Anger: Good vs Bad

Dear Friends,

Today, Americans say they are angry. Journalists and political commentators use that very word to describe a prevalent mood in sectors of our country.

What is this anger anyway? Is it people’s major way to address life? I don’t think so. People can be angry for very good reasons – compelling reasons: injustice, disrespect of the holy, the poverty to which their families are reduced through no fault of their own. In the best of all possible worlds, people funnel this anger in brave and life-serving ways, working with discipline and resourcefulness, in company with others, to achieve fruitful change in our society.

But anger is not always noble. Anger can launch the negative in us, diverting our ability to act for the personal or common good. This year, we have witnessed in the public arena seething, explosive, unbridled anger, rage, irritation, distress and annoyance. When these emotions are in play, the result is violence, destruction of life and property, injuries that will produce lasting physical or emotional scars. Anger of this kind begets anger. Are we in such short supply of emotions with which to cope with the hard things of life that anger consistently tops them all?

There are roughly 375 places in the Bible where the word anger is used, but only three times in the Gospel. In Matthew 18, Jesus tells the story of a vastly corrupt servant who receives compassion from his master when he begs forgiveness for his theft. That same servant does not do in kind. Instead, he throttles and imprisons another servant who owes him a much smaller amount. When told, the master, in anger, handed him over for punishment until he paid his full debt. The master dealt with injustice as he saw it.

The other two times we see anger are in the Gospel of Mark. Early in his public ministry, Jesus came upon a man with a withered hand as he entered a synagogue. Jesus’ enemies were there watching, ready to accuse him of healing on the Sabbath. Undaunted, “looking around at them with anger, and grieved at their hardness of heart (3.5),” Jesus restored the man’s hand. The anger in Jesus was directed toward those who preferred the letter of the law to compassion. Finally, in Mark 14, a woman comes to anoint Jesus’ head with costly perfumed oil. Some there were angry because this gesture, in their minds, was wasteful and did not help the poor. Their concern for the poor was really a mask for their desire not to see Jesus honored.

That’s it. No more references to anger. Something else was present in Jesus. His compassion was primary, even in times when it was mixed with justice. There were other human emotions Jesus tapped into, and used to promote the good. We are not Jesus. Therefore, anger eludes our complete mastery. But we are called to become Jesus. That means we keep trying to listen rather than raise a fist, to weigh rather than reject, to see things from God’s perspective rather than to be caught in the moment that seems impossible.

~ Sister Joan Sobala

Shaping the Future

Dear Friends,

The 14^th World Youth Day in Krakow, Poland and the Democratic and Republican Parties conventions are over. Americans, by and large, know more about the conventions than World Youth Day, if not by watching them, then by media summaries and vignettes. All were high energy events, with chanting, witness talks, soaking up the auras of the public figures who were highlighting the events. God was in the mix, too, as only God can be.

All three have to do with shaping the future, building character, defining values and embracing them.

They have to do with subtly, rightly or wrongly convincing people that what these groups espouse is good for the world and good for communities and for individuals.

But life and death went on as these groups met. In Japan, a man attacked residents of the Tsukui Yamayurien home for the  disabled, killing 19, and at the Church of Sainte-Etienne du Rouvray near Rouen, France, 85-year-old Father Jacques Hamel died at the hands of assassins while saying morning Mass. Other mass killings around the world fill out the month of July. Marriages and births took place.

On any day, good and evil clash. Conflicting values vie for the hearts and minds of people. Faced with evil in its blatant and subtle forms, people retreat into fear, or choose masked evil because it seems to offer them security. Evil entices us as a perceived good. How do we know the difference?

One tool of discernment is in the words of Pope Francis. In Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel), he speaks of “the economy that kills.” Let’s ask: in what way can an economy that kills coexist with the Gospel of life? We can go on with this line of questioning: In what way can closing the doors to migrants coexist with the Gospel of life? In what way can racism, classism and sexism coexist with the Gospel of life? You get the point: any issue that world citizens face need to be squared with the Gospel of life.

Convention delegates, world youth, you and I need to think through with our various communities (not just by ourselves) the needs of our time and our part of the world. What do others need from us? We will find the personal resources to do what we must. The danger is that we choose not to know what is needed and that we ignore the call and depend on our own best (or pre-decided) thinking. That’s it really. What we need to do doesn’t arise in us. It is received as a call from a world in which the love, joy, peace of Jesus all exist, but are held captive, contained – not set free.

The first work of convention delegates, world youth, you and me is to listen to the deepest needs of hurting people. Listen. It’s easier to just put on a band aid.  Don’t. Instead, step into the work of helping others through their rough patches. Open doors and computers. Help people make connections that will enable life to spring forth. Treat all you meet with respect, even the one who comes to hurt you. “Violence happens when suffering has nowhere else to go.” (Parker Palmer) The work underscored by World Youth Day and the American political conventions is before us.

~ Sister Joan Sobala

Supporting the Fair Food Program

Dear Friends,

The local tomato season is soon to be here. Patio pots and backyard gardens as well as farms will be producing so many tomatoes that we have to have them at every meal, preserve what we can and give a lot away. Tomatoes are certainly not as ubiquitous as bread, but like bread, we take tomatoes for granted. We eat tomatoes in sandwiches, salads, sauces, baked dishes. We drink tomatoes in juices and bloody marys. They are ingredients in gazpacho, soups, appetizers and yes, desserts.


One of my early memories of my father was standing in the tomato patch in my grandmother’s garden. He had a salt shaker in one hand and a tomato, warm from the sun, in the other, just enjoying the moment as he ate his first of the season. Got tomato memories?


Summer tomatoes in our part of the country are comfort food. The rest of the year, we buy them or products made with them, with little or no thought of where they come from.


Enter awareness.


Florida farmworkers are hidden in the central part of the state. No beaches, museums, resorts. They rise at 4:30, and walk to a parking lot to begin looking for work. With luck, a contractor will choose them, drive them 10 to 100 miles to a field. They can begin picking when the dew evaporates from the tomatoes, but are not paid while they wait. They pick from 9 am to 5 or 6 pm, before boarding the busses back to Immokelee. At the work site, pickers bring their buckets of tomatoes to a waiting truck, and are given a token worth on average 50 cents for each bucket. Workers must pick nearly 2.5 tons of tomatoes in order to earn minimum wage. This may or may not be possible, depending on the time of year and quantity of tomatoes on the plants.


The pay amounts to a penny a pound. Stunning, isn’t it. The work of The Coalition of Immokolee Workers (CIW) is to increase that wage, improve working conditions and ensure a more dignified life for the farmworkers and a more humane, transparent food chain. Even two cents a pound would help.

Two companies near the top of the food chain are Publix with grocery stores across Florida and Wendy’s. While many other national chains have signed on to the Fair Food program, these two major food players resist the call to justice for the tomato farm workers, who are largely located in central Florida. If you’re in a Wendy’s, tell the manager you are encouraging Wendy’s to join the Fair Food program. When you’re in Florida, don’t buy tomatoes at Publix, which prefers to buy tomatoes grown in Mexico rather than support local workers. Tell the manager why. You’ll need to know more, so for a closer look, go to www.ciw-online.org/ and www.fairfoodprogram.org/ . You’ll see why getting on board offers farm workers a leg up.                                                                          


Enjoy your local tomatoes!


~ Sister Joan Sobala

Celebrating Mary Magdalene

Dear Friends,

We know her, but we don’t know her. I mean Mary Magdalene, whose feast we celebrate in a new way this coming Friday, throughout the church.

Luke alone tells us that Mary of Magdala was first among women to follow Jesus during His public ministry and that He, Jesus had restored her to strength and fullness (8.1-2): “Accompanying Jesus were the Twelve and some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities [including] Mary of Magdala from whom seven demons had gone out…”  

 In Gospel times, to identify someone as being “of” a certain place was not to emphasize a specific location but it was a way of identifying a person with reverence within a community. This Mary: Mary of Magdala, and no other. Twelve times in the Gospel accounts, Mary of Magdala is named exactly that way. Moreover, placement in a list of names, in biblical times was significant. Mary Magdalene is always named first in a list of women present at the death and burial of Jesus and at the empty tomb.

Nowhere in Scripture is she ever called a prostitute. Her very clear place in the community got conflated in subsequent centuries with the nameless women who anointed Jesus with oil or were identified as prostitutes. Pope Gregory the Great (540-604) was notable in his designation of Mary Magdalene as a public reformed sinner. The image stuck for centuries. She became a wanton woman in need of repentance and a life of hidden and silent penitence. Gone was the revered title “Apostle to the Apostles", given to her perhaps as early as the third century by Hippolytus. Enter Mary Magdalene of Jesus Christ Superstar and The Last Temptation of Christ.

Even though Mary of Magdala was at the cross and burial, these alone would not be sufficient to elicit the great regard the early church had for her. Most importantly, she was venerated as the first witness of the Resurrection the first to see the Risen Christ in the Gospel of John.

There in the garden, on the morning of that first day of the week, Mary lingered after Peter and John had departed without seeing Him. She wept and she did not recognize Jesus until He spoke her name: Mary: That Mary recognized the voice of Jesus calling her underscores that Mary is a true disciple. She then went, at Jesus' command, to tell the others that He was alive.

“I have seen the Lord” she told them, long before Paul used those words “I have seen the Lord” to confirm his own discipleship.

The witness of Mary to the Resurrection was so clearly accepted by the early Church that it could not be dislodged as the Gospel texts were being framed. Who would have thought that God would want the primary witness of a woman to such a defining moment of faith?

As of July 22 -- this Friday -- the whole church will celebrate the feast of Mary Magdalene, Apostle to the Apostles, not as an obligatory memorial but with a status equivalent to the feasts of some other Apostles. Our congregation invites you, and others you may choose to bring with you, to our Motherhouse for our 11:30 am Mass for this historic, joyous  celebration of the restored recognition of Mary Magdalene as Apostle to the Apostles.  

Nuns on the Bus Visiting Rochester

Dear Friends,

This week’s blog offers you both information about a coming event in Rochester and an invitation to participate.

The Network Nuns on the Bus will be in Rochester on Wednesday, July 20^th to promote Network’s Vision for 2020:

                3:30 pm at Saint Joseph’s Neighborhood Center, 417 South Avenue and

                7 pm for a caucus to mend the gaps at Colgate Rochester Divinity School, 1100 S. Goodman

If you can only do one, plan on the caucus in the evening.

So what is Network and why should we be even remotely interested?

Network was formed by Sisters from across the country in Washington, DC lobbying for issues of justice with our federal elected officials since 1972. Since then, many other women and men have joined the Network lobby across the country. The tagline on the internet sums up this enlarged participation: “Network: Advocates for Justice, Inspired by Catholic Sisters.”

For the fifth year, greater visibility of Network has reached the national public through Nuns on the Bus, a tour of certain sections of the country with a variety of people on board. The themes and routes vary year to year because of emerging national needs. Local justice advocates come on board for a portion of the trip with Sisters and others who go the distance that year. Our own Rochester Sister Phyllis Tierney, SSJ rode the bus as it went through Greenville, NC one year. Phyllis had worked for justice in that area for a number of years.

This year Nuns on the Bus asks the American public to promote policies that mend the gaps and bridge the divides in our country: wealth and the income gap, tax justice, living wages, family-friendly workplaces. Then there are the access gaps; access to democracy (voting), healthcare, citizenship (immigration), and housing. Nuns on the Bus will be at both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions this summer. In between these conventions, the bus will be in Rochester, offering area residents a chance to “get on board” in whatever way we can.

No longer do we have to say in the light of potentially overwhelming issues “I am only one”. We are more than one - one with our Sisters and Brothers across the country, networked together for the common good.

For more information, go to https://networklobby.org. See you on the 20^th!

~ Sister Joan Sobala

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