What Moves You?

Dear Friends,

What are you passionate about? What energizes you?  Moves you to action? Work? Success? Sports? Family? Kids? Travel? The news of the day?

 Does God have anything to do with this absorbing lifestyle? This question leaves us uneasy .Our day-to-day experience seems to be “Here is God” on the one hand,  and on the other hand “Here is my life.” Do they connect. Should they connect? How can they connect?

We live on many levels: emotional, intellectual, artistic, down-to- earth. But for us as Christians, these elements of life are interwoven with a spiritual reality. That reality emerges from our life in Christ. It begins with the baptism that permeates, highlights and colors our whole being, if we let it. All the things and people we cherish, all we are passionate about in life is rooted in our relationship with God. God is our undeniable, indispensable partner of our lives. We don’t bring God into our work, play, study as an add- on. God is in our DNA – God is in the fabric of our being, in every move we make, in every thought we have, in every  word  we speak. When we come to that profound realization, we live life with passion as Jesus did.

We see his passion displayed in a public way in the Gospel for the Third Sunday of Lent (B cycle).  Jesus went up to the temple where he found an age old practice of scamming the poor played out again. On high holy days, people would purchase an animal to be offered as sacrifice. There were two locations where animals could be purchased: one was outside the temple precincts, where the prices were moderate and which the poor could afford, the second location was inside the temple gates. Once inside, the poor who had purchased their offerings outside were told these were unacceptable, They would have to purchase another animal inside. Are you surprised that the proceeds from the inside sales were shared between the vendors and the temple officials? Likewise, the moneychangers were involved and got their cut.

This is what made Jesus furious. The poor were being mistreated, taken advantage of. Watching Jesus, his disciples recalled the words from Psalm 69.10: “Zeal for your house consumes me.”

Jesus was passionate about his Father’s house, about honesty and integrity  and the poor.

Again, what are we passionate about? What consumes us? As we move deeper into Lent, mulling over Jesus’ zeal and our own passions can give us new insight into our own intertwined Christian and personal  lives and help us to want to fire up with others our world’s possibilities for the good and the holy. 

Sister Joan Sobala

PS. I'll be in Auburn, NY this Saturday, March 14 at Saint Alphonsus Church for a special presentation beginning with Mass at 4pm and a Lenten supper.  We'll talk about how the "God of Surprises Calls Us." 

Relinquish the "Isaac" of Your Life

Dear Friends,

It would be easy to skip the story of Abraham and Isaac that is linked with the Transfiguration of Jesus this Lent. In one of the hardest of the Old Testament readings, Abraham is told by God to go up Mount Moriah to sacrifice his son Isaac. Yet, Abraham had been promised that he would be the father of a great nation.  Isaac was the only means by which this promise was to be fulfilled. 

Still, Abraham prepared to do the unthinkable. To paraphrase a thought from the 20^th century Lutheran theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Abraham “did not withhold himself.” In the end, what was given to Abraham by God once was given to him again: the promise and his son. But the journey up the mountain was torturous.

We too are called to relinquish the Isaacs of our lives, perhaps a person, event, situation dear to us. Our Isaac could be a goal we have set for ourselves or a relationship that doesn't work out. The real or anticipated loss of our own personal Isaac has the power to tear us up. We may want to cry out: 

“You ask too much, God.” Courage and faith are needed to say; “I believe, God.”

Yet, God says to us as God said to Abraham, whose knife was raised over Isaac: “Do not lay your hands on him!” Only with the honesty of prayer do we know which Isaacs to sacrifice and when to refrain.

God shepherds us through human tragedy, injustice and meaningless suffering. We can depend on it.

In the Gospel, Jesus had begun his journey to Jerusalem and death, when he stopped and experienced the transfiguration.

Jesus shows us that there will be such moments in the midst of our own hard times, but beyond the moment, we will have to go on trusting that the apparent end is not the end, after all.

What is remarkable in the Gospel is that God, who would not permit the slaying of Isaac, does not withhold his own son. It is on his way to being handed over, that Jesus is transfigured, so that he and his disciples would not lose heart as the journey to death and darkness moved on to its climax. In the end Isaac was not killed. Jesus was. Who would have thought that the end was not the end for Jesus  and that the Risen One would give new meaning to all the Isaacs we sacrifice for the good.

Be an Ambassador Not a Bystander!

Dear  Friends,

Last week, the common lectionary for Ash Wednesday liturgies reminded us “ we are ambassadors for Christ as if God were appealing through us. (2Cor.5.20)” Ambassadors, in this sense, are sent to befriend with the Word of God people who live by other rules in other places, to speak the truth incarnated in the Word Made Flesh  courageously, and to be conduits for fruitful, respectful two way interchange. Standing at the head of the Lenten season, this call to be ambassadors for Christ adds another dimension to our Lenten practices as we move together toward Easter. Be ambassadors, not bystanders.

Bystanders  is a word that is only found in the Synoptic Gospels, Mark, Matthew and Luke.  In a piece written earlier in his career, the 2014 Poet Laureate Charles Wright, describes as bystanders the crowds of people who watched Jesus but did  nothing more.

                Always they sit

                At the center of things,

                Circles of conversation,

                Camps of opinion,

                Themselves so long

                Housed in the outskirts

                Of their own emotions they

                Occupy there

                Merely such neutral ground

                As keeps the peace

                Or honor.

                They leave

                No fingerprints

                On what their hands touch,

                Their story is how they

                Sidestep involvement, how

                They stay of two minds

                And now, finding

                Themselves at last

                Out in the open,

                Maneuverings unsuccessful,

                They answer only

                What they don’t feel,

                What they don’t know,

                What they are not.

What will our personal choice be this Lent? Shall we be ambassadors for the Holy One in the world around us, or bystanders only?

~Sister Joan Sobala, SSJ

Letters of Connectedness

 Dear Friends,

Last week, Americans, indeed, people around the world received a letter from prison, written by Kayla Mueller. Her words arose from the truth and conviction of her life and her decisions that brought her to be where she would prefer not to be. Her letter had an undercurrent of freedom that would not be denied.  The human community has a treasure trove of letters written during incarcerations – imprisonments in true, cruel prisons, or in other places where freedom of movement is impossible:  long  or  short periods of time which give rise to  new  thoughts, clarification, reiterated conviction, instruction for the reader and perhaps an evolving sense of who God is and what faith is. Letters of explanation, remorse, connectedness, and innocence proclaimed fill out the letters from prison for all to read.

Four of the Apostle Paul’s letters (Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians and Philemon) are called Paul’s prison letters, and are said to be written from Rome.  In the years between 1530 and 1700, some 3000 letters from prison were circulated in England to express political resistance and to articulate the reasons for that resistance that resided in people’s consciences. Among the letters from this period, are some from St. Thomas More. World War II produced some remarkable letters from the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Blessed Franz  Jagerstatter and Blessed Titus  Brandsma. The Letters from Birmingham Jail are Martin Luther King’s contribution to this genre. We also know Nelson Mandela’s stirring letters from prison. Ordinary people like John Brown, for example, captured by the Confederates at the beginning of the Civil War, wrote from prison. Through letters from inmates, social justice groups attempt to tap the power for insight and for good that is in the prisons of our day. In June of 2014, Pope Francis responded to 500 of the letters he had received from prison. And then there are people who were never really imprisoned behind bars, but who were caught, trapped and put to death. Who can forget young Anne Frank, and the Trappist monks of Tibherine, Algeria, who were assassinated in March of 1996, and who left an eloquent community letter forgiving their still-unknown killers.

Now we have a letter from Kayla to be read, studied and committed to our hearts. In it, she sounds like a totally normal American girl, imbued with a burning need to help alleviate pain wherever she was. She went from place to troubled place until the doors closed. That is the common thing about these letters: the doors close. People are alone with themselves and their God.  We may never know exactly how she died. As believers, we know that God held her close when no one else did. And we are left with sadness, stunned by the continuing brutality of ISIS which does not value young life, generous life, life at any age.

We ask: what can we do? As Lent begin and we become absorbed in the journey though Lent and Holy Week to Easter, we might embark on a new way to take this journey. Lent is not about self-improvement. It is about accompanying others to Easter – to witness to the Risen Jesus and His gift of  fullness of life. What if we centered our energy, focused our prayer daily at 11 am on the people who are near the breaking point in Syria and Iraq? Give a few moments to this prayer….every day. Hurl it to the satellite clouds or the natural clouds and target it back to earth just where it’s needed.  We can’t physically go to these places of pain and destruction, but we can be there. It would make a difference.

Below is the link to the letter Kayla Mueller wrote her loved ones while in captivity. 

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/02/10/world/middleeast/document-kayla-muellers-letter-from-captivity.html?_r=0

Stories Are Life in Words.

Dear Friends,

Much of winter is still ahead of us. On cold, snowy nights, shut off the telly, put away social media devices and tell stories: each other’s, well-loved stories, stories with surprise endings, stories that helped shape us  Enjoy and treasure your stories of life, faith, adventure.

We live a life-long story, and yet, if asked, we would not be sure that our own stories are interesting at all. It’s only in the telling of our stories, we begin to see their value and worth.

We also have a wealth of family stories. My four-foot eight Polish peasant 

grandfather, conscripted into the Russian army, deserted, and somehow made his way to Lackawanna, New York. How did that happen? I had no idea, before hearing this story as a child, that  my little Grandpa had such courage!

We tell stories that have impacted others in the world, stories about what happened at school or work. Travelling, seated next to strangers, we often exchange stories. Sometimes, we reveal to strangers whom we will never see again parts of ourselves we don’t easily share with people closer to us:  incidents, near-misses, day dreams. “I remember once… I had an experience something like that…”

Beyond those of our own lives, we like to hear other stories, see stories unfold on TV or in books, or at the movies.  Stories make meaning the way that analysis or synthesis can’t. Where did the world come from? Why are there people? Who don’t snakes have legs? Why do the living die? As we read the lives of others in biographies, we clarify our own convictions, and have new tools to examine our own lives. Here’s a thought: Go where you can hear the stories of migrants and refugees and be awed.  To be human is to have a story to tell.

The much admired writer, Elie Weisel, once remarked “God created people because he loves stories.” We know that Jesus was a remarkable storyteller. He used the stuff of ordinary life, introduced strangers into the story who became unexpectedly central to the meaning of the story and, as we know when we study them, these parables say more than they seemed to intend, to this very day.

God is not captured for once and for all in our human stories, but God is surely revealed in our stories, if our eyes and hearts are open.

The philosopher Kierkegaard went even further to say “the only real answers to religious questions are in the telling of a story.” So dare to explore religious questions in this seemingly simple way. Tell and enjoy the power of stories in your life.

Loss Of Intimacy with Christ

Dear Friends,

                In a craft store a few weeks ago, I ran into a woman who had been an active parishioner in one of the churches where I worked at one time. During the wide-ranging conversation, I casually asked if she was still at the church. “No,” she said. “We’re good people, but we don’t go to Mass anymore.”

                 I can’t get this conversation out of my mind. I don’t doubt they are good people, but there’s more at stake.

                It’s the loss of intimacy with Christ through Eucharist that catches me up short in this conversation.. Other versions of this absence have been told to me this way:” I believe in Jesus, but don’t like coming to Mass… I prefer to pray at home, at the lake or in the woods…It’s enough… the pastor has changed and I can’t pray with the new one.”

                Actually, followers of Christ – Jesus himself- have had times, maybe even long periods of solitude and separateness, but in the end, followers of Christ follow him together.  Followers of Christ belong to a community of believers, from Biblical times, to this day. The author of Hebrews says “We should not stay away from our assembly (that is to say Mass) as is the custom of some, but encourage one another, and this all the more as you see the day drawing near.” (Hebrews 10.25)

                 We are not solitary in our belief. We may have to find a different  faith community, receptive to our spirit, but the search is not optional in the life of a follower of Christ.

                Sunday Eucharist is a unique time of expressing our solidarity with the Lord and with one another.

                We come to Sunday Eucharist with a continually changing inner landscape. Perhaps one of us is 15, and exploring what it means to be a human being, a sexual being, growing and changing in so many ways. The 15 year old looks across the aisle and sees an old married couple (you know, in their 50’s) –worshipping together. At the same time the youth draws encouragement from them, they draw encouragement from the fact that youth are there – sharing the table of the Lord, searching out the meaning of life with God.

                On some given Sunday, or perhaps for weeks, we can’t pray. We go to Mass but that’s as far as it goes. No affect. No singing. A lump. On that day, we depend on others to pray in a way we can’t.

                Yet another time, we are attuned. We sing and pray with energy. The readings and homily speak to our hearts, and at communion, we am awash in the presence of Christ.

                We need each other to fill in what the other cannot be or do. We can stay away, bit when one of us isn’t present, there  is a hole, a gap, a sadness. We are not spectators watching a scenario unfold.  Each of us in important to the Eucharistic  celebration. We are members of the Body of Christ and sustain one another. Become who you are.

Do We Need Another Selma?

Dear Friends,

                The film Selma is now playing in our local theaters. As the fiftieth anniversary of the march, March 7,  approaches, this is a film worth seeing for its historical content as well as for understanding the religious convictions that under-girded the whole civil rights movement.

                In the film as in reality, John Lewis and Hosea Williams led the marchers up the left side of the Edmund Pettus Bridge.  Barely over the bridge, they were attacked and beaten by the police and deputies. The world watched the brutality on television. Two weeks later, the world watched again as the marchers, swelled in great numbers by people of faith from all over the country, escorted by the national  guard, crossed the bridge again and made it safely to Montgomery, some fifty-five miles to the north.

                Since the march, a memorial has been built just to the left side of the bridge where the attack on the marchers took place. I stood before it, awash in awe, in 2000, at the thirty-fifth anniversary march and was vastly moved by the connection made between two events which took place in different parts of the world some three thousand years apart. This simple monument - twelve pitched stones in flowing water-  was inspired by  the Book of Joshua where  the crossing of the Jordan by the Israelites into the Promised Land is described. There, the waters parted, “as the priests carrying the ark of the covenant of the Lord remained motionless on dry ground in the bed of the Jordan until the whole nation had completed the passage.” ( Joshua  3.17) Afterwards, one man from each tribe of Israel was commissioned to go into the water and take up a stone from the spot in the Jordan where the priests with the ark had been standing motionless. At Gilgal, on the east side of Jericho, Joshua set up the twelve stones that had been taken from the Jordan.

"In the future,” Joshua said, “when people ask you the meaning of these stones,

you shall tell  them, Israel crossed the Jordan here. (Joshua 4.20-21.)”

                 

President Lyndon Johnson passed the Voting Rights Act some time later that year, 1965. It has stood as a living record of the victory of the non- violent pursuit of human rights.  Last year, 2014, the Supreme Court rejected the most substantial first part of that law, leaving states to reframe the prerequisites for voting, largely in states in the  deep south. 

                Do we need another Selma?  What will you and I do? 

~Sister Joan Sobala