Accepting Our Imperfect Family Life

Dear Friends,

The feast of the Holy Family has the potential to make us stop to think. TV programs and ads, writers and preachers love to extol the joys of the perfect family, i.e.  husband, wife, 1.79 kids and a dog, all sitting in their spacious dining room enjoying the evening meal in tranquility.

We say, “That’s not us! That’s not our family.” In the face of the supposed ideal, discouragement threatens us, or the unwillingness to accept ourselves as we are. We need to fix us!

The good news is: that’s not the Holy Family, and not us either.

Today’s Gospel shows Jesus, about Bar Mitzvah age, exhibiting great chutzpah toward his parents. He simply stays behind in Jerusalem for three days and didn’t seem terribly remorseful when found. Frankly, Mary and Joseph could have saved themselves a lot of frustration if they had made concrete arrangements ahead of time. This is not to put down the Holy Family, but they did make a mistake in assuming rather than communicating. We know the feeling.

Luke tells us that when Mary asked the found Jesus for an explanation, she did not understand what he was saying. She had to mull it over.

Once we understand that God in the person of Jesus has experienced our imperfect family life, maybe we can accept our own situation and not feel that we must apologize for it or disown it.

A much-loved, insightful Native American, Sister Jose Hobday, author, and lecturer in the last decades of the 20^th Century, wrote that her favorite prayerbook was her family photo album.

“Three or four times a year, I get it out,” she says. “I look, I remember, and suddenly I am seeing how God has been with our family all these years. When all my other efforts at prayer fail, I bring out my family album.”

The story of Jesus, lost and found, doesn’t end in Jerusalem. We are told that Jesus went home to Nazareth with them where he was obedient and where he grew in wisdom, age and grace. This is what we are also called to do in a family: to grow, each in our own way but together with one another.

Our Gospel account today holds a deep lesson for family life in this time of stress and unravelling. Despite our failure at connecting or clear communication or recognizing one another’s pain at family disfunction, we can still become tender-hearted as we work at resolving our differences.

In this age, when some people worry that concern for the family is on the decline, a feast like this is important. It makes us take stock and take heart.

The ethician James Nelson puts it this way: “Each of us needs a place where the gifts of life make us more human, where we are linked with ongoing covenants with others, where we can return to lick our wounds, where we can take our shoes off, and where we know that within the bounds of human capacity – we are loved simply because we are. Because that human need will not die, the need for the family will not die.”

On this Holy Family Sunday, I hope we can recommit ourselves to work for a loving family life and growth in whatever context we find ourselves.

~Sister Joan Sobala

Seeing Christmas Through God's eyes

Dear Friends,

Earlier in December, Pope Francis travelled to Cyprus and Greece on one of his many pastoral trips to embrace the world.

He made a special point of going to Lesbos, a place he visited five years ago where, to this day, many refugees fleeing persecution disembark as they arrive in Europe. There, Pope Francis stood again amid the chaos and disorientation of the waterfront camp. Giving a reason for his return, Pope Francis told the people:

“I have to see your faces.”

Haggard faces, gaunt faces, faces full of hope, young and old faces, faces loved by others, faces alive with song:

“I have to see your faces.”

Those could have been the very words of God, spoken to a likewise fragile world of 2100 years ago. God in Jesus came to peer into the faces of the people of that day – the poor, the ill, the downtrodden, children and women, the sad, the despairing.

This is the true meaning of Christmas. God in Jesus, saying to the people then and now:

“I have to see your faces.”

Christmas means that God is present to us wherever we are, however, we live and thrive or suffer those just setting out in life. Everyone. Today, God desires to see all our faces.

For Christmas this year, look lovingly at the faces of other people with the eyes of God. With this inspired sight, Christmas may be more new, more real for us than ever before.

Christmas blessings to you and all you have come to know as yours.

~Sister Joan Sobala

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