Family and the Church

Dear Friends,

The first social institution we learn about in life is the family. Early on, we don’t even know it is a social institution –a basic building block of society.  All we know is that we belong. We hardly know we love the people in this family, so much are our early years self-absorbed.  Family members feed us, hold us, put bandages on our skinned knees, teach us the ins and outs of living, and are role models for interaction. Some of our family members may be dangerous to us, by how they treat us, or how they treat others. We can be squashed by family members or encouraged to be our best selves. At its best, the human family – our family -- is shaped by, guided by love.

Love requires risk. Will we, in our families, be faithful going forward into the future? Can we trust the one we love? Will love in us  blossom into goodness on behalf of others, no matter the cost?

Love also has consequences. It costs us time and energy.  It questions how we are being and becoming. Love is a commitment and a stretch, in imitation of God who is committed to us and has stretched out to us in Jesus.

Family life is threatened in every age, yet in our age, the challenges seem to be intensifying - challenges to relationships, challenges embedded in the economy, migration, the exhaustion of living. For Pope Francis, the call to examine and to renew family life is a high priority. That’s why he called for a Synod of Bishops with two sessions, several years apart. As part of these sessions, people across the world were consulted, couples who had risked marriage with success or failure were given a chance to say what happened to them and why. The Bishops debated the issues of marriage and family life from many perspectives. And Papa Francisco listened, took it all in.

 
 Just last Friday, he gave the church and the public a 256 page documentary arising from the contents of those meetings and processes, and, importantly, the document bears  the stamp of his own orientation toward treating fragile people with mercy, tenderness and a loving embrace.  For example, in chapter 8 of  this document entitled Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love), Pope Francis tells the reader “It can no longer be said that all those in any irregular union are living in a state of mortal sin and are deprived of sanctifying grace.” Some hierarchy and people will have a hard time with this statement, but what Pope Francis wants the Church to be is a community of support rather than a judge. What does not get a positive view in Amoris Laetitia are the notions of same sex marriage and fluid gender identification. How these topics will be handled in the future remains unclear, but the work is unfinished.

One of the people who took the pulse of the second session of the Synod last fall was Deb Rose-Milavec, Executive Director of Futurechurch. She was among the many non-official observers making connections with people from around the world.  Deb’s insights are culled from what she experienced in Rome as well as from emerging texts about the Synod. Deb will be at our motherhouse to talk about what she learned about the Synod on Family on Monday, April 25, 7 pm. Her talk is sponsored by Upstate Call to Action and Fresh Wind in Our Sails. Plan to join us.

~ Sister Joan Sobala

Do We Have the Courage to Stay?

Dear Friends,

I find it remarkable that each year at the Easter Vigil, adult women and men stand up in good numbers in our churches and ask for Baptism or Reception into our Church. Don’t you?  This happens everywhere in the world where the Catholic Church stands with open doors. The newcomers enter into a new relationship with Jesus, the Risen One, our Brother and Lord. They also enter a complex church.

Our church is an Easter people, for as Paul tells us "If Jesus had not risen, our belief would be in vain.” But we are also a human church and therefore, not above sin. Throughout our history up to this very day, our church gives witness to the depth and compelling love of the Risen Lord.  But we see in our church threads of destructiveness, violence and eruptions that are not life-giving.

In the face of scandal and disillusionment with what we see and negatively experience about our church, our newbies and we ourselves have a choice: Will we as baptized members of Christ’s Body  stay or go? Will the relationship we have with the Risen One inspire us to go on or will we quietly slip out the door, because the defects of our church repel us too much?

Take heart. In the 21^st century, as in centuries before, the Holy Spirit is moving us as a church in new and unknown directions- still faithful to the Risen Jesus, but new. Pope Francis is an example of that. The church is being painfully transformed. Ask any mother about birthing. Pain is laced with bringing forth new life.

It’s a highly personal question: do we have the courage to stay? Not to just sit in the pew on Sundays, but to participate in the becoming of the church, to share making our faith communities  attractive, welcoming, prayerful and grounded in the word of God and the celebration of the Sacraments.

When we find ourselves dissenting from some point that is being raised up in the church, we need not fear. Dissent is as much a part of faith as doubt.

On the 4^th Sunday after Easter, our Gospel gives us Thomas . Poor man .  For over 2000 years, he has probably hidden in some heavenly nook until the day is over! Too much Thomas-talk!

Yet doubt is an intrinsic moment of living faith, and when we face it, confront it, breakthroughs are possible.

Once Jesus came to and interacted with Thomas, Thomas uttered words that no one had spoken before.

My Lord and  My God. Thomas words are a gift to us. His words become yours, mine, ours.  My  Lord  and  My God. Precisely when Thomas looked upon the wounds of Christ, when you and I look upon the wounds of our church that renewed faith becomes real. The poet Rumi says it this way:

“Don’t turn your head away

Keep looking at the wounds,

for that is where the light enters .”

~ Sister Joan Sobala

How Do You Respond to Easter?

Dear Friends,

I have a folder full of wonderfully crafted pieces that believers in the Risen One have written about Easter over the centuries. For this Easter week, rather than write something of my own, I offer from this collection excerpts from a homily preached at St. John’s Church, Lafayette Square, Washington DC by  Rev. James C. Holmes in Easter, March 31, 1991.

“Interruption is fundamental to our experience of God. The story of creation is the story of God interrupting, breaking into the nothingness which is called chaos and bring order and life… God interrupted that meaningless void with something which is our world, which is humanity. Clearly nothing was the same anymore, and a task of that newly created humanity was to respond to its creator, to the one who out of love had formed them.

Interruption is the story of Easter. God interrupted death, interrupted the power and flow of the forces of evil …Nations and people could have gone on as before, drawing near to God 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 walking into that tomb and raising Him from the dead…

In a profound sense, God interrupts our lives, whether we like it or not, but the question for us today is how do we respond to the interruption, particularly to the news of Easter? Is it an interruption only in the sense that we somehow feel compelled to be in church?... The important issue is are we willing to realize that our lives have been interrupted with the assertion that power, money, status are but short lived symbols which we have allowed to take hold of us…Are we willing to be interrupted by the needs around us?
The news of Easter is that God has interrupted and continues to interrupt our lives with unending, undeserved love for us. {Let us have} a renewed sense of our own ministry of interruption, as agents of the love of God breaking into our world.”

In Brussels last week, many suffered interruption in the form of death, injury, not knowing, not being able to get somewhere “important” in a timely way. The forces of evil , present in ISIS and other demonic ways people act toward one another, seem uninterrupted, but not for long and certainly not forever. God interrupts evil . We participate in that interruption. Make no mistake about it. God counts on our participation in restoring the world to wholeness. The Easter season goes on in us.

As Robert Barron, Auxiliary Bishop of Los Angeles, recently wrote "Let us not domesticate the still stunning and disturbing message of resurrection. Rather, let us allow it to unnerve us, change us, set us on fire.”

~ Sister Joan Sobala

Celebrating Holy Week

Dear Friends,

Holy Week has begun – an invitation and an opportunity to be one with Jesus, Our Lord, as we remember and welcome anew His gift of Himself for our lives.

At the same time we think of Him with love, it would not be a surprise if we asked:  Do I personally  mean anything to God?

Does God really care about me, love me in spite of my faults, my past, my weaknesses?

Walter Burkhardt, an American Jesuit, reminds us: “The reason we ask these questions is because  the God of our education sits there like a Buddha, impassive, unmoved, hard as flint.  We really don’t know our God.” We learn who God is truly and more clearly when we engage in the mystery of this week.

 Walter Burkhardt continues to give courage and direction to us as we face Jesus’ gift of self:

                “The cross is the most dramatic answer to our questions.

                  The cross says God is passionate about each of us.

                  The cross says God is passionate about me.”

Let’s make no mistake in assessing the death of Jesus on the cross. It is not an accidental, mistaken act of violence. The death of Jesus is a deliberate choice by those who reject Him totally. God did not choose Jesus’ death on the cross. His enemies did. Yet from the divine viewpoint, we see in the death of Jesus, God’s overwhelming, passionate love for each of us, without exception. “There is no greater love than this – to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. (John 15.13)” We are God’s friends. He died for us.

During this week, let’s linger over, think of, be ready to be moved by this one thought: “Jesus is passionate about me.”  When we think this way, we are coming closer to knowing God as God really is: the lover of all human beings, past, present and to come.

We can be sure of this: As we present ourselves at the liturgies of the holiest days of the year, we  belong to the crucified one,  men and women loved by God, the Father of Jesus,  redeemed by  our brother and Lord Jesus through the cross, and called by the Holy Spirit to likewise love, witness and serve.

 

This is Jesus’ week of unutterable generosity.

This is our week to affirm that we belong at the foot of His cross.

~ Sister Joan Sobala

Defining "Descended into Hell"

Dear Friends,

Since the introduction of the New Roman Missal in 2010, the presider can invite the congregation to say either the 4^th Century Nicene Creed or the Apostles’ Creed, the essence of which goes back to the teaching of the Apostles. Besides being more ancient, the Apostles’ Creed is simpler in phrasing and choice of words. We seem to like it, except for one phrase which makes us frown.

Halfway through the Apostles’ Creed we declare about Jesus that he descended into hell. That phrase doesn’t appear in the Nicene Creed at all. What does it mean that he descended into hell?

Our question is modern. Hell, in our day, means only one thing – the place of eternal punishment after death. But for the ancients, the word “hell” had many synonyms. It was the grave. The Hebrews called it Sheol. The Greeks, Hades. These were different from Gehenna - a fiery, always burning garbage pit outside of Jerusalem – more akin to our modern hell.

But in early Christian theology, the grave or  Sheol or Hades or Gehenna, was simply the gathering place of all who awaited with some peace the opening of heaven by Christ. The great figures of the Hebrew Bible were there, holy people of non-Jewish origin, good people like you and me. Another way of saying he descended into hell is to say he descended to the dead.

Jesus came for everyone, scoops up into his divinely human embrace all who went before and all who came after him. Death would never be the end of life. Life would be the true outcome of death.

To say that Jesus descended into hell is to tell us something about that seemingly barren, unknown time from the late afternoon of Good Friday through Holy Saturday. It was not a barren time at all. Sister of Saint Joseph Eileen Lomasney offers us a poetic picture of this in-between time:

The ancient grayness shifted                                    And Moses standing

Suddenly and thinned                                                Hushed them all to ask

Like mist upon the moors                                          If any had a welcome song prepared.

Before a wind.                                                              If not, would David take the task?

An old, old prophet lifted                                           And if they cared

A shining face and said:                                              Could not the three young children sing

“He will be coming soon.                                            The Benedicite, the canticle of praise

The Son of God is dead.                                              They made when God kept them from perishing

He died this afternoon.”                                             In the fiery blaze?

 

A murmur of excitement stirred                               A breath of spring surprised them,

All souls.                                                                        Stilling Moses’ words.

They wondered if they dreamed –                           No one could speak, remembering

Save one old man who seemed                                The first fresh flowers,

Not even to have heard.                                            The little singing birds.

Still others thought of fields new ploughed         

Or apple trees

All blossom –boughed    

Or some the way a dried bed fills                            And they, confused with joy

With water                                                                   Knelt to adore

Laughing down green   hills.                                     Seeing that he wore

The fisherfolk dreamed of the foam                       Five crimson stars

On bright blue seas.                                                   He never had before.

The one old man who had not stirred

Remembered home.                                                  No canticle at all was sung

                                                                                       None toned a psalm or raised a greeting song.

And there he was                                                       A silent man alone

Splendid as the morning sun and fair                     Of all that throng

As only God is fair.                                                     Found tongue –

                                                                                       Not any other.

                                                                                       Close to his heart

                                                                                       When the embrace was done,

                                                                                        Old Joseph said

                                                                                        “How is your Mother?

                                                                                         How is your Mother, Son?” 

 ~ Sister Joan Sobala