Accepting Ourselves as Sinners & Saints in Process

Dear Friends,

For the last 10 years, a professor of psychology I know has begun her first class of the semester by asking students, “What do you fear most in life?” Up to four years ago, the answer was the same. Death. More recently, students came to fear something more than death, namely failure…the failure of a project, a scheme, an idea or the anticipated failure of a marriage, the stock market, a career.

Failure seems to grip the American student – and perhaps the American public – as an ultimate thing.

I’ve read some books and articles that counsel how to minimize failure and ensure success. In common, these texts tell us we must rely on ourselves, sell ourselves. Not a bad idea, when taken in moderation, but problematic when taken as the only or primary way to shape one’s activities and goals.

Take as an example the Pharisee in today’s gospel. Before we write him off and judge him lacking, we have to admit that he probably takes his religious obligations more seriously than we do. Who among us fasts twice a week and gives 10% of all we possess to the church? Moreover, the Pharisee is also an honest man, faithful to his wife and unwilling to work as an agent of an occupying power. He is proud of all of this – and rightly so. Like a good salesman, he takes off before God can catalog all he says and does.

Paul, in today’s second reading does the same. Paul says of himself: “I have fought the good fight. I have kept the faith.”

The difference between Paul and the Pharisee, though, is the same as the difference between the Pharisee and the publican. The Pharisee stands with head unbowed. Paul and the publican, on the other hand, know and acknowledge that everything they are and have is of God. Willingly, they bow before God, the giver of all good gifts.

In short, the Pharisee is his own horizon. He could only find scorn in his heart for the tax collector.

The tax collector, on the other hand, makes no reference to the Pharisee in his prayer. He does not see himself in competition with anyone for God’s attention and love. The tax collector simply prayed: “O Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner.”

If God is to touch us in any life-giving way, we need to admit that we are sinners.

Once we acknowledge the sinner in us, we take the first step to being gentle with others. We are all frail, all hurting in some way, all in need of being held tenderly.

Today, we are invited to accept ourselves as sinners. In a few weeks, we will be celebrating All Saints Day – the saints who have gone before us, the saints around us, and the saints we are working so hard to become.

Both labels apply. We are saints in process and we are sinners.

To deny either is to shut off great possibilities for our growth toward God, great possibilities for shaping our world as a place of mercy and tenderness rather than confrontation and violence.

To welcome the sinner in us and the saint in process is to open ourselves to life.

~Sister Joan Sobala

Planning Our Remembrance

Dear Friends,

The harvest moon has waned and we are moving into this mystical time when nature, here in the north, has matured for another year. We, too, day to day, move on toward our complete maturing and the time when we cross over into eternal life. Then we will be finished. Not done, but as the Psychologist James Hillman suggested, we will be finished with the patina of a piece of furniture which has been rubbed with oil or bee’s wax until it glows. We are all moving on toward a time when we will glow with the finish that is unique to us. 

Some of us will pass in a moment from a heart attack or accident. Others of us will suffer long and arduously. We can’t plan when our last days will come, unless we are personally violent with ourselves, which I hope we are not. But all of us have time now to plan out how we wish to be remembered in our families and communities. We tend to put this off. We say: “My family will take care of it. They will know what to do.” But you know something? They won’t know what you wish unless you tell them and if possible, work with them now to create what you wish for. 

The pandemic has changed some peoples approach to celebrating the conclusion of their loved ones’ earthly lives, but we are coming out of that time into bright sunshine again. In the light of this new time, what do we want to reclaim from former practices around a loved one’s death? For ourselves, what do we want at our own time of death?  

To begin, believe that your life is worth remembering and celebrating. We can say that we haven’t been much or done much, but we have been all we could be. We have grown and contributed to life, we have believed and loved God and people in some way. Those who have accompanied us through some phases of our lives will want to say goodbye and thank you. Our Church, if we have one, has tender rituals to send us on and comfort our loved ones.

So, consider putting together funeral plans. Include a wake. “No,” you groan. “I don’t need that!” But your loved ones do, and people who have known you over time need that, especially if they can’t come to your funeral. 

I recall at my Dad’s wake meeting a tall, distinguished looking stranger, who told me that when he was a fledgling in the management of Bethlehem Steel, where my Dad was a seasoned man in the field, my Dad trained him in understanding the industry, and in kindness and justice for the worker. I would have never known that without a wake and this man would not have been able to honor Dad with his presence. 

Plan your funeral ahead of time with a pastoral minister from your church and get it into your paperwork for the end times. What readings? What music? Who to participate? Other details?

How you and I approach our end times and the celebration of our lives is a gift to and a lesson for others. Let yourself be loved and mourned over. Let others wrap you in love as they hand you over to a future life with God.

~Sister Joan Sobala

The Many Faces of Mary

Dear Friends,

Are you old enough to remember holy cards? Pictures of Jesus, Mary, Joseph or the saints? I had a whole collection of Mary images. She was sometimes alone, sometimes holding Jesus. These cards exclusively portrayed Mary as white, pink-cheeked, young, clothed in simple blue or white.

At the head of this blog is a series of images of Mary created by artists* from various parts of the world. Mary looks like the people of their country. Her clothes and facial expressions are theirs. These images say that Mary belongs to them, not as a foreign import, but someone God has given them to be the Mother of God as they envision her, their own Mother, their morning star, teacher, companion and friend. As with Jesus, Mary is not a stranger to people of any land as they grow in faith.

This month, October, in the universal church, is dedicated to Mary, and, to the Rosary which is one way we pray to her. The Rosary is credited to Dominic in the 13th century, who taught it to people who were largely illiterate. They couldn’t read the Scriptures, but they could memorize the joys, sorrows, and glorious times of Jesus’ life. Saying the “Hail Mary” on each of 10 beads, they could blend the scriptural truths of Jesus with Mary’s own life. Jesus would not have come if Mary had not said “YES.”

Pope St. John Paul II added a new set of meditations to the Rosary. Entitled the luminous mysteries, they fill in the gap from Jesus’ infancy and childhood to His arrival in Jerusalem, passion, and death. The luminous mysteries include the Baptism of Jesus by John, the wedding feast at Cana, the proclamation of the Kingdom, the Transfiguration, and the Giving of the Eucharist at the Last Supper. Popes since the 16th century have encouraged believers to say the Rosary. With beautiful transparency, recent popes have reflected on the power of the Rosary in their lives:

“With the Rosary, we allow ourselves to be guided by Mary, model of faith, in meditating on the mysteries of Christ, and day after day, we are helped to assimilate the Gospel, so that it shapes our lives.” (Benedict XVI)

“The Rosary is our daily meeting that neither I nor the Blessed Virgin Mary neglect.” (Pope St. John Paul II)

“The Rosary is a School of Prayer and a School of Faith.” (Pope Francis)

The unity of all aspects of the mystery of God in Christ is present as fingers, heart and mind focus on the living Christ. Some people carry a chaplet (one decade in a small circular configuration) in their pockets to pray during a walk from one place to another. Some people simply finger the beads without words.

Many contemporary Catholics have given up the Rosary as a form of prayer as archaic or too repetitive. It takes practice to reclaim this way of prayer, especially now in a time when meditation and contemplation tug at our prayer-heart-strings. In the Rosary, the words of the Hail Mary slip in and out of the mystery being contemplated. After a while, it works.

~Sister Joan Sobala

*Photo above: Top (L-R): Mother and God: Queen of China (Chu Kar Kai); North American Indigenous Mother and Child (Fr. John Giuliani); Vietnam Mother and Child (unknown)

Middle (L-R): Italian Madonna (Allesandra Cimatrous); Sunshine Mother and Child (Shijun Munns)

Bottom (L-R): Modern Day Mother and Child (Jessica Russo Scheer); Navajo Mother and Child (Katherine Schange); Black Mother and Child (Unknown) Found in Corpus Reports

Yearning for Peace and Harmony

Dear Friends,

Yearning is not an everyday word in our vocabulary. Though an uncommon word, deep within us we yearn for harmony and peace, the richness of life shared, those realities that unite us as one.

Every age of human life, from the beginning, has uttered the cry of Habakkuk in today’s first reading – the cities of Europe overrun by the Mongols, the Jews remembering the Holocaust, the Japanese who bear the scars of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Naturals disasters in our country and across the globe, the events of 9/11, the unprovoked war in Ukraine make people cry out:

How long, O Lord? I cry for help and you do not listen!

I cry to you “Violence!” but you do not intervene. 

Our own city is plagued by murders of young people, battered women seeking shelter, pedestrians struck by drug or alcohol-impaired drivers. You and I are the brother and sister of everyone who suffers violence. We share in the cry of Habakkuk to God for help.

We want the day to come when there will be no more racism, when we will all be color blind. No more terrorism. Life will be too precious to be bombed or otherwise deliberately destroyed. No more sexism. Women will not be demeaned, used or considered inferior and men will not be pressured to live out destructive standards or die maintaining expected images.

We yearn for these things and more. In the light of all the Gospel can inspire, we yearn for a day when our church will pay so much attention to the growth and needs of people in Christ’s name that it cannot afford time to mistrust its members – a time when the strife and clamorous discord that Habakkuk speaks about are gone.

Yearning. We yearn for human possibilities that seem impossible. Left to ourselves, we might despair and smother the yearning in us before our hopes get too high. We fear the apparently impossible.

But listen to God answering Habakkuk and us as well:

The vision still has its time, presses on to fulfillment and will not disappoint.

If it delays, wait for it. It will surely come. It will not wait.

Jesus, throughout the Gospel, gives us an unerring vision – to love without clutching, to live without contention, to serve without competition. When we feel the yearning in ourselves for these or analogous things, it is God speaking to us.

Let’s face it, though. We don’t believe the vision is possible or that it is coming or that we have what it takes to live by the vision.

But God knows us. God has not given us a cowardly spirit, Paul reminds Timothy today. Rather, God has given us a spirit that makes us strong, loving and wise. Gifted with this spirit, as well as a faith that leads us to do the apparently inexplicable. Jesus encourages us to be so/do so in today’s Gospel.

The yearning of God for us becomes our yearning for God. It is not born of a naïve optimism but of bedrock confidence in the God who says:

Wait for the vision. It will surely come.

~Sister Joan Sobala

The Wheel of Fortune

Dear Friends,

We know that Wheel…of…Fortune…is one of our country’s most popular, longest running game shows. Viewers cheer wildly when a contestant accumulates gifts and money, and groan sympathetically when the wheel stops at Bankrupt.

Know where the wheel of fortune comes from? It’s an abbreviated form of today’s parable about the rich man and Lazarus. Many early medieval cathedrals in Europe have a wheel of fortune sculpted around the rose window. On the left, ascending side, the man is shown rising to wealth and prominence. At the top of the wheel, he is richly arrayed, but then on the descending side, he begins to fall into poverty and at the bottom, he ends up upside down with his toes sticking out of holes in his shoes or perhaps with no shoes at all – a graphic reminder that, although the world flatters the rich and powerful, material well-being is not automatically a sign of God’s favor or approval.

The rich man in today’s Gospel is not accused of specific injustices, but only of self-interest and self- indulgence, dressing elegantly and dining sumptuously every day. His sin was that he did not even recognize Lazarus’ longings, and perhaps even more seriously, did not even see Lazarus. He never noticed that Lazarus was there daily.

Self-absorption – reaching for the top of the wheel of fortune without regard for the poor stranger is a biblical theme that repeats itself in every age. Think Scrooge, for example, in The Christmas Carol. And in our day, think of the news commentators who encourage us in this voting season to put into office whoever will give them more money, a better lifestyle. For them, there is no need to think of Lazarus.

Suppose the American public did want to be faithful to Christ’s calling on behalf of the poor stranger? The situations are complex and vast. We feel paralyzed and desensitized. What can we do?

For one thing, we can register to vote if we haven’t done so, and we can vote for candidates and issues that will support and benefit the common good and the poor stranger. Voting can be a way of recognizing Lazarus. A second thing we can do is in our daily world. We can’t end the war in Ukraine or deal with the flooding and fires that strip people of their necessary possessions, but we can reach out a hand to the stranger in our neighborhood, in our own homes. SomeONE. Do we do that?

Another way of reading this Gospel is to recognize that Lazarus is within each of us. Lazarus – whom we ignore or don’t even see. There is the rich, valued part of us that we present to the world and there is the Lazarus in us that longs to be fed and recognized – the part of us we do not cultivate but which will be blessed by God when we come face to face.

The Lazarus in us is the part that has not succeeded, the addicted part of us, the part of us that lacks self esteem or haunts us in the night. Today’s Gospel tells us that our God values not just our successes but our very neediness, our woundedness, our need to be fed. Today, we are reminded that God’s love includes those parts of us that escape our best efforts – the Lazarus within us.

So, we celebrate Lazarus today. His name means “God is my helper.” As we try to make our world and ourselves more human, God is our helper.

~Sister Joan Sobala

Enthusiasm for God and the Things of God

Dear Friends,

In the Gospel, Jesus draws our attention to a crooked manager who has a redeeming quality – namely his enthusiasm for his own life. In a moment of crisis, this man acts shrewdly, wisely, and prudently to save himself. Jesus applauds his initiative and ingenuity. The crooked manager in Jesus’ story wants not just to survive, but to succeed, even if it means to move to a new place.

Through this story, Jesus tells His disciples and us to have the same enthusiasm for the reign of God that the crooked manager has for his own skin.

The call to be enthusiastic about God makes sense. The very word “enthusiasm” means being inspired by God.

It takes a lifetime to learn and internalize what it means to be a committed follower of Christ – to be public in living our faith and personal on our love for the stranger.

In some people’s lives, the name of this action on behalf of others is called heroism. Some heroes give some. Some give all. Certainly, unremarkable people turned into heroes on 9/11/2001 as strangers helped other strangers without regard for their own safety. Often in the years since then, we have heard stories of rescue and courage in the case of one, two a handful, a hundred people in danger.

Where did this heroism come from? From somewhere deep within them – some hidden place not even known to their self-consciousness.

That hidden place was their life drawn from God, their life with God. Our God – yours and mine – is the God of everyone. Some resist or ignore God, others know God in their daily lives. As the renowned psychologist Karl Jung put it, “Bidden or unbidden, God is present.”

News commentators in the aftermath of 9/11 had said that another possible target of the terrorists that day was the UN building. For some reason, that made me think of Dag Hammersjold, the UN Secretary General, whose plane crashed in Africa in 1961, when he was on a peace mission.

Then and often since, I have gone back to Hammersjold’s posthumous book called Markings, jottings written from the depths of his soul, for Dag Hammersjold wrestled with God all his life.

His words are apt for all heroes and for our own struggles with God:

  “I don’t know who – or what – put the question.

I don’t know when it was put.

I don’t even remember answering.

But at some moment I did answer Yes to Someone – or Something –

and from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and

my life in self-surrender had a goal.

I came to a time and place where I realized that the Way leads to

a triumph which is a catastrophe and a catastrophe which is a triumph…

After that, the word ‘courage’ lost its meaning,

Since nothing could be taken from me.” 

This is the deep truth that Dag Hammersjold found in his being. This is the inspiration of heroes. This is the awareness that lives in me: God’s presence, bidden or unbidden, in me. 

~Sister Joan Sobala

We Do What We Can

Dear Friends,

Twenty-one years ago, the date 9/11 was seared into American memory as a day of violent attack, many deaths, courage and compassion. Stories about that day have continued to emerge – stories of not knowing what to do next, stories of love and friendship, stories that have rooted them in lands beyond the United States.

Michael Grady was a fairly junior Coast Guard officer in the area who took charge of a marine rescue operation as soon as he realized what had happened. Grady sent out the call: “Anyone wanting to help with the evacuation of lower Manhattan Island report to Governors Island.” Five-hundred-thousand people were stranded there. The only ways they could get off the island were by walking or by water. One-hundred-and-fifty tugboats, ferries, pleasure boats, yachts responded making the trip over and over again to bring people to safety on Staten Island, New Jersey and elsewhere. Later in the day, the same boats brought supplies to use at the World Trade Center – everything from bottled water to acetylene torches. People did what they could.

The play Come From Away tells the story of over 6,500 people on 38 jumbo jets that were diverted from their various destinations on 9/11 to Gander, Newfoundland, a town of about 10,000 people. Passengers were hosted by the townspeople who gave what they had and did what they could.

Kathleen Murphy was a native of Kinsale, Ireland, who worked for 40 years as a nurse at Lennox Hill Hospital in New York. Firefighters, fallen on 9/11 were brought there, and she knew Father Michael Judge, chaplain of the NYC Firefighters. Kathleen came home to Kinsale to die of cancer, but the first responders lost on 9/11 were still on her mind. On some property she had on a hill above Kinsale Sound, Kathleen Murphy created a memorial to the 343 firefighters who perished in the World Trace Center Towers. Three-hundred-and-forty-three trees of various kinds were planted. Each bearing the name of a firefighter. Later, visitors who came, including many family members of the deceased, brought photos and mementos, medals won for valor, quotes and recollections. Kathleen Murphy and the people of Kinsale did what they could.

        In remembering life’s tragedies, in going forward with life, we, too, must do what we can.

        When disaster strikes or enemies attack, we do what we can.

        When the call comes to drop what we’re doing to respond, we do what we can.

        When we think we can’t, we do what we can.

        When it seems that all we can do is pray, we do what we can.

        God is ever present, so with God we do what we can.

        It’s never too late to do what we can.

~ Sister Joan Sobala