Clear the Roads

Dear Friends,

John went throughout the whole region of the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah:

A voice of one crying out in the desert:
“Prepare the way of the Lord,
make straight his paths.
Every valley shall be filled
and every mountain and hill shall be made low.
The winding roads shall be made straight,
and the rough ways made smooth,
and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” Isaiah 4

In this Gospel for the Second Sunday of Advent, John the Baptist calls for roads to be cleared, rough ways smoothed and mountains levelled. This call touches me more deeply this year because of the Thanksgiving snow storms in New York State.

The media shared the storm with everyone, so that even if our road was clear, we watched plows push through drifted highways. We saw drivers skid and slide and creep along because of snow and ice. We watched residents dig their way out the front door and clear sidewalks for others. We looked on as Bills spectators and two teams cheerfully coped with snow and a slippery field.

John’s words are a call to individual believers. We are familiar with our individual crooked roads and blocked paths. Our way may be blocked by discouragement and addiction. Loss or illness may throw us off the road or make it difficult to care for ourselves and others. A betrayal by a loved one may leave us broken down by the side of the road, in need of help.

John’s call is also a call to communities. A family may need to refresh their ways of reaching each other. A parish may be stuck in practices that block membership or community. A nation may need to reconsider exclusionary regulations that block the path for new citizens.

This Advent, let’s ask ourselves: What closed roads need to be opened? What crooked ways need to be straightened?

~ Susan Schantz SSJ

Looking Up and Looking Around

Dear Friends,

The season of Advent begins today. We usually think of Advent as the entrance to Christmas, but Advent has a distinctive character of its own. One of its themes can be summarized in two phrases:

Look up and look around.

These are two seemingly simple but actually difficult ways of living that Advent calls us to remember and practice.

In today’s responsorial Psalm we pray:

Make me know your ways, O Lord,

And teach me your paths. (Psalm 25.4a)

How will we know God’s ways and paths, if we don’t look up and look around? As a culture, it seems we have lost our daily breadth of vision. The ever-present in-our-hands cell phone makes us look downwards. People, old and young, walk down the street or in stores with eyes fixed on their phones. They sit at tables having a meal with others, while casting frequent glances at their phones, all the while missing the drama, joy and maybe even the goodness of life around them.

Arriving a little early for Mass, we tend to fold inward. We don’t see the stranger from another country who has recently arrived and is seated next to us. We don’t even say hello to friends seated nearby. In defense of our not paying attention to them, we say that we are in church to focus on God. True. But when we have a larger vision, we also embrace God within our neighbor.

Listening to people talk about the way they came to the voting booth in November, pocketbook issues were primary. I understand that. But was there room in our concern and our thinking for the big picture? Seeing more than our own needs can happen only when we look up or look around.

Next week, the prophet Baruch will alert the people to look up: “See your children gathered from the west and east.” (Baruch 5.5) In the Gospel, John the Baptist will appear, his preaching offering people a future beyond their imagining.

In the third week of Advent, we will again see John, this time looking up to see Jesus, coming to be baptized. Afterwards, Jesus looks around him, sees a desert and makes his way there, in order to keep his vision big enough to embrace everyone.

And finally on the fourth Sunday of Advent, we will see Mary and Elizabeth, meeting in joy because of the children they carried. Each could have been self-absorbed in her own joy, but as they looked at each other’s face, they knew, felt, intuited a bigness that was beyond them.

There we have it: each Sunday of Advent offering us a pathway to follow if only we look up and look around.

How about lifting our eyes, hearts and vision throughout this last month of the year to see the world in a deeply spiritual way, while a secular, end-of-the-year cultural celebration of Christmas would have us too distracted to do so.

Then, Christmas Day, when it finally comes, will become what it truly is, namely the beginning of realizing the many ways God-with-us surrounds us daily with love.

~ Sister Joan Sobala

Come to the Table

Dear Friends, 

We think about tables around Thanksgiving time. This year, whether we eat at a crowded table or at work or alone, let us name our past meal companions. Reach back to the tables of your past. Remember that everything happens at the table.  

Here is a poem by Joy Harjo, our first Native American poet laureate.

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.

It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.

At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.

Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.

We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.

At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.

~ Susan Schantz, SSJ

https://www.poetrycenter.org/at-table-poems-inspired-by-us-poet-laureate-joy-harjo/

Being Saved Together

Dear Friends,

Is there anything important in life that we have not received from someone else?

As much as we like to think so, the totally independent person does not exist. True, we make individual choices, perform independent actions and create newness in science, culture, business and more, but at the core of our lives, we are interdependent. In other words, I do not exist without a we. Today’s readings assume that interdependent people will be saved together.

Popularizations of Christianity focus on “Jesus and me.” The teachers of this way of thinking propose that our personal relationship with Jesus is all that really matters. Individuals as well as groups fight against the notion of being saved together. Some would rather be lonely than to be bound to others. Others of us fear being so lost in a community that our own personal efforts go unnoticed, unvalued. Still others fear that, in carrying others, we might get swept away ourselves. But we know differently.

So much of the history of our church has emphasized personal sin and personal salvation. In many ways, our church continues to foster these viewpoints. But there is communal sin as well as personal sin – the subtle or increasingly overt ways that society has of demeaning, denying, dehumanizing and destroying people. Sexism, classism, racism, spun out to the edges of life!

Communal sin is a reality. It thwarts compassionate thinking and action. It denies others the good we claim as our own. Only when individuals reject communal sin and move toward true reconciliation with others that salvation becomes possible for all of us in our time.

Today’s readings from Daniel and Mark tell us that as interdependent people, we will be saved together, not without suffering and misery, but ultimately, we will be saved together. It’s easy to recognize disaster. It is more important to frame that disaster in the hope God offers us is only together that God and we will overcome the threatening darkness.

The Letter to the Hebrews encourages us to

hold fast to the confession of our hope
without wavering,
for the One who has made us
a promise of life is faithful. (Hebrews 10.11-14,18)

As we make our way in life, we have a God upon whom we can depend.

~ Sister Joan Sobala

The Widow's Offering

Dear Friends,

Let us consider the gospel reading from Mark 12 that is assigned for Sunday November 10, 2024.

In the course of his teaching Jesus said to the crowds,
"Beware of the scribes, who like to go around in long robes
and accept greetings in the marketplaces,
seats of honor in synagogues,
and places of honor at banquets.
They devour the houses of widows and, as a pretext,
recite lengthy prayers.
They will receive very severe condemnation."

He sat down opposite the treasury
and observed how the crowd put money into the treasury.
Many rich people put in large sums.
A poor widow also came and put in two small coins worth a few cents.
Calling his disciples to himself, he said to them,
"Amen, I say to you, this poor widow put in more
than all the other contributors to the treasury.
For they have all contributed from their surplus wealth,
but she, from her poverty, has contributed all she had,
her whole livelihood."

The story of the widow’s gift is familiar to us. Often our preachers focus on her generosity. They remind us to live and give in the same manner. When this story is read at the time of a giving campaign, it may be used to encourage donations. Some homilists overlook the story’s setting, audience and larger context. A much deeper reading is possible.

In this section of Mark, Jesus berates those in religious and political authority who place unjust burdens on the poor. Jesus condemns predatory and exploitative laws and systems. This is not a speech about personal generosity. Here, Jesus is concerned with morality of systems and organizations.

When we reflect on Sunday’s reading, let’s widen our focus. With the widow and the disciples, let’s take in the surroundings. With them let’s ask ourselves some questions. What are the unjust systems we see? Where are we called to generous service? Where are we called to courageous change?

~ Susan Schantz, SSJ

Seeing Our Stories in the Trees

Dear Friends, 

One of our Sisters, Melita Burley, is in her sunset years. Back in the 1960’s, she and I taught at St. Agnes High School. One snippet from our many conversations which has never left me was her appreciation of the month of November. Finally in November, she mused, we have a chance to see the shape of trees without the mask of leaves. 

Poetic and true. Some of the people you and I know and love are also in their sunset years and reveal the shape of their lives as their own leaves drift away. Their beautiful faces are marked by laugh lines, suffering borne, courage remembered and God ever present. All true, but there’s so much more in our friends and others who are moving on. The psychologist James Nelson gives us an insightful image when he says “Aging brings out all sorts of contradictions in human nature. You become unpredictable…all seven dwarfs at once.” Which of the dwarfs seem to be asserting themselves for your aging loved ones? In you? 

Last week, Sister Susan Schantz in this space offered a similar message: this month, study trees: short and spread out, soaring and slender, willowy or seemingly staid. They will tell you about your parents, family members, long-term or recently-met friends, yourself. In this liturgical season, when we remember our beloved dead, it’s good for us to have other images of moving on in life than dying. One’s potentials and limits have mirrors in trees great and small – towering redwoods and stubby trees like Japanese maples. Look for trees that are fully nourished, grown up. Matured. Look for saplings. You and your loved ones are there. 

One of our Sisters tells the story of an ugly tree that grew in the front yard of the convent. Over the course of several years, Kathy cut down this tree to be a stump, but she could never seem to get rid of its roots. Each year, new green sprouted from the stump. Finally, Kathy realized that it would be better to cultivate this seemingly unwanted tree than to let it frustrate her. It is thriving and shapelier with tender care.  

What people in your life have you wanted to chop out of existence? Have you made peace with that which would not go away? Jesus told the story of a barren fig tree. (Luke 13.8) The owner wanted to destroy it, but the gardener said “Let it be for this year. I will cultivate the ground around it and fertilize it.” The owner agreed to wait. We don’t know the rest of the story, but the point is clear; accept what looks barren in our relationships. Wait. Let them be. 

In our current repertoire of hymns is a refrain that never ceases to touch me: “All I ask of you is forever to remember me as loving you.” As our years and our memories pile up, we can sing this song with more meaning. We sing it to God, to our treasured family and friends. We sing it to the people we have hurt and then prayed for endlessly. We sing to our deepest selves. “For age is opportunity no less than youth itself, though in another dress. (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) 

~ Sister Joan Sobala

Tree Wisdom

Dear Friends,

Linus is always ready with philosophical remarks. Falling leaves and bare branches provoke reflection on my part, too. What lasts? What fades and dies? Where do humans fit in the cycles of creation? What can I learn from a tree?

As a young teacher, I encouraged students to choose a tree to observe for the school year. I told them to watch closely. Each week they and I then wrote a few words about what we saw. Some weeks we wrote about what the tree saw. What season? Any changes? Any growth?

This chaotic, beautiful autumn invites me to attend to the growing things. Here is a 1928 Robert Frost poem that may speak to you, too.

Tree at My Window

Tree at my window, window tree,
My sash is lowered when night comes on;

But let there never be curtain drawn
Between you and me.

Vague dream head lifted out of the ground,
And thing next most diffuse to cloud,
Not all your light tongues talking aloud
Could be profound.

But tree, I have seen you taken and tossed,
And if you have seen me when I slept,
You have seen me when I was taken and swept
And all but lost.

That day she put our heads together,
Fate had her imagination about her,
Your head so much concerned with outer,
Mine with inner, weather.

~ Susan Schantz SSJ