Gazing at Others

Dear Friends,  

Today’s blog is something of a ramble...It’s about an action we perform which often goes nameless and has hidden implications for others. I’m talking about “gazing at others.” To gaze at someone is to look steadily, intently and earnestly at someone, something. It is to look with eagerness and curiosity (New Webster’s Dictionary). 

Whose gaze matters to us? Whose gaze do we emulate as we look upon others? Whose gaze do we feel upon us? What is in our hearts and minds as we gaze at others? Or maybe we are like Dives, in the Gospel, who does not even see Lazarus at his doorstep, much less gaze on him. 

Ibrah X Kendi, the author who recently won the National Book Award, asks us to look at the “white gaze,” a phrase he took from Toni Morrison who says it is as if “our lives have no meaning, no depth without the white gaze.” Kendi goes on to enlarge that phrase “white gaze.” “When internalized by Black people, the white gaze functions as a pair of glasses binding our eyes and thereby our very being...The white gaze positions white people as the perpetual main character of Black life and thought.”  

There is the white gaze, the male gaze that pins a woman as being in a particular place, the gaze of the monied 1% whose demands accept no counterproposal, the gaze of arrogance or self-centeredness. 

In Mark 10.17-22, a wealthy young man ran up and knelt before Jesus and asked him, “Good master, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” You can read the ensuing conversation for yourself, but pause at verse 21. “Jesus gazed upon him with love.” The young man went away, but the loving gaze of Jesus followed him, it did not abandon him. 

With everything we ask as we approach Jesus, He gazes on us with love. If we bring nothing, He nonetheless gazes on us with love. Each of us is the rich young man. 

In our day, do we focus our gaze on anyone long enough to know them and love them as they are? God gives us the call to do so in Psalm 11.4, “God’s eye gazes watchfully.” And then there is the example of Stephen, dying from being stoned in Acts 7, “But he, filled with the Holy Spirit, gazed intently to heaven.” Stephen, in the midst of his worst trial, gazed up to where he could find God and he was not disappointed...Stephen had the courage to die faithful because he saw the gaze of God upon him. 

In these early summer days, here are some questions to consider while sitting outdoors or walking on city streets: 

    Does my gaze maximize or minimize the worth of the person(s) upon whom I gaze?  

    Do I even see the stranger in the store, in the library, in the church, much less gaze upon him/her?  

    Is the gaze I rest upon others limited by my classist, sexist, racist biases?   

    Upon whom, like Jesus, do I gaze with love? 

~Sister Joan Sobala

Returning to the Pews

Dear Friends, 

Today, the feast of Corpus Christi – the Body and Blood of Christ – is like no other our Church has celebrated since this feast began in the 13th century. What makes this year so different is that, for over a year, we have been told to stay away or come only in qualified circumstances (distancing, masks, reservations). 

We stayed away lest the coronavirus come home to us from worship. Churchgoers searched for and found themselves celebrating Mass virtually in favored places across the country and across the world. Make a spiritual communion with Christ, we were told. That’s all that is possible – a spiritual communion with Jesus whose Body and Blood we have become over the years our being Catholic. 

But during this last week, many places in our country have opened up: beaches, the Indy 500, stores, all sorts of events and venues. Church, too.  

It’s time to come home to who we are in the depths of our being. Will we come home? In some ways, it’s more convenient to turn to our electronic devices while in our pajamas and pray at a distance, instead of dressing up and driving a distance to be with coughing strangers and friends in a church building that has nonetheless held many important memories for us. 

If we can, we need to return to the church building to pray shoulder to shoulder, breath to breath with others, to meet again people who, like us, value the Eucharist and our mutual immersion in Christ through baptism. We are invited to rediscover the community of which we were a part before the pandemic, and now, with whom we can share new, life-shaping experiences. God is among us. Fully present. 

Come. Come back. Come back each week to be with others who are also the Body and Blood of Christ. 

“Ah,” we may say, “I get nothing out of it.” Maybe. But being with God in worship and with our brothers and sisters in Christ means that we are becoming something more than a feeling of success or accomplishment or satisfaction. 

As a church, we believe that Christ is really and truly present in the Eucharist. His is not merely a symbolic presence nor is it a physical presence. It is the Lord, truly. 

One author suggests that Jesus might say to us today, “In the years ahead, I want you to know that the one who loved you still loves you. The bread you break and the cup you drink is your communion with me…the link that binds us together and makes us one. You share my life and love when you do these things in memory of me.” 

So come. Begin today and continue every Sunday if possible. Be nourished and take that nourishment out to others all week long to those places where we pour out our life’s energies, like Jesus, for the life of the world. Can we be less generous than Jesus, our Risen Lord, whom we receive in Eucharist? 

~Sister Joan Sobala

The Kiss of God

Dear Friends,

When I was a child, a couple named Fran and Mike lived upstairs from my parents and me. Fran was a heavy smoker from her teens. Mike worked in one of those loosely regulated chemical plants north of Buffalo. The best medical wisdom of that time offered them no hope of ever having children of their own.

When a girl down the street became pregnant with no husband in sight, Fran and Mike approached her. They would take, adopt, and love her child. So Johnny came to live upstairs when he was a few days old. He grew up much loved, doted upon, but Fran and Mike made one mistake. They never told Johnny he was adopted. For whatever reason, they held that information as a closely guarded secret. One day, when he was 25 or so, someone told him.

Johnny’s reaction wasn’t pleasant. He could not accept that this largely uneducated couple chose him in love. He felt betrayed, alone, without roots. Johnny raged at his adoptive parents and finally cut off ties with them. Mike died without ever seeing Johnny again. Eventually, Johnny became reconciled with Fran, but the scars remained.

Mike and Fran had no enlightened guides in their life process with Johnny. They simply chose him, not knowing his personality, talents, or potential. They simply embraced him.

This story is a fit for today’s feast, as our Church worldwide celebrates Trinity Sunday. Today, we celebrate no abstract, distant unfeeling God, no solitary monolith in the sky ready to roll down judgment to crush us.

No, Paul tells us in today’s second reading (Romans 8.15) that we are children of God. God chooses us and in baptism, gifts us with the spirit of adoption. We are adopted into the family of God.

Unlike Fran and Mike, who kept Johnny’s adoption a secret, our faith tradition from the earliest New Testament writings on proclaims we are adopted. We belong to the family of God.

We walk with God and in God. God is the Source of our being. We belong to our Creator God, our Father/Mother. We also belong to Jesus, our brother, the one who put himself in harm’s way so that we might live. We belong to God, the Spirit, our sustainer and comforter. God is the only one who most profoundly satisfies our hungers and brings us to completion. Today, we celebrate God, our kin.

The Norwegians tell a Viking legend to their children. The story is short but touching.

Before their souls became one with their bodies in the womb, God kissed their souls. All of life, the Norwegians say, is living the memory of that kiss.

Our own Christian tradition does not believe that there are unembodied souls waiting to be joined to bodies and be born. We believe that the whole person, body, soul, and spirit begins in the womb. But whether we are Viking or Christian, before the womb or in the womb, let’s think of the kiss of God being upon us.

Be still for a moment now and let’s bring up from our deep unconscious, the tender kiss of God. Savor it on this Trinity Sunday.

~Sister Joan Sobala

Accepting All of God's Languages

Dear Friends, 

Most often, when we think of Pentecost, we focus on the scene in the upper room. There, in the midst of their prayers, Mary and the disciples of Jesus experienced a mighty wind blowing, tongues of fire and the ability to speak unknown languages. All signaled the coming of the Holy Spirit. 

Instead, let’s go out into the street. There, in Jerusalem for the feast of shavuot (The Jewish feast of Pentecost) were Jews from all over the world, from faraway places with strange sounding names. They could have been from Wilkes-Barre, PA; Skagway, Alaska; South Sudan, Lichtenstein, Azerbaijan, and Mongolia. There they all were, caught up in the sound they heard. What they heard was the voice of the disciples speaking in their own tongue of the mighty deeds of God. Their tongue, which was common, ordinary, neither lofty nor honored in history and cultures. Here’s the thing about Pentecost. It said that people’s languages are important and that God is borderless. 

God is borderless, not confined to one language, nor one expression of God’s call, nor the covenant to be one with God. 

Powerful countries tend to use language as a weapon. You must speak this language if you want to be heard. You must understand this language if you want to move upward in life.  

In the United States, the official language is English, even though there are well over 100 languages spoken in our country. If you don’t speak the official language, you could be understood as subversive. A threat.  

*“On Pentecost, God gave the divine voice to a bunch of nobodies and a crowd of commoners. It was an act of liberation both for humankind and for God.” Those in authority have not paid heed. They have restricted God to certain languages to be used in prayer. God, on Pentecost, said, “Not so!” 

God remarkably does not silence the speech of the oppressed, brutalized and marginalized. We heard that in the trial of George Floyd. His words, uttered 28 times or more in less than 10 minutes were heard by God and bystanders that day. “I can’t breathe.” God, who gave and gives all humanity breath, cannot bear to have the breath of George Floyd taken away. Without breath, there are no words. Without words, people cannot share, cannot bear witness to God and to the meaning of life. *“When someone suppresses the language of nobodies, they suppress God’s word.” 

*“Pentecost was a rebellion against those who would restrict God to a single powerful language of a single righteous people or a single systematic way of looking at reality.  

“Instead on Pentecost, God spoke and the people in the streets understood. 

“They began to speak, too, in the tongues of angels and in the divine voice.” 

Nothing could have been more subversive, then or today.  

~Sister Joan Sobala 

*The quotes in this blog are from an anonymous, brilliant, God-centered source. Regrettably, it was not I.  

Walking in Christ’s Footsteps

Dear Friends,

Even though the feast of the Ascension was last Thursday, it’s not too late to mull over and celebrate the meaning of this event as believers in Christ, our risen Lord. In the early Church, Easter, Ascension and Pentecost were celebrated as three aspects of one event – the raising up of Jesus, his being welcomed home by His Father, and the giving of the Holy Spirit to his followers. Over time, Christians began to celebrate the importance of the Ascension 40 days after Easter as a moment of gladness over Christ’s victory and their own willingness to accept the work that Jesus handed on to them.

Two true stories show how people internalized this “handing over” of the mission of Jesus.

In her autobiography, Catherine DeHueck Doherty tells of visiting Jerusalem with her father, the Russian ambassador to Egypt. One day, her parents took her to the Rock of the Ascension, a place near Jerusalem from which Christ was taken up into heaven.

“I loved to look at that rock,” she wrote, “because it showed the imprints of a person who was standing on his toes on one foot, while the other was flat. I had one ambition: to put my feet into these imprints of the feet of Christ. But that was a bit difficult because they had this area cordoned off. But what’s a rope to a little girl? One day, I just slid underneath while everyone else was praying, and put my little feet into those imprints, one up the other down. People began screaming, ‘Look what she is doing! Get that child out of there! Blasphemy! Blasphemy!’ A Russian priest came forward and said, ‘Let the children come to me, have you forgotten that?’ He helped me put my feet into the imprints, as they escorted me out.”

Isn’t that what we are all called to do? To walk in Christ’s footsteps.

In 16^th century England, to be Catholic was to put your life in danger. To provide support of any kind to this outlaw religion was considered treason and punishable by death. Some did accept that fate, to keep that faith alive.

One such martyr was Margaret Clethrow of Yorkshire. For the crime of having Mass celebrated secretly in her home, Margaret was executed in 1586, at the age of 33.

On the night before she died, Margaret made one final request. She asked that her shoes be given to her oldest daughter, Anne, who was at that time 12. In those shoes, Margaret passed on to Anne the message of the Ascension.

Catherine and Margaret both caught the meaning of the Ascension. They embraced it. Jesus leaves us His sandals. We walk in his footsteps, and carry on His works of compassion, healing, justice and reconciliation.

Each time we act in that spirit, no matter how great, simple or unnoticed our words and actions might be, we do the work of the Risen Jesus – the Risen Jesus who puts the world into our hands and His sandals on our feet.

~Sister Joan Sobala

The Mother-Child Relationship

Dear Friends, 

Every day can’t be Mother’s Day, but every day we have a mother. 

If we have unanswered questions about our own mothers, if we doubt the word “Mother” applies to us in any way, we are in good company. 

Motherhood gives rise to a complicated set of relationships. 

Jesus had a mother, and we know that he didn’t always have an easy time with her. We have only to look in Chapter 3 of Mark or Chapter 12 of Matthew or Chapter 8 of Luke. In each of these accounts, Mary and his relatives came looking for Jesus, who was already becoming controversial. In Mark 3.21, the relatives of Jesus wanted to take charge of him, convinced he was out of his mind. But when Mary and other relatives tried to take him with them, Jesus replied: “Who are my mother and brothers? Here are my mother and brothers: anyone who does the will of God – that person is my brother and sister and mother.” 

That sounds like a rejection of Mary by Jesus – but it wasn’t. Mary knew about doing God’s will, after all, hadn’t she said “yes” to God before Jesus was conceived? Jesus knew about doing God’s will from his mother. So, in his moment, Jesus was telling everyone gathered around in what seemed to be a confrontation, that his mother fit the description of one who does God’s will.  

She stood by him as his disciple when other disciples did not. She stood beneath the cross and held his dead body in her arms. Later, on Pentecost, she would be the only one to have received the Holy Spirit in a second significant moment, the first being the annunciation. Mary, who had nudged Jesus into action at Cana, trusted he would be all who was meant to be, even when he seemed to be a failure, condemned and executed. 

When Jesus handed the disciple John and Mary to each other at the foot of the cross, he handed Mary another motherhood – the motherhood of all disciples, including you and me. 

I think we can draw courage from the way Jesus and Mary worked things out in their mother-son relationship, whether we are mothers, or we think of our mothers, living or dead. Neither mothering nor being someone’s child is easy. Sometimes it takes a lifetime to understand one another, if we even do then, but the mother-child relationship cannot be reversed or undone. 

Look at the painting pictured above. Done by a local artist, it is, at one and the same time, touching and humorous. Mama is kissing her child with ardor. The child doesn’t know what to make of it. 

In our own lives, what we do with our relationship with our mother, how we grow, given the mothers we have, is not just up to us, although it is in part up to us. 

On this day – Mother’s Day – let love have its way, whatever that means. Let the grace of God pour over us, so that we stand in the meaning of mother in the ways that best cause us to be amazed, to rejoice, to heal if need be, to accept and to let our mothers be who they are. Let us be who we are. Let Mary be our guide to a new depth of relationship with her Son, and our own mothers. 

~Sister Joan Sobala 

The Power of Being a Bystander

Dear Friends,

I have on my desk a photo cut out of the Democrat & Chronicle newspaper, 14 people standing curbside with the Cup Foods store in Minneapolis behind them.
            One couple held their child’s hands between them.

            Four had camera phones going.
            They were black and white – people who lived in the neighborhood as well as             

            passersby.

During the trial of George Floyd’s murderer, Derek Chauvin, lawyers referred to this group as “bystanders.” Bystanders are witnesses to deeds. Often “bystander” implies no willingness to intervene. They look. They see. They keep silent.

These bystanders outside Cup Foods did not keep silent. One of the women with a camera, Darnella Frazier, recorded the whole time that George Floyd was under Derek Chauvin’s knee. Her video was corroborated by video surveillance from across the street. These videos became pivotal elements in the trial. Moreover, several bystanders went on to be formal witnesses at the trial.

Bystanders are a repeating part of history. They watched the Armenian genocide 106 years ago, the Holocaust, the systematic forced marches of Native Americans, their relocation and massacres.

There were bystanders in Scripture. They are thus called only in Mark, Matthew and Luke. Bystanders watched Jesus’ followers untie the colt that Jesus was to ride into Jerusalem on what we call Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion. Two bystanders watched as a servant girl recognized Peter as a follower of Jesus, while he was keeping anonymous watch near the place where Jesus was taken. A bystander called out in Matthew and Mark that Jesus on the cross was crying out for Elijah. Singular voices. Who paid attention to them? The Gospel writers did.

No bystanders were at the tomb when Jesus was raised up. No bystanders were needed. This was a moment of faith beyond all imagining.

Christ lives, and He has not gone away. The Risen Christ has been with His people – all people – from that moment on.

Jesus was with the suffering Armenians, Native Americans, Jews and others who lost their lives in the Holocaust. He was with George Floyd. He is with us who have suffered at the hands of others. He is with us bystanders as we are caught in the presence of injustice.

When we come to the point of being bystanders, how can we take in and respect the truth of what we see and hear? These ways sound so simple, but they are arduous:
            Let’s keep Jesus in mind.
            Recognize those who are suffering as our brothers and sisters.
            Do what we can. Be ready to step forward, if possible.

            Pray that we may make a difference.

We can leave the George Floyd death behind us or we can understand that it is a part of our future – we who are bystanders who make an effort to see with Christ’s eyes.

~Sister Joan Sobala