:30 pm

Finding Faith: A Couples Story

Location: SSJ Motherhouse

Marlene Bessette was a non-practicing Catholic and Eric Bessette was an avowed agnostic when they met. They pushed and pulled each other along to spiritual places neither would have imagined.

Saturday, November 7, 10 am to 3 pm

Retreat Day at SSJ Motherhouse

Theme: Becoming More Deeply Who We Are

Presenter: Sister Joan Sobala

Cost: $35.00

Take Some Time For a Retreat

Dear Friends,

The voice mail message was from Rosie who plans to come to a one day retreat at our Motherhouse in early November. She was calling me about her friend whom she has invited to join us. There was hesitation in Rosie’s friend. She had no idea what happens at a retreat, so would I please write up a description, send it to Rosie to pass on to her friend. I hit my forehead with the heel of my hand. “Of course! Many of us who are used to the time away called retreat don’t realize that not everyone is familiar with the meaning and process of such a day, nor its benefits for them!”  Thus, this week’s blog.

Retreat is a general term which means taking a long look at who I am/who we are and how I am/we are moving on the journey that unfolds as we walk toward the future. Corporate executives retreat, professionals in various fields make a retreat. People searching  to know themselves  make a retreat. So do those who want to experience/master a discipline of some kind (yoga, qigong, etc.) Not all people who make a retreat have religious motivations. But some do, and I don’t just mean priests, Sisters and those committed to pastoral ministry. I mean ordinary people who have families, are single, young or older. Some people make an annual retreat of a day or more to refresh, regroup their thoughts, look back, look ahead, just be at home with themselves  and our God, make room for the Holy Spirit. The retreat is for the participant and his/her relationship with God, whatever that might mean. Sometimes, retreats spin out a particular theme, and people come because the theme resonates with them.

Most of the time, a skilled retreat director guides the event – someone who has experience in working sensitively with people on their life journey. (S)he will walk you through it. Often, retreats offer common times for input by the retreat guide, with breaks to be alone to walk, pray, just be, to empty one’s mind of clutter. Guiding questions/thoughts are often given for follow-up discussion back in the group. During these times of focused conversation, another person may voice what we are thinking, even better than we can. We find that we are not alone in our efforts to become more deeply who we are. We find God embracing us: “Do not be afraid, dear one.” Participants can share as little or as much as they’d like. There is no one way, no preferred way to make a retreat.

What will not happen on retreat? No hard sell on specific ways of thinking. No expectations of a specific outcome or moment of enlightenment, although that could happen. No embarrassing moments where people feel cornered. Mutual respect is the foundation upon which the retreat is built.

“Come to me… and I will refresh you,” Jesus says to His followers (Matthew 11.28) .That sums up a retreat: resting a while with the Lord. When the retreat opportunity comes, hold out your hands, let yourself be led, take in the Spirit, be enriched, be open to the future, which, as the late great Yogi Berra once said, isn’t what it used to be.

~Sister Joan Sobala

PS: Our next retreat day is Saturday, November 7,  10 am to 3 pm at the SSJ Motherhouse.              Theme: Becoming More Deeply Who We Are Cost: $35.00, including lunch and materials. If you'd like to go contact me at jsobala@ssjrochester.org or call me at (585)- 733-2555

There’s Work for Us All to Do and to Do Together

Dear Friends,

Yesterday’s news no longer figures into today’s media outlets. That’s the simple fact of contemporary communication worldwide. But yesterday’s human stories go on despite their lack of coverage. Take the vast number of migrants who have fled from Iraq, Syria, and other lands of the mid-East and Africa. If they made it to Europe at all, their gratitude to God/ Allah, kind people, smugglers who delivered, is vast and varied. But once in Europe, they continue to suffer from uprootedness, hunger, sickness, misery of all kinds, including their inability to decide where to go next. In Hungary, we saw how migrants were stopped in their journey by security agents and fences. They were stopped by a nation that seems to have forgotten how, during the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, millions of Hungarians fled to Austria and were taken in. One of the marks of humanity is to forget the good done to us and refuse to pass it on.

We want all we can have for our own: the cozy house, the protective door, a full larder, our own family around us. But if having everything for our own means that others have nothing or very little, then our mindset is not of God.

While we may not be on the front where these life-stories in Europe are being played out, we have our own share of migrants, legal and illegal to work with here in Rochester. The come from Bhutan, Nepal, the lands south of Mexico and other places with names unfamiliar to us. Here in Rochester also, we have seen rejection and violence.
 
Whether thinking of the people out there or here, our part is to make the mind of Jesus our mind. It’s to him we turn.

Next Sunday, we’ll hear how James and John came to Jesus, seeking to be at His right hand and left hand in glory.  No, Jesus said, that was not his to give. Moreover, the important thing was to be the servant of all. (Mark 10.44) All.  Not just the ones we like or choose to serve, but all.  Wrapping our minds around that idea of serving all is hard.  Perhaps our own greatest individual contribution to the work of welcoming immigrants is to help shape our national dialogue and ultimately, the American mindset about welcoming the stranger. This is something we can do, and encourage others to do, if we choose.

“Welcome” is antithetical to “chasing away”. As a nation, we know about welcome, but we also know about chasing away. We did that to people who had a prior claim on the land when we were the immigrants. In 1838-1839, Native Americans – Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw and others – were led through a forced relocation from their tribal lands I the southeast US into what were called the Indian Territories west of the Mississippi. The National Park Service has recently completed the marked trail of tears through nine states, to follow their trek  with reverence. What our government did then was to chase away people who had a prior claim to the land. Now some entrenched groups of Americans want to chase away people from abroad who have outstretched hands, who want to join us here, who want to dry their own tears shed on the desperate trail they traveled.  There’s work for us all to do and to do together.
 

“The liberation of many is a greater task than the lifetime of Jesus Christ. It will take longer and demand more than the lifetime and life of any individual disciple. The community that is willing to give life and not measure the return is the community that has understood the mystery of discipleship.” (author unknown) 
 

~Sister Joan Sobala

Family and the Church

This month, from its opening on October 4 until its closing on October 25, the Synod on the Family will have high priority in Catholic news outlets, and I hope, worldwide media will report the discussions, as well.

Marriage is on the front burner, and in particular, how to welcome Catholics home whose marriages ended in divorce and who have remarried outside the Church. To this end, Pope Francis told those gathered at the opening Mass “the Church should be a bridge and not a roadblock.”

With the uncanny twist only the Holy Spirit can provide, the first and third readings for the 27th Sunday of Ordinary Time (October 4) are about marriage and divorce.(Gen.2.18-24 and Mark 10.2-16). Here are three short reflections which can bring the readings and Synod together in our thinking.

• it is clear that the Law of Moses allowed divorce. It is equally clear that Jesus says in the Gospel that this was not God’s intention, but came about because of human frailty. Divorce was common in the time of Jesus, although only men could initiate the divorce procedure. Grounds varied among the various rabbinic schools of thought – ranging from flimsy reasons (She is a bad cook!) to the more serious (Adultery).
•  Specifically in this Gospel; account, Jesus is addressing the implications of divorce as it related to women. For a woman, divorce meant total disgrace in the community, the loss of home and children. She became socially unacceptable on her own. No respectable man would marry her.  In short, Jesus is addressing divorce, not as we know it today, but as a situation in which a human being is treated as an unwanted possession.
• In our families, among our friends, maybe we ourselves have known the reality of divorce. No one enters marriage planning on divorce. No one enjoys divorce. It is a devastating experience arising out of human frailty.  Divorced and remarried  Catholics feel awkward, uncomfortable, unwelcome at Sunday Mass. To all of these people, the Church needs to be a place where hurts are healed and hearts find courage to rebuild life. Pope Francis, in the spirit of our compassionate and merciful God, bids us search them out and welcome them. We need to do our share to heal the wounds that broke marriages bring.

As they marry, a couple promises love, fidelity – a promise that takes the work of a lifetime of effort, practice,  mutual support.

There’s more. The promise, the embrace of God celebrates our victories with us and holds us in our defeats. These promises human and divine, are the stuff of married life.

Living as we do in the time of Pope Francis, we can be sure he will do all he can to help God’s people live through the greatest challenges we face… living this life – our only life - fully, as we move toward eternal life.  He wants the Synod, and by extension all of us, “to rediscover a church that can unite compassion with justice.”
~Sister Joan Sobala