Dear Friends,
Children and shepherds are two sets of unassuming people
from an ancient Scripture with valuable lessons for us in today’s readings.
God’s love, John tells us in today’s second reading, enables
us to be not just children but children of God. What do you suppose that means?
Does John want us to think as children do? To learn as children learn? Or does
it mean that, like children, we need to be or become at home with the great
mysteries of life as children are so easily at home?
On the surface, we don’t deal with mystery in our everyday
life. We work, play, make homes for ourselves and others, share ideals. We
pray, cook, shop, spend endless hours on social media, make a living, show
others we love them. In our everyday lives, we don’t feel like the children of
God. We feel – well, adult, put upon, restless, satisfied, harried and
energetic, but we don’t feel like children of God and we don’t pay attention to
mystery. Then something happens which catches us up short.
COVID, for example? Why now? We also wonder why do people
abuse or kill each other? Why does this person love me with all my warts and
foibles? Why is the world divided into the rich and poor? The 99% and the 1%?
Why do people feel they have the right to be supreme over others? Why you? Why
me?
As we see our world reflected in the news, in our personal
lives, maybe we dare to ask, “Is this all God’s plan?” If so, is God playing
favorites? Or is this the result of being human, being free to choose?
In these pandemic times, we are encouraged to seek
scientific ways to help bring COVID-19 down. But does science answer questions
of the heart and soul about the meaning of life and death? If not, where do we
look?
It’s when we begin to face and probe questions that defy
clear and easy questions that we begin to face mystery: The mystery of life and
the mystery of God.
In the face of mystery, being child-like means we are
wrapped in the confidence that all will be well, that God is in charge, but truth
be known, we are not easily convinced. Mystery befuddles us.
If we reduce mystery to a problem to be solved or a puzzle
to piece together, we have done mystery an injustice for treating it like any other
human concern. The fact is that every day and always, we walk in mystery. We
take it in, but we can never take it in fully.
Sometimes, in the face of the mystery of God and the mystery
of life, all we can do is listen attentively for the voice of God. Sometimes
God's voice beckons us, assures us, stops us, lets us float in a sea of unknowing.
“I am the Good Shepherd,” Jesus tells us in the Gospel
today. Do we listen to the voices of the shepherd? We hear the voice of God
when we are as open as children to mystery. Adults prefer not to imagine much. Instead,
we say that we deal in real time with real issues. We are leery of wasting time.
Today’s readings call us to be adult believers who are not
afraid of being identified as children of God, adult believers who trust that mystery
both enfolds us and unfolds in our lives, adult believers who listen for the
voice of God accompanying us, leading us through the dramas and delights of
life.
~Sister Joan Sobala
