The Barren Fig Trees in Our Lives

Dear Friends,

Living in New York State, it’s probably safe to say that you and I don’t know much about growing fig trees. So, part of Jesus’ parable about the man who told his gardener to cut down this unproductive fig tree escapes us.

For one thing, the fig trees in Jesus’ time (as well as today) were treasured, carefully cultivated, fertilized, watered. Unlike the average, uncultivated tree growing in poor soil, and left largely to fend for itself, fig trees were pampered. Precious. No wonder the owner of the orchard was annoyed! He gave this tree every chance. The care he provided was useless. To put the situation into an axiom: that which only takes, and does not give can expect to be destroyed. The gardener, the hands-on figure in the story, had another thought, namely, to give the fig tree a second chance.(Luke 13.6-9)

In fact, you and I do know about barren fig trees: people in our families, those we meet in our society, our church, our town or nation or through the social media and the newspaper. Certain of these people appear to be barren, but perhaps they are not. Maybe they simply take longer to bear fruit. Faced with an apparent barren fig tree, our temptation is to give up. What’s really at stake is our patience and our willingness to suspend judgment. After all, we don’t know the moment of ripening if it comes at all. Oh, how would we like to predict it, program it, control it!

Leading up to judgments about the barren fig trees of our experience, we see signs of failure. Let’s call these signs of failure “falls”. Our society takes delight in pointing out the falls of others. Think about the relentless cameras of sports coverage recording the spill of the skater, the missed field goal, the slice into the third fairway over. These are replayed endlessly. Not just in sports but in other areas of life, people fall in a variety of ways and for a variety of reasons: infidelities, addictions, lack of discipline, bad choices, distractions. If we’re honest, people see us fall too.  Are we all bad fig trees? Who is to say? Certainly not Jesus and certainly not Pope Francis. Remember how Pope Francis echoed Jesus about holding off in much the same way? “Who am I to judge?” he asked reporters during one of his famous in-air press conferences when the question turned to priests who identify as gay?

Care is what we are called upon to give the fig trees that grow in our world. We either stand by, prune, and fertilize or we chop down or abandon what we judge to be barren.

One way of understanding the spiritual and corporal works of mercy which are foundational to the Year of Mercy is to see them as a call to care for the precious but barren fig trees of our world. On his Fridays of Mercy, Pope Francis spends time with people whom society has cast aside or judged useless. Most recently, he spent an afternoon with the addicted who are trying to make their way. With whom do we spend our occasional hours of mercy? For what fig trees are we the gardener?

This is our Jesus. He captures in this story one of the age-old tendencies people have – to judge one another worthy of being discarded. His story has another ending.

~ Sister Joan Sobala

Shaking Off Guilt

Dear Friends,

During Lent, we are invited to make reconciliation with God and one another a priority on our way to Easter. Sin has caused a rift between ourselves and God, between us and our neighbors, a separation, a turning away, a rejection of the other. Sin is a choice that damages our friendship with God. Reconciliation requires that we deal with this separation, division, sin and …. guilt. We can say it simply: “I was hurtful and I am sorry.” Before we can be reconciled, we need to understand and confront all of these realities we carry within us the most thorny and lingering of which is guilt.

Throughout my high school years, our whole school made a retreat in preparation for Easter. It almost always took me the better part of the year to get over what we heard and the way it was said. The preachers, out of an abundance of zeal, I’m sure, led us to believe that we are to bear life as a burden because Christ died for us. They pointed a finger at us and described our part in the passion of Christ in such detail that they induced in our fragile minds and shaky hearts an overwhelming, inappropriate sense of guilt. Now, many years later, the need to spend time considering sin and guilt in our lives continues. Our Church and we personally have come to emphasize the mercy, goodness, and embrace of God, and not wallow in unhealthy guilt when we are less than loving.

Guilt is a tricky emotion. It makes us uncertain about our next steps in dealing with our willful transgressions in helpful ways. False guilt consumes us, makes us turn against ourselves. It is abusive of who we really are. True guilt moves us on, helps us to reach for and hopefully be restored to our own authentic selves and our relationships with God and others. I once read somewhere that guilt, at its best, makes us look back at sin, recognize it for what it is, and then look forward to  reconciliation – to put our emphasis there -- on the forward movement. I am not saying that when we come face to face with our sin or when we think deeply on the meaning of Christ’s passion, that we should feel no sense of guilt. I am saying that we need to shake off, to put aside the undue, improper, unhelpful sense of guilt that boxes us in. Healthy guilt is to the soul what pain is to the body an indication that something is wrong – a dis-ease deep within us. Guilt is unhealthy when we stay in it, as Peter did for a while after his denials of Jesus, when we suppress it as Pilate did. Judas never did look forward. He was truly boxed in.

In Luke, we read about the interchange between Dismas, the so-called good thief, and Jesus. Dismas (Luke 23.39-43) knew healthy guilt. He had led a life of crime, but his words to Jesus came from a repentant heart. Dismas reached out to Jesus, acknowledged his sinfulness, and expected nothing more than to have Jesus hear him. But the generosity of Jesus abounded: forgiveness, and a welcome home. Jesus offered Dismas and, later, any of his disciples who had strayed from His friendship, both companionship and life to the full. That’s what Jesus offers us. There’s no need to take the better part of a year to recover from the Lenten examination of conscience. God has other things for us to do.

By all means, let’s admit our sin, whatever it is. Let’s seek reconciliation, shake off our past and enter into the embrace of Christ. With Him, we can walk confidently into a future that if as fresh as Easter morning.

~ Sister Joan Sobala

The Power of Symbolic Gestures

Dear Friends,

Pope Francis is in Mexico this week. Watch him carefully. His words will be important, but more important, I believe, are his symbolic gestures/actions in the places he visits, among them, Chiapas, one of the poor states of Mexico that has been subject to the brutality of powerful forces over the years. He’ll stand at the Mexican-US border, his presence a hope for all who want freedom from fear, freedom for life.

You’ve heard the words of Saint Francis of Assis: Preach always. If necessary, use words. That’s what Francis does. On his first trip after being elected, Francis  went to Lampadusa, an island off Italy’s mainland where refugees were brought, some dying on the way. Francis went there, prayed and threw a wreathe into the water in remembrance of all who died. Then he celebrated Mass on the shore. The cup he used for the Eucharist was made of wood salvaged from  a refugee-laden  boat that broke up on the offshore rocks.

Remember this photo of Francis taken in St. Peter’s Square? Francis hugged, held close for long minutes the lumpy, misshapen face of a man who had disfiguring disease. Francis did not turn away from him or stare in revulsion as others did. Who had last held this man’s unappealing-looking face  close?

Francis is not the only one who performs symbolic gestures. We can, and we do. Think hard this week of the symbolic gestures you’ve made or neglected to make. Be aware of the symbolic gestures you or others have received. Be ready to be inspired to make symbolic gestures when moved to do so.

We do not always recognize or appreciate the power and impact of symbolic gestures. Here’s an example of a multi-leveled, intertwined set of symbolic gestures. As a gift, I recently gave a friend a cutoff from my mother’s crown of thorns, a floor to ceiling plant which is now 43 years old. Since then, this friend has been diagnosed with stage four liver cancer, and is undergoing treatment. Last week, her husband came home with a sun lamp for the crown of thorns to help it through a bleak winter with sparse light. How many gestures of support and connectedness are in this simple story!

Children seem to know the value of symbolic gestures. At the children’s hospital Pope Francis visited on Sunday, children shyly slipped him pictures and cards with hearts on them. Francis gave rosaries and remembrance cards. He took pictures with as many children as he could. Frequently, our newspapers carry stories of children whose generous hearts move communities to give whatever is needed so that others may live. Two eighteen-wheelers took bottled water from our area last week, because a Webster boy’s heart was moved to do so. Symbolic gestures soften the harsh and difficult times of life.

Watch Francis and the people around you. Be inspired. Weave the power of symbolic gestures into your daily lives. I’ll do the same.

 

                                                There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish;

                                                      but what good are these among so many? (John 6.9)

~ Sister Joan Sobala

Trusting God With Our Efforts

Dear Friends,

There’s an austere familiarity about Lent. We’ve experienced it for years and years. And yet, no two Lents have been identical for us. This year, once again, we are at a new place. We’ve had experiences during the last year that we’ve never had before. As this year unfolds, so will newness. So Lent 2016 can be fresh and surprisingly appealing to us.

Lent is most especially a time of preparation to welcome the Risen One, who lives with us today in our complex world. Tools that help us prepare for Easter are traditionally prayer, fasting and almsgiving. With these, we clean the interior places where the really important movements of our lives take place. Tie these tools in with Pope Francis’ call for us to live a Year of Mercy, and we already have a full plate.

The human quality that will sustain us during Lent, Easter and beyond is trust…trust that the grace will be given, trust that we will have the strength and generosity we need to be Christ-like in our daily Lenten efforts and even trusting people moving in the same direction as we are.

Trust is a confidence that someone else is reliable. Trust means I can be secure in going forward, because I am being held up, by others, not the very least of whom is God. Yesterday I was finishing laps at the Webster Y and heading toward the shallow end of the pool. In a nearby lane, a boy no more than three was moving through the water, bubble on his back, a noodle under his arms. His grandmother led him out deeper and  deeper. This little guy was content, secure and happy. He trusted that grandma would give him all he needed to be at home in the water. This child was learning who to trust. Adults have to learn these things as well. Who is trustworthy enough to lead us out deeper and deeper?

Developing trust, for the Christian, takes discipline, faith and energy. It means living out the belief that the Risen Jesus is faithful to His promises. Trust is faith under pressure. There’s no such thing as a little bit of trust. We either trust or we don’t.

“Do not trust in princes” we read in Psalm 146.3. We need to be wise enough not to trust in a wide variety of people and things, from hawkers to surefire schemes to preachers who tell us that God is vengeful and that we are fundamentally evil. How different these devious  purveyors  of life are from Jesus who was once asked to cure two  blind men. “Do you believe I can do this?” Jesus asked. In other words, “Do you trust that I can do this?” “Of course, you can,” the blind men said. In others words:  “We believe you can. We trust you can”(Matthew 9.27-31). And Jesus did. Jesus is trustworthy beyond all that we can expect.

Corrie Ten Boom, the Dutch Christian imprisoned for her efforts with her family to save many Jews from the Holocaust, wrote of God’s place in her work:  “Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.”

Learning trust in a known God as we do the work of Lent can make a difference during the rest of the year. In the Lenten process, we learn to know the known God even more. Dare I say it? Happy Lent.

~ Sister Joan Sobala

Happiness and Blessedness

Dear Friends,

World Happiness Day, brainchild of the United Nations, is celebrated annually on March 20. On that day this year, our Church will begin Holy Week and this blog will be absorbed in the meaning of this holiest, most profound of weeks. So now is as good time as any to talk about happiness. We all want it. We find it, recognize it and name it in varied aspects of life. The Gallup-Healthways Well Being Index taps the happiness level of the world daily. 500 people worldwide are contacted each day and asked whether, on the day before the call, they experienced happiness without a lot of stress, or whether they experienced  the opposite. Gallup posts the results daily on the web. Your answers to the questions I pose here won’t get you into the Gallup Poll, but how about you? What in life has made/now makes you happy? What part did God play in these experiences? Maybe these questions don’t go together in your mind.

For many, happiness means things are going our way and Christianity has nothing to do with happiness. Rather, happiness is satisfaction with work, family, level of success, the newest “toys,” travel.  Happiness that includes these things is good, but over the centuries and in varied cultures, happiness has meant much more.

In the Jewish mentality of Jesus’ times, happiness and blessedness were interchangeable. They had to do with success, good health, many children. All of these were understood as signs of God’s love.

No one in Jesus’ mind has ever been categorically excluded from happiness. In the Gospel, blessedness/happiness is possible for everyone, but happiness is not necessarily what we expect. Happiness, believers in Christ over the centuries have found, is intrinsically connected with the well-being of others.  

Combing through the Gospel and summing up the characteristics of the people whom Jesus encountered along the road and in the villages and cities of his time, Jesus, in effect says:

                Blessed/Happy are the people who are good

                                                      the hand that does not strike,

                                                      the mouth that does not betray

                                                      the person  who does not deny his/her friend.

                Blessed/Happy are the merciful who see each other’s needs and act to fill them

                                                      those who care for each other in good times and bad

                                                      those who are open to change and become loving in that change

                                                      those who are willing to share their own food and drink.

                Blessed/Happy are they who do not give way to dominant power

                                                      those who let go of dominant  power

                                                      those who speak truth and love all without restraint.

 

Today, I wish you blessedness/happiness. May you recognize it in yourself and others, celebrate it, engage it, and turn it over to God, the source of all happiness.

 

~Sister Joan Sobala

Prisoners of Our Own Minds

Dear Friends,

Harry Houdini, the illusionist, claimed he could get out of any prison in an hour or less, but no one was to watch him. A small city in England had invited Houdini to come and break out of their new, state of the art prison. On the appointed day, Houdini, nattily dressed for the event, came. Harry entered the prison, the locksmith closed the lock and all withdrew.

From his clothes, Houdini took out his concealed instruments as he set to work. An hour went by. The people waited outside. Two hours went by. Nothing happened.

Stunned and demoralized, Houdini leaned against the locked gate. It opened under his touch. The townspeople had played a trick on the trickster Houdini. They had never locked the gate.

Houdini, in fact, had not been locked in. He was a prisoner only in his own mind.

How are we like Houdini- prisoners held by a certain way of thinking, prisoners in our own minds?

We are bound by phrases like

                I can’t                                                                  I’d never try that

                I don’t want to                                                  I am afraid to

                You’ll never catch me doing                           I am too old to

                I don’t get it                                                       I’m not strong enough to

                I don’t like it.                                                     I’m not talented enough to

The biblical moment that comes to mind in which the disciples are like Houdini is when they are locked away in the upper room on the evening of the third day after Jesus’  death on the cross (John 20.19.)

They were fearful. What would happen to them if they leaned on the door, stepped out beyond it?

Thank God that Jesus could penetrate their self-imposed imprisonment. He stood in their midst and did not offer them a dressing down for their desertion, for that would have been unworthy of Jesus. It would have driven the disciples deeper into the prison of their minds.

Instead, Jesus offered them the peace that unlocked the door so they could step out into what would become a fruitful discipleship in their needy world.

You and I can be enslaved by greed, self-centeredness, so many subtle dictates we allow to be imposed on us. We can stay there, or we can move out from behind locked doors to the freedom of the sons and daughters of God. The move from imprisonment to freedom is a lifelong work of the mind, heart and spirit.

~Sister Joan Sobala

Commitment is Continuity of Purpose

Dear Friends,

 

Having just heard the profoundly human story of the wedding feast at Cana recently, we do well to think of the commitments Jesus made and followed through on: commitments to the people who walked with him, commitment to do whatever His Father asked of Him, commitment to heal, and to be faithful to the mission His Father gave him to advance the reign of God in our world.

 

Jesus, in word and deed, expressed His intention to be committed to us. No longer do I call you slaves, I call you friends (John 15.15). I will be with you always, until the end of time (Matthew 28.20).

 

Commitment: it is nothing less than continuity of purpose in good times and in bad, in sickness and health, through disagreements and growth in diverse directions. To continue and grow, every true commitment takes time, energy and attention. For followers of Christ, commitments also involve a God -awareness/ a God -centeredness which anchors our various commitments, though the seas of life grow turbulent.

 

Married couples make their commitment to one another on their wedding day. Women and men religious make public vows to God through their own congregations. Scientists, teachers, public servants, members of the medical community all make commitments to serve the good of others. Most often, commitments are lived out in a stream of daily, ordinary activities, repeated and routine. The danger is in letting important repeated and repeatable actions become automatic.

 

While ongoing commitments are the true stuff of life, the dominant culture of our society seeks newness to overcome the perceived boredom that precedes or comes with the discipline of commitment. Youth and adults are each targeted with innovations in communication, clothing, lifestyles and ideas. Part of the work we do in life is to sort out the trite new from the valuable new, the old and repeatable from the useless and repeatable. We ask: will this help or hinder the commitments I have made?

 

Here are some other questions to mull over when thinking about the commitments of our lives:

 

- To whom or to what am I truly committed? Where in my life is there continuity of purpose?       

- Where do I need to do the work of recommitment?

- What do I do daily in service to the commitments I have made which are in danger of being lost by unconscious repetition?

 

In our daily living with the commitments we have made, Jesus, our Brother and Lord, is with us. I will be with you always. Let’s help each other believe it.

 

~ Sister Joan Sobala