Staying Active in the Church

Dear Friends,

A short book by Bishop Robert Barron is making the rounds of our parishes. Entitled “Letter to a Suffering Church,” Bishop Barron lays out the issues of the sexual abuse crisis in the church. He taps lessons from Scripture and the history of the church to show the Church’s power for good in times when the power of the demonic has tainted and diminished aspects of church life. He points out how the church has been durable and enduring as it has returned time and again to the commitment of Peter in John 6.66-68 where Jesus says to Peter as other followers walk away: “Do you also wish to go away?” Peter responded: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” In the last chapter of this slim volume, Bishop Barron encourages Catholics not “to cut and run” but to stay and fight for the Church of Jesus Christ.

I’d like us to consider some practical thoughts, building on Bishop Barron’s call to stay active in the church. And I take my cue here from no less a personage than Eleanor Roosevelt.

Somewhere, sometime she said “Great leaders we have had, but we could not have had great leaders unless they had a great people to follow. You cannot be a great leader unless the people are great.”

As a church, are we great? I believe we are greater than we seem to be, yet many parish church buildings echo with diminished Mass attendance. Parents don’t encourage children’s religious education or other involvements for fear of abuse or even because it’s dull. Committees, parties and social justice concerns are scarcely attended, if at all. Give it all a second chance, just as each of us has been given a second chance at something important.

Eleanor Roosevelt would tell us that we are the ones who must have the insight and do the work of strengthening parishes. Instead of complaining about the lack of parish vitality, consider doing something about it. Pose the question to the pastor: “What would you think if we had a   ___or began a ___ or revitalized our ___?”  If we ask these questions, we also need to be ready to follow through!

And when we come to Mass, do we make a point of getting to know other (maybe even new) parishioners or the visitor? It’s been well noted that people do not come back to Mass if no one talks to them. Do we sing and pray with energy? It would make a difference to the people as well as the presider. It is not his Mass. It is the Mass of the community and we all share it. And why is it that we have the same lectors and Communion ministers each week – mostly women. Why do men hold back?  “Oh, I am not worthy?" we might say. But we are a priestly people and that means all of us side by side.

It is true and ugly and unworthy of Christ that a relatively few clergy have been abusive of children and youth. But it is not all of them. Have you encouraged faithful, hardworking priests by your words? Have you taken the initiative to invite them over for dinner or host a gathering at your home with a few others just to talk about parish life?

Rediscover the possibilities of parish life, the great works of the Church, like Catholic Relief Services. Make room in your weekly schedule to become Catholic anew. Start somewhere, like maybe with prayer.

~Sister Joan Sobala

Death is a Stage of Growth

Dear Friends,

 Death, that threshold into the unknown, has visited our homes  during the last twelve months, if only in the newspaper. We have looked at the obituary pages, and seen familiar faces looking out at us – the faces of people we have known and loved or known slightly but admired nonetheless. We’ve seen the faces of people who died tragically, and others who had fought the good fight against potent diseases. To talk about death before it’s proximate for us or for our loved ones is an important thing to do. For, when death is proximate, we want to deny it, to negate it. Death infuriates us, makes us fearful, absorbs us in its details. Death, when it is upon us or our loved ones, can hold us hostage. At that point, we cannot hold death  up to the light, examine it, study it, put it in a life context or learn the lessons that human history, religion and culture have to teach us about death.

The Rev. Peter Gomez says in The Good Book, “Death is not something we want to understand or know; death is somehow unfair, and in this country it is culturally unconstitutional, violating our right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” At the same time, individuals and groups are searching for ways to help people be healthy in their dying. We also find people understanding death in spiritual, religious and metaphysical terms and valuing these understandings.  Americans  are coming to recognize death as a life companion . It takes a certain daring to learn lessons of death and dying before one needs them.

Death is too important a time in our life to enter into without thinking about it – without preparation, but we are sorely tempted to do just that. I don’t mean the how, when and where of dying. We can fantasize about those things, but it’s not likely that we will die the way we think or would like. Instead, it would be valuable  to prepare our minds and hearts for a reversal. Usually, we prepare for the more: higher education prepares us for work, maturing prepares us for relationships, growing to adulthood prepares us to embrace a bigger world. Preparation for death acknowledges that one day, work will diminish, relationships  will  no longer be as they were. Our world will shrink, for as we die, we shed expectations, plans, the need to possess.  Preparation for death opens us to the paradox: less is more. Yes. In the face of death, less is indeed more. 

The mystical teachings of ancient lands and people as well as the Christian tradition all speak of death as a passage. Not the end, a passage. Death is another stage of growth. Those of us who embrace Christianity  acknowledge  the passion and death of Jesus as an indispensable part of our tradition. If Jesus had died, and that was all, our faith would be fruitless. But our tradition holds that Jesus passed through death to new life. We call Him the firstborn from the dead, and what was real and true of Him is a promise for all of us who live. Death is a door to life. It’s not an easy door to pass through. It includes suffering. But for Christians who understand the meaning of Christ and the power of His own experience, the only way out of suffering is through it, and only Christ can get us through it.

We hope we will die well. But that can only happen if we do sufficient “death-thinking” earlier in life. As the author Ira Byock reminds us, “The honesty and grace of the years of life that are ending is the real measure of how we die. It is not in the last days or weeks that we compose the message of how we will be remembered, but in the decades that precede them .Who lives is dignity, dies in dignity.” 

-Sister Joan Sobala

The Connection between Halloween and The Church

Dear Friends,

A neighbor recently set out on the landing the cheerful pumpkin pictured above. The pumpkin glows in the darkness, shiny with some interior beauty. It's loveliness conveys itself to the viewer, offering memories of Halloweens gone by and the tenuous contemporary cultural connection of Halloween to the liturgical life of our church. Halloween stands as first in the trilogy "All Saints’ Eve/All Saints Day/the Day of the Dead.”  Let’s wander over these three days together in this blog.

Porches that welcome children who go tricks or treating often have a pumpkin prominently displayed, a funny, odd, sometimes scary face carved onto its bumpy surface. It’s a new interpretation for children when adults tell them that “Being a Christian is like being a pumpkin. God picks you from the patch, brings you in, and washes all of the dirt off of you. God opens you up and scoops out all the yucky stuff including the seeds of doubt, hate, greed etc. Then God carves you a new smiling face and puts his light inside you to shine for all the work to see.”

Ursula K. LeGuin, who died in 2018, wrote this in the last of her books of poetry, So Far So Good;

                                                                     All Saints All Souls

                                                         This is the day when the saints all go

           silently to church in France

                                                          And over the mountains of Mexico

    the bare bones dance.

                                                        Ghosts rise up from graveyard sleep

                                                          to follow the southward fleeting sun.

       It is the doomsday of the leaf

              and the feast day of the skeleton.

Personalize All Saints’ Day by making your own 10 saints to honor in the coming year: People whom you have known for many  years, or holy people you have only recently heard of. How will you recognize them? Here are some characteristics of Saints: 

• They live common lives and do common things with uncommon generosity
• Practice some restraint and courage
• Take God more seriously and themselves less so
• Care for others and treat them with dignity
• Take hope by the hand and never let go.

Your ten saints acknowledged by the Church for their holiness (All Saints Day) or the ones whose truth you have known in your lifetime (All Saints Day 2, commonly known as All Souls Day) will be your friends this year in a new and hopefully lasting way...

Celebrate these three days with all to whom we belong in the communion of saints.

-Sister Joan Sobala

A Lesson in Constancy

Dear Friends,

Today’s first and third liturgical reading go together like peanut butter and jelly.  It’s a no-brainer, but don’t let that make you think that their message is easy to live out.

Both Moses in the first reading and the woman who came to the judge over and over again about her claim are persistent. 

In modern terms, persistence means:

                                Hang in there!

                                Don’t let up seeking justice.

                                If you believe you know truth and right, live by that belief.

Let’s take a look at the key figures we meet today.

Consider Moses. Forget the fact that he is presiding over a battle and just concentrate on the man for a moment – this leader of a ragtag band of Hebrews making their way to the promised land. As their leader, Moses' part in the day’s events was to keep his arms raised in prayer over the battlefield. He couldn’t do it. We couldn’t do it.

Go into the kitchen and set the timer on the stove for five minutes. Extend your arms for that whole time. Is that hard to do? No! It’s impossible !  Moses, the leader, needed help. The future of Israel depended on it. Once Aaron and Hur figured out what they had to do, the leader got the help he needed.. Aaron and Hur stood on either side of Moses to hold his arms raised. Only then could victory be achieved.

And then there is the widow in the Gospel .She didn’t have an advocate, no power to bribe, cajole or force, but she didn’t fear the judge who kept denying her justice. She simply wore him down by her persistence. She was undaunted in her tenacity. She wanted what she needed enough to stay the course. She believed in her cause. The judge, on the other hand, depended on his authority. It was not enough. Justice has a way of making us determined in a way that enfeebles authority which is not based on justice.

What’s in these readings for us?

Perseverance needs to be relentless, but often needs assistance. Do you need help to persevere? Are you aware of others who need help in order to persevere?

No leader can lead alone. If we are the leader, reach out to the community for help. If we are in the community, work with the leader to achieve the desired goal.

As Paul counsels Timothy in the second reading ,be constant in season and out of season, when convenient or inconvenient.  Only this constancy will achieve the desired goal.

-Sister Joan Sobala

 

The Meaning of Happiness to a Catholic Christian

Dear Friends,

Someone suggested  recently  that I should do a blog on happiness and the meaning of  happiness in the life of a Catholic Christian. Just to see if people are interested in that topic, I googled “happiness” and found that the site had had 899,000,000 hits.  Are people interested or what? The web tells us that the pursuit of happiness has sped up in the last ten  years,  that it is global in scope, and that it is at the very top of human desires and needs.

Among the ancients, the Jewish mentality was that happiness and blessedness are equivalent  terms . People  were  happy or blessed  if they  had good health, many children and success in their economic lives. The danger then, as now, was that people’s attitude toward happiness could be completely self-centered: happiness is when things are going my way.

For Jesus, who stood tall among the ancients, happy and blessed also were interchangeable words with this difference:  The person blessed by God was happy. In both word and parable, Jesus also conveys that happiness is not what we expect.

Jesus engaged life on life’s terms. He reinforced, rubbed, disagreed, supplemented what he saw and hear. He engaged in prayer and in life’s incongruities. He became an expert in discovering the good in every person. With Jesus, no one was ever categorically excluded from happiness.

In the Gospel,   those who suffered had an opening to Jesus. Ironically, happiness came through suffering. Think of the woman with the hemorrhage in Mark 6 and Bartimaeus  in Mark 10. Happy were the people who sought for others, for then,  they  themselves  received. Remember the Syrophoenician woman in Matthew 15 and the Father with the demonic son in Matthew 18.  They came to Jesus on behalf of their children, and they were rendered happy. Happy also were the people whose possessions did not possess them Contrast Zacchaeus, who gave away generously once he met Jesus, with the rich young man who went away saddened because he couldn’t let go of what he had.

Some translations of the Beatitudes in Matthew 5 render them “Blessed are they”, while others say “Happy are they”. (The original Aramaic is “Mature are they” … but that’s for another time.) What Jesus is saying, in effect is Blessed are people who are good, whose hand does not strike, whose mouth does not betray. Blessed are the merciful, those who comfort others, help and tolerate each other. Blessed are those who do not give way to dominant powers, those who let go of power and those who, without restraint, speak and love everything that lives. The beatitudes contain and reveal such depths of happiness that we can see in them layer after layer of meaning.

The great Mohandas  Gandhi studied both Jesus and humanity. From these sources, he concluded that happiness is when what you think, what you say and what you do are in harmony.

May harmony and happiness be yours today, and may you share it with others.

-Sister Joan Sobala

The Message of Easter

Dear Friends,

It is easy for us to forget that the message of Easter is for all seasons and not just springtime. Even now, as we glory in the fall season with the harshness of winter not far behind, we would do well to keep Easter at the heart of our being and doing. Easter is the culmination of a battle between life and death. In Jesus, we know that life wins out, but in our day to day lives, death challenges us mightily: the death of our hope, the death of aspirations  any time of the year. and  ideas that have not yet blossomed, the death of relationships that are tentative as buds. Easter flounders or flourishes in our hearts.

   

This battle between life and death, for which we claim victory through Christ is something that  other  cultures find true in their own way.

The desire to live is in us, no matter what part of the world we come from, no matter what we hold in faith, no matter where we have been transplanted. The Irish poet, John  O’Donohue  wrote  a poignant piece about being an exile and then coming to the Easter moment of  belonging in a new place. I offer excerpts of it here, that we may read it against the struggle between life and death, and find ourselves encouraging exiles from other places who have come to our land to Easter here with us:
                       

                “When you dream, it is always of home. You are there among your own,

                 The rhythm of their voices rising like song…Then you awake to find yourself listening

                To  the sounds of traffic in another land. For a  moment , your whole body recoils

                At the strange emptiness of where you are…Nothing of you has happened here.

                No one knows you. The language slows you.
                The thick accent smothers your presence. ..

                The things you brought  from  home  Look back at you  out of place here …

                Now is the time to hold faithful To you dream, to understand  That this is an interim
               time full of awkward  disconnection. Gradually you will come to find Your way to
               friends who will open  doors to a new belonging. Your heart will brighten with new                        discovery. Your presence will unclench  And find ease, Letting your promise and
               substance been seen.

                Slowly a new world will open for you. The eyes of your heart, refined

                by this desert time, will be free To see and celebrate the new life     

                For which you have sacrificed everything.”

Easter is today for the refugee, the exile, the asylum seeker, the stranger in our midst. Recognizing their pain of loss, the deaths they have died along the way, let us stretch out our hands to them in love and offer them new life. After all, have we not also known the death and resurrection of Jesus ourselves?

-Sister Joan Sobala

Dear Friends,

Today in our Gospel, we meet Dives and Lazarus, characters in Jesus’ parable which, on the surface is about the wealthy and the poor co-existing in the world. But the rich man, Dives, is not accused of specific injustices, but only of self-interest, self-indulgence and…indifference to Lazarus. In fact Dives does not even see Lazarus, so absorbed is he in his own world.

Dives is like the complacent people whom Amos chides in the first reading. They were so taken up in their own pleasure and success that they were not sickened by the moral collapse of their country.

What does it take to overcome indifference to the stranger?  Work, concentration and  commitment  are essentially needed to become more deeply human like Christ, who never neglects anyone who passed his way.

Praying for a change of heart is the  indispensable  way  to  begin  setting  aside indifference and becoming conscious of the stranger, anyone whom we typically pass by. Here’s a prayer that moves us in that direction.

                Tender God,

                                                In the presence of people whom You know and love,

                                                Teach me to be a good listener

                                                To hear what people unconnected to us  are really saying,

                                                And not ignore them with indifference.

                Attentive God,

                                                In the presence of people whom You know and love,

                                                Help me to speak words that build the other person up.

                                                Words  of comfort, encouragement and hope.

                God who sees beyond our own limited sight,

                                                In the presence of the people You know and love,

                                                Move me to see beyond what I want to see.

                                                Let me look past no one whom You have put before  me.

                Compassionate God,

                                                In the presence of the people You  know and love,

                                                Let my voice be an faithful echo of Your own,

                                                My hand to reach out to heal as  Yours  does.

                                                Let me not walk past those  whom  You love,

                                                For You love everyone who comes my way.

~ Sister Joan Sobala