What's the Backstory

Dear friends,

Among the recently coined words that people are using is backstory as in  “ Here’s the backstory on this late-breaking news.”

We used to say “background”, but I think backstory is useful in a different way. Background  leaves people with facts but not necessarily with an experience to walk around in.

My friend, Bill Winfield, recently died on a Friday at Strong  Hospital. Two days later, his great-granddaughter was born at Strong. One backstory that allowed Bill’s funeral to have a measure of joy was the realization that God claimed Bill but gave the family new-born life as well.

Backstories of faith are not necessarily seen on the faces of people we meet.  We have to spend time with them. Listen to what emerges as they share their thoughts with us.

Next weekend, we’ll hear the biblical story of Zacchaeus.(Luke 19.1 – 10) Go read it for yourself. Even try reading it outloud. What's his backstory? How was he raised? Why did he become a tax collector? Was he a good one? Was he honest? Did he hear Jesus tell the story of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector? (We heard that one last week.in Luke 18. 9 – 14.) Did he wonder if he was like that tax collector? The  text doesn’t tell us Z’s backstory. That gives us a chance to wonder, create Z’s character, walk with him. And then there was the day that Zacchaeus and Jesus met. Zacchaeus in the tree. Jesus gazing up at him. Did they take each other’s measure? Did they wonder where each had come from, why they were so aware of one another?

Jesus and Zacchaeus. Two stories. Two backstories. One shared moment of grace.

This week, find someone gazing at you. Meet his/her eyes. Respect the richness of that person’s journey. What drives him/her up his own  tree?  Here is our own Zacchaeus whose story and backstory intersects with ours. Be conscious of the connection. Be enriched and humbled.

Blessings on your week,

Joan Sobala, SSJ

Be Saintly

Dear Friends,

I know I did All Saints Day and All Souls Day last week, but this time of year the sweeping winds and swirling leaves and shortening days somehow keep before my mind’s eye the topic of saints and life beyond our known life. This week, however, I’ll be brief and offer for your delight some thoughts from a man named Matthew R. Brown. Though I can’t provide you with any information about the author, his words speak to us of the vastness of the great cloud of witnesses of which we will be a part when we cross over. Brown writes:

It is the glory of the Church that it cannot name all the saints.

It is the glory of the Church that it cannot remember all the saints.

It is the glory of Christ that we cannot count all the saints…

The faithful cling to the roots of the saints, growing up from the ground.

How many saints there are, with more becoming so every day.

Now go out and be sainted.

Be saintly. It is a daring adventure beyond imagining in God’s love story with people like you and me. 

~Joan Sobala, SSJ

Celebrate the Saints ~ Be Connected with this Life and Beyond

Dear Friends,

Let’s think ahead a couple of weeks to when we will celebrate what our Hispanic brothers and sisters call The Days of the Dead – a harvest feast of those who have gone before us in the communion of saints. We begin our celebration on the holy vigil of All Saints, Halloween, and continue through November 1^st (All Saints Day) and November 2^nd(All Souls Day.)… indeed, on through November, when the earth itself, in these northern climes, seems to fall asleep.

All Saints Day and All Souls Day are ancient feasts. All Saints Day was originally celebrated during the Easter season. In 835, the feast of All Saints was moved to November 1^st and connected with the harvest festivals. The remembrance of All Souls was instituted at the influential monastery at Cluny, France in the eleventh century. Before long, the whole church celebrated this feast, linked with the feast of All Saints and its vigil.

Even though our society has taken over Halloween and turned it into the second most lucrative holiday of the year, Halloween is a Christian feast. In earlier times, Christians would go out on All Saints Eve to await the first star of the evening. Then they would light a candle in a lantern to burn for the three nights of the feasts. Christ the Light scatters the darkness and shows people the way home. The light banishes the ghouls and the goblins that threaten to overtake us.

Then there is All Saints Day. In celebrating collectively all the saints we need to remind ourselves that “the true company of the saints is more numerous than the list of those who have been formally canonized. There are many anonymous saints  who nevertheless form part of the great “cloud of witnesses,” who surround us with their faith and courage and so participate in the communion between the living and the dead.” (Robert Ellsberg, All Saints.)  Kenneth Woodward, in Making Saints, says that “the story of a saint is a love story of a God who loves and the beloved who learns to reciprocate this love – a story that includes misunderstanding, deception, betrayal, concealment, reversal and revelation of character” The feast of All Saints strengthens and encourages us to stay the course of our own love stories with God.

We all have our favorite saints: canonized ones as well as our family members, neighbors and friends.

The ones closest to us we remember on All Souls Day. But what do we do to remember them?

Here are some thoughts to use to spin off your own ideas:

• Make a display in your home of beloved people who have died. Invite your family and friends to bring over their own pictures. One evening, light some candles, gather around and tell stories of these people’s faith, humor, courage, goodness. Toast them. Pray in thanks for them.
• Visit your family graves in the cemetery. Thank the deceased for the good they were and did. Commit or recommit yourself to the values that made them special. Or perhaps, you may have to make up with your loved one buried there. Perhaps some issues have been unresolved. Why wait any longer to be reconciled? Speak words of reconciliation and love. Leave a little stone as a token of remembrance.
• Tell the children of your extended family the stories of those who have died and what gifts of character they had.
• Begin a winter’s worth of care for the lonely, the homebound.
• Think of your own death and the deaths of your loved ones. How can you each die with faith in your hearts, touched in the reality that each of us will die one day? How will others know what is important to us to have read and sung unless we tell them?

Beginning October 31^st, all three of these celebrations will either be part of our experience or we will ignore them- to our own loss. Here’s the “to do” list:

Celebrate the saints we meet everyday.

Take off our  masks and be who we are.

Hold up the holy ones who have gone before us.

Be connected with this life and beyond.

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I’ve recently published a small reflective journal, Good Morning God, to help capture the reader’s daily and seasonal thoughts on a score of topics. I’ll be in the atrium of Saint Anne Church (1600 Mount Hope Avenue 14620) on Sunday, October 27^th for a book signing. Come by to say hello between 1 pm and 3 pm. Books will be specially priced at $10.00. You can also get them at the front desk of our motherhouse (150 French Road 14618.)

~Joan Sobala, SSJ

Satisfy the Hungry Heart

Dear Friends,

Hunger comes in many forms and we deal with it in many ways. We talk about the world’s hungers, dieting to control rampant hunger urges. At the end of their tether, people embark on hunger strikes to draw attention to a cause. Jesus surfaced in people the many hungers of the heart and found them to be of two kinds: the hunger for truth, love and clarity, justice and peace or the hunger for gain, the desire to be top banana. The greatest gift that Jesus offers is union with Him, His Father and their Spirit. Each week, when we participate in the Eucharist, we come to the one who “satisfies the hungry heart”, as the old  hymn goes.

Fr. Dan O’Leary has an article in the 24 August 2013 issue of THE TABLET in which he speaks the far reaching embrace of Jesus in the Eucharist through us:

“The utter humanizing of God in flesh, bread and wine sounds shocking. No other religion talks about its God in this incarnational and eucharistic way. We are not saved by doctrines, Scriptures religions, pilgrimages and rituals. God comes to feed us- people of the flesh- in the earthy and unique intimacy of food. And we do not just look at it and adore it. We touch, taste, eat and drink it…. When we sit at the table of truth, immediately after receiving Holy Communion, we hear the vital assurance: “I am the living food of your flesh. I am the vibrant wine of your energy, the power within you. In me you are made complete, and you are invincible even in your darkest winter. And when your heart is full, it will overflow into other hungry hearts.”

For now, welcome the  hunger for God developing in fresh ways within you. Treasure the hunger and learn to recognize the ways that hunger is assuaged in our daily life as we serve the hungers of the world.

Jesus, Bread of Life and Cup of our Salvation,

may our hunger for You mirror,

in our own searching way,

Your holy hunger for us.

Amen.

~Joan Sobala, SSJ

Learning to be less in Remote Control

Dear Friends,

The news shows last week showed a pilotless F-16 streaking across the sky. It was being flown by remote control. A driverless car is on the drawing boards. We can already buy a vacuum cleaner that moves by itself. Motion detector lights have been available for some time. Drones, now used by the military, will have uses in daily life, but remote control in the spiritual life? It offers us nothing. 

The spiritual life, i.e., our life with and in God requires attentiveness, daily practice filling our lives with light, delight, awareness that God is everywhere we are and want to be. Certainly our work offers the world the best we can do, using our skills and education. Certainly, our hearts are full of empathy for people caught up in the world’s tragedies. Certainly we are breathless when we come upon beauty in nature and tenderness in human relationships. All of these are rooted in God’s active presence in our lives. Be sure of it. We are never alone or outside the embrace of our God.

God’s presence and love are not (I repeat) are not in proportion to our attentiveness, but our inner being takes on new depth of union with God when we are attentive.

So how do we learn to be less in remote control and more mindful of God and the gifts of God? Road work ahead.  Don’t continue to read unless you have the desire to draw closer to God.

1.       Carry around with you in your heart all day long one of the many short phrases Jesus utters in the Gospel. Chew on it. See how it lives uniquely in you. Believe it. Live by it.

A few examples:  If anyone asks you to go a mile with them, go two. (Matthew 5.40)

                                 Who do you say I am?   (Luke 9.20)

                                   Do you understand what I have done for you?   (John 13.12)

There are many more. Find them. Make a list.  Go over them often.

2.       The Celtic tradition encourages each person to have an anam cara, a soul friend, a person who has a very special place in our lives. A soul friend is a person who can share the ever deepening things of God with us and we with them. Be slow to name someone your anam cara.  This person is not just a buddy, a teammate, a spouse or a family member, although (s)he could be one of these. A soul mate loves God with you.

3.       The third part of growing in attentiveness to God is to allow yourself a retreat day with God away from home once in a while. Retreats often have a person who can help direct your thinking and praying. You could do a retreat alone or with a group. One such group retreat coming up is at the SSJ motherhouse on Saturday, October 19^th. It’s open to whoever wants to come. Go to the SSJ website for details, time and fee.  It's called "Dive Deeper" under our Retreat Saturday programs.

 

Jesus. Be with me as I try to be attentive to You in my daily life. Amen

~Joan Sobala, SSJ

Righting the Ship

Dear Friends,

For the last two weeks, I have been absorbed in the raising of the  Costa Concordia. This luxury liner has been lying on its side, towering over a rocky stretch on Italy’s west coast since it ran aground and tipped over in January 2012. During these last two weeks, the intricate system of equipment designed to set the boat aright was finally put into place. Would it work or wouldn’t it? It did, of course, and while many steps will follow both legally and to rehabilitate the boat, as far as I’m concerned, the engaging part of the story is over.

The Costa Concordia is a metaphor for each of us. We are each a ship, moving through the waters of life. Jesus travels with us on our ship, although He might well be asleep at times. We carry all kinds of passengers, luggage, cargo, foodstuffs. We throb with life. And like the Costa Concordia, we may tip over.

What causes us to tip over with potential loss of many kinds? The carelessness or arrogance of the captain, inattentiveness to the course, the desire to show off our navigation skills may be reasons. I think the tipped boat can also be the result of sin – the deliberate ignoring of God as our co-captain, wanting God and our own way simultaneously, not realizing we must choose one or the other.

Sin tips us over, but most of the time, not irrevocably. Like the Costa Concordia, we are righted, not by pulleys, winches and ropes, but by seeking forgiveness of God and   the one(s) we have injured and when we can, by receiving the Sacrament of Reconciliation. The younger son in the story of the Prodigal Father was tipped over.  Only in returning to his father could he be righted.

Then, last week, Pope Francis gave a wide ranging interview to his Jesuit confrere, Fr. Antonio Spadaro, SJ which again made me think of the Costa Concordia. The Church, we know, is called the barque of Peter.  Peter’s  boat is  in danger of tipping over. Pope Francis spoke of the Church with its narrow focus and rigidity over some aspects of life. It drives some people away, instead of gathering them together into the sheepfold of Christ. His own imagery for the church is likewise colorful: “a house of cards in danger of collapse.”

These are just two ways of taking in and using for our own fruitful reflection something as apparently nonspiritual as a tipped over luxury vacation ship. So scan the newspapers and news magazines, films and computer images to see what in our world can make you see God more clearly and understand a bit more the ways that life images tell us about our fragile yet resilient relationship with God.

Two more unrelated things:

• This Wednesday evening, Sept. 25, from 7 to 8.30 pm, two people in the know come to our motherhouse (150 French Road) to talk with whoever comes about the work and uncertainty of being young and Catholic.  They are Leslie Barkin, youth minister at Saint Catherine’s, Mendon and a national writer on youth issues, and David Dowd, a thoughtful  twenty something educator and youth ministry volunteer at Our Lady of Lourdes/Saint Anne, Rochester. 7 to 8.30 pm. Come, bring a young friend and engage in the dialogue.
•  Available at the motherhouse gift shop and main entrance is my new reflection journal , a simple workbook entitled Good Morning, God. It’s written to help you think through your relationship with God at various times of the year and when certain situations arise.  I like to say “If you don’t like what I say, cross it out and write your own ‘take’ but do use the book.” Use it yourself or get it for a holiday gift.

Blessings on your week.

~Joan Sobala, SSJ

Realizations About the Core of Christian Faith

Dear Friends,

You and I have been taught that the center, the core of Christian faith is to believe in Jesus.

Here are some realizations about Jesus to mull over and to take to heart.

To believe in Jesus …

                … is to be faithful to who He is really and not to who we think He is.

                … is to know and embrace Jesus  as the Risen Lord.

                … is not just an intellectual thing. It has to do with the “illogical logic” of the heart.

                … is not to be solitary. Jesus calls us to be a community of believers.

                … is to know that God acts in human life only when there is human readiness/human consent.

                … is to  both rest and be restless in the faith we profess.

Still it is not enough to confess that Jesus is the Risen Christ, present in our midst here and now.

Belief, if it is true and real, propels us into action, seeing, touching, ministering  as Jesus did.

In your life, when has your belief in the Risen One moved you to action? What happened?

Was it life-giving, life-changing for you or for others? Did you come to look at and engage the world

differently because, like the disciples after the resurrection, you could say “ I have seen the Risen

Lord!”?

                Holy One, Jesus, Our Savior and God,

    We stand, walk, leap, run through this world

                With all those you have given us as

                brothers and sisters.

                Help us to be and do all that is possible and necessary

                To help Your Father’s  Reign come to fullness..

                May our strength, energy and conviction

                Begin in You and end in You.

                Amen.

May your week be blessed

~Joan Sobala, SSJ
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