Many Gifts, Given for All

Dear Friends,

Many gifts, one Spirit. This is the theme of the reading from Paul for Sunday, January 19. In his second letter to the church at Corinth, he writes:

There are many kinds of spiritual gifts but the same Spirit.
There are different forms of service but the same Lord.              2 Corinthians 12

The apostle is encouraging that early Christian community to recognize and affirm the gifts given to individuals for the sake of all. They need the reminder because, for this faith community, that’s difficult to do.

It is difficult for some 2025 communities as well. All the baptized are called to mission. Baptism calls us to live in Christ Jesus, to love God and the neighbor, using the gifts we are given. The Church is called to recognize and nourish believers’ gifts, and to foster whole-hearted living of the baptismal call.

A colleague of mine is a gifted preacher. She is prayerful, attuned to human experience and educated in scripture studies and theology. She offers insight into the Sunday readings in a way that helps the congregation go deeper. She encourages worshipers to holiness and service. She leads in response to the baptismal call.

Currently, she is unable to preach at Catholic Mass because this ministry is limited to ordained priests and deacons. Her calling to preach is not recognized by her own faith community. A woman of faith, she has found ways to fulfill her call. She has taught Scripture, trained new preachers at a Christian seminary, and preached at various Christian churches. Along with other lay Catholic women and men she publishes homilies on the Sunday readings. In her nineties, she continues to share this gift of preaching. She has found ways to fulfill her vocation outside the Eucharistic celebration.

This woman’s story is not unlike that of many lay Catholic women and men called to preach. Each one has received a gift given for the good of the community. Each must find a way to live the call. The Catholic community continues to gratefully receive the preaching gifts of the ordained. These men’s homilies do build us up for faith and service. How much more blessed and gifted would our community be if the ministry of preaching could be shared by the gifted non-ordained?

~ Susan Schantz, SSJ

Taking the Plunge

Dear Friends, 

During many Christmas visits over the last few weeks, I heard heartwarming stories of newborns being welcomed into their families. Take Elena Marie. Not only was she welcomed, but the family arranged her baptism when the whole family was together because they all wanted to witness and celebrate Elena Marie’s new place in the church and world. 

One proud grandparent relayed to me the anticipation the family had as they waited to hear her response to the touch of water being poured over her. If Elena Marie showed no fear, the family would say “Ah! Isn’t she strong and wonderful!” And if she cried out, they would say “What powerful lungs she has already!”

In a sense, Elena Marie’s cries are a truer response to baptism than smiles. At its core, baptism is a frightening event, not just for babies, but for adults for who baptism was originally intended.

The descent into the water is a symbol of dying. The person being baptized is dying to the past in order to become, to enter into something new. 

At his own baptism, different from Elena Maries’s, Jesus went down into the murky waters of the Jordan and submitted to a cleansing by John. Luke, and only Luke, tells us that Jesus was baptized in the midst of and after others. He is one of the crowd, part of our humanity. He takes his place with all who stand, wade, and plunge into the waters of ordinary life. Jesus is not apart from us.

You and I suffer in varying degrees because the currents of our minds pull us in one direction and our desires pull us in another. Sometimes we feel deluged by the waters of our mortality, by the threatening chaos of sin and death. But we are not alone. Jesus enters the cleansing waters, greets us in the floods of our lives and emerges with us on the other side.

At his baptism by John, Jesus leaves his former hidden way of life and emerges a new creation. As does Elena Marie. As you and I did when we were baptized. Jesus urges us to discover what is true about ourselves and face our truth with all its beauty, paradox and difficulty.

Luke also adds that Jesus, after his baptism, prayed. Through prayer, he opened his life to all the possibilities the Holy Spirit offered. Jesus held himself ready, then gave himself freely and completely when the time was right. If Elena Marie’s baptism as well as yours and mine are to be fruitful, we must take the plunge, and pray to be ready for the next moment.

With Jesus before us, beside us, behind us and within us, why should we be afraid to take the plunge?

~ Sister Joan Sobala

The Magi, Returning Home

Flyaway Books, 2018

And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed for their country by another way. Matthew 2:12


Dear Friends,

It is the feast of the epiphany. I’ve been reflecting on the Magi story and I have two questions:

• What happens to the Magi after Bethlehem?
• What happens to us after Bethlehem?

The Magi saw a star and they followed it. Their visit to Herod alerted him to Jesus’ birth. Herod’s violent response began with their visit. The Magi found the child and family they had travelled to see. They worshipped and gave gifts. A dream warned them to return home by another way, avoiding Herod and protecting their new hope.

We believers are also advent searchers for signs. We are drawn by the Christmas star, and we follow. Through each epiphany season of our lives, we retrace this journey to find the God of hope.

Like the Magi, we encounter evil, in individual persons, but also in destructive systems and ideologies. Even when our hope is threatened, God draws us forward to meet the glory shining on the face of Christ. We too can see clearly and follow a different road home. We are strengthened in faith and courage to face changes and challenges ahead.

There are so many threats to our hope this new year. The Magi’s story speaks to us:

• Do not travel alone.
• Be ready to travel far and long.
• Be awake and alert to the presence of evil.
• Be awake and alert for signs of hope.
• Find this new way home and foster and protect the gift of hope.

Hopeful New Year’s greetings,
Susan Schantz SSJ

Jubilee Year 2025

Dear Friends, 

Just a few days ago, on Christmas Eve, December 24^th, Pope Francis opened the Holy Door at St. Peter’s Basilica, marking the beginning of the Jubilee Year 2025. The door will close again and be sealed on Epiphany, January 6, 2026, for the next 25 years – until the next Jubilee Year, 2050.  

The theme of this Jubilee Year is “Pilgrims of Hope,” an apt focus for our times.  

At the head of this blog is the logos for Jubilee 2025. A background of green (green being the color of hope) holds a circle (of unity) featuring people of all colors awash in a sea, holding onto each other, holding on to a cross that bends toward them. Rich symbolism.   

We are those people, living in a time when climate change and ongoing wars in many parts of the world threaten human existence and thwart peace among the people. This year (the only one we have) is a time to lift high the cross, to cling to the cross, even as we cling to one another.  

In our very being, human beings are pilgrims, here on this earth for only a short time, moving through life, moving from place to place, seeking a blessed life. In the Jubilee Year, pilgrims are asked to pause and to ask: What have we seen and heard? What have we added to the value of life? What Holy Door will we pass through? What will we leave behind at our end of life? 

Whom do we choose and welcome this year to be our models of hope? 

Whom do we choose and invite to be our companions on this pilgrimage? 

Some people will make a point of traveling to a holy place to symbolize their own pilgrim status. Rome is prepared to receive 35 million pilgrims this year. Some will go to the newly re-opened Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Some will find a holy place nearby where they can sit and contemplate life’s deep meaning. Will you go somewhere, even if it is only a few steps away? 

Still other people will travel in their minds, hearts and bodies to seek forgiveness of God and others for the ways they have inflicted hardship. Some will go a step further and seek reconciliation with God or others from whom they have been alienated. In whatever way you can, make forgiveness and reconciliation a part of this year. 

In this year of Jubilee, give generously of yourself to others who need your particular gifts. 

One last thing: take a page from the Hebrew tradition. Their celebration of the Jubilee Year was seen as a time of rest from the ordinary day to day labor of their lives. It’s not likely we can take a whole year off, but we can have Jubilee hours, or days when the computer and phone are off, and we rest in the Lord. 

Happy New Year!

~ Sister Joan Sobala

A Place of Welcome and Love

Dear Friends, 

There are plenty of Christmas pictures that depict Mary and the baby. There are not so many that feature all three members of the new family. In those scenes, Joseph usually stands in the background or to the side. He looks watchful and reliable. We can imagine him as a protector and provider. He can handle visitors and the curious animals. He looks like a respectable older man. He does not look like an excited new father.

The picture above is a still from the film The Nativity Story (2005). I love this scene. I sense deep warmth and energy among the three figures. Look at Jesus’ little hand in the air, lightly held by Mary. Look at the gaze of Mary and Joseph, two new parents overcome with love for their baby and each other. They’ve negotiated the difficult early days of pregnancy and marriage. Late in Mary’s pregnancy, they have left home and traveled rocky roads to Bethlehem. Their happiness is visible and tangible. Their loving touch links them and the child into a joyful trinity.

This year’s Christmas joy is threatened by the same forces that threatened the holy family. Wars and rumors of wars. Poverty. Frightening natural disasters. Violence born out of despair and hatred. Shifts in world leadership. Quarrels among former allies. Challenges to organized religion. 

When we enter the circle of the nativity scene we are welcomed to a place where love exists and love matters. Mother, father, and child reach out to us and we pray with them for a mending of this broken world.

Peace for you this Christmas.

Susan Schantz SSJ

The Joyful Coming of Our God

Dear Friends,

Christmas is a scant 10 days away. In today’s first reading from Zephaniah, we are reminded that God delights in coming to us. Our Mass translation is rather restrained: “He will sing joyfully for you,” it reads. But translations closer to the Hebrew assures us that God dances, twists, turns with shouts of joy for us.

God is like Gene Kelly in that famous dance sequence from “Singing in the Rain.” God is like King David, dancing in the streets because the Ark of the Covenant was being carried into Jerusalem. God is like the cripple in the Acts of the Apostles. Cured by Peter and John, Luke tells us the newly cured man took a tentative step and then another. Realizing what an astounding gift he had been given, the man began to leap into the air with shouts of joy.

Our God is not a reluctant God who comes because we need to be saved. In fact, Our God can’t wait to send His Son to our age, our time and place, our special moment in history. Sure, Christmas is our celebration of God’s coming, but it is also a celebration of God’s belief in human worth. We are not the only ones who dream of being loved and accepted. God dreams of being loved and accepted by us.

One of our great human weaknesses is to believe that we are not worth the coming of our God. We are bogged down not only by the very real weight of sin, but also by the suspicion that sin is winning out in us and in our world. Our secret wants and angers, the secret scorn or dislike we carry, the hidden scars we carry are so well known to us, so big in our eyes, that they override any good we feel about ourselves. We may not like ourselves for what we’ve said or done to others, the demands we’ve made, the pain we’ve inflicted. Secret shame can isolate us to the point that we say, “if they only knew what I am really like, they wouldn’t like me.”

We beat on ourselves.

But just as the father ran to meet his dejected prodigal son in Luke’s Gospel, so God runs to meet us.

Christmas, coming soon to your home and your heart, is the feast of God running to meet us, bearing Love Incarnate. Come as far as you can, God says to us. I will meet you the rest of the way.

That surprising insight, if we can grasp it, can stir up in us immeasurable joy. God wants us, loves us and holds us close.

Finally, be like God this week. Rejoice over someone, actively, tenderly. Say to the people closest to us:

Thank you.

I love the way you did that.

You are so good.

I appreciate you so much.

To speak words of appreciation to others, to let them see joy in us because of them is to echo God at Christmastime…God – who says to us – “I love you…You are special to me.”

~ Sister Joan Sobala

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