Gathering at the Table

Dear Friends,

Two ways of developing the vision and practice of faith among Catholic Christians have been occurring simultaneously this year: the Universal Church’s Synod on Synodality, the first session of which just concluded in Rome last week; and the National Eucharistic Revival, the middle year of a three-year process launched in 2022 by the American Bishops.

I talked about the Synod in my September 17th blog. Today I offer a few thoughts about the Eucharist and why the American Bishops feel such a revival is valuable. In some parts of the country, not as many people celebrate Eucharist weekly as used to. One factor that influenced this new time is, of course, COVID-19. For the better part of two years, Masses were cancelled as part of the way to contain COVID. People got out of the habit of weekly worship. But in fact, the pews had already begun to empty before then. Other activities began to take precedence in people’s lives. The valuing of Eucharist diminished, maybe not in theory but certainly in practice.

It’s an important thing to help believers return to the weekly celebration of Eucharist, as the source and summit of our lives, so here are some thoughts to consider as you and I hopefully resume coming to the Table, because “You, Lord, are the center of our lives.”

These thoughts about Eucharist come not from today’s bishops, but from a letter to the Diocese that Bishop Matthew Clark wrote in 1996. He reminded us that “The Sunday celebration of the Eucharist is crucial to our understanding of our Christian identity…God’s people gather to hear the Word, to offer themselves with the gifts of bread and wine, to remember the mighty acts of God in Jesus Christ and in so doing, to join themselves to Jesus Christ, the perfect offering. We gather at table and then go forth to live what has been said and done.”

Moreover, Bishop Clark said, “We are called to be alive to the reality that we are not just individuals standing before God, but rather a community of people brought together as the Body of Christ.”

Somehow, this eludes us and it will take work to draw us together again to savor and to treasure our common Table and recognize our need to be there.

We begin with ourselves. Are we there weekly or not? If we meditate on these thoughts from Bishop Clark and resolve to come and see, we might recall what a gift it is to be there – to be a home with other believers who are struggling with life’s complex issue even as we are.

Then we invite someone else to come. An invitation might be rejected, but try again or with someone else. Afterwards, together, name the blessings of the moment. (This is not the time to critique the homily, although you might want to do that at another time.) This is the time to taste, savor. Did you watch other people at prayer? Did the fragrance of candles, flowers and incense touch something in you? Did the power of the Holy Spirit stir something in you?

Come again to the Table for as Bishop Clark reminded us: “Sunday Eucharist is the core of our life. Nothing can equal it.”

~ Sister Joan Sobala

Celebrating the Feast of All Saints

Dear Friends,

On Wednesday of this week, the Church celebrates the Feast of all Saints – men and women, girls and boys who have taken God’s love to heart and have lived out its vast possibilities.

These people in every way are like us and maybe a little bit more. They have this outstanding quality: they have responded to the awakening of God. They saw God alive, alert, beckoning them. They saw people in need, and they took an important step. They became responsible for what they saw. That is the essence of holiness.

Saints come in all sorts of packages:

Stephen Biko was a South African Freedom Fighter who died in prison after a severe beating (1977).

Lioba was the cousin of Boniface. They lived in the 8th century. Eventually, she travelled from England to live and catechize in Germany, even after Boniface died.

Stanislaus Kostka was a boy when the walked from Poland to Rome to seek admission to the Jesuits (16th Century). He died shortly after he began his studies.

Sergius was Russian Orthodox (14th Century). It is said of him that “his transparent holiness illuminates an entire age.” (Blessed Among Us)

Elizabeth Fry was a Quaker reformer (19th Century). The mother of eleven, she went to visit Newgate prison one day. What she saw prompted her into prison reform.

Saints are not necessarily Roman Catholic. They are believers in God who have sipped from the cup that Jesus held to His lips on the cross, and they became His uniquely. They thirsted for God and God quenched their thirst.

I count my grandfather, Casimer, among the saints. As a young Polish conscript, he deserted from the Russian army, fled across the Atlantic and found himself a boarder in my grandmother Tillie’s rooming house in Lackawanna, NY. She was by that time a widow with a small son. Casimer and Tillie married and moved out to a farm in Eden, NY where my mother was born. Grandpa Casimer lived until I was a novice. He died on our Congregational founding day, October 15. St. Casimer has watched over me all these years.

How about you? Who are the saints of your family, your neighborhood? Who lived /lives with eyes open to the needs of the people?

Are you a saint in process? Don’t hesitate to want to be one. Some new yearning for God may already be in you.

Enjoy this holy day as you explore it in new ways.

            Know that the God who calls you
            Will stir up courage within you,
            Will accompany you in your waking,
            Will sustain you in your seeing. (Jan Richardson)

~ Sister Joan Sobala

Seeking Clarity of God’s Vision and Direction

Dear Friends, 

From time immemorial, people have asked questions for clarity, insight, understanding. Others have asked questions to entrap and destroy their target. 

Here’s the emperor’s coin, Jesus. Are you pro-God or pro-Caesar? 

Here’s a woman caught in idolatry, Jesus. Do you support the law or do you favor leniency for criminals? 

Here’s a man who is unclean, Jesus. Do you uphold what the law says about the unclean or not?  

The questions the Pharisees posed were traps to discredit Jesus to his hearers.” The Pharisees plotted how they might trap him…and Jesus knew the malice in their hearts.” 

If we could quiz Jesus in the here and now about the issues of our day, our own questions would also be endless. 

Jesus, are you pro-choice or pro-life? 

Liberal or conservative? 

Which is more important: jobs or the environment? 

Jesus, tell us where you stand on gun control, nuclear weapons, AI, capital punishment, LGBTQ, banned books in schools. 

What helpful questions can we ask about the way forward between Hamas and the Israeli? Is mutual brutality, violence that is over the top, the only solution? 

As believers, we don’t seek to trap or embarrass Jesus. We seek clarity, light, a better understanding of God’s vision and direction for our world. But as believers, we need to work through these questions in a God-context, using the Gospel vision to illuminate our way as we try to make sense of thorny issues.  

Society is quite eager to provide answers to our questions: supermarket tabloids, talk show hosts, co-workers, influencers in every field imaginable, kids in school bathrooms, warmongers. 

A framework for approaching our contemporary questions can help us in our questioning, no matter our age or place in life: 

First of all, as we discern how to think, what to decide to do or not do, we need to be confident that God is with us, in us, surrounds us. We are a people who are graced by God’s presence and love. In the first reading from Isaiah today, God says to us: “It is I who arm you, though you know me not.” The grace of God is present to us in each situation of our life, not as an imposition, a demand, but a tender companionship that shows us the way. God is for everyone holding life together in Gaza. 

Secondly, Jesus never sends His followers out alone. Attempting to deal with today’s complex issues by ourselves makes no more sense than trying to be our own physician. It is in the believing community that we can seek wisdom and talk to others in Gospel terms. In community, we can, with more confidence, discover how to approach our questions with Christ’s vision and not just our own. The nourishment we receive at the Eucharistic table, in the Eucharistic community, enlightens not just our minds, but our hearts, our whole being. 

Finally, let’s be alert for the concrete situations in which the Gospel takes flesh in people and see how they approach or resolve the pressing issues of our day. See how the Gospel vision takes the form of food for the hungry or bricks and concrete or lessons in hope, compassion and mercy. 

This is how Jesus might respond to the questions we might pose today: 

“I can’t prepare you for every choice you’ll need to make or every situation you will encounter, but my grace will be with you. Others who are likewise graced will help you to understand more clearly. Don’t be afraid to learn from one another. Seek life and you will find it. Ask questions and be ready for new and revealing responses.” 

~ Sister Joan Sobala

Doing Something Life-Giving for the Community

Dear Friends,

Let’s begin today by remembering two generous, energetic, insightful women who died 25 years apart in Rochester, NY. 

Hattie Harris, “the mayor of Strathallan Place,” has been honored for her tireless efforts to improve life for all. Michael Wenzel, writing in her obituary, told how “she influenced elections, legislation, and community projects. She also worked hard for those who were not politically well connected.” Hattie Harris once remarked: “Be ashamed to die until you have done something life-giving for the community.” Hattie died in 1998 at the age of 101. 

The remarkable Rosa Wims died just last month, in September 2023. After 28 years as a licensed practical nurse, Rosa began a new phase of her life. She started the Faith Community Wellness Center on Genessee Street, but hers became a name well-known in the larger for her pre-Thanksgiving dinners for the needy. More and more people came to eat, and more and more people came to help. Eventually, she passed off the organization of this feast to Foodlink, while she became the honorary host. Rosa was 100 years old when she died. Much loved and respected by the community. 

A Jewish woman and a Black woman – both continued their service to the community long after they could well have retired and taken their leisure. They are models for us today. They are our Sisters. 

I could find no insight into their motivations – religious or not, but if you and I are believers in the Risen Christ, then we look to Him to create in us the capacity to heal, to touch in love, to welcome the outcast, to render justice and mercy. We might not do the same things as Hattie Harris and Rosa Wims, but as we live on through the years we have been given, let’s develop in ourselves a willingness, an openness to serve deep into our so-called golden years.

We bring Christ’s values to meeting the contemporary questions and needs of our time. Each age of Christianity has had to do that. Our ancestors in faith and we depend on the Holy Spirit working with us to interpret the signs of the times, to live faithfully through times that would draw us down into despair or mean-spiritedness.

In our efforts to know and express in our day the best that Jesus has to offer, we tend to bump into each other in creative or disruptive ways. But we go on, finding resources and companions to do what is needed, using Christ’s very self as the measure of what we strive to become, overcome, improve and create a community of people who love one another. 

~ Sister Joan Sobala

*Pictures courtesy of the Democrat and Chronicle

Are Our Vineyards Fruitful?

Dear Friends,

One straightforward way of reading today’s Gospel is as an indictment of the chief priests and scribes of Jesus’ time. We can identify them with the tenant farmers who rejected the messengers and killed the king’s son.

The story is a variation on an equally depressing passage in Isaiah, where God’s careful preparation of the vineyard comes to naught.

If we read these passages concentrating exclusively on the outcome, we would only experience failure. Dreams shattered, great loves destroyed, inedible wild grapes with long runners that wrap around every living thing they touch and choke the life out of the plants where they cling.

Reading the texts this way gives us nothing helpful to turn over in our minds and weave into our life patterns this week. Let’s concentrate instead on the vineyard owner. In both passages, the vineyard owner did his very best, gave fully to produce the best possible vineyard.

In Isaiah, the vineyard owner used the finest materials to build up his vineyard, but it did not yield good fruit. In Jesus’ parable, the vineyard produced a true and abundant harvest, which only brought out the greed in the tenants. With a call for justice and an end to hostility, the owner sent increasingly important messengers to talk with the tenants and finally, the most important, His own son.

You and I can remember when we have given something the full measure of our devotion and it failed. We can point to failed relationships, the song that ended without applause, our work rejected, our adult children devoid of the values we treasure. When our best efforts fail, we are sorely tempted to stop sending messengers and never the one closest to us.

And yet, we are most like God when we do just that - give our best over and over again.

During times when failure threatens to crush us, we would do well to remember Paul’s words in today’s second reading: “Let God’s own peace through Christ His Son stand guard over our hearts and minds.”

Let me tell you one woman’s story as a profound witness to today’s lessons. I’ll call this woman Nora. Nora had been a member of my Congregation. We lived together for seven companionable years before she left the Congregation. Shortly afterwards, Nora married. Within a year, two tragedies struck. Her beloved older brother committed suicide and she was found to have uterine cancer. Fortunately, surgery removed the cancer completely. Then, one day, Nora’s husband came home and told her that he didn’t love her anymore. Could she be gone by Friday? Next, her father died. Not long after that, I got a phone call from Nora, whom I hadn’t seen since she left our community. She was at Strong Hospital. “I want you to come over and help me die.”

Nora had acute leukemia.

I would sometimes come into her hospital room and find the efforts at living left her too weak to talk. At other times she would be teaching a group of interns and seasoned doctors about what happens in the human heart, mind and body as illness ravages it.

Over these last months, Nora worked through a lot. One day, shortly before she died, Nora told me she had come to feel better about herself than she had at any time in her life. She planned her funeral liturgy to reflect all she had come to understand about herself before God. Nora died at 42.

Was hers a wasted life? A failed life? Was her vineyard fruitful or was it choked by invasive vines? Had she heeded the messengers God sent or not?

At the end of her funeral, a cantor sang a song from “Goodbye, Mr. Chips” which ends with this verse:

            In the evening of my life, I shall look to the sunset,
            At a moment in my life when the night is due.
            And the questions I shall ask only you can answer.
            Was I brave and strong and true?
            Did I fill the world with love my whole life through?

Like Nora, we cannot lose hope in the face of suffering, or when our vineyard is attacked. Through the darkest of times, personally or in world crises, we can confidently pray today’s Psalm:

            Lord of Hosts, take care of your vine!
            Protect what your right hand has planted!
            Let your face shine on us and we shall be safe!

~ Sister Joan Sobala

Celebrating the Mother of God

Dear Friends,

Each year in October, our Church celebrates Mary, the Mother of God and our Mother.

Since earliest Christian times, it has been the little people who have honored, loved and depended on the support of Mary. That makes sense. Little people, that is the poor, the ordinary, those who have no decision-making power or authority, depend on their mothers for sustenance, safety, learning, the daily needs of life. Mothers have been known to surround their children in a mantle of security. They are often the one who lead their children to God.

Mary has been claimed as mother by people worldwide over the centuries. She is a model of trust, courage, patience, risk. Widowed mothers and unwed mothers have turned to her. So have the oppressed, the marginalized, the afflicted. The veneration of Mary has been a mainstay, an inspiration across the globe.

During the Council of Ephesus, in 431, the bishops gathered to consider whether Mary was to be more appropriately called Christotokos (Christ-Bearer) or Theotokos (God-Brearer). They were leaning toward Christotokos. Meanwhile, on the streets of Ephesus, when the people heard this, they roared out “No! Theotokos!” The people had spoken. Thus, it has been for all these centuries. Mary is acknowledged by believers as the Mother of God.

In distant and obscure parts of the world, sites of strong Marian devotion have developed. Sometimes, these were sites of apparitions, where typically, Mary appeared to the little people. We certainly know of Guadalupe (1531), Lourdes (1858) and Fatima (1917). Among the less well-known sites of Marian devotion are Montserrat, Spain (880), Walsingham, England (1061), Bistrica, Croatia (1545), LaVang, Vietnam (1778), Akita, Japan (1973) and Kibeho, Rwanda (1980). Pope Francis recently went to visit the tiny Catholic population of Mongolia, which dates back to 1992. Venerated there, in the Cathedral of SS Peter and Paul in Ulaambaator, is a statue of Our Lady of Heaven, found in a dump not many years ago. Little people, not the wealthy or powerful, go to search for life-giving things in dumps. Mary is with her Son’s People in Mongolia.

This month, include reverence for Mary in your daily prayer. Say a Rosary. To find a list of all mysteries of the Rosary, go to https://www.marquette.edu/faith/prayers-mysteries.php. Or say one decade. If neither of those work on any given day, say a Hail Mary.

The Hail Mary was not composed all at once. It came together over many centuries. It was the work of the little people. Beginning with the greeting to Mary from the archangel Gabriel, the prayer goes on to include Elizabeth’s words to Mary. The faithful of the medieval period added bits and pieces until the Council of Trent, in the 16th century, accepted the prayer as we know it.

Hail Mary. Holy Mother of God. A surprise to her parents. A surprise to Joseph. Her remembered words are few but she points to us to Jesus as she pointed the wine stewards at the Marriage Feast in Cana to Him. “Do whatever he tells you.” (John 2) The stewards knew what to do. So do we, if only we are willing. The wine our lives will produce will be abundant and exceptionally fine, if we do what He tells us. Little people know how to make good wine.

~ Sister Joan Sobala

The Generosity of God’s Love

Dear Friends,

Every three years, this rather puzzling Gospel of the workers in the vineyard is read on the 25th Sunday of Ordinary Time. Some workers put in longer hours than others. All got paid equally. The good guys lose again! Right? Unfair!?

Our interpretation depends on what we know about the reasons this parable was included in the Gospel of Matthew and its possible value in our lives.

The audience for this parable is, in the first place, the Pharisees pressing Jesus with their narrow attitudes. They complained that he treated sinners too well. Jesus welcomed them, dined with them, helped them. The generosity of God’s love infuriated the Pharisees.

Forty years later, Matthew’s community was dealing with the influx of Gentiles into their community. Matthew’s community is composed mainly of Jewish people who had embraced Christ in faith and could not fathom how these Gentiles – foreigners, pagans, unbelievers, outsiders – could be on equal footing with themselves – God’s chosen people. Thus, Matthew is using this story of God’s graciousness to address the smallness of the community’s thinking.

This parable is not about labor relations or hourly wages, though it might seem so. It is rather about God’s generosity, which, in our own lives, we emulate by being generous as well.

All generosity is unfair. It is God’s choice when, where and how to be generous. That’s so hard to accept, yet don’t we do the same?

How about parents who treat their children as individuals? At times, one child may have a singular need. When attention is given to the one, other children in the family may grumble and probably do, but the parents make their choice according to their own vision.

A modern-day version of this story can be found in the actions of Pope Francis, whose constant theme song is God’s merciful love and care. Some years ago, Pope Francis presided at the marriage of 20 couples. Later, it became known that some of the couples had been living together and one of the couples had a child. You can imagine the response. Some rejoiced, others – the modern-day Pharisees – were furious. Pope Francis and these couples had not followed the rules.

Today’s first reading from Isaiah gives us an important clue for understanding Jesus’ thinking. It was a passage Jesus knew well and had depended on in His words and actions: “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are my ways your ways. As high as the heavens are above the earth. So high are my ways above your ways, my thoughts above your thoughts.”

So, when we take the opportunity to include others in our communities and neighborhoods, we are on fertile ground to do so. The word “exclusion” is not part of God’s vocabulary.

~ Sister Joan Sobala