Life Beyond Death

Dear Friends,

The November liturgical readings prompt us to ask: Life. Death. Then what? The answer to that question has changed in history as people’s core values have changed.

If you were an Egyptian monk three centuries before Christ, you would think of this life as an antechamber – a prelude. Real life would happen after death. Still, a person couldn’t just sit around and do nothing, waiting for this life to be over. So the monks took up basket-weaving, weaving and unweaving the same basket throughout their lives. In doing this, the Egyptian monks underscored their sense of the futility of life.

The Greek philosopher Plato spoke of death as the releasing of the soul from the prison of the body – not a very positive way of viewing either the body or this life, which for us can only be embodied.  

One element of genius in Judaism is that it did value this life, with all its challenges, victories, and defeats.

Belief in the resurrection of the dead emerged relatively late in the history of Judaism. Jews came to believe not that their bodies would be resuscitated or that their earthly lives would simply be prolonged, but that God would transform them entirely.

Today’s first reading comes from this Jewish perspective. We read the second century B.C. story of a mother with seven sons. Encouraged to remain faithful to God by their mother, all seven sons died, rather than abandon their faith. In dying, they reaffirmed their belief that they would live with God in a new way. To sum up what was taught by the experience of the mother with her seven sons, we can say Life is treasured. Death is a passage. New life lies beyond.

A few centuries later, Jesus would embody these beliefs in His very person, as He died, rose, and appeared to many. But already in his public life, Jesus dealt with the meaning of life, death, and eternity. In today’s Gospel, Jesus encounters a group of Sadducees who understood the resurrected life as a simple extension of this life. Thus, they told the story of a woman who married seven brothers successively, according to an ancient Levirate law. No, Jesus told them. This life and the resurrected life are different but related realities. Moreover, the resurrected life is beyond our imagination and inventiveness and rests with God’s own creativity and freedom.

Today: Life. Death. Then what? Life around us is so full of misery, injustice, pain, and cruelty that it would be unbearable if there were not more. But if life beyond this life is not merely a continuation of what we have been and known, then what is it? What can we say about eternal life, heaven, whatever we call it?

The first thing we can say is that Love Endures. We have only to think of our loved ones who have crossed the threshold of death. We continue to experience them through dreams, feelings, help apparently from nowhere.

The second thing we can say about life beyond death is that God’s compassion and promises will prevail according to our capacity to take them in.

You and I, all people, are destined for life. Believing this, we put aside the things that don’t matter in life, we put human cruelty and carelessness into perspective and welcome the conviction that we are destined for eternal life. We are loved by the God of the living.

~Sister Joan Sobala

Hope -- Rooted in God

Dear Friends,

November in our global north is a time when people enact rituals of hope. We plant trees, floral and garlic bulbs, oats and wheat. Into the earth they go, and then we give them no more thought, somehow confident they will weather the winter and thrive in the spring.

We may not make the connection between November planting and hope, but it is strongly there. We hope for that which is not in hand but will surely come. But only in God. Only in God will the fullness come. Hope is not optimism. It is rooted in God.

Recently, some of our Sisters gathered to talk about hope, to enlarge and relish its meaning for ourselves and our times. Here are some of our realizations to pass on to you.

Hope is the confidence that God will see us through to a fruitful end. The danger is in being more confident about our ability to see ourselves through, and not acknowledging God’s presence and action in the moment. As people of hope, we risk hostility and persecution as Jesus risked crucifixion. We enter into the darkness so as to emerge into the light of the resurrection.

We do see true hope embedded in human life in our times – the bright spot at the end of the evening news, the realization that no one really wants war. How the people of Martha’s Vineyard, exhausted after the tourist season, rallied to treat with care the immigrants dropped on their island. That was a mustering of hope. The many justice projects around the country that find evidence to make right wrongful incarcerations are examples of hope alive among us. Pope Francis offers his own encouragement: “We must fan the flame of hope that has been given to us.” And again, “Where God has planted you, hope.”

Yet the word “hope” is not part of our daily language. A prison chaplain asked a young incarcerated Black man, “What do you hope for in life?” “No one has ever asked me that before.”

Fear, the opposite of hope, threatens to overcome our land. The potential loss of democracy, human-made disasters make hope seem absent in our times. Around us, we find people engaged in “quiet quitting” looking as though they are engaged, but secretly are simply marking time. Inside, they are “away.” Pieces of this reality are in your life and mine.   

God, in Jeremiah, lifts up any of us who allow ourselves to be embraced by God. “I know well the plans I have in mind for you, plans for life and not for evil, to give you a future full of hope.” (Jer.29.11)

We enliven hope when we perform small acts of kindness, when we look and act like happy people (because, deep down, we are). To paraphrase Paul saying to Timothy, “Always be ready to give an answer for the hope that is in you.” When we listen to the community’s story of coming through difficult times, we see hope blossom. Hope is never complete except in God. 

As earth and sky embrace November, may the God of hope fill you to overflowing. Now go plant some bulbs or a tree.

~Sister Joan Sobala                                                                         

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