The Gift of Blood

Dear Friends, 

Shortly after the human carnage in Uvalde, TX, national news outlets reported a surge in blood donors. Fifteen hundred in Texas alone. In some places, people had to be turned away because they could not be accommodated. When tragedy strikes, people give blood, which they associate with the gift of life. We may have not thought through the connection between tragedy and the gift of blood, but there it is. The recipients become what they receive.

Blood sustains the flow of life.

The Blood of Christ sustains the flow of life in the church and in the world.

A few weeks ago, a nurse practitioner from my insurance carrier came to do a home visit. After a series of routine tests, she wondered if I would allow her to take a test which measured whether there were differences in the blood flow in each of my arms and legs. I was curious, to say the least. Much to my delight, the graphs were identical for each appendage. The blood flowed consistently throughout my body. 

Does the Blood of Christ flow consistently throughout the church and the world? No. We know it doesn’t, because in some instances Christ is ignored, unwanted, misunderstood, rejected when understood. The whole church and the whole world are inconsistent hosts for Christ who gives us His blood to sustain us and His Body to nourish us.

How do we come to value and cooperate with the truth of Christ’s Body and Blood as lifegiving for us? Certainly, and as often as possible, by coming to the Table of the Lord. But there’s more. As we plunge into our lives, day after day, we can work politically, economically, and socially to stanch the loss of lifeblood in the many clear and hidden ways that happens. We can work locally, nationally, and globally to enhance the flow of blood to all those people and places where the need is greatest. In this way, we become Christ for others. We bring Christ to others.

The Body and Blood of Christ are always given together and received together. Wherever people move in the world, Christ is there, offering His very self that we might live. We give Him to others when we act generously, speak lovingly, look upon others with love, treat them with reverence. 

Today, may we accept the call to receive Christ, become Christ, and give Him to others without holding back. Christ says to us: “You share my life and my love when you do these things in memory of me.”

~ Sister Joan Sobala

The Many Guises of God

Dear Friends,

On a day like today – Trinity Sunday – when we celebrate the Life of Our God, think of stories you have heard or experiences you have had in which the touch of God has become evident. I can give you an example of such a story.

A few years ago, 4-year-old Katie was disconsolate because her dog Scottie had died. One afternoon, as Katie’s mother, Mary, was getting supper, she thought she heard Katie talking with someone upstairs. Mary found Katie on the phone, earnestly telling someone about Scottie. When Katie became aware of Mary, Katie whispered: “I’m talking with God to make sure Scottie is in heaven and that God knows Scottie is there.”

Mary took the phone from Katie, fully expecting no one to be there. On the other end was an elderly woman’s voice. For a few moments, Mary and the woman talked. Mary thanked her for her compassion toward Katie.

When the phone bill came a few weeks later, Mary found that Katie had called a remote part of Nebraska. On impulse, Mary punched in the numbers again. This time, a young voice answered – a man who told Mary that the woman whom Katie called was his mother. She had lived alone and was quite ill at the time of Katie’s call. One of her great sustaining moments in those last months had been their conversation, and she had since died.

The question is: who was God in this situation? Was God the woman who consoled Katie? Was Katie the embodiment of God for the fragile woman? Both, I think. Each of these people needed tangible contact with God. Neither was disappointed.

God, who is creator, redeemer, sanctifier, Mother-Father, Word Made Flesh, Spirit On Fire – God who is the fullness of relationship – is our appreciator, rescuer, our confidant in moments of crisis, our assurance that, over the horizon of death, we will survive. God is the surprise who comes to us in may guises.

Today’s feast reminds us that our stories are interwoven with the very life of God. Our relationships mirror God’s very life.

At times like this, when we see relationships between individuals, groups and nations strained and broken, it’s good to remind ourselves that there is one who is the fullness of relationship. Just as Katie lost her dog and the Nebraska woman died, the people of Ukraine will suffer great losses. Like Katie and the senior woman, the suffering people of Ukraine, are gifted with the presence of God. God comes to them in every act of kindness, every gesture of healing or support. God is on the other end of the phone, the driver of the bus, the kind gravedigger who gently buries those killed in the war.

So too with the people of Buffalo and Uvalde. Those who died by violence in these last weeks were not alone in their dying. God shielded them, held them close and now holds close the grieving families.

Trinity Sunday makes us pause over and look lovingly on God and hold God close. 

~Sister Joan Sobala

The Imprint of the Holy Spirit

Dear Friends,

Father Joe Brennan (1929-2008), Hebrew scholar, educator, priest and friend to many in the Jewish Community and the Diocese of Rochester, had a way of recognizing the movement of the Holy Spirit in places and stories where others would miss it. He was able to see the imprint of the Holy Spirit on our unfinished parts.

Once, in a homily at St. Mary’s Church, Joe told the story of a famous tunnel built in the time of King Hezekiah (721BC) to bring water into Jerusalem from the pool of Siloam. The inscription found in the entrance of the tunnel describes how the workmen started from opposite ends and dug toward each other until at last they could hear one another’s voices through the rock. Their way was arduous and as they dug, they almost missed each other more than once. They had to keep talking to each other through the walls that separated them in order to achieve their goal. In the end, they did break through to each other. And the water began to flow.

Father Brennan went on: “Let us pray that however impenetrable the barriers may seem that separate us, however many detours and zigzags we may find ourselves making, that we will not abandon the effort to reach out to each other. May we listen to each other through the separating wall and call out to each other words of encouragement and hope.”

I can’t think of a finer Pentecost story. What the Holy Spirit prompts us to do is to turn our contemporary clashes and conflicts into healing, revelatory encounters through whatever walls separate us from one another. We are called to put aside our own adamant convictions and inclinations and embrace the mission that the Spirit bestowed on Pentecost to all the disciples of Christ – to open themselves to God and one another in love.

If the world has ever needed the Pentecost presence of the Holy Spirit, it is now. As Mary Oliver put it, “It is a serious thing just to be alive on this fresh morning in a broken world.”

Today, let us conspire (breathe together), inspire others, and sometime perspire with sheer effort, that the works of the Spirit of Fire transpire to humanize the world we live in.

With confidence on this Pentecost Sunday, we pray:
        Spirit of truth,
        Whom the world can never grasp,
        Touch our hearts with the shock of your coming, and your disturbing peace
        Fire us up with longing to speak your uncontainable word.
        We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

~Sister Joan Sobala

Building a True and Lasting Peace

Dear Friends,

Our country marks the unofficial start of summer with this Memorial Day weekend. We especially love the playfulness and leisure, the family gatherings, and the very thought of a long summer ahead. The day itself compels us to think of wars gone by and cemeteries decorated to honor our fallen soldiers. We look at Veterans marching in parades and see behind their sunglasses the memories of people with whom they marched, the battles fought, the moment before artillery fire broke out.

But despite our holiday spirit, famine, fighting and the fury of those who would rule supreme in their part of the world still go on. Uvalde, Laguna Woods, Buffalo, and the entire nation weep for the innocent lives that were taken by senseless acts of gun violence recently. Ukraine is in ruins. The American southwest is devastated by fire.

On this Memorial Day weekend, what is our part to build sustain and strengthen a true and lasting peace, a world that is restored to God’s original meaning?

Remember the Prayer of Saint Francis? “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace?” That’s what I wish for your heart today.

Some contemporary of ours, whose name I don’t know, has rewritten the Peace Prayer of Saint Francis to include us grappling with the issues of our day. The prayer follows below, with the hope that you might even edit it more to include your own hopes and desires for peace:
        Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
        Help us to recognize the evil latent in a communication that does not build communion.
        Help us remove the venom from our judgments.
        Help us to speak about others as our brothers and sisters.
        You are faithful and trustworthy; may our words be seeds of goodness for the world:
        where there is shouting, let us practice listening;
        where there is confusion, let us inspire harmony;
        where there is ambiguity, let us bring clarity;
        where there is exclusion, let us offer solidarity;
        where there is sensationalism, let us use sobriety;
        where there is superficiality, let us raise real questions;
        where there is prejudice, let us awaken trust;
        where there is hostility, let us bring respect;
        where there is falsehood, let us bring truth.
        Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
        Amen.

Summer can be, for all of us, a further descent into darkness or a season that brings freshness and light, new growth in ourselves and to those with whom we come in contact. May we become the very encouragement of God for others.

~Sister Joan Sobala

The Evolution of Our Faith

Dear Friends,

I seem to be absorbed these days in thinking about our Church, its life and future. The Church means a great deal to me, because it is our common way to be with our God in these uncommon times. I hope it means much to you, too.

Today’s first reading recounts how the fledgling Church handled its first major problem: What were they to do with the Gentiles who wished to become members of the community? Should they be required to observe the traditional Mosaic Law? Should males be circumcised? Should women and men observe the customary dietary regulations?

Hearing these questions probably makes us shrug our shoulders. They are non-questions for us. But they weren’t non-questions for the early Christians all of whom were practicing Jews. These were new questions, previously unasked. There were no models to which they could refer.

But the questions would not go away. Real people were standing across an apparent divide from them. They would not go away.

The Acts of the Apostles reports that people on both sides of the question met face-to-face. Their efforts led to a wonderfully succinct statement showing the confidence they had in the Holy Spirit with them:
            It is the decision of the Holy Spirit and ours too
            not to lay on you any burden
            beyond that which is strictly necessary.

Talk about bold and daring statements.

The first things this bold statement of the Council of Jerusalem reminds us in our day is that there are very few absolutes in life. Christ’s Spirit had shed new light on what they had inherited. Some of it was to be passed on. Some of it was not.

The second learning from this text is that each generation needs to ask: What is for now and what is forever? What is essential and what can change?

And finally, connected as we are through the Holy Spirt, nothing burdensome should be imposed unless it is strictly necessary.

Today, you and I are pioneers, not unlike the members of the Council of Jerusalem. There has never been a culture like ours. We can’t look at our history for the answer. There is no exact model – nothing out there – that is going to tell us how to live lives that are fully in harmony with God.

We are creating a new faith in 2022.

As the first Century Christians did, we are called upon to address life’s questions using the values of Christ: unity, not uniformity, compassion, devotion to God, refusing to call anyone a stranger or outcast. As a church with a very long history of struggle with the questions of the times, we got it wrong sometimes. It sometimes took us centuries to get it right and apologize…but we have tried and grown. Other people have joined us in the exploration into living truth.

It seems to me that our most important work of faith is to hold for ourselves and pass on to the next generation what is essential and crucial and to let all the rest blow away on the breath of God.

~Sister Joan Sobala

Shaping Our Church Identity

Dear Friends,

On Easter Sunday and the first few weeks following, the Sunday readings focused on the event of Jesus’ resurrection and the early Christians’ experience of Jesus. Beginning last week, though, and for these few weeks before the Ascension, the focus changes to the impact of Easter on the identity of the early Church.

To put it briefly, identity is not a static, once and for all thing. Psychologists tell us that, even though a person’s identity is somewhat shaped by heredity and inborn characteristics, to change and to grow is essential to life. We welcome some things and reject others. We sample, deepen, develop, refine our characteristics.

The identity and self-understanding of human groups is also a lifetime task. One such group is the Church.

Formed by the presence and promise of Jesus, the Christ, the church has existed for over 2000 years. From the days of Pentecost, through the missionary experiences described in today’s first reading until that time when the New Jerusalem of our second reading has overtaken our earth, our Church not only has existed, it has continually been becoming new and hopefully more faithful to its founding impulse.

The Church has unfinished business. The shape of our Church, how we embody and pass on the heart of our faith and practice will continue to change.

Recently, parish leaders in one local community have proposed changing the Mass schedule shared between two parishes. The shrinking number of clergy and the decline in weekend attendance by parish membership are practical reasons for this proposal. In our effort to be faithful to Christ in these difficult times, we will need to know and integrate our heritage and our history with our present circumstance without fear but with great love.

In today’s Gospel, we hear again Jesus’ tender words to his followers:
            Love one another. Such as my love been for you, so your love be for one another.
            So must your love for one another be. This is how all will know that you are my 

            disciples: by your love for one another.

We can quote those lines easily – they are as familiar to us as the air we breathe. But this love of which Christ speaks demands our attentiveness. It consists of sorting out what is necessary to maintain for the sake of life and growth and what is not. It chooses life for individuals and groups and discards what has become useless or has ceased to engender life. It values the way the Holy Spirit works for everyone.

With tongue in cheek, someone once paraphrased a line from the Gospel: Wherever two or three are gathered in Christ’s name, there is … dissention. Maybe.

But for sure, whenever two or three are gathered in Christ’s name, there is the potential to become more clearly who we say we are:
            The Body of Christ.
            The people of God.
            God’s love incarnate.

These weeks, as we hear how Christ’s Spirit guided the early followers of the Lord toward a new, unfolding identity, I hope we can find encouragement and determination to believe that we, too, will be guided by the Spirit in renewing our Church identity for our time.

~Sister Joan Sobala

The Gift of Abundant Love

Dear Friends, 

Long before there was Mother’s Day, there were mothers…every day of the year…year in, year out.

Our society talks about birth mothers, natural mothers, foster mothers, stepmothers, single mothers and other mothers, e.g. women and men who have never given birth but who give life and nurture individuals and groups.

What we celebrate today is the motherhood of all nurturers: the motherhood of many including the motherhood of Mary and the motherhood of God.

There hasn’t been a time in Christian history that people have not been stirred to honor Mary. She is Theotokos, the Mother of God. On the cross, Jesus gave her to John and therefore to all of us as mother. (See last weekend’s blog.)

Mary is the first disciple of Jesus, our friend, companion, and model of how to say “yes” to God. She shows us how to be faithful to that Yes.

And then there is the motherhood of God. The medieval theologians Anselm and Hildegard of Bingen and Pope John I spoke and wrote of Jesus our Mother and God our Mother. Jesus refers to Himself as a mother hen, gathering her brood (Luke 13.34).

The mothering qualities we treasure in life are found first in God. If God is our Mother, then we imagine God when we activate the mothering qualities in our lives.

Mothering is arduous. Consider the Ukrainian crisis today. Amanda Taub, writing from Poland for The New York Times, reminds us that 90% of the refugees are women, children, and senior men. Ukrainian men between 18 and 60 had to stay behind to serve in the military. Life for these refugee mothers and their children is precarious. It’s exceedingly complicated to find affordable childcare and employers who allow flextime. How to provide?

The story of the Ukrainian women has its counterparts in Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan and Somalia, to mention a few other countries. 

Most of the time, our minds and our culture picture mothers as honored, well provided for and happy. We hardly want to think about the pain that mothers suffer at various times in their life. They don’t talk about it, but it remains in their memories. It is part of what forms their character. Remember how Simeon told Mary in the temple after Jesus’ presentation “a sword will pierce your heart” (Luke 2.35)? Mothers join with Mary in that piercing and its memory. 

On this Mother's Day, when we think about the Risen Christ’s gift of abundant love and we remember all the mothers we have known, we commit ourselves to that same divine love – love that is active, strong, inclusive and unending.

~Sister Joan Sobala