Continuing Jesus' Work

Dear Friends,  

On Easter Sunday and for the first few weeks following, the Sunday readings focused on the event of the Resurrection and the early believers’ experience of the Risen and Glorified Jesus.   

Beginning last week though, and for the weeks before the Ascension, the focus changes to the impact of Easter on shaping the early Church. 

Christ entrusted to His followers the work He began. We see this in the story of the early church in the Acts of the Apostles and in the letters of the New Testament. 

That work is summed up in today’s Gospel, where Jesus gives His disciples one comprehensive, all-encompassing charge: 

Love one another as I have loved you.   

It takes a person a lifetime to sample, deepen, develop, and do what Jesus calls us to do in living out the one indispensable aspect of discipleship. 

We are on our way. 

Sometimes analogies help us grasp what the Risen Jesus has entrusted to us. (I found this somewhere but give it to you without quoting the unknown reference.) 

Giacomo Puccini, the great composer, wrote the memorable Madame Butterfly, Tosca and La Boheme. In 1922, Puccini was diagnosed with cancer. Undaunted, he announced: “I want to write one more opera.” So he began to write Turandot. “But what if you die?”, his students asked him. "Then my students will finish it." In 1924, Puccini died, Turandot was unfinished and his student took up the task. 

Turandot’s premier performance was in Milan’s La Scala Opera House under the direction of Puccini’s best student, Arturo Toscanini. The gala performance went on until it came to the point where the composer laid down his pen. Tears streaming down his face, Toscanini put down his baton and turned to the audience. “Thus far the master wrote, and then he died.” 

Toscanini picked up his baton again. His tear-stained face was wreathed in smiles. Toscanini shouted to the audience "But his disciples finished the music!” And they had. 

That’s love and dedication – generous and willing to pick up the unfinished work of the master – and for us, disciples of the Risen Lord, we continue the unfinished work of Christ. 

~ Sister Joan Sobala

A Book Full of Names

This Sunday is Mother’s Day in the US and I will leaf through my mom’s prayer book. It holds much more than its worn pages of prayers. I will see a few faded family photos and a yellowed Erma Bombeck newspaper column, entitled If I Had My Life to Live Over. A fragile bookmark is signed Love, Lila. That’s from my mom’s aunt, Sister of Saint Joseph Loyola Guider who died in 1948. There is an index card in mom’s writing, A Prayer for Husbands and Wives. There is a clipping of a letter to the editor written by my brother Stephen. There are death notices for my sister and my father. 

Mom’s prayer book still breathes relationships and connections. Her prayer, like her life, was full of names. She told me once that when she prayed at night, she would simply name each of her loved ones and ask God to take care of us. 

For many North American churches, it is also Good Shepherd Sunday. Like God, our Good Shepherd, mothers know us and call us by name. And, this Sunday, there is another shepherd on believers’ minds. By the time you read this reflection, we will know the name of the next Bishop of Rome. Let’s add his name to our own prayer. May he be a shepherd like Jesus, like Francis. May he be a shepherd like Brazilian Bishop Pedro Casaldaliga who wrote four days before his death:

At the end of the road, they will say to me:

Have you lived? Have you loved?

And I, without saying anything, will open my heart full of names.

Peace,

Susan Schantz SSJ

A Sign of New Life

Dear Friends,  

Sometimes my calendar is such that I need to write a blog a week or two before it is due. I wrote my blog for May 4 during Holy Week. Pope Francis died Easter Monday. I debated what to do. The blog I wrote is about Carlo Acutis, the millennial who was scheduled to be canonized on April 27th. The ceremony has been postponed until the new Holy Father sets a date. But I chose to present the blog about Carlo. He is still a sign of new life in the Church. 

Once in a while, I read two articles back-to-back, which seemingly have no connection, only to find out that they do. Your experience too?  

The Notre Dame Magazine (Spring issue) carried a conversation between the sociologist Christian Smith and the noted religion writer Ken Woodward. They talked about Christian Smith’s new book, Why Religion Went Obsolete: The Demise of Traditional Faith in America. Smith points to the fact that availability to a larger world through the internet has come to mean that the younger generations do not need organized religion to understand the world or their place in it. Religion used to provide these insights. Smith’s research says religion is deemed obsolete to achieve these goals. Today’s young people live in a world where religion is culturally unnecessary. 

Then there is the story of Carlo Acutis, told in the “Last Word” section of THE WEEK (February 14, 2025). Carlo, born May 3, 1991, died of leukemia on October 12, 2006. Fifteen years old. Carlo was known for his devotion to the Eucharist. From the time he was 11, he posted on his website stories of Eucharistic miracles he collected from around the world. He called his postings a "virtual museum” of miraculous events. Carlo believed he would not reach adulthood. The onset of his illness and subsequent death were rapid.  

If the Church is anything, it is thorough in its investigation of those who are presented for sainthood. This was certainly the case of Carlo. But the pieces quickly fell into place. “By 2019, Carlo’s body was moved to a glass-paneled tomb inside the Church of Saint Maria Maggiore….Assisi…A silicone mask of his face was made to cover up signs of decay… Acutis was attired in his favorite clothing: navy blue Nikes, blue jeans, and a North Sails zip-up sweater. He was the first prospective saint to be buried in branded clothing.” (THE WEEK cited above)  

Carlo Acutis will be called on as the patron of youth, computer programmers and influencers. 

One could argue that the Church is astute to present to the world as one of its own in the most dazzling sort of way a beautiful looking, contemporary youth who can attract others of his generation. True. But there is more. Carlo Acutis did not find faith, the Eucharist, belonging to God obsolete. He lived by these realities. 

Truth be told, many others of us also feel pulled, stirred, called by the power of God to be open about our lives of faith. For us, faith is not obsolete.  

In this Easter season, as we celebrate the Risen One among us today, as we remember with love, Pope Francis, we have a young friend who has completed his journey and stands with the living God.  

~ Sister Joan Sobala

Easter Sunday Homily of His Holiness

Dear Friends,

As we mourn our brother Francis, let us welcome his Easter words.

Gratefully,

Susan Schantz SSJ

EASTER SUNDAY

Saint Peter's Square

Easter Sunday, 20 April 2025

HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS POPE FRANCIS

READ BY CARDINAL ANGELO COMASTRI

Mary Magdalene, seeing that the stone of the tomb had been rolled away, ran to tell Peter and John. After receiving the shocking news, the two disciples also went out and — as the Gospel says — “the two were running together” (Jn 20:4). The main figures of the Easter narratives all ran! On the one hand, “running” could express the concern that the Lord’s body had been taken away; but, on the other hand, the haste of Mary Magdalene, Peter and John expresses the desire, the yearning of the heart, the inner attitude of those who set out to search for Jesus. He, in fact, has risen from the dead and therefore is no longer in the tomb. We must look for him elsewhere.

This is the message of Easter: we must look for him elsewhere. Christ is risen, he is alive! He is no longer a prisoner of death, he is no longer wrapped in the shroud, and therefore we cannot confine him to a fairy tale, we cannot make him a hero of the ancient world, or think of him as a statue in a museum! On the contrary, we must look for him and this is why we cannot remain stationary.  We must take action, set out to look for him: look for him in life, look for him in the faces of our brothers and sisters, look for him in everyday business, look for him everywhere except in the tomb.

We must look for him without ceasing. Because if he has risen from the dead, then he is present everywhere, he dwells among us, he hides himself and reveals himself even today in the sisters and brothers we meet along the way, in the most ordinary and unpredictable situations of our lives. He is alive and is with us always, shedding the tears of those who suffer and adding to the beauty of life through the small acts of love carried out by each of us.

For this reason, our Easter faith, which opens us to the encounter with the risen Lord and prepares us to welcome him into our lives, is anything but a complacent settling into some sort of “religious reassurance.” On the contrary, every day we can experience losing the Lord, but every day we can also run to look for him again, with the certainty that he will allow himself to be found and will fill us with the light of his resurrection. Easter spurs us to action, to run like Mary Magdalene and the disciples; it invites us to have eyes that can “see beyond,” to perceive Jesus, the one who lives, as the God who reveals himself and makes himself present even today, who speaks to us, goes before us, surprises us. Like Mary Magdalene.

Brothers and sisters, this is the greatest hope of our life: we can live this poor, fragile and wounded existence clinging to Christ, because he has conquered death, he conquers our darkness and he will conquer the shadows of the world, to make us live with him in joy, forever. This is the goal towards which we press on, as the Apostle Paul says, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead (cf. Phil 3:12-14). Like Mary Magdalene, Peter and John, we hasten to meet Christ.

The Jubilee invites us to renew the gift of hope within us, to surrender our sufferings and our concerns to hope, to share it with those whom we meet along our journey and to entrust to hope the future of our lives and the destiny of the human family. And so we cannot settle for the fleeting things of this world or give in to sadness; we must run, filled with joy. Let us run towards Jesus, let us rediscover the inestimable grace of being his friends. Let us allow his Word of life and truth to shine in our life. As the great theologian Henri de Lubac said, “It should be enough to understand this: Christianity is Christ. No, truly, there is nothing else but this. In Christ we have everything” (Les responsabilités doctrinales des catholiques dans le monde d'aujourd'hui, Paris 2010, 276).

And this “everything” that is, the risen Christ, opens our life to hope. He is alive, he still wants to renew our life today. To him, conqueror of sin and death, we want to say:

“Lord, on this feast day we ask you for this gift: that we too may be made new, so as to experience this eternal newness. Cleanse us, O God, from the sad dust of habit, tiredness and indifference; give us the joy of waking every morning with wonder, with eyes ready to see the new colours of this morning, unique and unlike any other. […] Everything is new, Lord, and nothing is the same, nothing is old” (A. Zarri, Quasi una preghiera).

Sisters, brothers, in the wonder of the Easter faith, carrying in our hearts every expectation of peace and liberation, we can say: with You, O Lord, everything is new. With you, everything begins again.

Copyright © Dicastero per la Comunicazione - Libreria Editrice Vaticana

Embracing the Risen One

Dear Friends,

On Good Friday,
Jesus was condemned to death,
His life was violently taken from Him.
Then Jesus’ body was laid in a tomb.
Protected by a stone.

But not forever.
Jesus, whose life had been violently taken from Him,
was remarkably, truly alive.
Our minds cannot grasp
the extent of God’s faithful love
in raising Jesus from the dead.
Dumbstruck, we leave it
to our hearts to embrace
the Risen One this day.

There is no neat formula to know
when or how we can expect to experience the Risen Lord
in our time.
All there is
is the quickening of our hearts
and the witness of others.
The pull of it.

The good news of Easter Sunday is that
God has interrupted and continues to interrupt our
sometimes boring,
sometimes difficult lives
with compassion and
unending love.

God interrupts power that seeks to destroy
and the forces of evil that seek to
overcome our world.

Easter shows us that
death is not eternal.
Life is.

In You, O Risen One, we find life.
In the mystery of our personal depths,
when we choose life.

Christ’s life surrounds us,
embraces us,
upholds what is most treasured in us.

Our lives made holy and whole because
He lives.
Alleluia!

~ Sister Joan Sobala

Palm Sunday

Dear Friends,

As he rode along,
the people were spreading their cloaks on the road;
and now as he was approaching the slope of the Mount of Olives,
the whole multitude of his disciples
began to praise God aloud with joy
for all the mighty deeds they had seen.
They proclaimed:
"Blessed is the king who comes
in the name of the Lord.
Peace in heaven
and glory in the highest."

Luke 19:28-40

I imagine Jesus’ arrival in my town in 2025. Crowds are waving signs and banners. Would I be there? Would I be hopeful or cynical? Would curiosity push me closer to the road? Would I call out his name? What praise would I echo? What words of desire and anger and longing would I utter? What words would go on my own sign?

Contemplating that exuberant day many years ago, I wonder. Would I recognize Jesus? Would I have joined the crowds singing at His arrival? Would I have believed? I believe that the psalms sung and prayed by my ancestors give me the words for prayer and praise. Justice! Peace! Help! Change! Save us! Mercy! Freedom! Deliverance!

This Palm Sunday, choose a word or two for the praise and prayer you cry out as you welcome the one is coming, always coming to save us. Join the crowd that calls out with many voices, many words. Welcome hope.

With you in the crowd,

Susan Schantz SSJ

Continuing Life's Journey with Acceptance

Dear Friends,  

The story recounted in today’s Gospel haunts us who claim to be followers of Christ. We don’t necessarily like this story. Maybe the woman taken in for adultery was for real, maybe she was a plant. At any rate, let’s grapple with it. 

The unnamed woman’s accusers made her stand before everyone, the Gospel says. A non-person. A thing used to trap. A woman, ostensibly caught in the act of adultery, she stood before Jesus alone. No man was presented with her. Only this woman, awaiting the condemnation that would lead to her death. The stones were already being gathered.  

But Jesus had no use for the stones or the cleverness of the learned who knew how to manipulate the Law like stones. 

Tracing his finger in the sand, Jesus gave everyone time to cool down, to rethink their part in this drama. It gave Jesus time to think of the other women whom he healed, those who loved him and ministered to him. Then he straightened up. Authority fell like a mantle, softly on his shoulders and enfolded this misused woman. 

Has no one condemned you? 

Don’t you wonder what was in her voice as she answered Jesus? Surprise! No one, sir! Wonder? No one, sir. Gratitude? No one, sir. 

Go now. And sin no more. 

From this day on, she would carry with her the strength and weakness of her past. “It is not that I have reached the goal,” Paul echoes in today’s second reading to the Philippians. "It is not that I have finished my course – but I am racing toward it.” 

There is more ahead. More for Paul, for Jesus, for the adulterous woman. More for us. 

Next week, we plunge into the Passion. The agenda is before us: Will hurting, hurt, wrong, wronged people find in our believing community the acceptance that enables them to continue life’s journey, or will we turn away those who are accused and condemned as beyond hope, comfort, love or salvation? 

We all know hurting, wrong, wronged people. 

Will we accept these people and others like them? When we ask them, “Has no one condemned you?”, will they answer, No one! 

Will we accept those aspects of ourselves that others might condemn and go on? 

Because God does accept us and bids us to go on. 

The words of God in Isaiah today tell us: “Remember not the events of the past. See. I am doing something new! Now it springs forth! Do you not perceive it?” 

The newness that Jesus offered the woman in today’s Gospel is a presage of Easter. Then, all things will be made new. Let’s go on!

~ Sister Joan Sobala