Tomorrow is my 80th birthday. Birthdays are like
the parables of Jesus. They seem like simple stories but they admit of a
multitude of meanings that keep coming to us as our lives go on. Today, I would
like to hold up an abbreviated parable of these 80 years as a mirror for reflecting
on your own experiences.
On this Mother’s Day, how can we resist some thoughts about
our mothers – the first carriers of our lives. From my childhood, my mother,
Celia, had trouble with me. I was a contrarian who didn’t want to follow her
directions. One day, when my mother was talking to a neighbor across the front
fence, she called out to me “Joanie, don’t go into the street.” I stood on the
curb and looked at her as I stuck my toe into the street. She turned away and
laughed. That’s how life was. For better or for worse, I have put my toe into many
streets of life. Did you do that?
There were tough moments when I was
attacked, literally by neighborhood thugs and once by a boy in my class at
school. My mother taught me courage and resilience. She stood by me just as
Mary stood by Jesus throughout his life and never turned away. Maybe your
mother stood by you as you grew or maybe she didn’t or couldn’t. Who stood by
you at critical times of your life?
Later, when I wanted to respond to God’s call to religious
life, she resisted. Celia reasoned that I would be locked away forever and not
be able to taste the options of life. Years later, my mother admitted to the
richness of my life, and hers as a result. What choices have you made in
response to God’s call that your family could value only in retrospect?
Over the years, I have learned that the journey of my adult
life is more than the first commitment I made as a Sister of Saint Joseph. That
choice was certainly foundational but it swelled with other calls to welcome,
accompany, discern with and integrate others into faith, other times to say “Yes.”
Thinking again of Mary, the mother of Jesus, we remember her "yes" to the
invitation of God to bear her son. That "yes" took her to stand on the shores of his life as he preached, taught, healed.
It took her to stand beneath the cross and to experience the terrible pain of
holding his dead body in her arms. Mothers never want to experience the death
of their children. But she also experienced his Risen from the dead and she
experienced the Pentecost coming of the Holy Spirit (for the second time for
her). What has the first “Yes” and other “Yeses” of your life meant to you and
others?
Here we are today – threatened by a virus we can’t see or
hear or touch, but one which could overwhelm us as individuals, families, and
as a church and nation. Often the cable networks carry pictures of people who have
died from complications of COVID-19. Many of them were young – serving the
community with their talents and desires. Why did they die and why, at 80, am I
still here? What does God want of me? Why are you still here? What does God
want of you?
What does faithfulness to God and to my treasured commitments
mean to me in this new context? Shall I put my toe into the street again? To
borrow the question of Mary to the angel: “How will this be?” What does it mean
to say “Yes” to God at my age – and you at yours?
~Sister Joan Sobala
