Creating Heartfelt Disciples

Dear Friends,

Several months into 2023, the world’s population is 8 billion. Of all of us earthlings, 1.4 billion are Roman Catholic, and 2.6 billion are Christians of various traditions.

That’s a lot of disciples of Christ! Beginning with the 120 who were together for the first Pentecost (Acts 1.15), followers of Christ have multiplied greatly in one way or another over the centuries. How has that happened?

The obvious, expected answer is through baptism, when a person is welcomed into the community of believers and sets a course of faithfulness throughout life. It may be that we were baptized as infants and nobody asked us if we wanted to be. It’s also true that not every adult’s reasons for becoming Christian are pure. It might be the thing to do in order to marry or leave one’s country of origin or be accepted in a desirable lifestyle.

But how does one grow in heart-membership? That’s the most important question.

Here’s a story that can give us a sense of how it happens and what we must do to become even more heartfelt disciples.

“When the house lights dimmed and the concert was about to begin, the mother returned to her seat and discovered that her child was missing. Suddenly the curtains parted, and spotlights focused on the impressive Steinway on stage.

“In horror, the mother saw her little boy sitting at the keyboard, innocently picking our ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.’

“At that moment the great piano master made his entrance, quickly moved to the piano, and whispered in the boy’s ear, ‘Don’t quit. Keep playing.’

“Then, leaning over, Ignacy Jan Paderewski reached down with his left hand and began filling in a bass part. Soon, his right arm reached around the other side of the child, and he added a running obbligato.

“Together, the old master and the young novice transformed what could have been a frightening experience into something wonderfully creative.

“The audience was so mesmerized that it couldn’t recall what else the great master played. Only the classic ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.’”

What does this charming story have to do with discipleship?

In our church, there are many people who have become masterful in serving the community or addressing issues of justice and peace. They are recognized for their giftedness. But the truly visionary ones find successors – fledglings or disciples who have not yet awakened to the possibilities of their service to God and to others. The true master, like Paderewski, plays on one side of the newcomer’s melody, and then puts his/her arms around the newbie and offers considerable depth to what the melody-bearer has begun.

That’s the point for each of us in ministry – ordained or voluntary. To welcome, instruct, bolster by our own practices the potential in the next generation.

Paderewski accepted the unplanned presence, eagerness, and talent of a fledgling, untested before the public. He made this child’s performance soar. All the child had to do was to keep playing. And the people remembered the child, the piano master, and their song together.

Paderewski’s actions were an example of what contemporary sociologists beginning with Erik Ericson, call “generativity” – passing on to the next generation the desire and taste for, competence in, staying power to create the next phase of what is important in life.

After we are gone, there will be no one to fill the void left by our absence if we do not encourage the disciple at the piano bench.

~Sister Joan Sobala

The Voice of the Good Shepherd

Dear Friends,

Each weekend since Easter, our Gospel stories have been about His disciples recognizing the Risen Christ – readings which also encourage us and instruct us to do the same.

On the Sunday after Easter, Thomas recognized Jesus, despite his professed doubt. Last weekend, the disciples on the road to Emmaus found Him to be a stranger who accompanied them, finally recognizing Him in the breaking of the bread. And this weekend we hear about the Good Shepherd, whose voice the flock recognizes, and they follow Him.

In today’s society, many cultural, political, religious voices clamor for our attention and attempt to seduce us by their appeal – voices that tell us what really is important and what we should pursue: having lots of money to buy state of the art toys, looking beautiful or handsome, driving a powerful, expensive car, being surrounded by the right people, being number one in school or business, living in the right neighborhood or belonging to the correct political party. A long list of enticements.

In the noise made by all these voices, can we still hear and recognize the voice of the Risen Christ and what His call is?

He certainly does not call us to the rejection of this life with all we love most deeply.

The Risen Christ’s voice calls us to:

faithful love and service,

justice when needed,

compassion daily,

delight in the earth,

fullness of life.

All these things cause us to stretch, strive, reach, weigh the options of the present moment, but we know we can never achieve them fully in this life. Think of the ways we or others suffer from pain, conflict, misunderstanding, the temptation to hopelessness. We are called to the more, but the more is unachievable in this life. Is it ever achievable?

Christians have always and everywhere believed that Christ’s ultimate gift is to bring us all home to heaven. The Easter season is just the right time for us to linger over thoughts of our ultimate destiny.

Heaven is the name for the fullness of life Christ promised. It is the fruit that never becomes overripe, the face and the voice that never cease to appeal to us. Heaven is the conviction that never fades, the music that always stirs us, the love that glows and is never diminished.

Yet heaven is not some far distant planet beyond the galaxies. It is already in process in the very people and places and situations we love. When you and I pay attention to this life which we live so ardently, we are really paying attention to intimations of heaven.

By what we become and what we do, day to day, we can either enlarge our capacity for life with God in heaven or we can be satisfied with our present capacity. What’s worse, we can diminish our capacity, by living distracted lives, inattentive to what really matters.

I invite us – you and me – to take the voice of the Good Shepherd seriously and become more open to His call.

~Sister Joan Sobala

The Walk to Emmaus

Dear Friends,

Some Gospel stories appeal to us with immediacy. We identify with their message with little or no difficulty. The prodigal father and the wedding feast at Cana are two such stories. The walk to Emmaus – today’s Gospel – is a third.

Today we find two dejected disciples leaving Jerusalem by foot, late on Easter Day. They have abandoned the other disciples who are huddled together behind locked doors in the upper room. Fear and anxiety plagued all of them. We know the name of one of the disciples heading toward Emmaus – Cleophas. Some people say the other disciple was his wife, Mary. Perhaps it was you or I.

How often in our lives have we known suffering, death, destruction. We’ve known Jesus’ passion and death and perhaps have been overwhelmed by them – failing to realize that the passion of Jesus was indispensable to His journey. Like Cleophas and his companion, perhaps we, too, have felt like losers, the unlucky followers of a failed prophet.

Jesus met them, meets us on the way. No berating. No words of disappointment or rejection. No anger. Jesus is a fellow traveler.

Through their tender interaction with Jesus, something stirred in them, in us. Balm upon our weary souls. Hearts burning with love within us in moments of bleakness or weakness.

And then it was night. Time to stop to be refreshed. Even on the midst of their sadness, Cleophas and his companion were hospitable, inviting Jesus to stay with them. They would be His hosts for supper. How little did they know that soon, the guest would become the host and would offer them living bread as well.

We, too, stop to be refreshed on the way. Each week we come to Eucharist, bearing the scope of our lives. We bring our marriages, friendships, relationships that have gone bad. We bring our hopes for a troubled world, our thanks for heartwarming surprises and ordinary good health. We bring everything to a faithful God who receives us and gives us His very self in return. We know Him in the breaking of the bread.

But we do not stay at Eucharist, even as Cleophas and his companion did not stay at table after Jesus disappeared from their sight. They didn’t linger to relish what they had experienced.

Quickly, the Scripture says, quickly they went back to Jerusalem to share the good news. Joy – the taste of God’s presence – is a gift to be shared with others.

So they went – and their good news was met by the good news of the other disciples. We have seen Him!

As we consider the Emmaus story in our own lives, where do we find ourselves? Are we running away from the pain and frustration of life, from a God who doesn’t seem risen or present to us? Or are our hearts already burning inside us and we don’t know how to interpret the movement within? Have we come to the table and been fed by the Lord? Have we returned to the community of believers, ready to do our part to help the community of faith thrive?

Easter means that great reversals are possible. The disciples on the road to Emmaus knew such reversals.

If we allow it, the disciples on the road in Rochester, Henrietta, Parma, Canandaigua will know the same.

P.S. The painting of Cleophas and Mary dining with Jesus in Emmaus featured at the head of this blog is the work of Rochester artist Dick Kane. It is part of a triptych which can be seen at Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Brighton.

~Sister Joan Sobala

Letting Jesus Easter in Us

Dear Friends,

Jesus is risen and walks among us – in the beautiful, fragrant gardens we experience, in the hovels and places made ugly by misuse. Christ is risen and He is here. So now what? 

Now is the time to let Jesus Easter in us. We are at a place of choice: will we go on to a new springtime of life with God and one another or will we go back through the tomb into our old ways? Easter calls us to places we have not been.

If we do choose to go forward to meet Christ at the seashore or behind locked doors or on the road to our personal Emmaus, as His disciples did, what will be our pace? Will pace be hurried or harried, languid, decisive, measured, determined, effortless, exhausting, unsure, cautious? Will we choose to go on with Christ deliberately or will we just let life happen? Who will walk with us? People we choose or people who are given to us? Will we recognize the Risen One in them, their words, their gestures?

Will our hearts burn within us as He speaks to us on the way, as we do necessary things, cross boundaries, head down unmarked trails, come to a crossroad? In going forward mindfully, we move with others unerringly into the heart of God.

With or without noticing Christ with us, we are on the move. With Him, we are enfolded in love and enlivened toward goodness, mercy, hopefulness.

 This is the drama of grace. 

~Sister Joan Sobala

Our Beloved Risen One

Dear Friends,

Easter is a day of realization, deep emotion, and unprecedented connection with Our Beloved Risen One. Too many words fail us, so here are just a few.

Elation.             Standing at the tomb, I see He is not here. He is risen.

Awe.                  The same Jesus is at first unrecognizable, until He calls us by name.

Surprise.          He gave us all He could, all He had and wants to be with us still.

Tenacity.          I feel the pull of the Resurrection, the contagion of it.

Eagerness.      To see Him in our day and keep Him close.

Reverence.      For His unconditional generosity toward us.

Celebrate well with your communities of faith, families and friends. Most of all, keep a space in the hours of Easter day to spend time with Our Risen Lord.

~Sister Joan Sobala

Faith-Led Resistance

Dear Friends,

On February 26, the First Sunday of Lent, we looked at Jesus’ resistance to the temptations of Satan. Palm Sunday, and indeed, all of Holy Week can be read through this same lens of resistance. We do that today, remembering Jesus as with Him we try to be faithful to the love, forgiveness and reconciliation we experience from our merciful God.

Jesus was a resistor. In the midst of the crowd’s Hosannas, he resisted the temptation to believe that the adulation of the crowd would last.

Jesus resisted running away from suffering – yet in the garden, as he prayed, Jesus resisted suffering and the very comfort of relying on His Father’s love.

Jesus resisted the night with its betrayal, the night of death and the bleakness of the tomb.

Jesus resisted bitterness as His disciples scattered in the night and Peter faltered, denying any knowledge of Jesus.

Jesus resisted the power of Rome and hostile religious authority that threatened to crush Him.

Others involved in the events of these days marshalled resistance as well.

Judas resisted the new, unexpected way that Jesus offered people salvation. He wanted Jesus to be savior his way.

Simon of Cyrene resisted carrying Jesus’ cross.

Peter, at the Passover meal, resisted Jesus kneeling to wash his feet. Later, Peter resisted his conscience and the loyalty that Jesus inspired in him.

The women in their vigil at the cross and at the tomb resisted the threat of the Roman military and the jibes of the crowd.

Resistance either comes from faith or it does not. When it does not come from faith, as we see in this week’s drama, it disappears into cowardice, shrinks from the inside and leaves in its trail failure. Such resistance obscures the likeness of God in the resistor and offers a spark to ignite the world.

But resistance that comes from faith leads to new life, a renewed confidence in God and Easter itself. Jesus’ cry on the cross shattered the last human resistance, death – forever.

On Easter, the resistance of the stone, the inability of Jesus’ followers to recognize Him, and the resistance called fear gave way to lasting, indescribable joy.

Today, absorbed as we are in the power of Holy Week, let us not forget that Easter lies ahead.

~Sister Joan Sobala

Making Our Profession of Faith

Dear Friends,

As Jesus stood bereft before the tomb of his beloved friend, Lazarus, he gave three commands:
            Roll away the stone.
            Lazarus, come forth.
            Unbind him. Let him go free.

In Turkey and Syria in February, the stones entombed unsuspecting people who lived in apartment buildings leveled by earthquakes. Many died, but some, caught beneath the rubble, experienced life anew as rescue workers “rolled away the stone and unbound” the entombed.

That experience was graphic for us to witness but the call of Jesus applies to our contemporaries to come forth from the tombs of their lives. They will need to want to come forth, but it is up to us, neighbor, friend, family member, co-inhibitor of the earth, to roll away the stone and unbind them. And when we ourselves are imprisoned and invited to come forth, only others, attentive to the need, can roll back the stone and unbind us.

But let’s turn to another aspect of the story.

Since Bethany was only about two miles from Jerusalem, word of the raising of Lazarus traveled quickly to the high priests in the holy city. These officials convoked the Sanhedrin and decided that Jesus had gone too far. He must die.

Jesus, weeping over Lazarus, in fact stood at the opening of His own grave. Raising Lazarus had set His own passion in motion. Through His passion and death, Jesus would lead Lazarus, Martha, Mary and all of His disciples – you and me – through the tomb into new life.

We get so absorbed in Jesus and Lazarus in this account, that we fail to see Martha and Mary. They must have consoled one another before Jesus arrived with what could have been a mantra. “Lord,” each said, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

Martha and Mary thought of Jesus as a wonderworker. But Jesus called Martha to a deeper faith, to believe that He is God, the giver of life. Jesus would die on the cross, yes, but He would live again forever. “Do you believe this?” Jesus asked Martha.

“Yes, Lord,” Martha replied. “I believe you are the Christ, the Son of God.”

Earlier in the Gospel of John, Peter makes a profession of faith in Jesus. Now, close to His entrance into Jerusalem, Martha makes the same profession of faith.

Will we?

Closing in on Holy Week, with its drama, awe, sadness and bleakness, will we make a profession of faith?

Will we say,
        Jesus, I believe in you. Help my unbelief.
        Jesus, your own death helps me make sense of the
                many deaths I know in life, including my own.
                Help my unbelief.
        Jesus, let me come with you into the garden,
                Into your trial, into the way of your cross.
                Help my unbelief.

~Sister Joan Sobala