The Importance of Family

Dear Friends,

Nothing is more important in life than our family relationships. Nothing. No matter how we characterize our own, family life is basis, indispensable and in threatened. Still, we have probably had more of family life during this pandemic year than we have had in any other.

Not only are young children experiencing distance learning at home, but our older children are unexpectedly home from college for longer periods. Perhaps our sons and daughters, who have lived in distant cities have been laid off and can’t afford their housing anyone. Maybe grandparents have joined us or cousins. Is the atmosphere relaxed? Probably not. Families in any circumstances need to work at their life together, but in this year of anxiety, boredom and loose ends, the work of the family becomes more arduous. However, we experience it, it’s true: We grow as humans in our family only through commitment, perseverance and courage. Whatever it takes!

It’s no surprise that the liturgists who put together the biblical texts for Holy Family Sunday include portions from Matthew and Luke, who reveal not only the covenant of love between Mary and Joseph, their moments of awe and wonder, but also the stresses they experienced.

In our own family lives, I hope that, like Mary and Joseph, we accept each other’s dreams, support each other and accept the support of strangers like Simeon and Anna.

While we can’t imitate the lives of Jesus and Mary step by step, we can be like them – open and responsive to the beckoning of God and help each other live it out. As Paul says in Colossians today, in our family interactions, let us put on heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.

Family life is precious, whether it is our own personal family, where our weaknesses are accommodated and our victories applauded, or whether it is the family of the universe to which we belong.

When Pope Francis was in Philadelphia in 2015, he focused on the family: “A healthy family requires the frequent use of these three phrases – 'May I please,' 'thank you,' and 'I’m sorry.'”

If any of us is looking for New Year’s resolutions, a holy place to start may be bringing to life in our home the examples of Mary and Joseph, the words of Paul to the Colossians and Pope Francis.

We have the human resources to do so.

~ Sister Joan Sobala

Looking Up

 

Dear Friends,

My cousins, Ed and Ro, are avid stargazers. They recently sent me the image shown here of Saturn and Jupiter which will be as close together on December 21 as they have been since 1623. Go out on whatever cloudless sky we have before then and look up to see what you can see. Look up! 

“Look up!” is a good phrase to describe our best posture for Christmas. It’s what the shepherds did as they guarded their flocks by night on the hillsides beyond Bethlehem. Maybe they saw a star-filled sky and wondered about what it meant. They certainly saw an angel and then a brilliant panoply of angels in the sky, and they wondered. Wondering is a Christmas activity. The shepherds wondered what the words of the angel meant and where that message would lead if they dared to follow it. 

Somehow, they decided who would be left behind to guard the sheep and who would go to see. Seeing is a Christmas activity. The shepherds saw with new eyes on Christmas. Up on the hillside, they saw angels who told them the good news and the shepherds believed. Down in a sleeping town, they saw the star lead them to a stable. They wondered if they dare go inside.

They went in, saw, and they believed what they saw was more than what they saw…three people, somehow comfortable in these meagre surroundings: a man, a woman and a newborn. Animals were there, too, heating the stable with their body warmth and their breath. The shepherds were in awe. Awe is a Christmas word. These shepherds, poor and poorly regarded in their society, came face to face with the Word Made Flesh, tiny, unafraid, glad to finally be among his people. In their belief, the shepherds went out to tell anyone who would listen. Belief and telling the good news are Christmas activities.

• So too, this Christmas, we are called to look up, wonder, see, be in awe, believe and tell the good news.

Later, the astrologers in the East also looked up and saw the star. From different places, they set out. Led by the star, they journeyed alone and then maybe together. Journey is an Epiphany activity. One must leave the comfort of home to meet others on the way to meet the Word Made Flesh. 

One must come to trust others on the way. The Wise Men trusted too much. They trusted Herod, who was a villain, untrue to the kingly role he was given. But God’s care for the Word Made Flesh was greater than the power of Herod. Both the Holy Family and the Wise Men, warned in a dream, fled safely, but infant boys in Bethlehem did not. Great sacrifice is also part of the Epiphany experience.

• On Epiphany in this Christmas season, we are called to journey, alone and best of all together, to find the Child, to trust we will find Him, to accept the truth of dreams and be willing to sacrifice.

All season long, let’s all do our best to experience the simple-sounding, deeply revelatory calls we have from God, to be as the shepherds were and the Wise Men as well. Ask the Christ Child to show us how. It all begins with looking up. 

~ Sister Joan Sobala

Finding Our True Joy

Dear Friends,

The principal characters in today’s readings are Isaiah, Mary, the Thessalonians and John the Baptist. Without exception (and like us,) they lived with life-altering questions for which they had no immediate answers. They had no clear sense of what would happen, and along the way, they suffered for holding fast to their beliefs as well as what the messengers of God and their very lives told them were true.

They believed that God’s love enfolded them as they went on. (Do we?)

Woven through all four pieces of today’s Scriptures is a strong, luminous thread called joy.

None of these – Isaiah, Mary, the Thessalonians and John – had it easy, but they were all convinced that they were loved by God. (Are we?) They dared to forge new paths and they believed in a coming yet unseen. They knew by instinct and by faith that God loved their world and they rejoiced. (Do we?)

What is joy anyway? Can we experience it even in these immensely difficult times? 

Joy is not giddy delight nor happy laughter or merrymaking. It’s not a tailgate party or the euphoria of drugs. Joy is not the response to comedians or a passing response to incongruity. 

Joy is anchored in the promise that God wills the well-being of all. It is the keen awareness that God is in our life or is coming in a new way. It is a learned response that requires time, patience and a sustained effort. Joy grows in us over a lifetime.

The person who has learned joy gazes at, walks in the world and sees God’s imprint in life and nature.

Take the beloved American poet Mary Oliver. She encouraged her readers to welcome joy. “If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it…Life has some possibility left. Whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.” 

“Look to him that you may be radiant with joy,” the psalmist reminds us (Ps.34.5).

So, do it. Look to God who is near. Don’t think your way into joy. Don’t make it a project. Don’t preprogram it. The experience will happen in the depths of our hearts despite pandemic, economic distress and personal loss. Instead, be open to the season which celebrates the coming of God.

As this season comes to flower, enjoy the music, drink in the delicate scent of fir trees, peppermint and ginger-bread. 

Look around you and see for certain that God is in love with the world.

We have great cause to rejoice.

~ Sister Joan Sobala

The Fearfulness and Beauty of the Desert

 

Dear Friends,

Today, in our liturgy, we see how the Israelites fleeing from Egypt, the captives in Babylon, John the Baptist and Jesus himself suffered in the desert and they found it to be a place of growth in God. But it wasn’t easy for them nor for us in the deserts of our times.

Throughout recorded history, people have known deserts to be dangerous, inhospitable, inhuman places. In ancient literature, including the Bible, deserts were peopled by demons, and therefore, a testing place. The children of Israel, on their long journey from Egypt to the Promised Land, to Jesus himself, faced the rigors of the desert. Humanly speaking, the desert is a lonely, terrifying place.

At the same time, though, as today’s first reading tells us, the voice cried out in the desert “prepare the way of the Lord. Make straight in the desert a highway for our God” (Isaiah 40.3). The Israelites were free to come home after a 40-year captivity in Babylon, and as they travelled, the desert before them and around them was in bloom. Beauty and redemption were in the desert. 

Centuries later, John the Baptist, newly emerged from the desert, cried out familiar words: “Prepare the way of the Lord” (Mark 1.1). He would be the precursor of Jesus, who would point to Jesus as the expected Savior. But before his encounter with Jesus, the wilderness, the desert had been home to John. There, he survived on locusts and wild honey. When the time came, he left the desert to preach, baptize, challenge Herod and ultimately die as the price of a dance. 

Just as John found his salvation in the desert, so do we find salvation in our modern desert. The voice of the Lord speaks to us in the wilderness of the pandemic, the awful desert of a destructive relationships. We know the wilderness of moral wrongdoing or depression, addiction, loneliness and war, the wilderness of working for justice and peace in a less than conscious world. The desert is anyplace that the integrity of our soul is tried, where the fabric of family life is stretched to tearing, where communities are tried by tragedy and the challenge to human value.

We travel through a variety of deserts that endanger or frighten us. Yet like the people coming home from Babylon we too can find great beauty, in the desert. Most especially, it is here, in the desert, that we find the comfort of our God. “Comfort, comfort my people,” says God in Isaiah (43.2).

When tempted in the desert, Jesus needed the strength of God, the comfort of God, and he was given both. The temptations were overcome, and there was joy! 

Joy happens in life, when the wilderness does not overcome us, when we reach quenching waters and they are not a mirage, but real. 

As Advent continues through this strange and unwelcome year, we are not alone in the personal wilderness of our society and world. Listen. Listen. Listen to the voice you hear in the wilderness, for surely, there will be one.

~Sister Joan Sobala

Reimagining the Lion and the Lamb

Dear Friends,

This week, enjoy these imaginative pairings of God’s creation in Isaiah 11.6-9: 

“Then the wolf shall be the guest of the lamb and the leopard shall lie down with the kid.

The calf and young lion shall browse together, with a little child to guide them.
The cow and the bear shall be neighbors, together their young shall rest; the lion shall eat hay like an ox.
The baby shall play by the cobra’s den, and the child lay his hand on the adder’s lair.
There shall be no harm or ruin on all my holy mountain for the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the Lord.”

To our way of thinking, these pairings don’t fit together. They seem adversarial. They don’t make sense. Have you ever seen a lion eat hay? Yet combinations of these images appear on Christmas cards, so our ancestors in the faith made what they believed were significant connections. In the Book of Revelations, Chapter 5, Jesus is called the Lion of Judah. He is in continuity with the sacrificial lamb, Jesus, who died for us. Jesus is both lion and lamb.

But for us today, caught as we are in the throes of a pandemic, squashed in by political battles and economic hardship, we might want to think about these figures – the lion and the lamb in the more non-biblical way – as daring to thwart one another’s lives.

We could call by the name “lion” those destructive ways of being that stalk the lambs of our society and world, causing fear, anxiety, and death. The pandemic is a lion, and the lamb the fragile human bodies don’t stand a chance against it. The lion is the emotional stress we find in us that makes us attack others, even if at other times, we love them. Abuse. Physical abuse, mental abuse. They are part of our world today. The lion is that part of us that gives no peace to our alter ego – that part of us that wants wholeness and peace prevail. In this way of thinking, the lion and the lamb are, indeed, adversarial.

What can we be, become, and/or do during this Advent season in order to reclaim the biblical imagery of the lion and lamb being one – to relinquish the adversarial way we experience them in this dismal time?

Allow for daily silence. Even a few minutes away from others, the TV or the internet. Let the hidden gifts of this season seep into our consciousness. Silence contentiousness. Welcome inner quiet. Turn away from noise. Meet God in the deep silence of your heart.

Close the door to violence. We see it nightly on television. Brawls and batterings. We need not support violence, buy it, nor give it a place in our homes. Embrace peace and let it show up in daily living.

God is coming, the one who is both lion and lamb. Will we recognize him?

~ Sister Joan Sobala

The Gift of Gratitude

Dear Friends,

As COVID-19 keeps pursuing our bodies this Thanksgiving, let’s try to keep our eyes and hearts fixed on the big world we live in with all its graces, newness and hopefulness, as well as on our families and friends. Let’s remember that:

·         All the good done, the justice insured, all the compassion offered, all the violence rejected across the world is God’s gift to us.

·         When vaccines are proven effective and the poor are included in healing, these are God’s gift to each of us.

·         When people’s bonds are broken and they are freed to use their talents for a better life, these are God’s gift to us.

·         The surprising things that we find true, beautiful and good in our homes, relationships, neighborhoods, are God’s gift to us.

·         When illness, accidents, bad choices, unethical situations, international disasters of human or natural making have not overwhelmed us personally or collectively, these have been God’s gift to us.

·         When the situations of our lives have been graced with meaning-makers and consensus-builders, these have been God’s gift to us.

If gratitude catches hold of our hearts and minds and feet it becomes a way of living in us. When we receive with thanks and give away freely, gratitude has become a way of living in us.

When Jesus in the Gospel says to the man he cured of demons to go home and make it clear to them how much God had done for him, this was God’s gift to him and gives us an example to do in like manner.

We thank God, too, for poems that urge us to be grateful and which speak to us of what we know in more pedantic ways. These are also God’s gift to us.

                “…For vows of marriage, vows of silence, 

                    vows of chastity that bend the starlight to earth…

                    For holy names and graves…

                    For the grace of growing old 

                    And thinking that it’s wisdom.

                    For that share of intimacies

                    I don’t share with words

                    But share with sadness and content.” (William O’Leary, 2017)

On Thanksgiving Day, may we roam among the snippets of thought, the sacred spaces of this earth and be deeply aware that God has given us hearts that are capable of enlarging with gratitude.

~Sister Joan Sobala

Working Together for the Common Good

Dear Friends,

On the Sunday after his election was confirmed by his victory in Pennsylvania, President-elect Joe Biden went to Mass. Certain things would not change for him. Joe Biden was a man of faith before his election. Afterwards, he would need God’s guidance to put together a government that would be fair to all, respectful of and embracing all Americans, without exception. Ahead, there will be successes in this agenda. There will also be missteps, blind spots, and pain. After all, Joe Biden is human. So are we.

As he spoke in victory, I was appreciative of President-elect Biden’s desire to build up the lives of all citizens and newcomers alike. But he is not alone in this task. You and I need to share in that profound work. Like Joe, we can be confident of the wisdom of God, the constant companionship of God as we go forward. But we need to be open to it, access it, activate it, renew it daily.

The American project of growth and outreach stretches before us. President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will have to surround themselves with knowledgeable people for whom the common good is the acknowledged goal of service in government. We will need to do in like manner, so as not to grow sour because of political differences or be entrenched in old ways that did not serve life for all. 

In his recent encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, Pope Francis emphasizes social friendship as a blueprint for healing the many scars from wounds inflicted, even within families, during the election process. Pope Francis highlights the virtues of compassion, solidarity and dialogue.

Recently, the Bishop of San Diego, CA, Robert McElroy, in a talk given at the University of Notre Dame, built on the words of Pope Francis: “We, as people of faith, must demonstrate how our nation can be rebuilt by citizens who identify with the vulnerability of others precisely by refusing to channel our compassion and compassionate action along the lines of party and class.” On solidarity, Bishop McElroy said that Americans, beginning with Catholics, must learn to put the common good above self-interest. (This may be the hardest task of all!) And when it comes to dialogue, he said, a new tone of encounter needs to be embraced. “It is vital,” Bishop McElroy said, “that we be less magisterial and more dialogical even on those issues on which are convictions are most profound.

To do these things with fruitfulness, you and I need to give up Redundance, Rebukes, Regrets, and Recurrences of destructive patterns. Instead, we must be Resourceful, Re-creative, Respectful, and capable of Renewing with the Holy Spirit the face of our nation and ultimately, the earth.

Let it be so.

~Sister Joan Sobala