Working for America's Future

Dear Friends,

We celebrated Independence Day this week. We sang patriotic songs, waved flags, wore red, white and blue.

But independence is not an absolute. Our American freedom is a moored freedom, tethered to God and the good of one another: “one nation, under  God,” as we say in our pledge of allegiance. We are yoked to one another. As we grow to value our relationships with one another, we will want to make life better for all.

All through the political primaries, we heard claims in conflict with this vision which links independence with interdependence and dependence. Independence without ties to anyone revels in individualism. You live your way, I’ll live mine. Maybe we’ll intersect. Maybe not. Good luck.

But people with no sense of moorings are adrift in a sea of private choices. That is not what our founders wanted for us, nor is it what God wills for us.

God, whom we celebrated a few weeks ago as Trinity, has a rich inner life. God is a community and if we are to grow more fully into the image of God, then we must become, as persons and as a nation, more community-oriented.

The late communications guru, Marshall McLuhan, once told us there are no passengers on spaceship earth. Everybody is crew. Believers go on to say that God is with the crew, and indeed, God is the spirit of the crew.

As we travel on this year through political campaigns and elections, through controversies, joys, tragedies and scientific breakthroughs, through the Olympics and other international events with our companions on spaceship, here are a few questions to ask ourselves now:

1. Are you proud of being an American?
2. Do you know what it is that makes you most proud?
3. Do you tell others how you feel about America at its best and at the moment?
4. Have you on occasion felt less than proud to be an American? When?
5. Do you act on your beliefs?  In what ways?
6. Have you acted on your beliefs with repetition, pattern or consistency?
7. What will you do in the next six months to affirm America as the home of the tired, the poor, those yearning to breathe free?

These are not just questions for the 4^th. It takes a certain passion and even audacity for a believer in God to work on behalf of America’s future.

~ Sister Joan Sobala

Do We Stay or Do We Go?

Dear Friends,

Before you read this, the non-binding vote in England will have happened. Brexit or remain? The question has been swirling in the British air for weeks. The Scottish people had a similar vote in 2014: Leave union with England or not? Before that, in 1997, when Hong Kong was to revert to being part of China, and people had no choice in that outcome, individuals and groups asked the question for themselves “Do we stay or do we go?”

When marriages teeter, relationships fray, academic pursuits or work are not satisfying, do we stay or do we go?

These are our very human questions, based on the choices we’ve made and the choices before us. In the best of all possible worlds, we choose again the choices we have already made, but the outcome depends on so much: the life-giving quality of the choices we have made, the choices our partners have made, our willingness to stay the course and build with others life to the full. In Christian terms, those choices are stirred in us by God, if we allow it.  The best in Christian life is summed up in the call to do our part to build up the reign of God – or as some of contemporaries call it “the kindom of God.” I like this term “kindom of God” because it bespeaks not only our relationship to God (as in “the kingdom of God”), but our relationship to God and to one another. We embrace God when we embrace one another.  We are kin and therefore, we stay, not go.

Jesus posed that same question to his disciples. Will you stay or will you go? Remember?  Just after Jesus had promised himself as food and drink for them in John 6, many listeners found this a hard saying. They walked away. Jesus turned to his disciples with the same question “Do you also want to leave?” (John 6.67) Jesus acknowledged their freedom. Whether he wanted them to stay was not the point. They had the right to choose. So do we. In all those issues that really matter in our lives, including our relationship with our Risen Lord, we can stay or go.

Many Catholic Christians today have walked away from active life and worship in parishes, for a wealth of reasons. Have they gone away from Christ or just from the institutional church? Jesus offered His body and blood for our nourishment on the journey. Where does one find that nourishment except in community worship at Eucharist. “But I can be one with Christ in other ways.” Yes. But when believers have chosen another path, they may not even recognize their hunger and run the risk of becoming spiritually weak from that hunger, and disoriented from their deepest God-given values. “Not true. I’m fine.”  It’s between you and God, of course, but don’t forget the community that needs your staying power, profound questions and courage. It is as daring to stay as to go. Maybe more so.

From earliest times, believers have chosen to go away. Some returned, others did not. God can be met everywhere. God in Christ is met in a special way at the Table of the Lord. Returnees are welcome alongside those who have never gone away. Life is richer when we are at the Table together. Stay or come back. “Lord, to whom shall we go? …We are convinced that you are the Holy One of God..” (John 6.67-68)

~ Sister Joan Sobala

Seeing Through God's Eyes

 

Dear Friends,

My thoughts of the Orlando 49 this week were mixed in with thoughts of Prince and Muhammad Ali - the outpouring of regard, affection, praise offered to Prince and Muhammad Ali from many quarters of society. People knew them, loved them, exulted in their work, their insights, their accomplishments. Prince and Muhammad Ali were, in the language of praise, larger than life. So great was his appeal that, at the last of the memorials for Muhammad Ali, speakers included representatives from the major religious bodies in the United States.

Fans will go to these public figures’ gravesites in the future to pay their respects, to remember and to tell stories about where they were when they first heard “Purple Rain” or when they saw this or that boxing match which added to Muhammad Ali ‘s claim to be the greatest of all time. In the language of our day, Prince and Muhammad Ali were iconic.

Like the Orlando 49, they were also children of God, made to the image and likeness of God. Along the way, as their characters were formed and their strengths and weaknesses emerged and changed, the image of God they were was more or less evident, but it was always part of who they were.

The idea of being in the image and likeness of God does not come up in our everyday language – either about ourselves, our circles of family, friends, acquaintances, or public figures whose prominence seems to have nothing immediate to do with showing them as the image of God. It’s left to us to think in those terms, to discover, explore, name the qualities of a person that according to our best lights, render them images of God, to start thinking in these terms on a more frequent basis.

What is required for us to do this sort of thinking is to stand in another place. What place? And how do we do this?

Pope Francis, speaking to all gathered for a general audience in Saint Peter’s Square in April, 2014, called his hearers to wisdom,

                “And wisdom is precisely this: it is the grace to be able to see everything with the eyes

                of God. ...it is to see the world, to see situations, circumstances, problems, everything

                through the eyes of God… Sometimes we see things according to our liking or according

                to the condition of our heart, with love or hate, with envy. No, this is not God’s

perspective.

                Wisdom is what the Holy Spirit works in us to enable us to see things with the eyes of God.”

 

It takes practice to gaze on public figures, all those we know and love or don’t love with God’s eyes.

~ Sister Joan Sobala

Finding Our Helpers in the Wake of Tragedy

Dear Friends,

Death in places of play, enjoyment and community gatherings was in the very air we breathe during this last weekend. The drownings and the hot air balloon accident at Letchworth, the nightclub shootings in Orlando. Lives snuffed out and other lives touched to the quick.

What do we make of all of this? How can we go on with cheer, verve, delight, determination? Where do we turn?

The friend of many, Mr. Rogers, told how he handled things beyond him in his youth: “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’”

How do we help each other through this weekend with unexpected death so close to us? Who are our helpers?

One set of helpers are the thoughts and convictions that we cultivate and carry in our minds:

                Whoever dies never dies alone. God holds the dying one close.

                God weeps when death snuffs out life in an untimely way.

                God never wishes the untimely or violent death of a person, since each person is made in    God’s very image and likeness.

                God does not scorn any person, even though we scorn some, judging them to be evil.

Just as we require helpers to see us through the difficult and destructive times of life, we need to be helpers to others:

                Sitting in silence with a pain-filled person.

                Eye contact that says “I am for you and with you”.

                The telling of one’s own convictions.

We cannot undo the deaths of the weekend, but we can treat people around us with dignity, not bad-mouthing whole categories of people but letting others know that goodness far exceeds evil in the unfolding of life.

~ Sister Joan Sobala

Planning Your Funeral

Dear Friends,

Since the beginning of May, I have been to nine funerals. Some of the lives the gathered community held up to God in thanks and with sadness were older people, some had died suddenly of heart attacks, one woman had committed suicide, others died after a short, dramatic illness. In each case, the funeral was done with great dignity and care by the presider, readers, homilist, musicians and leaders of prayer. The deceased, as a child of God, deserved the best the community could offer.

Wakes, vigil services and funerals are times to help console the ones left behind. Some people today choose cremation and no wake or wake service. The deceased have a right to that choice. The other side of that choice which people may want to consider is no wake with a body in the coffin denies family, friends, coworkers one last treasured glimpse of the loved one. When the deceased him/herself says “no wake” it, deprives the family of meeting people – strangers -- whom the deceased knew in life. What will you do? It’s current in our society to want to multiply words of remembrance (a.k.a. eulogies) at some point in the liturgy. In that setting, it’s often too much. These stories and remembrances can best be told at leisure at the wake, burial site or at the meal afterwards. Let the liturgy stand alone as the lighted Paschal Candle stands alone, or have  one speaker to say "My father was a man of faith and this moment is important in his life. Please come to the burial or meal, so we can continue to celebrate with the kind of remembrance and social festivity he would have liked." What will you do?

 

In addition to being at funerals and wakes, twice, during the last month, two people asked me to help them put together the details for their funeral liturgies. These people wanted what they wanted. Both of them, married with adult children, knew that, left on their own, their children might make other choices. The details of our funerals are our last choices in life. It’s important that we honor our loved ones, attending to the desires that arise from their strong faith and important relationships.

 

How old are you, anyway? Have you ever thought about your own funeral – what you would like for readings or songs? You may say you are too young for such thoughts and want to put them off for as long as possible, hoping at the same time to put off their realization as long as possible. But these thoughts are not death-wishes. They are valuable insights into your own life, and its meaning for yourself and others. Revisions ahead can be many, but for now think of what you will do.

 

The next time you go to a funeral, dress up in honor of the deceased. During the service, don’t daydream. Listen carefully to the words. Take in the gestures of the ritual. Watch to see the reverence with which the coffin/cremains are treated. Would this be a funeral you would like for yourself?

~ Sister Joan Sobala

Connecting Our Lives to the Body and Blood of Christ

Dear Friends,

Twice during the year, our liturgical calendar calls us to celebrate the Body and Blood of Christ. The first time is Holy Thursday, when Christ offers Himself to His followers as nourishment for them. But during Holy Week, we are deeply involved in compelling events – the flow of Christ’s self- giving, culminating in His passion, death and resurrection. So we have a second feast of the Body and Blood of Christ two weeks after Pentecost.

It’s important to focus community mindfulness on the Body and Blood of Christ, because we, like every generation before us poses the question “How can this be”? The child, recently confiding to his grandmother on the day  of his First Communion “How does Jesus  get into the bread”? The befuddled people of Jesus’ time who heard Him say “I am the Bread of Life. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. The Bread I will give is my flesh for the life of the world” asked “How can this man give us His flesh to eat”? And recently a poll found that fully 45% of American Roman Catholics believe Jesus is symbolically, not really present in Holy Communion.

The Church has taught, from the beginning of Christianity, that Jesus is really and truly present in the Eucharist. The risen Jesus who walks invisibly among us, becomes our food – tangible in the Eucharist. We do not receive the Jesus of History, who preached, taught and healed as told in the Scriptures. We receive the Risen Lord – the Christ who, after the Resurrection would appear to people, talk with them and be gone.

Something or someone can be real without being physical. Electricity and courage, the sound of a voice or the convictions we treasure are real but not physical. So too, the Risen One is really and truly present in the Eucharist. What we receive is not a symbolic presence or a physical presence. It is the Risen Lord.

As we seek to treasure the Body and Blood of Christ we receive, here’s a thought to connect our everyday lives to the Body and Blood of Christ: At the level of everyday life we have the power to share our body and blood. We can hug, shake hands, nurse babies, make gestures of love toward one another…Medical technology enables us to give blood, donate parts of our bodies, breathe life through mouth to mouth resuscitation. Our bodies are energy sources, sources of nourishment for one another. We know and appreciate this in the daily order of things. Somehow, we don’t make the transition to understand that, as people gathered for Eucharist, we are the body of Christ. We are the blood of Christ. There is the consecrated bread and cup and the consecrated people. How will we be poured out for others? Where are we willing to spend our life’s energies?

~ Sister Joan Sobala

Building Up God's Kingdom

Dear Friends,

In a new book entitled Divine Renovation, Father James Mallon, Pastor of Saint Benedict Parish in Halifax, Nova Scotia, talks about parish life and its need to be renewed and restored. Fr. Mallon draws on the experience of the early Church, in which all, all, all baptized believers were formed into missionary disciples. All of them were called to build up God’s Kingdom. Today, he continues, all of us are called to build up God’s kingdom.

Somehow, and regrettably, for many centuries, the work of building up the Church was thought to belong in the hands of religious orders or the ordained ministry. Father Mallon says No. Early on and now, you and I are all called to be missionary disciples. No one is excluded. All of us exercise missionary discipleship the way the Holy Spirit inspires. At the very least, this means that each of us is called to create a welcoming parish home for people. If some people are to return and others come new, our invitation, the way we model and live parish life will be essential. Not just nice. Not just helpful. Essential.

“You ask too much!“ you might retort. “I don’t know how. I have enough to do. What if I do it wrong?” These first responses all arise out of fear: fear of rejection, fear of creating discomfort in a relationship, fear that we may be labeled as “over the top.” Yet how many times does the voice of God, Jesus, God’s messengers say to people who are called: “Do not be afraid.”

What am I really asking? That, this summer, you be open to praying over the people in your life and then inviting them to Eucharist with you.

Praying over people who are already part of your daily life is important. God will point the way. Pray for them both before and after inviting them to join you some Sunday, whether they say yes or no. If yes, go with them. If no, pay attention to the tone of the no. It may mean “Not this time.” Or it may mean “Don’t ask again.” But be ready. Inviting someone implies we want to be hospitable to them, that we are ready to help them through the parts of the liturgy and the changes in posture. It means we are also ready to answer questions or find the answers for later. Over time, those who are welcomed will experience a sense of belonging. Only when they have an adequate comfort level can they be open to believe.

The work of inviting people to come and see belongs to all of us. Without us, it won’t happen unless the love of God burn in us in such a way so that we can see the potential fire in the other. As the anonymous poet from the near East says:

If you do not burn,

If I do not burn,

How will the darkness become light?

~ Sister Joan Sobala