What Are We to Do?

Dear Friends,

In today’s Gospel, three people of apparent position and status come to John the Baptist with the same question: “Teacher,” they say, “what are we to do?”

A simple question, isn’t it? “What are we to do?”

We ourselves have asked that question in one form or another over the years. When we come to a fork in the road, what are we to do? Faced with choosing between two styles, two visions of our national government, what are we to do? At Christmastime this year, with a pandemic surge complicated by the omicron variant, what are we to do? Faced with incessant holiday cheer, the yearlong impetus to compete and consume, what are we to do? The question is tinged with anxiety. Anxiety about so many things, great and insignificant, grips us. In the night, kept awake by the specter of the next day, we cry out in our hearts, “What am I to do?”

In the face of all of this, today’s first two readings tell us what to do. “Rejoice’” they say. Rejoice because, as Zepheniah says, we are loved by a God who is deliriously happy because of us.

Rejoicing is a wonderful idea – but no one can tell us to do it or how to do it or make us do it. Sometimes we are suspicious of people who rejoice too much. We suspect they are frivolous or irresponsible, have no depth or ability to suffer themselves much less to suffer with the poor of the world and its refugees.

Paul tells us in our second reading today: “Rejoice in the Lord always. Dismiss all anxiety from your minds.”

Paul and the people of his day demonstrate how ancient and absorbing anxiety is. Paul urged his followers to choose joy over anxiety. Don’t you wonder if they accepted his challenge?

For our part, as we approach the fullness of this season, we can either cultivate anxiety or let go of it, put aside the dread we feel beforehand and the undue guilt we experience afterwards. Instead, we can be content with being and doing our best.

To be content, we need to build up a context, a habit, a vision out of which we can think and act.

John, and later Jesus, would offer their hearers such a guiding vision – a vision that modifies and balances seasonal craziness or the dilemmas of life. The vision is to live with compassion and justice, to pray and to trust, to do all we can and then let go to live in peace, honor God and one another.

In our deepest being, we know that Advent celebrates our God coming – today, and on Christmas and beyond. Along the way, will we be so moved by the vision God offers that we will know what to do?

~Sister Joan Sobala

A Second Chance

Dear Friends,

There isn’t one of us reading this blog who has not had a second chance…
    … a near miss on a highway.
    … the birth that eases the pain of a previous miscarriage.
    … the disease found out and dealt with.
    … the chance to love again.
    … growing up knowing what it’s like to be trusted again after parents’ trust in them had been   shaken.

Maybe we remember being told unequivocally by someone important to us that we had to get it right the first time – whatever “it” was – and we were denied the very possibility of a second chance. Or maybe we have denied others a second chance. You and I both know people who had to walk away from a relationship and thus not be able to give this particular person a second chance. For some of us, a second chance doesn’t necessarily mean a change in direction. Maybe I’ve done something well and my second chance is to do more. Maybe I’ve done something poorly and my second chance is to do it well.

Today’s readings for the Second Sunday of Advent tell us that Advent is a time when people are given a second chance – another chance to prepare for the Incarnation – God in Jesus dwelling in our world, in our relationships, in us.

Jeremiah’s secretary, Baruch, a poet, and a prophet in his own right, tells of a people first led away on foot by their enemies and then invited to go home. Baruch says to the city of Jerusalem: “Up Jerusalem – stand on the heights. See your children are coming back to you (Baruch 5.5 ff)!” The exiles and the city both had a second chance. In a real way, God had a second chance too.

Today’s psalm bursts with the giddiness that comes with the pure unexpected delight of reversal.

“When the Lord brought back the captives of Zion, we were like people dreaming. Then our mouths were filled with laughter and our tongues with rejoicing (Psalm 126.1-2).” A second chance, recognized for what it was.

And then there is John the Baptist inviting people to receive a baptism of repentance (Luke 3.3). And what is the key ingredient in John’s baptism if not reconciliation with God and others? A second chance.

The choice is ours. Will we hide in the valleys or flee to the mountains and miss the Advent message that calls us to welcome God’s unimpeded access to move our hearts?

Paul, writing from prison in Rome to his beloved community at Philippi, encourages us: “I am sure of this. That the One who has begun a good work in you will carry it through to completion (Phil.1.6).”

What he says is true of us and yes! Of the flawed world in which we live. God is incarnate not just in you and in me, but in our world. God’s compassion puts out to the world the same potential for conversion and transformation that individuals experience. If God is ready to give the world a second chance, then every strategy for justice and peace is worth the attempt and every labor for the relief of suffering is worth the effort.

So the work of preparing – really preparing for Christmas – is strenuous.

I invite you to do this work as I will: to recognize and make tangible some second chance that will make Christmas this year taste and feel savory and new.

We can be like the captives of Zion brought back, like people dreaming.

Then our mouths will be filled with laughter and our tongues with rejoicing.

~Sister Joan Sobala

Celebrating the Eucharist

Dear Friends,

On this First Sunday of Advent, I had planned to recall with you some of the great themes of this gentle season of preparation for the coming of Jesus on Christmas – themes like longing for the coming of the Savior, movement from darkness to light, and waiting patiently but actively for His coming again in our day. Then I heard the review of the recently concluded semi-annual meeting of the U.S. Bishops, and their major document which had been in production over the last year. It was on Eucharist, and my plans for an Advent overview flew out the window.

In this short space I can’t say much about Eucharist. Volumes have been written over the centuries. But what I do want to confirm is that Eucharist is the sustaining center of the Catholic life. By virtue of our Baptism, we are welcome at the table, not because of any good we are or do. As Pope Francis put it, Communion “is not the reward of saints but the bread of sinners.” We are welcome at the table because God, our Father and Mother, the Word made Flesh and the Holy Spirit welcome us there and has invited us to the table for the rest of our lives.

From time to time in our history as a church, emphasis has been put on various aspects of this central act in our Christian lives. Between the Middle Ages and Vatican II, for example, the Eucharist was thought of exclusively as the bread and wine changed into the Body and Blood of Christ through a process called transubstantiation. “What happens to the bread and wine?” is the most significant question in this period.

After Vatican (1963-1967), the Eucharist has come to be understood as the whole event, not just the Canon and not just Communion. These are surely indispensable parts of the Eucharist, but the Eucharist begins when people come in and ends when people leave.

Bishop Matthew Clark, in a Pastoral Letter on Eucharist to our Rochester Diocese in 1996 put this new and enlarged perspective on Eucharist this way:

“This understanding of the Eucharist as the action of the whole community gathered at prayer is the defining characteristic of our Catholic faith. In this action of praise and proclamation, offering and receiving, we know Jesus in the midst of the assembly, in the proclamation of the Word and in the bread and wine, now the Body and Blood of Christ. In this Eucharistic action we are fed and nourished to go out into the world to be the Presence of Christ, to live Christ’s dying and rising in our worlds of family and friends, work and play, neighbor and stranger.” (Incidentally, the image at the top of this blog is the image from the original text of Bishop Clark’s letter.)

When we come to celebrate Eucharist, we celebrate the generosity of Jesus in his self-giving at the Last Supper. We remember His passion, death, and resurrection. And we are caught up in each other’s lives as at no other time during the week.

Pope Leo the Great summed up rather succinctly in the fifth century, the sweeping meaning of the Eucharist in the lives of believers, but we seem to forget. Pope Leo told us, “The effect of partaking of the Body and Blood of Christ is that we are changed into what we receive.” Not just when we are together at Eucharist. We become what we receive throughout our daily lives.

In other words, “We are a sacred and precious people who come together to celebrate a sacred and precious action which spills over into our daily lives.” (author unknown)

To infuse our celebration of Eucharist with new depth of meaning and appreciation may be for us this year the best way to enter and live out Advent. Come, Lord Jesus!

~Sister Joan Sobala

Crossing the Finish Line

Dear Friends,

Today is the last Sunday of our liturgical year – the Feast of Christ the King/the 34th Sunday of Ordinary Time. Next Sunday begins Advent, first and gentlest season of the new year.

We can liken the end of this year of political turmoil and daily juggling in our household to completing a race as Paul does in his second letter to Timothy 4.7.
            Crossing the finishing line of any endurance race,
            Will the racer “finish strong?”
            Finishing strong means crossing the threshold
            With energy left,
            With a vision of more races to come…
            And win.

As we finish this especially complicated year,
Hopefully you will finish strong, but also
make room for a song in your heart and on your lips.
            A song of mercy, gratitude, and justice.
            A song of compassion and hope.
            A song that goes on singing within your being
            Even when you don’t realize that the song is an anthem
            About God’s presence in your own personal race.

As Thanksgiving and Advent approach,
the pandemic still has not let go of us.
It insinuates itself into our desires for an ordinary life with
Its ordinary ups and downs, its saving moments and unique pain.
            Will we finish the race of this year strong –
            With a song in our hearts and upon our lips?
            Will gratitude for whatever escapes we have experienced and
            Hopes we have seen realized
            Cause us to fall on our knees and
            Hear the angels’ voices
            Sing to God in gratitude for all of us?

Whether we have dared to be strong or
Whether weakness has so drained us,
            Will we even recognize
            The giftedness that the year has brought?
            The knock on the door
            The child’s question
            The color of the earth awash with rain
            Our loved one’s tenderness recognized
            As is if for the first time
            A lasting intimacy with Jesus?

We can, and we will recognize the holy, the life-giving,
Only if we pray as Jesus bids us:
            When you pray,
            Go away by yourself –
            Enter alone
            Into your heart
            And close the door
            Behind you –
            Wait there quietly
            For God will come…MT.6.5,6

Do that sometime today or during this last week of the liturgical year:
            Wait quietly for God’s presence to reveal itself
            In fresh new ways.

In this time when we approach
The finish line of this year’s race,
Dare to ask:
What is the fate of those who achieve
a lasting intimacy with Jesus?
            Life.
            Not life without pain or sadness,
            But
            Life in its remarkable fullness.

There will be another race to run and finish strong.

Meanwhile, keep the song God inspires in your heart.
Let it fill you with longing and wonder
For what will be
As well as deep satisfaction and thanks to God
For all you have weathered thus far.

~Sister Joan Sobala

Overcoming Tough Times Together

Dear Friends,

What was the worst day of your life?

We might say: the day I lost my spouse, a parent, or child. Some would say the day my marriage broke up or our child got into trouble or turned away from us…the day I lost my job or found out I had a serious illness. Some would say the day my faith in God disappeared or the day I experienced emotional collapse.

Common in all these experiences is a sense of numbness or emptiness. Nothing makes sense anymore. The world has become a hostile place. God seems unreal and remote. Add in the breakdowns and violence in the physical and political worlds and our helplessness is complete. Very few of us go through life without times like this.

Today’s readings are about situations like ours, people like us from another time and place who likewise have come to the end of their resources. We can learn from them on how to face our own crises as individuals and as a people.

The Book of Daniel was written several hundred years before Christ, at a time when the Jewish people were fighting for their very survival. The Gospel of Mark comes out of another time of crisis 30 years or so after Christ’s resurrection. Jerusalem was then under foreign domination and the familiar was being swept away.

Let’s look for the meaning beneath the imagery of the calamitous times described in Daniel and Mark. Today, two thoughts gleaned from Daniel and Mark are worthy of our attention.

First, In the throes of suffering, things are not as they appear. We are not abandoned. God has not lost control. In fact, God goes before us, surrounds us, awaits us, welcomes us, offers us the freedom to shape life. It’s easy to recognize disaster. It’s more important to frame that disaster in the hope that God offers us.

Secondly, it is only as a community that we come through the disasters of life. Much as we would like to think of ourselves as independent, self-sustaining and capable of working through the challenging dimensions of life ourselves, we aren’t, and we can’t be. If you still think so, name anything important in life that we have not received from someone else. I do not exist without a we.

Individuals as well as groups fight the notion of being saved together. Some of us would rather be lonely than bound to others. Some of us fear being so lost in a community that our own personhood and efforts go unnoticed and undervalued. Or we might fear that, in carrying others we might get swept away ourselves.

Today’s readings tell us that only as interdependent people will we be saved. God and we together can and will overcome the threatening darkness.

The Letter to the Hebrews encourages us to hold fast to the confession our hope inspires without wavering, for the one who has made us a promise of life is faithful.

Whatever our difficulties, we have a God upon whom we can depend.

~Sister Joan Sobala

Being Generous

Dear Friends,

None of us would have faulted the woman in today’s Gospel if she held onto her two coins. None of us would have faulted the woman in the first reading had she told Elijah to get lost as he asked her for food. Yet each gave with dignity and trust. They each intuited these times as graced moments, opportunities to place God above all things in their lives. We know nothing more about the Gospel widow. We do know that for the widow of Zarephath, the oil and flour never ran out.

Today’s Scriptures are not just stories of generous widows. These stories tell us about the big-hearted attitudes of people.

Jesus doesn’t endorse the widow’s action. He doesn’t say “Go and do likewise.” What Jesus does is to call attention to her attitude of generosity and trust and in doing so, invites his listeners to give without measuring the cost.

Generosity is complex. How do I determine how much to share – when – why – with whom? How does one create in oneself an attitude of generosity – a non-clutching, other-centered style of living? We are not sure whether to give to the panhandler, pick up the hitchhiker, believe the story of destitution and the crocodile tears. Over the years, I’ve “been had” by professional needy people. Maybe you have, too.

There’s an irony in the story of the woman who gave two coins. Later, the temple she supported with her pennies would be destroyed in a war. Was her gift in vain? Is our gift in vain if the receiver misuses it, or the object of our giving is destroyed? No. Even in times of exploitation, what matters most for our personal and spiritual growth is the largeness of spirit that goes on within the exploited person.

There is no neat, tidy formula or answers to detailed questions about generosity. But I do know this: each of us has a head and a heart, an intuition or a hunch. Each of us carries the Gospel within us. If we rub our experiences against the Gospel enough, the rubbing can generate sparks to see by, and by which to act.

One contemporary story of generosity comes to mind. Last year, a single mother I know with two young children found life challenging given a recent divorce and the stress of the pandemic. In previous years, the family had supported a needy family at Christmastime.

This year, the organizers suggested that, due to her new circumstances, the mother might not want to take part in the program. “Absolutely not,” the mother replied. “I want my children to learn that Christmas is not just about us being taken care of. We’ll cut back somewhere. But we will adopt a family this year.” 

For those of us who try to hear the Word of God and keep it, the generosity of the widows in today’s readings are a reminder and a promise:

-        a reminder that what we have is not ours to covet or hoard, and

-        a promise that in some unspeakable way, the good we have and are will not run out in the sharing.

~Sister Joan Sobala

Remembering the Saints in Our Life

Dear Friends,

The number is over 730,000. That’s how many Americans have succumbed to the pandemic: famous people, your relatives and friends, mine as well. In many cases, death came to them without the presence of their loved ones.

On All Saints’ Day (Monday) and All Souls’ Day (Tuesday), the Church – all of us – take time to say “thank you, God” for their lives, for the lessons they taught, the goodness in them, the hard things they struggled to overcome.

It's easy to limit the notion of saint to the canonized and the worldwide, but the saints are all who have gone to God in the sure and certain hope of eternal life. These days, bask in their victory over death. Honor them for their faithfulness. Call on them to stand by you as you make your way.

Let’s think of our loved ones who have died – our own local homegrown saints. We can say that when they died, they crossed a threshold. One’s loved one is not where he or she was. That’s why the Risen Jesus told Mary Magdalen in the garden not to cling to Him (John 20.11-18). He had crossed a threshold. She still wanted Him back where He was. In order for Mary to continue in this new moment with the now-Risen Lord, she too had to cross a threshold. That’s the key to turning life-draining grief into new life. Not only do our loved ones cross a threshold in death, we must do so as well as they’re dying.

Another helpful thought comes from the Celtic branch of Christianity, where people speak of the “thin veil” that separates this side of eternity from the other. As the days grow shorter and the winter winds gather strength, let’s pause to peer through the thin veil. Consider our loved ones. They are closer than we think. Think of great ones whom you know only from a distance. Their greatness hides in us as well, waiting to be set free.

These are not the days to think of our loved ones with sustained sorrow, nor to count the saints or to name them. These are days to celebrate the full flowering of humanity as we take God‘s promise in Christ seriously.

This is the meaning of this day.

Now go out and join the saints.

Be saintly.

What a daring thing to do.

~Sister Joan Sobala