Recognizing Our Part in Renewing Earth

Dear Friends,

If nothing else, this devastating COVID-19 pandemic has slowed down the pace of human life. We find ourselves at home most of the time, and unless we are essential workers, we are out for only exercise or errands. The creatures of the world notice our absence. In Llandudno, Wales, wild mountain goats came into town and sampled the bushes, garden vegetables and trees. In a photograph from Nigeria, lions are resting comfortably in the blazing sun on a paved, untraveled highway. And the storks whose migratory pattern takes them over an Albanian lagoon have settled there in large numbers.

At the same time that nature and clear air levels have changed for the better, we have experienced the collapse of our economy, devastating illness and the noble attempt to find ways of addressing COVID-19 and the human need for the basics of life.

May 24 marks the fifth anniversary of Laudato Si’, Pope Francis’ “bold bid to help humanity to love the earth, to glimpse its sacredness and be moved by its plight” (Austen Ivereigh, Wounded Shepherd, p.195).

What’s the connection between the Pope’s message and our virus-induced misery? For one thing, the ecological crisis is deeply connected with our human and political crises. To come through all of these crises requires new ways of thinking and acting. Begone competitiveness and selfishness! Welcome cooperation, compassion and awareness!

Create a new heart in us, O God – new heart to save what Pope Francis calls our common home. A new heart can happen only through conversion – seeing with the eyes of God, listening with the heart of God and acting with the tender heart of Jesus. This will take work on our part and a cooperation with our attentive God.

If you haven’t read Laudato Si’, Google it and spend time absorbing Francis’ insights. He himself, when he was the archbishop of Buenos Aires, experienced an ecological conversion. It became abundantly clear to him that human beings were not meant to dominate the earth but to live compatibly with other creatures.

As we suffer through the pain of this pandemic, the time is right for us to awaken to our shared responsibilities in bringing forth a massive renewal of the planet, which Francis calls our homeland – “one world with a common plan.”

Among steps to take, consider our “throwaway culture” with its emphasis on production and consumption. These pandemic days have shown us that we can do with less. We can also teach our children by our actions more than our words to value the earth. We can also pay attention and support the efforts of young people who are the conscience which calls adults to ecological conviction and action.

The Swedish teenager, Greta Thunberg, and Pope Francis met one day in April 2019 in St. Peter’s Square. With delight, Pope Francis told her “Go on, go on, continue!” And she in turn exuded joy at his caring: “Thank you for standing up for the climate, for speaking the truth. It means a lot.”

~Sister Joan Sobala

We Are Never Alone

Dear Friends,

Today’s section of John’s Gospel reminds me of a poignant story a woman told me.

Her mother, up in years, lived in Philadelphia, in the family home where my friend had grown up. One night, the phone call came. My friend’s mother had suffered a massive stroke. She was gone. When my friend arrived home, her only sister hugged her. “We’re orphans!” she wept. Here they were, mature women with families of their own, yet the word orphan came to mind as they characterized their new state in life.

Competent, functioning adults feel vulnerable and abandoned when the protective canopy of an older generation is torn from them. The orphan is plunged into an experience of greater responsibility with fewer resources, compelled to provide for self without the luxury of being provided for. At whatever age, the orphan yearns for the intimacy which now seems irreplaceable – an intimacy of relationship where identity is derived from belonging rather than achievement. From the perspective of the bereaved, the one enduring personal loss, death is never timely. As adults, however, we are not comfortable admitting our own adult perception of having been abandoned.

Likewise, as people of faith, we suffer the acute absence of God or meaning in our lives. Somehow, we have been shaken loose – maybe because we went off to college, lost a loved one or experienced a crisis like this pandemic. We can’t seem to put our life into a larger context. Maybe we feel we have no life story at all that means anything to anyone.

Even if we search for meaning somewhere other than the Christian community, we might nonetheless hear a small voice nudging us to Sunday worship. We might get as far as a back pew, well away from others who clearly have a sense of belonging, but relax. There will be no thunderbolts.

Going back to today’s Gospel, Jesus assures us “the Father will give you another Advocate to be with you always…who remains with you and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you” (John 14.16 -18).

If we let the poetic, mystical message of this Gospel seep into us, it can make us realize that we, well and truly, are never orphans. God’s promise has been given to us. The Spirit has come to us and will continue to abide with us.

We are not orphans.

We are never alone.

        We are always in the company of the Spirit of God. That’s God’s promise to us.

        Belonging is the door of our own eternity. We have only to cross the threshold.

~Sister Joan Sobala

The "Yeses" in Life

Dear Friends,

Tomorrow is my 80^th birthday. Birthdays are like the parables of Jesus. They seem like simple stories but they admit of a multitude of meanings that keep coming to us as our lives go on. Today, I would like to hold up an abbreviated parable of these 80 years as a mirror for reflecting on your own experiences.

On this Mother’s Day, how can we resist some thoughts about our mothers – the first carriers of our lives. From my childhood, my mother, Celia, had trouble with me. I was a contrarian who didn’t want to follow her directions. One day, when my mother was talking to a neighbor across the front fence, she called out to me “Joanie, don’t go into the street.” I stood on the curb and looked at her as I stuck my toe into the street. She turned away and laughed. That’s how life was. For better or for worse, I have put my toe into many streets of life. Did you do that?

There were tough moments when I was attacked, literally by neighborhood thugs and once by a boy in my class at school. My mother taught me courage and resilience. She stood by me just as Mary stood by Jesus throughout his life and never turned away. Maybe your mother stood by you as you grew or maybe she didn’t or couldn’t. Who stood by you at critical times of your life?

Later, when I wanted to respond to God’s call to religious life, she resisted. Celia reasoned that I would be locked away forever and not be able to taste the options of life. Years later, my mother admitted to the richness of my life, and hers as a result. What choices have you made in response to God’s call that your family could value only in retrospect?

Over the years, I have learned that the journey of my adult life is more than the first commitment I made as a Sister of Saint Joseph. That choice was certainly foundational but it swelled with other calls to welcome, accompany, discern with and integrate others into faith, other times to say “Yes.” Thinking again of Mary, the mother of Jesus, we remember her "yes" to the invitation of God to bear her son. That "yes" took her to stand on the shores of his life as he preached, taught, healed. It took her to stand beneath the cross and to experience the terrible pain of holding his dead body in her arms. Mothers never want to experience the death of their children. But she also experienced his Risen from the dead and she experienced the Pentecost coming of the Holy Spirit (for the second time for her). What has the first “Yes” and other “Yeses” of your life meant to you and others?

Here we are today – threatened by a virus we can’t see or hear or touch, but one which could overwhelm us as individuals, families, and as a church and nation. Often the cable networks carry pictures of people who have died from complications of COVID-19. Many of them were young – serving the community with their talents and desires. Why did they die and why, at 80, am I still here? What does God want of me? Why are you still here? What does God want of you?  

What does faithfulness to God and to my treasured commitments mean to me in this new context? Shall I put my toe into the street again? To borrow the question of Mary to the angel: “How will this be?” What does it mean to say “Yes” to God at my age – and you at yours?

~Sister Joan Sobala

Shepherding Us Through the New Norm

Dear Friends,

We hear people talk about “getting back to normal” after the pandemic subsides. I hope we don’t, for what was normal before COVID-19 was a time that did not treasure the poor, the homeless, Indigenous, Black and Brown people, people fleeing from persecution of all kinds. The wealthy kept growing richer. The middle class, found itself in free-fall.

What the new normal needs is a miracle of love and unselfishness.

That’s a phrase I borrowed from Walter Munk, one of today’s great oceanographers. Munk coined that phrase to describe the only way he knew to overcome global warming. That phrase also describes what we must do to emerge from this this pandemic time as well. “A miracle of love and unselfishness” needs to root itself in our lives if we and our communities are to be made whole as waves of the coronavirus, sweeping with stealth across our planet, threaten us.

On this Good Shepherd Sunday, we celebrate the one who stands with us in all we suffer. It’s well known that sheep recognize the voice of the shepherd. When someone other than their true shepherd calls, the sheep simply don’t respond.

We hear the undeniably repeated call in the 10th Chapter of John’s Gospel, “the sheep hear his voice as he calls his sheep by name and leads them out {of the sheepfold}. (John 10.3)…I have other sheep that do not belong to his fold. These also I must lead, and they will hear my voice and there will be one flock and one shepherd (John 10.16)…My sheep hear my voice; I know them and they follow me. I give them eternal life and they shall never perish. (John 10.27-28).” Even though, as largely urban people, we have no daily familiarity with sheep, we are moved by the image of a shepherd loving his sheep so ardently.

In Pope Francis, the world has found a contemporary shepherd who speaks with the voice of the Risen Lord – a profound leader who urges the world and not just the church to live out the love and unselfishness that the Risen Jesus calls us to if only we hear his voice. Francis, in his letter on the need to save the earth, (Laudato Si’) affirms that the planet is a single homeland that calls for “one world with a common plan.” That calls for us to shake ourselves free of being grasping, selfish and self-centered and instead, make common efforts toward shaping the common good of our planet. As the virus crossed boundaries without seeing them, people in the new normal need to cross boundaries of state, class, gender and race in support of one another.

Francis is a shepherd in the image of the Good Shepherd. He urges us to be that too.

During this painful time, we find people stretching out to help one another. Let’s not stop once the immediate worst is over. Let us be changed in heart and mind and spirit, generous beyond anything we have done in the past. The new normal will take effort on everyone’s part, a miracle of love and selflessness.

~Sister Joan Sobala

The Stranger on the Road

Dear Friends,

Once again today we hear the much-loved story of Jesus encountering his disciples on the road to Emmaus. Cleophas and an unnamed partner were fleeing Jerusalem, disappointed and miserable. Their world had collapsed. We don’t know who was with Cleophas, but it could have well been his wife, Mary, who had stood beneath the cross of Jesus. Let’s call Cleophas’ travelling companion by that name.

As darkness began to encroach, Mary and Cleophas were approached by a solitary stranger. They could have cut him out of their journey. Passed him by. Perhaps it was pure mid-Eastern courtesy that prevented them from doing so – more likely some deep tugging of grace. The stranger seemed to be ignorant of the things that had transpired over Passover and the Sabbath. He listened to their interpretation of what had happened. The stranger – Jesus unrecognized – was attentive to them, and then it was his turn to unfold the Scriptures for them – to offer them meaning and hope. And as they listened, something happened to them. Much later, they would reveal to each other how their hearts burned within them as He spoke.

At this moment in 2020, we are all together as a people beginning to emerge from the coronavirus. Like Cleophas and Mary, we want to run away from the place of our miseries; our hopes dashed. We might even want to run away from a God who doesn’t seen risen or present in our world, shattered as it is by this invisible enemy. Like Mary and Cleophas, we try to name the things that have happened – to us individually, to our church, our relationships, our world. What we fear is that things won’t go back to how they have been. It’s likely they will change. Maybe evolve. Maybe change radically. The stranger on the road – Christ unrecognized – will be our travelling companion. Let’s listen to Him. And when we invite Him in as a guest for supper, He will feed us with himself instead.

In the days ahead, when Eucharist will be available to us again, will we go? Maybe before all this, the meaning of Eucharist was escaping us, but how about now – in this new time. Pay attention to what is happening within you. Does your heart burn within you? Will you recognize the Risen Lord? Looking at the wounds this virus has brought us, will you see Jesus’ wounds in others? Will you come to know that we need one another in dawning new ways? Will you? Will I? Will we?

This beloved story of the disciples and Jesus on the road to Emmaus, tells us to take courage, for Christ will meet us on the way to a new tomorrow. It tells us: the stranger who walks with us and helps us understand what had happened is no stranger at all.

~Sister Joan Sobala

The Wounds of Christ

Dear Friends,

For Him, it didn’t have to be this way,
Risen Christ that He was.

He could have left His wounds
in the tomb,
staining the stone,
untreasured.

But Jesus’ wounds were the embodiment of
the compassion he bore for everyone.

Jesus’ breath,
halted in death,
was fresh, deep and sweet
on this new Day.

Beyond this day, Jesus wanted His holy wounds
to touch the wounds of people where they suffered
in every time and place, as with the silent virus eroding our world.

Yes, His wounds stir life
in us who are so wounded today.
His wounds,
hands and feet and side, make us,
wounded as we are,
cleary, undeniably
one with Him.

How faultlessly wise of Jesus not to reject His wounds
for they throb with the truth of all
we can trust about Him
in this fearsome time.

Come to think of it: We might not recognize the Risen Christ without them.

~Sister Joan Sobala

Feeling the Power of Easter

Dear Friends,

This year, Easter – Sunday and Season – are inextricable bound together with the coronavirus. Some people say that the Sunday after our nation is free to move about again will be the real Easter this year. We can certainly celebrate it then, but we would miss the power of Easter if we don’t “celebrate” Easter when our nation faces death as it does right now.

Easter tells us that death is not our destiny. God gave no permission for death to hold Jesus as its permanent victim. Rather, death, like an old snake skin, lies discarded at the garden gate.

“Jesus, You live and we live because You live.
Our minds cannot grasp it, so we leave it to our hearts to embrace new life in You.”

Easter is not naive. We don’t close our eyes to the realities around us. The cross always stands in our sanctuary, even though this day, this season, it is draped with the mantle of victory.

Today, though our hearts are heavy with the anguish of many, “we celebrate Easter because we believe there are no God-forsaken places, no God-forgotten promises. Easter is the ultimate intrusion of God into places and situations we deem to be God-forsaken. Jesus lives and we live because of him.” (Lutheran Bishop Mark Harmon)

Clarence Johnson, New Testament scholar and co-founder of Habitat for Humanity writes of Easter: “On the morning of the resurrection, God put life in the present tense, not in the future. Not a hope for the future but a power for the present. Not so much that we shall live someday but that He is risen today. Jesus’ resurrection is not to convince the incredulous nor to reassure the fearful, but to enkindle believers…”

So today, let yourself be enkindled. Go outside and at least in your heart and in your imagination, meet Jesus in the garden. Like Mary Magdalen, you may not recognize Him at first, but He will call you by name. Then, like Mary, you will see Him Risen and Glorious, and your heart will be glad.

Today – outside – feel the pull of the resurrection and let courage stir in you to meet the days ahead.

May God Easter in You Today.

~Sister Joan Sobala