Christmas Spirit

One of the characters in Joyce Carol Oates' work Heat was talking about an importnat historical moment: "I wasn't there,but some things you know"

It's true, isn't it?
We know in some mysterious way the import of Christ's coming
We weren't there.
But we are here.
And Christ is here.
In war ravaged Syria and with the homeless in shelters around our country.
Christ is here.
And Christmas continues to come
In the face of hatred and warring-
no atrocity too terrible to stop it,
no Herod strong enough,
no hurt deep enough,
no curse shocking enough,
no disaster shattering enough.
For someone on earth will see the star,
someone will hear the angel voices,
someone will run to Bethlehem,
someone will know peace and goodwill:
the Christ will be born!

someone will hear the angels

Hum A Happy Song to the Lord

Dear Friends,

Some spiritual writers have a honed ability to sum up the “big” aspects of faith in small packages. In two short paragraphs, the Latin American theologian Gustavo Gutierrez helps us to understand the Infancy Narratives in Matthew and Luke in terms of the adult dynamic of growth, change and suffering.

Matthew tells of Joseph magnanimously agreeing to divorce Mary
 in private rather than to press

Mary Visiting Elizabeth

charges, until an angel shows up to correct his perception of betrayal. Luke tells of a tremulous Mary hurrying off to the one person who could understand what she was going through: her relative Elizabeth, who miraculously got pregnant in old age after another angelic annunciation. Elizabeth believes Mary and shares her joy, and yet the scene poignantly highlights the contrast between the two women: the whole countryside is talking about Elizabeth’s healed womb even as Mary must hide the shame of her own.

Over the centuries, we’ve sanitized the events surrounding Jesus’ birth. Gutierrez continues,

We observe a mellow domesticated holiday purged of any hint of scandal. Above all, we purge from it any reminder of how the story that began at Bethlehem turned out at Calvary.

In the birth stories of Luke and Matthew, only one person seems to grasp the mysterious nature of what God has set in motion: the old man Simeon, who recognized the baby as the Messiah, instinctively understood that conflict would surely follow. "This is the child destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against…” he said, and then made the prediction that a sword would pierce Mary’s own soul. Somehow, Simeon sensed that though on the surface little had changed – the autocrat Herod still ruled, Roman troops were still stringing up patriots, Jerusalem had still overflowed with beggars – underneath, everything had changed. A new force had arrived to undermine the world’s powers.

If you haven’t done so already, read the Infancy Narratives this year as speaking directly to adults trying to take the Holy One seriously in our lives which are entangled in cultural perceptions and values Which diminish the their meaning.

Hum a carol as you continue Advent,
~Joan Sobala, SSJ  

A Christmas Gift for Your Spirit

Dear Friends,

Are you steadfast? That’s a word we don’t use in today’s parlance, but it’s worth including.

Steadfastness means that we keep on keeping on. Sometimes, the word “patience” is used in place of steadfastness. The problem is that “patience” has overtones of “putting up with.”

When my high school friend, George, was voted the most patient in our class, he didn’t like it one bit. Patience is just not as rich a word as steadfastness. One ingredient in being steadfast is the capacity to work at seemingly impossible things. Isaiah offers us an array of surprising and impossible images: the wolf lying down with the lamb, the baby playing in the cobra’s den. Impossible! Get real! Everyone knows that a lamb in a wolf’s lair is lunch.

The steadfast are ready to live through seemingly impossible things. The steadfast also hang on when it is tempting to let go, walk away, cave  in. I think of hospice workers who tenaciously serve the dying who have no personal or familial claim, or government professionals who work behind the scenes preparing the way for peace accords and breakthroughs.

John the Baptist is certainly an example of steadfast love. His vision of God’s reign led him to preach and act with conviction. He would not be dissuaded, even though his words led to his death.

Being steadfast is no easy thing. Some days, we have no vision to draw on – only a glimpse, if that. In fact, some days all the steadfast person can do is to put one foot in front of another. We may think they don’t, but the steadfast need encouragement. On the day after Thanksgiving, the steadfast women and men camped on the National Mall in Washington calling for immigration reform. That day, they received encouragement from Michelle and Barack Obama, who came to sit with them, to  listen, and to talk. The president said to them: “Don’t ruin your health.” The fasting men and women then passed on the call to fast a day at a time to supporters.

There are many ways to be steadfast. Not every life situation requires us to be steadfast. It is not virtue to stay in an abusive relationship. Cut loose, for the sake of life.

You and I are not born steadfast. We become steadfast through practice. We learn the meaning of steadfastness from others, figures like Mary, Joseph, and John the Baptist. Choose steadfastness among other Christmas gifts for your spirit. Priceless!

~Joan Sobala, SSJ

Is Jesus Knocking at Your Door?

Christ at Heart's Door, by Warner Sallman

Dear Friends,

By 5 pm on any given day, each of us has opened or closed roughly a dozen doors. To open or close a door is a natural, unthinking act- unless we have forgotten our key or our arms are too full to manage the door.

Doors are an integral part of life. They provide passageway to where we want to go. They offer us privacy or protection from unwanted elements. Doors are also instruments of power. We can shut people out or admit them.

Advent is a time for opening some doors and closing others. It’s a time to open the door to a deeper, stronger relationship with the Holy One, to open our hearts to new and renewed relationships with people, to open our minds to new attitudes, practices and ways of thinking that birth in us a future full of hope.

Maybe you can recall seeing the well known painting by the artist, Warner Sallman, which shows Jesus standing at the door and knocking? Jesus comes to the door of the human heart, knocks and waits for an invitation to enter. The outside of the door has no knob, which says that the human heart can only be opened from within. We have the power to welcome or refuse entry.

In order to hear Jesus’ knock, we need to be awake
 – awake to His coming here and now
 - awake to His coming birthday 
 - awake to His coming at the end of time.

Are you continually alert? I’m not. We get distracted by the sheer business of our lives.
Being busy is not a bad thing, unless it prevents us from doing the work of Advent, which is to welcome God into our lives in fresh new ways.

The knock comes, and we react to it in different ways. We may be cautious, curious to see who’s there, irritated to be interrupted, ashamed that our house is not in order. We may be curt at the door, guarded, fearful, elated – or we may ignore the knock completely. Go away, God! I don’t want to see you today.

You may think that this idea of opening some doors and closing others is a mild-mannered approach to Advent. But let’s think about two doors to close which require personal discipline and hard work.

Close the door to noise, even briefly everyday and welcome quiet to let the gifts of the season seep into our consciousness. Be with the silence. “Well. Ok,” you might say, “but then what do I say to God?” Say “Come, Lord Jesus!” or maybe say nothing at all. Let God speak to you in the silence.

Close the door to violence. Isaiah talks about beating our swords into plowshares, i.e. making peace with what could be the weapons of war. We are surrounded by war and violence in our culture, we find it in the words we say to one another, in our subtle lack of respect for people, things and ourselves. We need not support violence, participate in it, give it a place in our homes, encourage it or buy it.

As we move through Advent, two figures help us open our doors to Jesus knocking.

Mary, who did not let her hesitation keep her from extending a welcome to the invitation of God. Mary is every person who has stood at the door of an unknown future and said Yes.

Jesus is called the Key of David, in the ancient collection of Advent prayers called the O antiphons:
   
Jesus, Key of David, is the one who opens and no one shuts, the one who shuts and no one opens.

Jesus is the key to our future.

During Advent, let the physical doors we open and close throughout the day remind us that our comings and goings are opportunities to meet and welcome Emmanuel, to offer kindness, a cookie, a cup of teas to others.

The key is in the lock.
The divine visitor is at our Advent door.
Don’t open it a crack. Open it wide.

~Joan Sobala, SSJ

Savoring Sacred Spaces

Happy Thanksgiving, dear friend and reader!

We took a winding road up to a site overlooking the Sea of Galilee – an avid group of pilgrims and a wiry, knowledgeable, Israeli guide named Menahan Hefetz. This is the place, Menana Hefetz  told us, where Jesus fed the 5000. A hush fell over the group, each of us taking in every contour of the land, going over the text in our minds, moved by emotions of awe and joy that surprised us with their strength.

On that sunny day twenty- one centuries ago, the hunger of the people was satisfied and there were leftovers. Jesus had fed them all.  Since then, the spot had become a holy place – but unlike other holy places, no commemorative building was erected there. It was left as a meadow, a sacred space.

Sacred spaces are those places where something unique happened:  something unrepeatable, forever impressive and memorable. Before you read on, stop to think of your own sacred spaces.

People need sacred space like Plymouth Rock and the World Trade Center. People create shrines in places where people have died as victims of tragedy or accident. In times of great need, people go to sacred spaces, or we create them or recognize them buried within the ordinary.

One reason the nation’s highways and airways are clogged these days is because people are going home, going to be with loved ones. Home is a sacred space. We know the smell of it, the foods that are repeatedly served there, the couch that everyone claims, the old tree in the backyard that’s good for climbing.

The sacred space of home.
The sacred space of our hearts and memories.
The Christian sacred space on the hillside over the Sea of Galilee and the upper room in Jerusalem.
The sacred space at the table of the Lord in our own churches.

We need them to live and grow.

Today, let’s let our mind’s eye  rove among the sacred spaces of this earth and thank God for them.  Our  own  beloved sacred spaces – yes!  and the sacred spaces of others as well.

On Thursday, when we celebrate Thanksgiving I hope we embrace people all over the world savoring their sacred spaces, weeping as the Philippine people weep over the sacred spaces that have been destroyed. I hope we take time for Eucharist on Thanksgiving Day, which for us disciples of the Lord Jesus,  our  Savior and Brother, is the sacred space that is more important than any other. Here all are welcome with all their emotions, needs, sorrows and delights. 

My colleague at Nativity Church, Brockport, Father Ted Auble, says that the Eucharistic table is very long. It extends in both  directions, to the deep past and into the hazy future. All are welcome at this table.

 Are all welcome in your own personal sacred space?

~Joan Sobala, SSJ

Let's Talk About Family

 

Dear Friends,


On the Sunday after Christmas, the church celebrates the feast of the Holy Family.  Looking out last Sunday over our parishioners at The Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary,  Brockport, it occurred to me that the time to start talking about families is now (all the better to celebrate the Holy Family later this year.)

We are entering into a long period when families get together, remember people who have died or for whatever reason, won’t be with us this season: Thanksgiving, Advent, the whole Christmas season.

So let’s talk about families, which come in all sorts of sizes and shapes: traditional two-parent families, single-parent families, couples who have no children, families of choice, blended or adoptive families. Single people have extended kinships that are, for them, family. Religious congregations are families, so are intentional families, the families of our neighborhood and world.

Family life is precious- whether it is our own personal family, where our weaknesses are accommodated and our victories applauded or whether it is the family of the universe to which we belong. This is a time to consider the ones who are  alienated from our family and what can be done to restore that relationship.

As we gather over the next six weeks or so, I hope we can bear within us the consciousness of the companionship of God, who helps us deepen and treasure the many aspects of family life, and actively cultivate respectful, tender attitudes toward one another. God is our model in this, since God is a family. God loves families with a lasting love and wants our various families to be whole.

Here’s a helpful summary of the power and value of family offered by  the moral theologian, James B. Nelson:

    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 bound 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. That human need and its fulfillment are one more reason for giving thanks on Thanksgiving Day.

    Gracious God, hold our family close to You. In our comings and goings, let our hands and hearts show welcome to all who belong to us. Help us to realize they belong to You as well. We pray in the name of our Brother and Lord, Jesus, and with the tenderness of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

~Joan Sobala, SSJ

Crown of Thorns..Is it Your Story?

Dear Friends,

This is a true story. It is also a version of our own stories, but first, the story.

My mother, Celia had a friend named Laura, who lived a few blocks away in Friendly Village, Manchester, NY. Laura’s deepening illness took her first to the hospital, and then to a nursing home. Laura never came back to her home again.

Celia and a few friends were hired by Laura’s lawyer to help prepare the house for sale. Laura had been away from the house for seven months, so the air was stale and dust was everywhere. The lawyer had provided a dumpster, so that the women could discard all the things that had no obvious value.

On an accent table in the corner of the living room was a pot with dried soil and in the soil what looked like a stick. Celia took the pot outside, but couldn’t make herself throw it into the dumpster. First she set in on the ground next to the dumpster. A few days later, she picked it up and put it on a table on the patio. Then she put it in her car. Celia didn’t know what this plant was, but it had taken hold of her and she couldn’t heave it away.

With  biblical care, she placed it in her living room where the bright morning sun could warm it. She watered it, and yes, talked to it. The stick  began to enlarge as water flowed through its length. Eventually, bright green leaves appeared and tiny pink flowers. The plant was … a crown of thorns. The year the crown of thorns came from Laura’s home to Celia’s was 1986.  Now, 27 years later, it thrives at a friend’s home, bright with flowers and stands almost seven feet tall.

You can probably see a variety of ways the story of the crown of thorns is your story as well. I certainly do.

Have we been neglected, unwatered. Have we been left to die? What God-figure has taken us home, watered us, talked with us, placed us in bright sunshine? Have we grown seven feet tall?  Have we been Celia for others?

~Joan Sobala, SSJ