Celebrating Epiphany

Dear Friends, 

Today is the last day of the Christmas cycle. We end this richly inspiring time in company with the Magi. It is likely that they arrived some two years after Jesus’ birth. Mary, Joseph, and Jesus had replaced residence in the stable in Bethlehem with a small house in town. It’s not clear why they stayed in Bethlehem instead of going home after Joseph registered in the census, but they didn’t. It was there, long after the shepherds had moved on, that the star led the Magi to “the house where they saw the child with Mary his mother.” Matthew 2.11

The journey had been arduous. Most journeys are. But the Magi had the luxury of going back home. Many journeyers don’t. 

I think today of the refugees of our day. Every continent has them – men, women, and children, fleeing from persecution, destitution, political pressure, hunger. The movement in our day seems to be largely from south to north. Treacherous treks on foot and across unforgiving seas.

In 2021, Pope Francis was drawn to the Island of Lesbos, one of the numerous islands dotting the coastal waters of Greece. Lesbos was a point of arrival, a holding area for newcomers to Europe. Pope Francis waded into the midst of the people. “I have to see your face,” he told one after another. “That’s why I came. I have to see your face.”

Who do you suppose Pope Francis saw, as he looked into the faces of the young, the mature, the old, the sick? He saw Jesus the Incarnate Word of God, perhaps newborn, but certainly the one who suffered, would die, and be raised up. Knowingly or unknowingly, the refugees live the mystery of Christ’s gift of himself to the world.

I wonder what Jesus saw when, as a two-year-old, he encountered the Magi. Were they swarthy? With weather-beaten faces? Could he see different ethnic groups and races traced in their facial makeup, their size, their bone-structure? In a sense, it wouldn’t have mattered, except that Jesus came for everyone, not just his fellow Jews. The presence of the Magi at the beginning of Jesus’ life was no accident, no fabrication of the evangelist Matthew. It was part of the truth revealed in Jesus’ infancy. He was for everyone from distant lands as well close by towns and neighborhoods.

To this first encounter with the Word Made Flesh, the Magi brought their knowledge and experience of life, their searching and their questions, their openness to the new and untried, their gifts. Isn’t that what refugees bring? Isn’t that what we bring to the beginning of this new year of our own personal journeys through life. In the wealth of our lives, we are more alike than different. 

The lure, the demands of our culture, the need to protect our own turf won’t go away because we want them to. Epiphany is God’s call to us at the beginning of this new year to stay on the longer journey to God, to peer into the faces of other travelers who are strangers to us and to find them kindred. To find them kindred, a star will guide us. We can trust that! God is faithful.

~ Sister Joan Sobala

A New Year--A Fresh Start

Dear Friends,

In the untouched freshness of this day, I wish you:

Holiness, unexpected but welcome in you.
Ample time to think things through.
Patience with your family in difficult moments.
Perseverance in important things.
Yesterday in perspective.

New ideas for making the world a more positive place.
Energy to meet the day, along with enduring commitments.
Wonder at all God has done and is doing in our midst.

Yearning for goodness, compassion, and kindness to flood the world.
Empathy with suffering people everywhere.
A heart that reaches out to the most vulnerable, as Jesus did.
Restlessness until you rest in God.

2 eyes that see more clearly the things that are worth seeing.
0 degrees of departure from the truth, that is to say: never.
2 ways of looking at a question, or even more.
3 new friends this year who will warm your heart.

And to be sure that all of this is true, real, and possible in a world of so many seeming impossibilities, keep in your mind and heart the blessing in today’s first reading:
        The Lord bless you and keep you,
        The Lord make his face shine upon you
        And be gracious to you.
        The Lord lift up his countenance is upon you
        and gives you peace. (Numbers 6.24-26)

~Sister Joan Sobala

He is Here--Merry Christmas!

Dear Friends,

We have waited and now, He is here. Jesus, the long-expected savior. He is here. Today. Now. He is here.

        In the face of hatred and wars that pepper our world, no atrocity is too terrible to stop Him,
        No Herod strong enough,
        No pain deep enough,
        No curse shocking enough,
        No disaster shattering enough.

        For someone on earth this day sees the star
        Someone hears the angels voices,
        Some have instinctively run to Bethlehem to see for themselves
        And their hearts know peace and goodwill.
        They shout out. Do we listen?
        Christ is born. He is here.    (adapted, source unknown)

With Howard Thurman, we announce:
        I will light Candles this Christmas;
        Candles of joy despite all sadness,
        Candles of hope where despair keeps watch.
        Candles of courage for fears ever present,
                    Candles of peace for tempest-tossed days,
                    Candles of grace to ease heavy burdens
                    Candles of love to inspire all my living,
                    Candles that will burn all year long.

From Pope Francis to us:
“God’s ways are astonishing, for it seems impossible that he should forsake his glory to become a man like us. To our astonishment, we see God acting exactly as we do: He sleeps, takes milk from His mother, cries, and plays like every other child! As always, God baffles us. He is unpredictable, constantly doing what we least expect. The nativity scene shows God as he came into our world, but it also makes us reflect on how our life is part of God’s own life. It invites us to become His disciples if we want to attain ultimate meaning in life.”

Last week I was in the locker room of the Bay View YMCA after a swim. A woman was talking about her mother, who has suffered from dementia for the last five years. “What is the best thing you can say about her life these days?” I asked. Her answer was prompt. “She’s happy. She laughs a lot. She can still see the humor in things.” Laughter is one of God’s unique gifts to people. Let’s use it on Christmas day. In the tiredness that comes on Christmas after dinner and all the family rituals are done, here are a few jokes to enjoy:

“Dear Santa, This year please give me a big, fat bank account and a slim body. Please don’t mix the two of them up as you did last year.”

“Never forget. Once you stop believing in Santa Claus, you get underwear as gifts.”

“What’s every parent’s favorite Christmas Carol? Silent Night.”

“What does Santa suffer if he gets caught in the chimney? Claustrophobia.”

“Prisoner before the judge. J: What are you charged with? P: Doing my Christmas shopping early. J: That’s not a crime. How early were you shopping? P: Before the store opened.”

Christmas awe and delight to you and all you love from our Sisters and staff.

~Sister Joan Sobala

Welcoming Jesus

Dear Friends,

On this Sunday before Christmas, today’s first and third reading, taken together, offer us a telling contrast between two men who were important in their own times.

Ahaz was king of Judah – the lower part of what we today call Israel – the area surrounding Jerusalem. Faced with a difficult choice, Ahaz refused a sign from God to help him with that choice. His unguided choice had ramifications for his people.

Joseph, the talented but lowly carpenter from Nazareth, lived some centuries later. He did accept a sign from God. It directed him to a decision that would affect all generations to follow – right down to us today.

Both Ahaz and Joseph were tempted to say: “Things don’t look right to me, but I’ll decide for myself what to do.”

Ahaz succumbed to the temptation. Joseph did not.

Instead, Joseph paid attention to the messenger who came to him in a dream. He accepted Mary and the child whom he named Jesus, thus laying claim to the child.

As the story unfolds in Matthew’s Gospel, Joseph’s fidelity to God, to Mary and to Jesus, is like a rock. Unshaken. I sometimes wonder if, in later years, when Jesus talked about building a house on rock, if He didn’t think of Joseph, the man who was rock for Him and Mary.

What motivated Ahaz was expanding his own power. But Joseph realized his powerlessness.

What’s it like to feel powerless like Joseph? We weren’t there, of course, but we know. We know powerless pregnant women like Mary, and indignant men, like Joseph could have been.

We know how hard it is to sort things out, and communicate when things don’t look right, feel right. We know how gossip hurts, and how people try to second guess what’s going on.

We know how governments require that we show up in certain places to do certain things.

Some of us know what it’s like to be without shelter at night or what it means to be threatened with death, to be refugees from destructive powers, to be foreigners in a strange land.

We know these things in our own world and in the world of the Holy Family. We weren’t there, but we know.

As we celebrate Christmas Eve next Saturday and Christmas Day itself, we won’t be just remembering in some tenderly sentimental way the events of Christ’s birth in Bethlehem. Rather, we will be called to welcome and embrace Jesus in our day as Mary and Joseph welcomed and embraced him then.

This week, all week long, let’s each of us whisper in our hearts or say aloud "Come, Lord Jesus."

Let’s Practice.

I welcome You here and now.               Come, Lord Jesus.

I meet You in the world around me.      Come, Lord Jesus.

I believe you know the depth of our human experience and don’t shy away from it.

Come, Lord Jesus.

I trust that signs of Your presence will be given to me so I can recognize You.

Come, Lord Jesus.

With people all over the world who weren’t there but who know You, we say

Come, Lord Jesus.

Come, Christmas in me and in my loved ones.

Come, Lord Jesus.

~Sister Joan Sobala

Accepting God's Healing During Difficult Times

Dear Friends,

During my parish ministry days, when I was free to do so, I often moved to the back of the church as weekend liturgies were concluding. Being there gave me a chance to spend a moment with people who were leaving early for whatever reason. One day, an older woman was hurrying out. “I’ve got to get home to John,” she stage-whispered. “You know, my husband. He’s got Parkinson’s and stays in bed until I get home from church. I worry when I am apart from him.”

There’s a connection this weekend between John the Baptist in prison and the woman at the back of the church. Both were anxious.

John had worked hard to live out his call. He prepared carefully, preached faithfully, and called people to repent and live close to God. Now, in prison, he was caught between King Herod’s wrath and his own personal anxiety over his mission: a rock and a hard place.

Was Jesus the one?
Had he expected too much of Jesus?
Had he, John the Baptist, made a mistake?
Had he used his energies for nothing?
Was it too late to pull out?

John, in this passage, was more deeply threatened by the anxiety in his own mind than by Herod.

The woman with the sick husband was also anxious. She could have stayed to the end of Mass and had a few strengthening words with other parishioners, but she was driven to go home without these boosts to her life. You and I know her anxiety, John’s anxiety, even though ours may take a different form.

John, we may recall, was the son of aged parents. We don’t know how many years he had them both, whether he was torn between the care they required and his mission. If he was so torn, many of us know what that’s like, especially during the holidays, the demands of family on us seem to escalate.

Combing the Gospels, we don’t see any evidence that John sat and stewed in his anxiety. Instead, he sent messages out to Jesus: Are you the one who is to come or should we look for another?

Caught up as we are in the press of daily life, with its unpredictable mix of the expected and unexpected demands, we would do well to ask Jesus the same question: Are you the one who is to come, or should I look for another?

If He is indeed the one, then He will help us to see, hear, touch others who need us and be touched in return. He is the one who raises us up when we feel dead inside, overwhelmed by work or by dread. He is the one who sets the poor before us, helps us to understand how we can use our best gifts generously for those who need them. And when we are sick or a caregiver of the sick, He is the one who offers us patience and strength to see us through with steadfast love.

When we feel trapped by life or even by the most joyous season of Christmas, Jesus is the one who offers us both healing and blessing. Let Him. Let God be the one who lifts us up.

In the end, we may still be between a rock and a hard place. We may not know how to meet these demanding holidays, but we can still go forward, because, like John, we can trust that God partners with us in all we try to be and do. With Him, we can trust that what we do is not in vain.

~Sister Joan Sobala

Being Steadfast

Dear Friends,

On this Second Sunday of Advent, we ask the great “how to” question. How do we shape and reshape our adult lives to live meaningfully with God and one another? Paul’s letter to the Romans holds up two virtues to cultivate to make this reshaping possible. They are steadfastness and encouragement.

Steadfastness means keeping on. Sometimes the word “patience” is used in place of steadfastness, but patience has a connotation of being temporary: “I am putting up with this person, this situation now – but not for long.” Patience is not as rich a word as steadfastness.

One ingredient in being steadfast is the capacity to work at seemingly impossible tasks: Smaller Ukraine holding off Russia for over 270 days of conflict; beating COVID-19; therapists working with the paralyzed to get them walking again.

Today’s first reading from Isaiah describes the peaceable kingdom through a variety of impossible images: the baby playing in the cobra’s den; the wolf and the lamb laying down together in harmony. For some, these images get dismissed as fantasy. Get real! Everyone knows a lamb in the wolf’s lair is lunch!

But look: In 1988, who would have imagined that the following year, the Berlin Wall would be torn down. In 1990, who would have thought a Black South African would be the nation’s president, or in the United States in 2009, who would have thought we would also have a Black president.

In 1991, I never thought about being an ovarian cancer survivor. That journey began for me the day after Christmas that year.

Imagining seemingly impossible things is only one aspect of living steadfast lives. The steadfast also hang on when it would be tempting to let go, cave in, walk away.

Consider these examples of steadfast love active in people we know or have heard of:

• Caring for a loved one through an acute or chronic illness
• Believing in one’s call from God when others do not
• Seeing an endpoint and working toward it when others deny the endpoint exists
• Wholeheartedly serving others who have no familial or personal claim (Think of hospice workers, or government professionals who work behind the scenes preparing for peace accords and breakthroughs.)
• Musicians and artists who see creations no one seems to cherish
• Those who work at tasks which are greater than their lives, with no expectation of seeing outcomes.

John the Baptist, the dominant figure in today’s Gospel and next week’s as well, was certainly an example of steadfast love. His vision of God’s reign led him to preach and act and he could not be dissuaded even though his words and deeds led to his death.

Being steadfast, though, is no easy thing. Some days, the vision is dim or energy wanes. It’s then that encouragement is needed. The kind word, walking alongside the person can bring an infusion of energy. You and I need to be God-reminders for the steadfast, even as others are for us.

Two further brief thoughts about being steadfast: First, we are not born steadfast. We become steadfast through practice, and we learn its meaning and value from others. Secondly, not every life situation requires that we remain steadfast. There is no virtue in continuing in a situation where life is destroyed rather than fostered. Cut loose, for the sake of life.

The Advent figures of John the Baptist, Mary and Joseph accompany us through these weeks. They encourage us in our Advent-mindedness. “Believe,” they tell us. “Believe that you are capable of being steadfast and encouraging. Believe that Emmanuel, God with Us, is indeed with us in our gloom and glory.”

~Sister Joan Sobala

Welcoming God into Our World

Dear Friends,

Advent begins today. The way the season is laid out, the first two weeks invite us to concentrate on the big picture – the coming of God into our world. The last two weeks immerse us in the more familiar way of celebrating Advent, namely in preparation for the well-known, well-loved coming of Christ at the stable in Bethlehem.

Another way to describe Advent is to emphasize that our God comes and continues to come into our adult world – to meet us wherever we are and to enfold us in love as we live our topsy-turvy lives.

The Dominican Herbert McCabe writes in a compelling way about this very contemporary coming, albeit in non-inclusive language: “God’s way is very much simpler than our ways. He doesn’t have our complications. He is just simply in love with us. Not just with some of us, not just with saints or people who try to be good, but with absolutely everybody: with liars and murderers, with traitors and rapists, with the greedy, the arrogant, the inconsiderate, with prime ministers and priests and policemen. He loves us all. And not in some general way. It is not a question of some vague warm feeling for humanity, for the whole human race. He loves each of us intimately and personally – more intimately and personally than we can love ourselves. He is more personally concerned for our good and happiness than we can be for ourselves.” (God, Christ and Us, p.26)

God is in love with us now, in our adult lives, as we are, where we are, however we face the future. But we are not easily convinced.

"There are certain questions we should ask ourselves, particularly during the Advent and Christmas seasons. Born 2,000 years after Christ…when we talk about God’s coming, do we not focus exclusively on the tiny babe born long ago?... Do we scan the horizons of our world for Christ’s coming, or have we locked God up in the prism of a bygone past?

"In our personal religious life, we are tempted to dwell on our childhood and our youthful enthusiasm, and we never really grow up. We surreptitiously undermine the possibility of a truly adult life. We give God no chance to exercise His initiative. We do not allow Him to reveal Himself in ways that would make Him credible as the God of adult life. We would like to overlook the divine advent yet to come.” (Johannes Baptist Metz, The Advent of God, pp.10,12)

Beginning today, we can take a fresh plunge into Advent. What one practice can you, can I, initiate to welcome God into our messy, much-loved world?

Perhaps it can be as simple as praying daily the last words of the New Testament. At the end of the Book of Revelation, we read, “Yes, I am coming soon,” and the reply “Amen! Come Lord Jesus!”

Amen!             Amen!             Amen!             Come, Lord Jesus!           Come!

~Sister Joan Sobala