Helping Others Live as Fully as Possbile

Dear Friends,

Within one week in March, St. Patrick, St. Joseph and St. Oscar Romero are celebrated as great men of God.  March 17, 19 and 24. These three saints, each of whom loved God deeply, came from different historical periods and walked very different paths to God.

Patrick, an Irishman by birth, was taken to Gaul as a slave. Eventually, he was released and became a priest who could have worked among the Celtic people on the continent. But he yearned for the people of his homeland, went back and worked tirelessly so that Ireland would be ardently Christian.

Joseph, the carpenter from Nazareth, had expected a normal length of years, with a wife and family among his own people. But God called him to a remarkable journey as the spouse of Mary and the foster father of Jesus.

Oscar Romero was a priest in El Salvador. In one small town where he ministered, Father Romero was exposed to the plight of his parishioners at the hands of government agents. He experienced a conversion to embrace the cause of the poor. As the bishop of San Salvador, he died at the altar for it.

What was common to these men? Certainly their faith and their perseverance. But there is something very basic in all of them. It is that they were other-centered.

Other-centeredness is the opposite of self-centeredness. Infants are by their very makeup at that  point in their lives are self-centered. Their needs are all they know. The symbol of the self- centeredness of an infant is how they put everything they can in their mouths. Parents have to be vigilant, lest they take in something harmful.

It takes diligent effort to move from self-centeredness to other-centeredness. It is the work of a lifetime to become other-centered – to expend oneself for the good, the well-being of others, to open the way for others to recognize God’s abiding presence and treasure it.

Certainly Jesus is our primary example of other-centeredness through his life and through his death. One person in the gospel who mirrors Jesus’ other-centeredness is the Syro-Phoenician woman – the foreigner who came to Jesus begging for her daughter to be cured. And how about the man whom Jesus met at the foot of the mountain right after the Transfiguration.  The man wanted healing for this son. The disciples still, seeking to be first in the kingdom of God, were not other-centered enough to heal the boy.  But Jesus did so. Jesus recognized other-centered people when he met them. Still, he loved and worked with his disciples who were “on the way” but not yet other-centered.

During this Lent, as we take time to honor and celebrate the great generosity of Joseph, Patrick and Oscar, let’s ask our Gracious God that we might become bigger of heart and mind, so that others may live as fully as possible.

~Sister Joan Sobala

The World Would be Better if We Try

Dear Friends,

Every year, early in March, I pull out of storage the framed cover of LIFE magazine dated March 19, 1965 so my memory, sadness and ire will be stirred again.

The headline reads “The Savage Season”, and the photo shows two (of many) troopers  waiting for John Lewis,  Hosea Williams and a long stream of marchers crossing the Edmund Pettis Bridge leaving Selma, Alabama.  Moments later, the somber marchers, theirs eyes downcast and their hands in their pockets in classic non-violent posture, would be attacked by troopers and deputies, on horses and with dogs, using cudgels of all kinds to beat down the marchers on their way to the state capital in Montgomery. Later that month, at the order of President Lyndon, federal troops escorted the marchers along the route to Montgomery. In August 1965, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act to strengthen the Civil Rights Act of 1964. People who sought justice and equality were hoping for an end to racism.

But if we look at the Democrat &Chronicle for February 21, 2019, the headlines tell of increased  violence  embedded in hate crimes. Everyone is in the mix: racists, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, neo-Confederates,  anti-Semitic groups. The list is long. The march from Selma to Montgomery goes on.

Yet Jesus would have us be and do otherwise. While words like racism don’t appear in the Gospel, hatred and animosity among people who lived shoulder to shoulder are evident. None of this is of Jesus. He teaches that each life is valuable. Every person is of equal value with everyone else. No one is a throwaway.  “In my father’s house there are many rooms”  (John 14.2) - room for every person of every race, each gender, ethnic group, sexual  orientation, without exception.

In 2019, what do we need to do personally, minimally and daily so that racism gives way to unity and peace? 

1.   If possible, get to know one person of color. Really know that person: his/her desires, hopes, struggles and vision of life. Let that person get to know you as well.

2.  Treat everyone you met with respect. Let it show. If that person does not treat you with respect as well, let it go. Don’t give back in kind. S/he may be living through suspicion of the other born of pain and maltreatment.

3.  Do not take part in derogatory conversations about people of color. Often these include name-calling. The “N” word. Speak otherwise.

4.  Call on God, who is the Significant Other of all of us, to help us overcome  the outlooks we have constructed to keep us and others confined to separate non-overlapping  spaces.

5.   As the spiritual writer, Ron Rohleiser says: “Bless more and curse less!” Words matter.

6.   Do not judge. Rather be compassionate as your Father is compassionate. (Mt.5.48)

Try on one or more of these attitudes this Lent, and work at making it fit our minds and hearts.

Hard work? You betcha!  Worthwhile? The world will be better if you try, if I try, if we try together.

-Sister Joan Sobala

Lent: Fasting and Following the Lord: Some worthwhile ideas

Dear Friends,

Lent begins on Wednesday, all fresh and new. I hope you have some good, simple ideas to draw on that can help Lent be fresh even a month from now. Here are two short pieces that others have written which I have found helpful in past Lenten times. You may want to weigh the ideas within them for their worth.

The first is an excerpt from the Abbey of the Arts by Christine Valters Paintner. She says, and we can echo

   “I am called to fast from being strong…to allow a great softening…

    I am called to fast from anxiety… and enter into radical trust…

    I am called to fast from speed…causing me to miss the grace shimmering right here…

    I am called to fast from multitasking...beholding each thing, each person, each moment…

    I am called to fast from endless list-making…and enter into the quiet and listen…

    I am called to fast from certainty and trust in the great mystery of things…”

This second piece is from an unpublished  article by Rochesterian  P. David Finks;

   “Lent is the time for getting into the habit of following Christ, but never letting following
    Christ become an empty habit…following is not easy business.  It requires a tranquil 
    and trusting spirit…In order to follow, you need to be free from the bonds of any place or
    time, you need to be free from the chains of possessions or habits, you  need to be free
    from the shackles of selfish expectations…Jesus walks into the place where we are and
    says ‘Follow me.’… Right here, right now, in the midst of the everyday facts of life. His call
    is that we follow him into all the broken places of life to renew and make them who call is
    still hard, and his call is still easy to evade and avoid…Yet hearing that voice speak your
    name, saying ‘Come, follow me,’ you can do nothing else but lay down control and
    selfishness and all your self-absorbed fussing, and take up the cause of this stupendous
    stranger whose mission is light and life and love. Lent means following  Christ – trying to
    express in our lives the same kind of reconciling love he did.”

Fast and follow – two loaded words to imprint on the inside of our eyelids so that we see them every morning as we are struggling to wake up. Lenten words to live by: Fast from the destructive interior motor that drives us – literally drives us into not seeing Christ and not hearing his call to follow him.

I wish you a slowly unfolding Lent which promises the companionship of Christ daily.

~Sister Joan Sobala

Do Not Strike Back

Dear Friends,

If the name Abishai was called for on the Jeopardy category “Biblical Figures”, most of us would probably miss the answer. Abishai only appears once  - in 1Kings - as David’s military advisor. But obscure as he is, Abishai lives on today.

Here’s the backstory to today’s reading from 1Kings.

The older Saul and the still young David were in conflict, battling over a kingdom. Saul was about to kill David, when David fled, with Saul’s army in fruitless pursuit. As our reading today unfolds, David has a stroke of luck. David and his friends come upon Saul, asleep, unguarded and defenseless. “Kill him,” Abishai whispers to David. But David refuses. Saul is his king, the Lord’s anointed. Trusting in God’s wisdom and power, David leaves Saul to God to deal with. But David did take Saul’s spear as proof he had stood over Saul and had a choice to kill him or not.

Can you imagine how Abishai might have reacted to David’s refusal to heed his advice? “What kind of fool are you, David? Saul would kill you if he could. If you don’t kill him first, he will do away with you. Act now, David! Here’s your chance. Kill Saul! ” Later, David would tell why he didn’t follow Abishai’s advice. David chose to be guided by mercy, justice and compassion. Saul, in turn, moved by David’s thinking, entered into a kind of peace with David.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus stands with David over against Abishai. Jesus, too,  urges his followers to choose mercy, justice and compassion when dealing with conflict. Teaching his followers a Godlike generosity, Jesus wants us to do  good to those who have done evil to us.

How hard it is to break the cycle of violence, hatred and evil by returning compassion for violence, love for hatred and good for evil. What a challenge it is to live this way.

Abishai is alive and well in our world today. Is it his voice, urging you onto strike back,that you listen to? Who is the mentor of the moment who seems to have the answer that will solve everything? Today’s Abishai, cloaked in modern terms, tells us that unless we attack those who attack us, all is lost. Jesus and David would have it otherwise. They resist the undertow of revenge and tell us to do likewise. These readings are a lesson for world leaders about how to treat their own people as well as their enemies, but they are also a lesson for me. How about my own tendencies to be aggressive and violent in my personal relationships? My own ways might be more subtle and calculated, but Abishai whispers in my ear too. Abishai becomes active in me when I strike back against those who harm me.

Begone, Abishai. Come to me, Jesus. Stand with me, David.

Help me not to judge, or condemn, or find novel ways of striking back.

Help me to pardon, give, love, forgive, be compassionate and just.

-Sister Joan Sobala

God invites us to sing. No conditions.

Dear Friends,

As a people in our day, Americans don’t sing much. We have our car radios, MP3s or our ear buds, and we listen to music a lot, but singing is another matter. 

Yet singing is a deeply human, time-honored way of expressing emotion, solidarity with others, hopefulness, delight. The Jewish people, for example, have a Sabbath of Singing, to remember and renew the power of the songs of Moses and Miriam as they crossed the Red Sea on their long journey to freedom. Muslims sing the Koran and other world-wide religions have their songs of praise and thanks, however they name the Holy One. They sing with the people next to them.

As the Third Reich was training and indoctrinating youth to be folded into a solid war machine, the boys were taught patriotic songs. They sang these songs marching, practicing, at meals. In a whole other context, Black Americans sang their songs of sorrow and yearning for freedom from their slave days onward. In the 1960’s, as the Civil Rights movement grew, Americans of all ethnic origins across the country learned and sang songs of freedom in solidarity with the Black Community.

Today, Americans seem to have devolved into a land of listeners. Listening is good, of course, but singing lifts the soul as listening can’t.

In most Protestant and Evangelical Churches, congregations sing heartily at worship. Choirs and cantors help swell the sound, but congregational singing draws people’s hearts and minds closer to God and to one another. Some Catholic parishes have sustained or developed rich congregational singing, but not all. Some historians say the lack of singing at Mass stems from the Irish who came to America. They remembered needing to pray silently in Ireland, lest enemy troops find them. The Irish who came here associated strong congregational singing with the Protestant Churches. That’s one theory. There are others, of course, but no theory is adequate for us not to sing. “Be filled with the Holy Spirit, speaking with one another in psalms, hymns and spiritual songs.” (Eph.5.18-19) “It is my joy, O God, to praise you with song. To sing as I ponder your goodness.” (Morning Prayer, Saturday, Week IV of the Divine Office)

Sing praise to God in the morning. Sing alone. Sing together. I’m sure you have your own personal evaluation of your ability to sing. “I’m pretty good,” you might say, or “I’ve got a beautiful voice,” or “I carry my notes in a bushel basket.”   God doesn’t say to us in the Scripture “Sing only if you have a good voice.” God invites us to sing. No conditions.

Singing at Mass is worship. We create a joyful song to the Lord together. With one voice. Singing at Mass is ministry to one another. We sing for healing the person in the next pew with cancer, depression. We sing in joy awaiting the birth of children in the womb. We sing because we are saved and loved by a God who sings back to us. “God will exult over you with loud singing.”(Zeph.3.17)

"Sing a New Church into Being”, we proclaim in one of our contemporary hymns. Sing, and if you dare, sway, clap your hands, lift your arms in prayer. Develop a singing life, on key or off.

-Sister Joan Sobala

My Heart is Ready

Dear Friends,

From the earliest times of human consciousness, love was a gift and a challenge. People tried to understand the stirrings of the heart by creating definitions of love which, in fact, never completely captured this multifaceted aspect of human beings. The ancients divided love into three kinds: agape – the love of the divine and the divine in us, filio – the love of fondness and friendship with those with whom we share life and experience, and eros – sexual love.

Poets have written about love.  John Henry Cardinal Newman  took as his episcopal motto “cor  ad  cor loquitur” Heart speaks to heart. Rejected sexual love can morph into hatred and sometimes violence. Then too there is the love of friendship, the love of people for their pets who are endlessly faithful .

Love is not chosen. It arises unbidden in us and lasts long after dementia or death cause separation. My mother’s friend, Laura, was in a nursing home the last eight months of her life. Her mind clouded, Laura could no longer remember my mother’s name, but my mother continued to visit her, and each time, from some deep place, Laura recognized my mother.  “You’re my friend, “Laura would say.

Childhood experiences sometimes affect the breadth and scope of our love long into our adult years. Tommy, as a second grader, saved his allowance so he could buy 5 Valentines for his five favorite fellow second graders. ”How many in the class? ” Tommy’s Mom asked. “20.” said Tommy. Mom showed him a packet of 20 cards for a dollar.”  “Then you could give one to everyone in the class.” Tommy’s Mom pointed out and waited. Tommy swallowed hard, but he took his mother’s suggestion. One little girl in the class, came to Tommy on Valentine’s Day, tears in her eyes, clutching a card close to her. “ Oh Tommy, thank you. Yours is the only Valentine I got.” Tommy told me this story when he was forty.

If Valentine’s Day can be celebrated with a wide embrace, it can also be celebrated as a time to renew and deepen our commitments. Commitment is not a popular idea in our culture. A segment of our population today favor: try this or that. Give our bodies to someone on a temporary basis. Make ourselves the sole measure of the choices we make.

Commitment to our work does make it big these days – but other commitments are harder to stay with, grow with . I’m thinking of marriages left because someone more appealing came along, the priesthood or religious life never tries because the sacrifices are too many.

If you’ve continued in a relationship with others for years, Valentine’s Day can be a time to recommit and resolve to find new ways to grow together. If you’ve given yourself to God through a religious commitment of whatever kind, make time to spend with God on Valentine’s Day.

Valentine’s Day can be a time to choose again, to repeat our yes, to transform a day of knickknacks, candy, trifles and trite phrases into a time of love, truly deepened with our God and one another.

My heart is ready, O Lord. My heart is ready.

-Sister Joan Sobala

Let's Dare to Forgive

Dear Friends,

One of life’s hard but necessary lessons is to learn to be people in whom forgiveness resides...to be able to forgive others for what they have done to us…to ask forgiveness of those whom we have injured… and to forgive ourselves for what we have done to others. If we don’t forgive, then we will die inside.

Forgiveness is a relational process. It involves God and us in personal and sacramental ways. We don’t go immediately from whatever generated the need for forgiveness to making forgiveness actual in our life. Maybe we need to walk away from the event, leave it alone for a while. Take a break. We also need to develop a certain patience and refuse to let the thought of whatever it was stay in the forefront of our mind. Other bigger, growthful thoughts can’t occupy our minds if we are so preoccupied with the memory of whatever it was. Only with time (different for each of us), can we decide what we need to do so that the memory of whatever it was does not swallow us up. Lay it to rest. We know that forgiveness is real when it no longer hounds us and we are free to go on.

Jesus taught us the full measure of forgiveness, by his words to his followers to “forgive 70 times 7 time”(that is to say endlessly  - Mt 18.22). He told us “if you do not forgive, neither will you Father in heaven forgive you (Mark 11.26) His greatest lesson in forgiveness was the way He died on the cross.” Father, forgive!” He cried out in Luke, his words washing over Jerusalem with love Luke 23.34).

It is So Hard to Love…

To unlock the heart

To release the bottled pain….

So hard to stop running

To embrace the one hated

To love and forgive.

So hard…

To unclench the fist

To surrender to God.

-Joseph Varga

Jesus is the Lord of Second Chances. When we feel dead inside and wonder if we can ever be resurrected, Jesus, the Holy One, is there offering forgiving love and bidding us to do in like manner.

God’s forgiveness of us and our forgiveness of others are inextricably linked. Once we recognize and own that we are forgiven by God, then we are free to treat each other as though we are forgiven. In our world that is so full of dissing, hatred and violence, forgiveness of others and ourselves opens doors and windows. Goodbye, road rage. Goodbye, revenge. The world feels different, tastes different, is different.

In our dismal days of national strife, let’s dare to forgive, and with God, create a new world.

-Sister Joan Sobala