Saying Yes to God

Dear Friends,

I’m always glad when Pentecost falls during May, because May is dedicated to Mary, and Mary and the Holy Spirit belong together like water and wine, like bread and butter.

When we look at the lovely statues of Mary in our churches, she is always pictured as young, with a seamless serene, beautiful face. But have you ever seen a statue of the Mary of Pentecost -- the older Mary with strands of gray in her hair, and a face full of character, showing frown lines and laugh lines that only years of hard living bring – a face a bit more leathery without recourse to Neutrogena products!

Mary was about 50 at Pentecost -- give or take a few years. Fifty would have been old then in a culture and time when many were dead before 50. Early on in her life, Mary was overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, and then at Pentecost, Mary and the Spirit of God met again: good friends bonded by love.

Like Mary, when we are young and untried and daring, we are invited to say Yes to God. But, like Mary, once is not enough. So, when we have grown older – when we’ve had a chance to experience great joys or see our world crumble around us, we are again asked to say Yes to God.

It’s not hard to believe that, as a young woman, Mary was like you and me, expecting life to unfold reasonably, gently, easily, one nourishing event after another. But the wind of God took Mary and Joseph to far-flung places: Bethlehem and Egypt and Nazareth and Jerusalem. Mary was in Jerusalem again when the sky darkened on Good Friday, the curtain of the temple was ripped in two and misery seemed to mark the end of Jesus’ life. Mary was there. Did she recognize the Spirit in that moment?

Fifty days later, the Pentecost wind of God that blew over the disciples and it was not a gentle breeze. It tore down and built up and gave life and changed life. It took people’s breath away and breathed newness into them.

What will we do, what will we become when the ruah Yahweh – the wind of God sweeps through our life in these years after our first Yes to God? That is to be seen.

Meanwhile we pray: Come, Holy Spirit. Fill us. Open us. Breathe us free. Blow through us. Be in us. Make us new and ready to be one with You and The Risen One and The Father/Mother of us all. Amen.

~ Sister Joan Sobala

Celebrating Mother's Day Means Celebrating the Future

Dear Friends,

Mothers are the sine qua non of life. Without them, simply put, we would not be. Children honor their mothers by the creation of art pieces, cards and gifts, as only they know how. For their tender ages, they grasp the meaning of motherhood as best they can. We might not always appreciate our mothers, but with age and  experience , those of us who reflect on our mothers (on Mother’s Day or any other time for that matter,) have opportunities to think of the elusive depth of motherhood. 

Nancy, a woman I had known for over twenty years, died recently . I was honored to preside at her committal service in the family’s historic burial place. The family had placed her ashes in an old metal  garden watering can, which she had used for years  to nurture the plants she grew throughout the summer. The family had borne the watering can with its precious contents  first to church for the service, together with spring blossoms from her yard, and then to the cemetery. As we stood around the place of burial, each family member named one of Nancy’s qualities that they would take into the future with them, so that the gift of Nancy would go on through them. Those gathered spoke of Nancy’s balance, evenness, her generosity, the way she wrote notes to people at just the right time, her dependability, her faithfulness to God and family. 

Think about your own mother, whether  you felt “good” about her or not. What qualities did she have for you to emulate and carry into the future?

And think of Mary, the Mother of God. There would have been no blood of Christ had there not been first the blood of Mary. The Yes of Mary made possible the Yes of  Jesus .

We may have been fortunate enough to be born with the assistance of a nurse or midwife or a woman with practiced hands. Today we think of the children born to refuge mothers in transit, mothers in war zones, mothers  just  before they themselves have died, the mothers of the disappeared in various countries of our world. Far from being downers, thoughts like this allow us to linger over the courage, sheer determination, abiding trust and acceptance of women all over our world. 

Motherhood, rather than a private aspect of our lives, is a powerful public image of the human desire for a future. 

At its deepest, that’s what we celebrate on Mother’s Day.

 ~Sister Joan Sobala

Sharing Your Story

Dear Friends,

At the end of winter, we not only shed our heavy coats and hats, we emerge out of our winter cocoons. We gather for picnics, concerts, outdoor event of all kinds. Even as these things happen, we find ourselves telling, hearing and exchanging stories.

People love stories. They give us room to move around the speaker’s world. We also admit others into our world as we tell the story of an event, a beginning and ending, something funny, something sad. 

The best parts of the Scriptures for many people are the stories that embody God’s interaction with the big and little personalities of the encounters. One woman I know has paid much attention to the story of the woman with the hemorrhage who touched Jesus garment (Mark 5.25-34, Matthew 9. 20-22, Luke 8.43-48). The woman I know was there, in her imagination, mind and heart, at that moment when Jesus turned to the woman with the hemorrhage. He said to her: “I never want to see you grovel.” Ahhh, blessed insight.

Our lives are made up of not one story, but many stories, but we often pick out some stories that we tell over and over again. We massage them with words and pauses until they are finely honed. When inspired by another person’s story, we find ourselves remembering stories we thought we had not valued. The stories we hear on the news after a tragedy of some sort often give an insight into the way observers or participants interpreted the event.

Sometimes people use their stories to arouse sympathy. There is the victim, who downplays his or her own role in an event. The villain story turns the blame, the guilt on the other person, not on themselves. The helpless story leads the listener to conclude that the helpless person had no choice. Don’t fall in love with these stories, if you tell them at all or hear them told. Rethink them for the sake of life.

Instead, let’s let the stories we tell be sincere. One interpretation of the word “sincere” comes the Latin phrase sino cero – without wax. In ancient Greece and Rome, some shady sculptors fixed their less than perfect art pieces by filling in faulty spots with wax. Some purchasers were duped. Others, more perceptive, asked if the sculpture was sino cero – without false stuff. 

A good thought to shape our stories for the summer’s telling.

~ Sister Joan Sobala

Protecting Our Environment

Dear Friends,

Driving around Rochester these last two weeks, the sound of the buzzsaw tells us that city workers and private landscapers are out trimming trees. It’s a rite of spring, to keep our greenery healthy. Soon, volunteers will fan out in the community to clear highways verges and neighborhoods of litter accumulated over a winter’s worth of wind. It’s all important but is not enough. Recycling is important, but this, too, is not enough. The threats to our fragile world require us to pay even more attention.

Travelling through the Philippines in January 2015, a bright yellow rain poncho over his papal cassock, Pope Francis told his hearers that "man was betraying God’s calling by destroying nature.” Later in the year, his zeal for God and the gifts of God gave the world the encyclical Laudato Si (LS) also named “Caring for Our Common Home.” Peace, justice and the preservation of creation are three absolutely interconnected themes, which cannot be separated and treated individually.” (n.92) 

Talking to a group at the Vatican, Pope Francis put it very strongly: “If you are a Christian, protecting the environment is part of your identity, not an ideological option.” Strong words. Very  strong.

So now what, sister and brother Christian?
For one thing, we can encourage legislators at every level of government to do all they can to protect the earth, the ozone layer, the polar ice cascading into the sea, to negate climate change in a consolidated effort. “I am just a small voice” we might say. True. But choruses are made up of small voices. The writer Louis Savery invites his readers to practice transposition, moving our voices to a new key. The song doesn’t change, he says. We just sing it in a way that allows it to be heard differently. If you plant even one flower this year, raise your voice on behalf of the sadly changing world.

The Climate Summit that took place in Paris last November, just after the ISIS driven carnage there, was in mutual solidarity about combatting and ultimately reversing climate change. If we join our energies and voices to theirs, great reversals can happen. That’s the Easter message, isn’t it? Great reversals are possible. “Hope would have us recognize that there is always a way out, that we can always redirect our steps, that we can always do something to solve our problems." (LS n.61)

To get further dimensions of the issues facing our dear earth, go to Climate: Vital Signs of the Planet Evidence, and Earth Day 2016. Be immersed in our world’s needs.

~ Sister Joan Sobala

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