What is life to the full anyway?

Dear Friends,

Have you ever pushed away from the table with the words “I’m full”? Usually when we say that, we mean we can’t eat any more – we can’t take in any more. In hearing a lecture, we may not be able to absorb another thought.

Consider a thimble, a bucket and a swimming pool. Fill each to the brim with water. Which is the fullest? Of course, it’s a trick question. Each is as full as it can be. What differs in each is the capacity for fullness. Each cannot take in any more.

In the Gospel, Jesus says:
I have come that you might have life,
and have it to the full.
(John 10.10)

Have you reached life to the full? I respectfully submit that you have not and I have not. We can each take in more.

What is life to the full anyway? It is just beyond us. It is never found in this life, even at the moment when we think we have it. Heaven is fullness of life, and heaven is just beyond us.

Many of us with long memories recall being taught or at least inferring from what we were taught that this life was all about preparing for heaven. This life was an antechamber. Heaven was all that is important. This life was to be endured, suffered through, trod through without savoring – for savoring life in this world threatened eternal life. In this way of thinking, life here and now was deemphasized.

Through the new vision of the mission of Jesus articulated by Vatican II, people have increased their love for the world. Health, the potential for travel, satellites that bring distant paces into our electronic devices – these have helped us relish life. The danger of this way of thinking is to put heaven on a closet shelf and forget about it.

It’s time to regain the balance:
to pay close attention to this life and to pay close attention to heaven.

Heaven is another name for the fullness of life that Jesus the Risen One promised. It is the fruit that never becomes overripe, the face and voice that never cease to appeal to us. Heaven is the insight that never fades, the music that always stirs us, the love that glows with vitality and never diminishes.

Heaven is the fullness of all human relationships summed up in the depth of our relationship with God.

“God,” the Book of Revelation tells us, “will wipe away every tear from our eyes and death shall be no more – neither shall there be mourning or crying nor pain any more – for the former things have passed away… God shall dwell with us.”

But let’s not think of heaven as some far distant place beyond the galaxies. Paradoxically, heaven is right here, in the people and places we love. Just beyond us. Here and now.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning reminds us
    "Earth is crammed with heaven
    And every common bush afire with God;
    And only she who sees takes off her shoes. 
    The rest sit around it and pluck blackberries.”

~Joan Sobala, SSJ

Happy Mother's Day!

Dear Friends,

Happy Mother’s Day to all who mother in any way!

The mothers among us are natural mothers, grandmothers, godmothers, mothers by adoption or by marrying into a family. Men mother, too, when they take seriously the primary gift of all mothers which is to nurture. Men and women both nurture when we care for the earth or a community or when we nurture faith in others. The American observance of Mother’s Day was a great idea that took hold and has spawned a national day of being with and buying for Mom. This focus is popular, but it is not enough. Honoring our mothers/nurturers becomes more real when we do it all yearlong and when we mother/ nurture using people we know as a model. Not all of us have had beautiful relationships with our mothers, so Mother’s Day can be hard. Still, we can go the route of nurturing others and become what we did not receive.

Mary, Our Mother

In our faith tradition, all yearlong, we honor Mary, the Mother of God and our mother. But May is a time especially dedicated to her. Jesus gave his disciple, John, to Mary as a son and Mary to John as a mother. It happened at the foot of the cross, as described in John’s Gospel. Chapter19. We are John. Jesus gave us his mother to be our own. And Mary encourages us to do whatever he tells us. (John 2) .This month, grow in faith in Christ through the lens of Mary. Learn to know the Lord as she did. Learn to be with him after the Resurrection,  as she came to know him anew then.

God, Our Mother and Father

Liturgically, we always pray to God as Our Father. That’s what Jesus taught. “Our Father in Heaven…” “God, our Mother” feels strange on our lips. Still, in Isaiah, God speaks as being like a woman groaning in labor. Jesus in Matthew, longs to enfold the children of Jerusalem as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings. If mothers and fathers image God, then the terms “God our Mother” and “God our Father” reveal facets of God to us to cherish and emulate.

The Empowerment of Mother Figures Whether They Know It or Not

Consider Mary Lempke, a 52 year old nurse who lived near a hospital in Milwaukee. When a blind, mentally incapacitated baby boy with cerebral palsy was abandoned at the hospital, the staff was at a loss to know what to do with him. Then someone remembered Mary. Would she take care of him? The consensus was that he would die young. “If I take the baby,”  Mary said, “He won’t die young."

The care of baby Leslie was absorbing. Each day, she massaged his entire body. Mary prayed over him, cried over him, she placed his hands in her tears.

The years passed. 5, 10 15.

It wasn’t until Leslie was 16 years old that he could stand alone. All this time, he couldn’t respond to her at all.

One day, Mary noticed Leslie plucking on the taut string of a package. She wondered if he was sensitive to music. Mary began to play every type of music imaginable for Leslie, hoping something would appeal to him.

Eventually, Mary and her husband bought an old upright piano and placed it in Leslie’s  room. She would take Leslie’s fingers in hers and show him how to push the keys down, but he didn’t seem to understand.

One night, Mary awoke to the sound of someone playing Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto #1. She shook her husband. Had he left the radio on? He said he didn’t think so but they had better check.

What they discovered was beyond their wildest imaginings. Leslie was playing the piano. Leslie, who had never even gotten out of bed alone before, was seated at the piano playing with beauty, accuracy, soul.

Mary dropped to her knees. “Thank you, dear God. You did not forget Leslie.”

Doctors describe Leslie as an autistic savant – a person with brain damage who was nonetheless extremely talented. Doctors can’t explain the phenomenon – neither can Mary. But she does know that this talent was released through love… a gift from God, in this case, through a mother who couldn’t stop caring.

This is the love we celebrate this weekend, a love that embraces, protects, keeps on giving, and delights in our growth. Celebrate with thanks all who have given to you.

~Joan Sobala, SSJ

Words that Inspired Our Two Newest Saints

Dear Friends,

Sunday was a remarkable day in Rome. For the first time ever, two popes were canonized in the same ceremony:  Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul II.

Most people living today grew up with Pope John Paul II. Less of us remember good Pope John, as he was called. He was pope from 1957 to 1963. If you want to know Pope John XXIII, look at Pope Francis. Francis stands, walks, teaches, embraces the world as John XXIII did.

The leadership of these two men significantly influenced modern Catholicism and our secular society. So many people have been touched by their vibrant faith. So many people venerate their names and memories. How could they  not be proclaimed saints?

Holiness is attractive. People recognize goodness.

Such was certainly the case for these two great men. But no two people manifest holiness in exactly the same way. (After all, God ‘s images in the universe are many and varied.) Saint John XXIII and Saint John Paul II exemplify the nuances of God in our world.

John XXIII was elected pope in 1957. He was a surprise choice for the office. To everyone’s surprise, he spoke to the hearts of the people with warmth and humor.

John XXIII set a new tone for the church focusing the church’s energies to serve the people of the day, not just replaying old glories.

He wrote: “We are not on earth to be museum keepers, but to cultivate a flourishing garden of life.”

John  XXIII was not just a friendly – neighbor type. Trained as an historian, before his election, he was the Papal ambassador to three very sensitive areas:

    To the Orthodox Churches of Eastern Europe
    To Turkey with its Muslim population
    To France, First Daughter of the Church, as France has been called.
In each assignment, he won the hearts of the people, and was extremely effective in governmental relations which were often quite strained.

At heart, Angelo Roncolli – Pope John XXIII – was always a pastor with a compassionate touch. His pastoral advice? “ See everything. Overlook a great deal. Correct little.”

Pope John Paul II – Karol Woytyla- was the first non-Italian pope in 450 years. As a young man, growing up in Poland, he lived under Nazi rule. As an adult, he lived under Communism. The suffering he and his people experienced formed him as a man – a man without fear.That suffering fueled his heart of compassion.
So it was that he became a missionary pope, visiting 129 nations, to bring God’s message of hope and encouragement to a world often oppressed and enslaved by its own people.

Billy Graham called John Paul II “ the most influential voice for morality and peace in the last 100 years.”

On these Easter Sundays, Jesus leaves us with words to carry in our hearts – the same words that inspired our two newest saints.

The first word is Peace. Every time Jesus returned to his followers after the Resurrection, his first word was Peace. All is forgiven. All is well.

Go. Go tell the people the Good News. Death does not have the final word.

Do not be afraid. I will be with you.

As followers of the Risen One, as brothers and sisters of Saint John XXIII and Saint John Paul II, let us be at peace. Not anxious. Tell people God makes a difference. Don’t be afraid. Ever.

We have the words of the Risen Lord to go by.


~Joan Sobala, SSJ

Easter - An Interruption?

Dear Friends,
   
This is a homily that was enclosed in a letter from a friend in 1991. It is not mine, but I wish it was. Here it is for you. 

“Interruption is the story of Easter. God interrupted death, interrupted the power and flow of evil to demonstrate that divine love and commitment to humanity was stronger than anything else, no matter what the present moment may seem. Nations and people could have gone on as before, drawing near to God and then falling away in an assertion of their own independence in a never ending cycle, had not God interrupted in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, and interrupted supremely by raising his from the dead.

In a profound sense, God interrupts our lives whether we like it or not, but the question for us is how do we respond to the interruption, particularly the news of Easter. Is it only an interruption in the sense that we feel somehow compelled to be in church, to wear new clothes and sing familiar hymns and gather with family, as pleasant as those are? Are we willing to realize that our lives have been interrupted with the assertion that power, money, and status are but short-lived symbols which we have allowed to take hold of us? Are we willing to accept the interruption that we are not in control of nature, of the lives of others around us, or of even our own lives no matter how tightly we hold on or try to force our wills? Are we willing, more simply, to be interrupted by the needs of others around us, the needs of housing and food, of healing and forgiveness, of justice and peace, or would we rather ignore them, as if they would go away?

The news of Easter Day is that God has interrupted and continues to interrupt our lives with unending, undeserved love for us. It is our task to acknowledge that good news and to go forth into tomorrow         and tomorrow and tomorrow with a renewed sense of our own ministry of interruption, as ones who are agents  of the love of God breaking into our world.”

Happy Easter season, to all of you, my sisters and brothers in the ministry of interruption!
~Joan Sobala, SSJ   
    

Await Easter with Confidence

Joanblog for April 14

Dear Friends,

            You and I are privileged to see Good Friday from the vantage point of Easter. We know the delirious shout of joy, Christ is risen, that has reverberated through centuries,

communities and individual lives.

            On this particular Good Friday, I invite us to step back from this side of Easter to stand in two places

            ~ to linger at the cross, and

            ~ to walk in the garden of the tomb in that time between Good Friday and Easter.

            It’s important for us to stay a while with the reality of Good Friday and not move too quickly to Easter, because as the theologian, Anthony Padavano says, “the cross is a gathering place for sorrow.” Padavano goes on “When Easter comes too quickly, it dismisses pain without healing it.” (Some of what follows is Padavano paraphrased.)

            Sometimes in life, pain needs to be held and sorrow needs to blossom.

            The psychic distance between Good Friday and Easter is immense. When we are in the Good Fridays of life, we may not want to celebrate Easter. We may need to embrace the cross and not let go.

            Of all Christian symbols, the cross is the most believable - believable because our God died on the cross. Our God does not take the easy route. Our God knows pain- the human pain of being alone, devastated, dying.

            God could have saved humanity another way. God chose this way, so that, in Christ, so that in Christ, our God could gather all the lost loves, all the lost values and shattered dreams of this world.

            God gathers all of your efforts and mine: wasted efforts, denied or destroyed efforts.

God gathers under the cross the children of refugee camps throughout the world, the betrayed and soldout sub-Saharan Africans, Syrians, Ukrainians, Venezuelans and tomorrow’s broken masses.

God gathers us as we weep and are forced to let go of life as we once knew it.

When there are no answers for our great sadness, we look upon the cross and we see Christ and ourselves, mirrored in each other.

At the cross, Paul says, we seem to be able to endure, because we, who know the cross intimately, are together with the one who makes the cross believable. And so we linger.

            But then, inexplicably, we are ready to move on.

            As salmon know when it is time to swim upriver,

            As hummingbirds know when it’s time to fly north,

            As we awaken from paralyzing sadness to greet the new day,

we become ready to walk into the garden of the tomb.

            Something in us is very sure that the cross is not the end

            The apparently vanquished becomes the victor.

            We recognize him – Christ, who reaches forward in history for us, also reaches backward into history as the fulfillment of every believer’s faith, every dreamer’s dream.

            The poet George Mackay Brown imagines what great elation lives in the great figures of Scripture on that Holy Saturday before His resurrection.

He went down the first step.

His lantern shone like the morning star.

Down and round he went

Clothed in his five wounds.

Solomon whose coat was like daffodils

Came out of the shadows.

He kissed Wisdom there on the second step.

The boy whose mouth had been filled with harp-songs,  (David)

The shepherd-king

Gave, on the third step, his purest cry.

                       

At the root of the Tree of Man, an urn

 With dust of apple blossom.

Joseph, harvest-dreamer, counsellor of pharaohs

Stood on the fourth step.

He blessed the lingering Bread of Life.

He who had wrestled with an angel,                                          (Jacob)

The third of the chosen,

Hailed the King of Angels on the fifth step.

Abel with his flute and fleeces

Who bore the first wound

Came to the sixth step with his pastorals.

On the seventh step down                                                         (Adam)                       

The tall primal dust

Turned with a cry from digging and delving.

            Tomorrow the Son of Man will walk in a garden

            Through drifts of apple blossom.

Await Easter with confidence.

                       

Prepare Your Heart for the Lord's Supper

Dear Friends,

Over the next few weeks our attention in these blogs will be absorbed by the events of Holy Week and Easter one portion at a time.

Today, let’s study lovingly the Lord’s Supper, specifically as a meal.

As I began to think of how to start this blog, my thoughts went back to an experience my friend Viktor told me about. Viktor is a Swiss Dominican priest, who in his earlier life was making his way down the boot of Italy toward Rome. His preferred method of transportation was … hitchhiking. At one point, he was picked up by a scruffy looking older man driving an even older old truck which had almost no springs. Viktor tried a few conversation starters, but they were fruitless. They drove along in silence through the hot countryside, the air in the truck redolent with human sweat. Viktor brought along no food, but when the truckdriver pulled up under a tree, this taciturn man shared with Viktor what he had: a loaf of peasant bread and a bottle of rough wine. They sat in companionable silence under the tree and polished off both the loaf and wine before resuming their journey. The truckdriver let Viktor off in the outskirts of Rome. It was only as he walked along, that Viktor realized that he had celebrated Eucharist with this man who was Jesus unrecognized.

As we keep our eyes fixed on Jesus these next two weeks, we’ll want to study him from every angle.

Listen to him.
Be his shadow.
Be focused on him.

We’ll want to think back over all the meals in the Scripture that Jesus had – not only with is disciples- but with strangers, outcasts and even his enemies:

• the meal Peter’s mother-in-law mad after Jesus healed her
• the parties Jesus had with Levi (Matthew) and  Zacchaeus after each of their first encounters
• the parties at the end of the stories of the Prodigal, the woman with the lost coin, the man with the lost sheep
• the wedding feast at Cana and the feeding of the multitudes
• Some of Jesus’ most poignant encounters with people took place at meals. We have only to recall Jesus at the home of Simon where an unnamed woman washed Jesus’ feet with her tears, dried them with her hair and anointed them.

On the night before He died, Jesus' final meal with His disciples was:

The Passover meal of the exodus, when the Israelite slaves ate the lamb and unleavened  bread  before      leaving Egypt. Jesus’ unique contribution to that meal was his service to His disciples ,whose feet he washed  and gave us the example to do likewise. In doing so, Jesus asks us for two things:  to let Him serve us in this way, and to serve others in whatever way draws those others closer to God, His Father. This required that Jesus cross boundaries. We can do no less.

A farewell  meal, tinged with sadness. Jesus would part from them shortly. Yet there was something about this night that was more powerful than sadness, namely a pledge and an assurance that farewell was not forever. Jesus would feed them forever, at the altar and when the truck stops on our way to Rome. Jesus would be with them forever, though they knew not how.

Today, all week long, let’s find in our memories and experiences the presence of the Risen Jesus eating with us, feeding us, telling us stories of how others are nourished for the journey, and we also. Then, when we come to the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday night, our hearts will be ready.

~Joan Sobala, SSJ

Help Ourselves and Others to be Free

Dear Friends,
   
In the movie The Son Of God, Jesus stepped into the tomb of Lazarus, stood behind Lazarus’ head and put his hands on the shroud where the head and shoulders of Lazarus joined to breathe new life into his dead friend.

In the Gospel, Jesus did none of these things. He stood outside the tomb and wept, respectful of the reality of death symbolized by the stone rolled across the opening of the cave. 

                It is striking that, at this point, Jesus gave three instructions:
                      to the people gathered around, He said: Take the stone away.
                      (after praying,) Jesus called out: Lazarus! Come out.
                      Once again, to the people, He said: Unbind him and let him go free.

Only God could raise Lazarus, but Jesus invited the community to participate in two other significant actions. The people were invited to take away the stone and to unbind Lazarus, newly restored to life.

In this Gospel, are we bystanders?  Disinterested  spectators? Do we weep and then go away? Or do we enter the freeing of others from those things from which they can’t release themselves?

Not all binding is bad. Wives and husbands bind themselves to each other in marriage, priests through ordination and women and men religious through the vowed life in community bind ourselves to Christ and to the Church. You and I can bind ourselves to the achievement of a common purpose. But the binding of Lazarus is a binding in death. I hope we are compassionate enough to unbind others from the many deaths people experience: the death of hope, the death of a loving relationship, the death of enthusiasm.

Lent is the time to give over our energies to stand with Jesus outside the tomb and be ready to do what He asks of us. In this Gospel account, our call is clear: to unbind those unable to unbind themselves. After raising  Lazarus, Jesus went on with his journey to Jerusalem. He did not stay. Can we be ready to do that, too?  Unbind them, and then go on.

Here is a wonderful irony to nibble on all day long:  Being bound to Christ is to be free.

~Joan Sobala, SSJ