A New Year--A Fresh Start

Dear Friends,

In the untouched freshness of this day, I wish you:

Holiness, unexpected but welcome in you.
Ample time to think things through.
Patience with your family in difficult moments.
Perseverance in important things.
Yesterday in perspective.

New ideas for making the world a more positive place.
Energy to meet the day, along with enduring commitments.
Wonder at all God has done and is doing in our midst.

Yearning for goodness, compassion, and kindness to flood the world.
Empathy with suffering people everywhere.
A heart that reaches out to the most vulnerable, as Jesus did.
Restlessness until you rest in God.

2 eyes that see more clearly the things that are worth seeing.
0 degrees of departure from the truth, that is to say: never.
2 ways of looking at a question, or even more.
3 new friends this year who will warm your heart.

And to be sure that all of this is true, real, and possible in a world of so many seeming impossibilities, keep in your mind and heart the blessing in today’s first reading:
        The Lord bless you and keep you,
        The Lord make his face shine upon you
        And be gracious to you.
        The Lord lift up his countenance is upon you
        and gives you peace. (Numbers 6.24-26)

~Sister Joan Sobala

He is Here--Merry Christmas!

Dear Friends,

We have waited and now, He is here. Jesus, the long-expected savior. He is here. Today. Now. He is here.

        In the face of hatred and wars that pepper our world, no atrocity is too terrible to stop Him,
        No Herod strong enough,
        No pain deep enough,
        No curse shocking enough,
        No disaster shattering enough.

        For someone on earth this day sees the star
        Someone hears the angels voices,
        Some have instinctively run to Bethlehem to see for themselves
        And their hearts know peace and goodwill.
        They shout out. Do we listen?
        Christ is born. He is here.    (adapted, source unknown)

With Howard Thurman, we announce:
        I will light Candles this Christmas;
        Candles of joy despite all sadness,
        Candles of hope where despair keeps watch.
        Candles of courage for fears ever present,
                    Candles of peace for tempest-tossed days,
                    Candles of grace to ease heavy burdens
                    Candles of love to inspire all my living,
                    Candles that will burn all year long.

From Pope Francis to us:
“God’s ways are astonishing, for it seems impossible that he should forsake his glory to become a man like us. To our astonishment, we see God acting exactly as we do: He sleeps, takes milk from His mother, cries, and plays like every other child! As always, God baffles us. He is unpredictable, constantly doing what we least expect. The nativity scene shows God as he came into our world, but it also makes us reflect on how our life is part of God’s own life. It invites us to become His disciples if we want to attain ultimate meaning in life.”

Last week I was in the locker room of the Bay View YMCA after a swim. A woman was talking about her mother, who has suffered from dementia for the last five years. “What is the best thing you can say about her life these days?” I asked. Her answer was prompt. “She’s happy. She laughs a lot. She can still see the humor in things.” Laughter is one of God’s unique gifts to people. Let’s use it on Christmas day. In the tiredness that comes on Christmas after dinner and all the family rituals are done, here are a few jokes to enjoy:

“Dear Santa, This year please give me a big, fat bank account and a slim body. Please don’t mix the two of them up as you did last year.”

“Never forget. Once you stop believing in Santa Claus, you get underwear as gifts.”

“What’s every parent’s favorite Christmas Carol? Silent Night.”

“What does Santa suffer if he gets caught in the chimney? Claustrophobia.”

“Prisoner before the judge. J: What are you charged with? P: Doing my Christmas shopping early. J: That’s not a crime. How early were you shopping? P: Before the store opened.”

Christmas awe and delight to you and all you love from our Sisters and staff.

~Sister Joan Sobala

Welcoming Jesus

Dear Friends,

On this Sunday before Christmas, today’s first and third reading, taken together, offer us a telling contrast between two men who were important in their own times.

Ahaz was king of Judah – the lower part of what we today call Israel – the area surrounding Jerusalem. Faced with a difficult choice, Ahaz refused a sign from God to help him with that choice. His unguided choice had ramifications for his people.

Joseph, the talented but lowly carpenter from Nazareth, lived some centuries later. He did accept a sign from God. It directed him to a decision that would affect all generations to follow – right down to us today.

Both Ahaz and Joseph were tempted to say: “Things don’t look right to me, but I’ll decide for myself what to do.”

Ahaz succumbed to the temptation. Joseph did not.

Instead, Joseph paid attention to the messenger who came to him in a dream. He accepted Mary and the child whom he named Jesus, thus laying claim to the child.

As the story unfolds in Matthew’s Gospel, Joseph’s fidelity to God, to Mary and to Jesus, is like a rock. Unshaken. I sometimes wonder if, in later years, when Jesus talked about building a house on rock, if He didn’t think of Joseph, the man who was rock for Him and Mary.

What motivated Ahaz was expanding his own power. But Joseph realized his powerlessness.

What’s it like to feel powerless like Joseph? We weren’t there, of course, but we know. We know powerless pregnant women like Mary, and indignant men, like Joseph could have been.

We know how hard it is to sort things out, and communicate when things don’t look right, feel right. We know how gossip hurts, and how people try to second guess what’s going on.

We know how governments require that we show up in certain places to do certain things.

Some of us know what it’s like to be without shelter at night or what it means to be threatened with death, to be refugees from destructive powers, to be foreigners in a strange land.

We know these things in our own world and in the world of the Holy Family. We weren’t there, but we know.

As we celebrate Christmas Eve next Saturday and Christmas Day itself, we won’t be just remembering in some tenderly sentimental way the events of Christ’s birth in Bethlehem. Rather, we will be called to welcome and embrace Jesus in our day as Mary and Joseph welcomed and embraced him then.

This week, all week long, let’s each of us whisper in our hearts or say aloud "Come, Lord Jesus."

Let’s Practice.

I welcome You here and now.               Come, Lord Jesus.

I meet You in the world around me.      Come, Lord Jesus.

I believe you know the depth of our human experience and don’t shy away from it.

Come, Lord Jesus.

I trust that signs of Your presence will be given to me so I can recognize You.

Come, Lord Jesus.

With people all over the world who weren’t there but who know You, we say

Come, Lord Jesus.

Come, Christmas in me and in my loved ones.

Come, Lord Jesus.

~Sister Joan Sobala

Accepting God's Healing During Difficult Times

Dear Friends,

During my parish ministry days, when I was free to do so, I often moved to the back of the church as weekend liturgies were concluding. Being there gave me a chance to spend a moment with people who were leaving early for whatever reason. One day, an older woman was hurrying out. “I’ve got to get home to John,” she stage-whispered. “You know, my husband. He’s got Parkinson’s and stays in bed until I get home from church. I worry when I am apart from him.”

There’s a connection this weekend between John the Baptist in prison and the woman at the back of the church. Both were anxious.

John had worked hard to live out his call. He prepared carefully, preached faithfully, and called people to repent and live close to God. Now, in prison, he was caught between King Herod’s wrath and his own personal anxiety over his mission: a rock and a hard place.

Was Jesus the one?
Had he expected too much of Jesus?
Had he, John the Baptist, made a mistake?
Had he used his energies for nothing?
Was it too late to pull out?

John, in this passage, was more deeply threatened by the anxiety in his own mind than by Herod.

The woman with the sick husband was also anxious. She could have stayed to the end of Mass and had a few strengthening words with other parishioners, but she was driven to go home without these boosts to her life. You and I know her anxiety, John’s anxiety, even though ours may take a different form.

John, we may recall, was the son of aged parents. We don’t know how many years he had them both, whether he was torn between the care they required and his mission. If he was so torn, many of us know what that’s like, especially during the holidays, the demands of family on us seem to escalate.

Combing the Gospels, we don’t see any evidence that John sat and stewed in his anxiety. Instead, he sent messages out to Jesus: Are you the one who is to come or should we look for another?

Caught up as we are in the press of daily life, with its unpredictable mix of the expected and unexpected demands, we would do well to ask Jesus the same question: Are you the one who is to come, or should I look for another?

If He is indeed the one, then He will help us to see, hear, touch others who need us and be touched in return. He is the one who raises us up when we feel dead inside, overwhelmed by work or by dread. He is the one who sets the poor before us, helps us to understand how we can use our best gifts generously for those who need them. And when we are sick or a caregiver of the sick, He is the one who offers us patience and strength to see us through with steadfast love.

When we feel trapped by life or even by the most joyous season of Christmas, Jesus is the one who offers us both healing and blessing. Let Him. Let God be the one who lifts us up.

In the end, we may still be between a rock and a hard place. We may not know how to meet these demanding holidays, but we can still go forward, because, like John, we can trust that God partners with us in all we try to be and do. With Him, we can trust that what we do is not in vain.

~Sister Joan Sobala

Being Steadfast

Dear Friends,

On this Second Sunday of Advent, we ask the great “how to” question. How do we shape and reshape our adult lives to live meaningfully with God and one another? Paul’s letter to the Romans holds up two virtues to cultivate to make this reshaping possible. They are steadfastness and encouragement.

Steadfastness means keeping on. Sometimes the word “patience” is used in place of steadfastness, but patience has a connotation of being temporary: “I am putting up with this person, this situation now – but not for long.” Patience is not as rich a word as steadfastness.

One ingredient in being steadfast is the capacity to work at seemingly impossible tasks: Smaller Ukraine holding off Russia for over 270 days of conflict; beating COVID-19; therapists working with the paralyzed to get them walking again.

Today’s first reading from Isaiah describes the peaceable kingdom through a variety of impossible images: the baby playing in the cobra’s den; the wolf and the lamb laying down together in harmony. For some, these images get dismissed as fantasy. Get real! Everyone knows a lamb in the wolf’s lair is lunch!

But look: In 1988, who would have imagined that the following year, the Berlin Wall would be torn down. In 1990, who would have thought a Black South African would be the nation’s president, or in the United States in 2009, who would have thought we would also have a Black president.

In 1991, I never thought about being an ovarian cancer survivor. That journey began for me the day after Christmas that year.

Imagining seemingly impossible things is only one aspect of living steadfast lives. The steadfast also hang on when it would be tempting to let go, cave in, walk away.

Consider these examples of steadfast love active in people we know or have heard of:

• Caring for a loved one through an acute or chronic illness
• Believing in one’s call from God when others do not
• Seeing an endpoint and working toward it when others deny the endpoint exists
• Wholeheartedly serving others who have no familial or personal claim (Think of hospice workers, or government professionals who work behind the scenes preparing for peace accords and breakthroughs.)
• Musicians and artists who see creations no one seems to cherish
• Those who work at tasks which are greater than their lives, with no expectation of seeing outcomes.

John the Baptist, the dominant figure in today’s Gospel and next week’s as well, was certainly an example of steadfast love. His vision of God’s reign led him to preach and act and he could not be dissuaded even though his words and deeds led to his death.

Being steadfast, though, is no easy thing. Some days, the vision is dim or energy wanes. It’s then that encouragement is needed. The kind word, walking alongside the person can bring an infusion of energy. You and I need to be God-reminders for the steadfast, even as others are for us.

Two further brief thoughts about being steadfast: First, we are not born steadfast. We become steadfast through practice, and we learn its meaning and value from others. Secondly, not every life situation requires that we remain steadfast. There is no virtue in continuing in a situation where life is destroyed rather than fostered. Cut loose, for the sake of life.

The Advent figures of John the Baptist, Mary and Joseph accompany us through these weeks. They encourage us in our Advent-mindedness. “Believe,” they tell us. “Believe that you are capable of being steadfast and encouraging. Believe that Emmanuel, God with Us, is indeed with us in our gloom and glory.”

~Sister Joan Sobala

Welcoming God into Our World

Dear Friends,

Advent begins today. The way the season is laid out, the first two weeks invite us to concentrate on the big picture – the coming of God into our world. The last two weeks immerse us in the more familiar way of celebrating Advent, namely in preparation for the well-known, well-loved coming of Christ at the stable in Bethlehem.

Another way to describe Advent is to emphasize that our God comes and continues to come into our adult world – to meet us wherever we are and to enfold us in love as we live our topsy-turvy lives.

The Dominican Herbert McCabe writes in a compelling way about this very contemporary coming, albeit in non-inclusive language: “God’s way is very much simpler than our ways. He doesn’t have our complications. He is just simply in love with us. Not just with some of us, not just with saints or people who try to be good, but with absolutely everybody: with liars and murderers, with traitors and rapists, with the greedy, the arrogant, the inconsiderate, with prime ministers and priests and policemen. He loves us all. And not in some general way. It is not a question of some vague warm feeling for humanity, for the whole human race. He loves each of us intimately and personally – more intimately and personally than we can love ourselves. He is more personally concerned for our good and happiness than we can be for ourselves.” (God, Christ and Us, p.26)

God is in love with us now, in our adult lives, as we are, where we are, however we face the future. But we are not easily convinced.

"There are certain questions we should ask ourselves, particularly during the Advent and Christmas seasons. Born 2,000 years after Christ…when we talk about God’s coming, do we not focus exclusively on the tiny babe born long ago?... Do we scan the horizons of our world for Christ’s coming, or have we locked God up in the prism of a bygone past?

"In our personal religious life, we are tempted to dwell on our childhood and our youthful enthusiasm, and we never really grow up. We surreptitiously undermine the possibility of a truly adult life. We give God no chance to exercise His initiative. We do not allow Him to reveal Himself in ways that would make Him credible as the God of adult life. We would like to overlook the divine advent yet to come.” (Johannes Baptist Metz, The Advent of God, pp.10,12)

Beginning today, we can take a fresh plunge into Advent. What one practice can you, can I, initiate to welcome God into our messy, much-loved world?

Perhaps it can be as simple as praying daily the last words of the New Testament. At the end of the Book of Revelation, we read, “Yes, I am coming soon,” and the reply “Amen! Come Lord Jesus!”

Amen!             Amen!             Amen!             Come, Lord Jesus!           Come!

~Sister Joan Sobala

A Note of Thanks

Dear Friends,

What do we need to live, grow, thrive, and survive? Gratitude. You may not have said gratitude, but it’s nonetheless true.             

Gratitude is the muscle of the heart. As gratitude pumps in us, vision and hope are released into the world. 

Today, let’s acknowledge aspects of life that we previously might not believe are subjects for our personal gratitude. And let us say to our generous, ever-mindful God...

 

Thank you for giving us people who help us understand

what this rollercoaster ride called life is all about.

 

Thank you for Eucharist, weekly nourishment through Word and Sacrament,

 and our faith community which embodies Christ.

 

Thank you for the universe out there - beloved of God -     even as earth is.

 

Thank you for writers and songwriters who open us to inspiration.

 

Thank you for newcomers to our land who

take the lowest jobs available and do them with care.

 

Thank you for all who have come and keep coming to the aid of the Ukrainian people

 in their determination to survive foreign aggression.

 

Thank you for the good done, the justice insured, all the compassion offered

 and the violence rejected across the world.

 

Thank you, God for boats that carry people away from danger and toward ports of safety

 

Thank you for holding us close as we try to keep the vows we have made.

 Thank you for the grace of growing older and growing old.

 Thank you for nature with its colors, textures and hues, its brilliance and starkness.

 

Thank you that I have come to this day without being overwhelmed

by the accidents, bad choices, unethical situations I have been in.

 

Thank you for prompting me to absorb into my life the insightful words of others

 that have touched my soul.

 

Thank you for healers, peacemakers, reconcilers, and builders of a culture of life.

 

Thank you for people who did us a service decades ago

and we still live off that gesture of generosity.

 

Thank you for the manna You sent to nourish me

as I struggled through my own personal desert.

 

Throughout this Thanksgiving Day, 2022, in between the turkey and the conversations, the walks, and the games, may we find ourselves thanking God for a whole host of realities the thought of which might, at other times, escape us.

I hope so, for to do so is to enrich the meaning of Thanksgiving Day even more.

~Sister Joan Sobala

Trusting in God During the End-Times

Dear Friends,

Each year, the readings of November and the First Sunday of Advent are hard. They are about the end-times and point to the unwillingness of people to stay the course that leads to fullness of life.

Malachi is railing against the proud and the evildoers. They have no life-embracing vision upon which to build their lives. But God says to the faithful “for you, there will arise the sun of justice.” (Mal.3,20a)

The people whom Paul addresses in the letter to the Corinthians believed that since Jesus’ second coming was imminent, they no longer needed to carry their share of the workload in society. Paul condemned this attitude as unworthy of Christ’s followers. He urged them to participate in shaping life.

In the Gospel, Jesus finds people admiring the temple instead of doing the work of justice and mercy the Temple required. Echoing Malachi, Jesus bids them to persevere.

Throughout history, the end-time experiences have inspired either panic or lethargy. Yet there is a third way to respond to dire times. That third way is to trust God.

The end-times enter our lives in all sorts of ways. In some way, the war in Ukraine represents the end times. So did 9/11. When our jobs are phased out or relationships fall apart, when the illness and death of our loved ones threaten to swamp us, today’s Gospel says:

Don’t stray. Don’t panic. Give witness to the faith that is in you. Endure even as you trust Christ to be with you. I will be with you to give you the strength you need. “I myself shall give you a wisdom in speaking so that your adversaries will be powerless to resist or dispute.” (Luke21.17)

Surrounded by supportive family and friends, bolstered by the promise of God’s fidelity, we can weather the storm and even during our own chaos, feel the sun of justice with its healing rays that Malachi writes about.

People are not always surrounded by loved ones in times of distress. Some of us apparently or truly stand alone, cut off from the people we love and depend on the most – shut off from them by our own choice or by the choice of others. People are alone for all sorts of reasons. But in truth, God is with the bereft as well.

The difference between despair and hope during personal or societal calamity is in the measure of our openness to the stunning truth that we are

                            surrounded
                            held up
                            shielded
                            propelled forward
                            beckoned by a God who loves us.

When darkness of whatever kind sets in, our God will not abandon us, just as God did not abandon His only Son. God is here. Our God is a faithful God.

~Sister Joan Sobala

Life Beyond Death

Dear Friends,

The November liturgical readings prompt us to ask: Life. Death. Then what? The answer to that question has changed in history as people’s core values have changed.

If you were an Egyptian monk three centuries before Christ, you would think of this life as an antechamber – a prelude. Real life would happen after death. Still, a person couldn’t just sit around and do nothing, waiting for this life to be over. So the monks took up basket-weaving, weaving and unweaving the same basket throughout their lives. In doing this, the Egyptian monks underscored their sense of the futility of life.

The Greek philosopher Plato spoke of death as the releasing of the soul from the prison of the body – not a very positive way of viewing either the body or this life, which for us can only be embodied.  

One element of genius in Judaism is that it did value this life, with all its challenges, victories, and defeats.

Belief in the resurrection of the dead emerged relatively late in the history of Judaism. Jews came to believe not that their bodies would be resuscitated or that their earthly lives would simply be prolonged, but that God would transform them entirely.

Today’s first reading comes from this Jewish perspective. We read the second century B.C. story of a mother with seven sons. Encouraged to remain faithful to God by their mother, all seven sons died, rather than abandon their faith. In dying, they reaffirmed their belief that they would live with God in a new way. To sum up what was taught by the experience of the mother with her seven sons, we can say Life is treasured. Death is a passage. New life lies beyond.

A few centuries later, Jesus would embody these beliefs in His very person, as He died, rose, and appeared to many. But already in his public life, Jesus dealt with the meaning of life, death, and eternity. In today’s Gospel, Jesus encounters a group of Sadducees who understood the resurrected life as a simple extension of this life. Thus, they told the story of a woman who married seven brothers successively, according to an ancient Levirate law. No, Jesus told them. This life and the resurrected life are different but related realities. Moreover, the resurrected life is beyond our imagination and inventiveness and rests with God’s own creativity and freedom.

Today: Life. Death. Then what? Life around us is so full of misery, injustice, pain, and cruelty that it would be unbearable if there were not more. But if life beyond this life is not merely a continuation of what we have been and known, then what is it? What can we say about eternal life, heaven, whatever we call it?

The first thing we can say is that Love Endures. We have only to think of our loved ones who have crossed the threshold of death. We continue to experience them through dreams, feelings, help apparently from nowhere.

The second thing we can say about life beyond death is that God’s compassion and promises will prevail according to our capacity to take them in.

You and I, all people, are destined for life. Believing this, we put aside the things that don’t matter in life, we put human cruelty and carelessness into perspective and welcome the conviction that we are destined for eternal life. We are loved by the God of the living.

~Sister Joan Sobala

Hope -- Rooted in God

Dear Friends,

November in our global north is a time when people enact rituals of hope. We plant trees, floral and garlic bulbs, oats and wheat. Into the earth they go, and then we give them no more thought, somehow confident they will weather the winter and thrive in the spring.

We may not make the connection between November planting and hope, but it is strongly there. We hope for that which is not in hand but will surely come. But only in God. Only in God will the fullness come. Hope is not optimism. It is rooted in God.

Recently, some of our Sisters gathered to talk about hope, to enlarge and relish its meaning for ourselves and our times. Here are some of our realizations to pass on to you.

Hope is the confidence that God will see us through to a fruitful end. The danger is in being more confident about our ability to see ourselves through, and not acknowledging God’s presence and action in the moment. As people of hope, we risk hostility and persecution as Jesus risked crucifixion. We enter into the darkness so as to emerge into the light of the resurrection.

We do see true hope embedded in human life in our times – the bright spot at the end of the evening news, the realization that no one really wants war. How the people of Martha’s Vineyard, exhausted after the tourist season, rallied to treat with care the immigrants dropped on their island. That was a mustering of hope. The many justice projects around the country that find evidence to make right wrongful incarcerations are examples of hope alive among us. Pope Francis offers his own encouragement: “We must fan the flame of hope that has been given to us.” And again, “Where God has planted you, hope.”

Yet the word “hope” is not part of our daily language. A prison chaplain asked a young incarcerated Black man, “What do you hope for in life?” “No one has ever asked me that before.”

Fear, the opposite of hope, threatens to overcome our land. The potential loss of democracy, human-made disasters make hope seem absent in our times. Around us, we find people engaged in “quiet quitting” looking as though they are engaged, but secretly are simply marking time. Inside, they are “away.” Pieces of this reality are in your life and mine.   

God, in Jeremiah, lifts up any of us who allow ourselves to be embraced by God. “I know well the plans I have in mind for you, plans for life and not for evil, to give you a future full of hope.” (Jer.29.11)

We enliven hope when we perform small acts of kindness, when we look and act like happy people (because, deep down, we are). To paraphrase Paul saying to Timothy, “Always be ready to give an answer for the hope that is in you.” When we listen to the community’s story of coming through difficult times, we see hope blossom. Hope is never complete except in God. 

As earth and sky embrace November, may the God of hope fill you to overflowing. Now go plant some bulbs or a tree.

~Sister Joan Sobala                                                                         

Accepting Ourselves as Sinners & Saints in Process

Dear Friends,

For the last 10 years, a professor of psychology I know has begun her first class of the semester by asking students, “What do you fear most in life?” Up to four years ago, the answer was the same. Death. More recently, students came to fear something more than death, namely failure…the failure of a project, a scheme, an idea or the anticipated failure of a marriage, the stock market, a career.

Failure seems to grip the American student – and perhaps the American public – as an ultimate thing.

I’ve read some books and articles that counsel how to minimize failure and ensure success. In common, these texts tell us we must rely on ourselves, sell ourselves. Not a bad idea, when taken in moderation, but problematic when taken as the only or primary way to shape one’s activities and goals.

Take as an example the Pharisee in today’s gospel. Before we write him off and judge him lacking, we have to admit that he probably takes his religious obligations more seriously than we do. Who among us fasts twice a week and gives 10% of all we possess to the church? Moreover, the Pharisee is also an honest man, faithful to his wife and unwilling to work as an agent of an occupying power. He is proud of all of this – and rightly so. Like a good salesman, he takes off before God can catalog all he says and does.

Paul, in today’s second reading does the same. Paul says of himself: “I have fought the good fight. I have kept the faith.”

The difference between Paul and the Pharisee, though, is the same as the difference between the Pharisee and the publican. The Pharisee stands with head unbowed. Paul and the publican, on the other hand, know and acknowledge that everything they are and have is of God. Willingly, they bow before God, the giver of all good gifts.

In short, the Pharisee is his own horizon. He could only find scorn in his heart for the tax collector.

The tax collector, on the other hand, makes no reference to the Pharisee in his prayer. He does not see himself in competition with anyone for God’s attention and love. The tax collector simply prayed: “O Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner.”

If God is to touch us in any life-giving way, we need to admit that we are sinners.

Once we acknowledge the sinner in us, we take the first step to being gentle with others. We are all frail, all hurting in some way, all in need of being held tenderly.

Today, we are invited to accept ourselves as sinners. In a few weeks, we will be celebrating All Saints Day – the saints who have gone before us, the saints around us, and the saints we are working so hard to become.

Both labels apply. We are saints in process and we are sinners.

To deny either is to shut off great possibilities for our growth toward God, great possibilities for shaping our world as a place of mercy and tenderness rather than confrontation and violence.

To welcome the sinner in us and the saint in process is to open ourselves to life.

~Sister Joan Sobala

Planning Our Remembrance

Dear Friends,

The harvest moon has waned and we are moving into this mystical time when nature, here in the north, has matured for another year. We, too, day to day, move on toward our complete maturing and the time when we cross over into eternal life. Then we will be finished. Not done, but as the Psychologist James Hillman suggested, we will be finished with the patina of a piece of furniture which has been rubbed with oil or bee’s wax until it glows. We are all moving on toward a time when we will glow with the finish that is unique to us. 

Some of us will pass in a moment from a heart attack or accident. Others of us will suffer long and arduously. We can’t plan when our last days will come, unless we are personally violent with ourselves, which I hope we are not. But all of us have time now to plan out how we wish to be remembered in our families and communities. We tend to put this off. We say: “My family will take care of it. They will know what to do.” But you know something? They won’t know what you wish unless you tell them and if possible, work with them now to create what you wish for. 

The pandemic has changed some peoples approach to celebrating the conclusion of their loved ones’ earthly lives, but we are coming out of that time into bright sunshine again. In the light of this new time, what do we want to reclaim from former practices around a loved one’s death? For ourselves, what do we want at our own time of death?  

To begin, believe that your life is worth remembering and celebrating. We can say that we haven’t been much or done much, but we have been all we could be. We have grown and contributed to life, we have believed and loved God and people in some way. Those who have accompanied us through some phases of our lives will want to say goodbye and thank you. Our Church, if we have one, has tender rituals to send us on and comfort our loved ones.

So, consider putting together funeral plans. Include a wake. “No,” you groan. “I don’t need that!” But your loved ones do, and people who have known you over time need that, especially if they can’t come to your funeral. 

I recall at my Dad’s wake meeting a tall, distinguished looking stranger, who told me that when he was a fledgling in the management of Bethlehem Steel, where my Dad was a seasoned man in the field, my Dad trained him in understanding the industry, and in kindness and justice for the worker. I would have never known that without a wake and this man would not have been able to honor Dad with his presence. 

Plan your funeral ahead of time with a pastoral minister from your church and get it into your paperwork for the end times. What readings? What music? Who to participate? Other details?

How you and I approach our end times and the celebration of our lives is a gift to and a lesson for others. Let yourself be loved and mourned over. Let others wrap you in love as they hand you over to a future life with God.

~Sister Joan Sobala

The Many Faces of Mary

Dear Friends,

Are you old enough to remember holy cards? Pictures of Jesus, Mary, Joseph or the saints? I had a whole collection of Mary images. She was sometimes alone, sometimes holding Jesus. These cards exclusively portrayed Mary as white, pink-cheeked, young, clothed in simple blue or white.

At the head of this blog is a series of images of Mary created by artists* from various parts of the world. Mary looks like the people of their country. Her clothes and facial expressions are theirs. These images say that Mary belongs to them, not as a foreign import, but someone God has given them to be the Mother of God as they envision her, their own Mother, their morning star, teacher, companion and friend. As with Jesus, Mary is not a stranger to people of any land as they grow in faith.

This month, October, in the universal church, is dedicated to Mary, and, to the Rosary which is one way we pray to her. The Rosary is credited to Dominic in the 13th century, who taught it to people who were largely illiterate. They couldn’t read the Scriptures, but they could memorize the joys, sorrows, and glorious times of Jesus’ life. Saying the “Hail Mary” on each of 10 beads, they could blend the scriptural truths of Jesus with Mary’s own life. Jesus would not have come if Mary had not said “YES.”

Pope St. John Paul II added a new set of meditations to the Rosary. Entitled the luminous mysteries, they fill in the gap from Jesus’ infancy and childhood to His arrival in Jerusalem, passion, and death. The luminous mysteries include the Baptism of Jesus by John, the wedding feast at Cana, the proclamation of the Kingdom, the Transfiguration, and the Giving of the Eucharist at the Last Supper. Popes since the 16th century have encouraged believers to say the Rosary. With beautiful transparency, recent popes have reflected on the power of the Rosary in their lives:

“With the Rosary, we allow ourselves to be guided by Mary, model of faith, in meditating on the mysteries of Christ, and day after day, we are helped to assimilate the Gospel, so that it shapes our lives.” (Benedict XVI)

“The Rosary is our daily meeting that neither I nor the Blessed Virgin Mary neglect.” (Pope St. John Paul II)

“The Rosary is a School of Prayer and a School of Faith.” (Pope Francis)

The unity of all aspects of the mystery of God in Christ is present as fingers, heart and mind focus on the living Christ. Some people carry a chaplet (one decade in a small circular configuration) in their pockets to pray during a walk from one place to another. Some people simply finger the beads without words.

Many contemporary Catholics have given up the Rosary as a form of prayer as archaic or too repetitive. It takes practice to reclaim this way of prayer, especially now in a time when meditation and contemplation tug at our prayer-heart-strings. In the Rosary, the words of the Hail Mary slip in and out of the mystery being contemplated. After a while, it works.

~Sister Joan Sobala

*Photo above: Top (L-R): Mother and God: Queen of China (Chu Kar Kai); North American Indigenous Mother and Child (Fr. John Giuliani); Vietnam Mother and Child (unknown)

Middle (L-R): Italian Madonna (Allesandra Cimatrous); Sunshine Mother and Child (Shijun Munns)

Bottom (L-R): Modern Day Mother and Child (Jessica Russo Scheer); Navajo Mother and Child (Katherine Schange); Black Mother and Child (Unknown) Found in Corpus Reports

Yearning for Peace and Harmony

Dear Friends,

Yearning is not an everyday word in our vocabulary. Though an uncommon word, deep within us we yearn for harmony and peace, the richness of life shared, those realities that unite us as one.

Every age of human life, from the beginning, has uttered the cry of Habakkuk in today’s first reading – the cities of Europe overrun by the Mongols, the Jews remembering the Holocaust, the Japanese who bear the scars of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Naturals disasters in our country and across the globe, the events of 9/11, the unprovoked war in Ukraine make people cry out:

How long, O Lord? I cry for help and you do not listen!

I cry to you “Violence!” but you do not intervene. 

Our own city is plagued by murders of young people, battered women seeking shelter, pedestrians struck by drug or alcohol-impaired drivers. You and I are the brother and sister of everyone who suffers violence. We share in the cry of Habakkuk to God for help.

We want the day to come when there will be no more racism, when we will all be color blind. No more terrorism. Life will be too precious to be bombed or otherwise deliberately destroyed. No more sexism. Women will not be demeaned, used or considered inferior and men will not be pressured to live out destructive standards or die maintaining expected images.

We yearn for these things and more. In the light of all the Gospel can inspire, we yearn for a day when our church will pay so much attention to the growth and needs of people in Christ’s name that it cannot afford time to mistrust its members – a time when the strife and clamorous discord that Habakkuk speaks about are gone.

Yearning. We yearn for human possibilities that seem impossible. Left to ourselves, we might despair and smother the yearning in us before our hopes get too high. We fear the apparently impossible.

But listen to God answering Habakkuk and us as well:

The vision still has its time, presses on to fulfillment and will not disappoint.

If it delays, wait for it. It will surely come. It will not wait.

Jesus, throughout the Gospel, gives us an unerring vision – to love without clutching, to live without contention, to serve without competition. When we feel the yearning in ourselves for these or analogous things, it is God speaking to us.

Let’s face it, though. We don’t believe the vision is possible or that it is coming or that we have what it takes to live by the vision.

But God knows us. God has not given us a cowardly spirit, Paul reminds Timothy today. Rather, God has given us a spirit that makes us strong, loving and wise. Gifted with this spirit, as well as a faith that leads us to do the apparently inexplicable. Jesus encourages us to be so/do so in today’s Gospel.

The yearning of God for us becomes our yearning for God. It is not born of a naïve optimism but of bedrock confidence in the God who says:

Wait for the vision. It will surely come.

~Sister Joan Sobala

The Wheel of Fortune

Dear Friends,

We know that Wheel…of…Fortune…is one of our country’s most popular, longest running game shows. Viewers cheer wildly when a contestant accumulates gifts and money, and groan sympathetically when the wheel stops at Bankrupt.

Know where the wheel of fortune comes from? It’s an abbreviated form of today’s parable about the rich man and Lazarus. Many early medieval cathedrals in Europe have a wheel of fortune sculpted around the rose window. On the left, ascending side, the man is shown rising to wealth and prominence. At the top of the wheel, he is richly arrayed, but then on the descending side, he begins to fall into poverty and at the bottom, he ends up upside down with his toes sticking out of holes in his shoes or perhaps with no shoes at all – a graphic reminder that, although the world flatters the rich and powerful, material well-being is not automatically a sign of God’s favor or approval.

The rich man in today’s Gospel is not accused of specific injustices, but only of self-interest and self- indulgence, dressing elegantly and dining sumptuously every day. His sin was that he did not even recognize Lazarus’ longings, and perhaps even more seriously, did not even see Lazarus. He never noticed that Lazarus was there daily.

Self-absorption – reaching for the top of the wheel of fortune without regard for the poor stranger is a biblical theme that repeats itself in every age. Think Scrooge, for example, in The Christmas Carol. And in our day, think of the news commentators who encourage us in this voting season to put into office whoever will give them more money, a better lifestyle. For them, there is no need to think of Lazarus.

Suppose the American public did want to be faithful to Christ’s calling on behalf of the poor stranger? The situations are complex and vast. We feel paralyzed and desensitized. What can we do?

For one thing, we can register to vote if we haven’t done so, and we can vote for candidates and issues that will support and benefit the common good and the poor stranger. Voting can be a way of recognizing Lazarus. A second thing we can do is in our daily world. We can’t end the war in Ukraine or deal with the flooding and fires that strip people of their necessary possessions, but we can reach out a hand to the stranger in our neighborhood, in our own homes. SomeONE. Do we do that?

Another way of reading this Gospel is to recognize that Lazarus is within each of us. Lazarus – whom we ignore or don’t even see. There is the rich, valued part of us that we present to the world and there is the Lazarus in us that longs to be fed and recognized – the part of us we do not cultivate but which will be blessed by God when we come face to face.

The Lazarus in us is the part that has not succeeded, the addicted part of us, the part of us that lacks self esteem or haunts us in the night. Today’s Gospel tells us that our God values not just our successes but our very neediness, our woundedness, our need to be fed. Today, we are reminded that God’s love includes those parts of us that escape our best efforts – the Lazarus within us.

So, we celebrate Lazarus today. His name means “God is my helper.” As we try to make our world and ourselves more human, God is our helper.

~Sister Joan Sobala

Enthusiasm for God and the Things of God

Dear Friends,

In the Gospel, Jesus draws our attention to a crooked manager who has a redeeming quality – namely his enthusiasm for his own life. In a moment of crisis, this man acts shrewdly, wisely, and prudently to save himself. Jesus applauds his initiative and ingenuity. The crooked manager in Jesus’ story wants not just to survive, but to succeed, even if it means to move to a new place.

Through this story, Jesus tells His disciples and us to have the same enthusiasm for the reign of God that the crooked manager has for his own skin.

The call to be enthusiastic about God makes sense. The very word “enthusiasm” means being inspired by God.

It takes a lifetime to learn and internalize what it means to be a committed follower of Christ – to be public in living our faith and personal on our love for the stranger.

In some people’s lives, the name of this action on behalf of others is called heroism. Some heroes give some. Some give all. Certainly, unremarkable people turned into heroes on 9/11/2001 as strangers helped other strangers without regard for their own safety. Often in the years since then, we have heard stories of rescue and courage in the case of one, two a handful, a hundred people in danger.

Where did this heroism come from? From somewhere deep within them – some hidden place not even known to their self-consciousness.

That hidden place was their life drawn from God, their life with God. Our God – yours and mine – is the God of everyone. Some resist or ignore God, others know God in their daily lives. As the renowned psychologist Karl Jung put it, “Bidden or unbidden, God is present.”

News commentators in the aftermath of 9/11 had said that another possible target of the terrorists that day was the UN building. For some reason, that made me think of Dag Hammersjold, the UN Secretary General, whose plane crashed in Africa in 1961, when he was on a peace mission.

Then and often since, I have gone back to Hammersjold’s posthumous book called Markings, jottings written from the depths of his soul, for Dag Hammersjold wrestled with God all his life.

His words are apt for all heroes and for our own struggles with God:

  “I don’t know who – or what – put the question.

I don’t know when it was put.

I don’t even remember answering.

But at some moment I did answer Yes to Someone – or Something –

and from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and

my life in self-surrender had a goal.

I came to a time and place where I realized that the Way leads to

a triumph which is a catastrophe and a catastrophe which is a triumph…

After that, the word ‘courage’ lost its meaning,

Since nothing could be taken from me.” 

This is the deep truth that Dag Hammersjold found in his being. This is the inspiration of heroes. This is the awareness that lives in me: God’s presence, bidden or unbidden, in me. 

~Sister Joan Sobala

We Do What We Can

Dear Friends,

Twenty-one years ago, the date 9/11 was seared into American memory as a day of violent attack, many deaths, courage and compassion. Stories about that day have continued to emerge – stories of not knowing what to do next, stories of love and friendship, stories that have rooted them in lands beyond the United States.

Michael Grady was a fairly junior Coast Guard officer in the area who took charge of a marine rescue operation as soon as he realized what had happened. Grady sent out the call: “Anyone wanting to help with the evacuation of lower Manhattan Island report to Governors Island.” Five-hundred-thousand people were stranded there. The only ways they could get off the island were by walking or by water. One-hundred-and-fifty tugboats, ferries, pleasure boats, yachts responded making the trip over and over again to bring people to safety on Staten Island, New Jersey and elsewhere. Later in the day, the same boats brought supplies to use at the World Trade Center – everything from bottled water to acetylene torches. People did what they could.

The play Come From Away tells the story of over 6,500 people on 38 jumbo jets that were diverted from their various destinations on 9/11 to Gander, Newfoundland, a town of about 10,000 people. Passengers were hosted by the townspeople who gave what they had and did what they could.

Kathleen Murphy was a native of Kinsale, Ireland, who worked for 40 years as a nurse at Lennox Hill Hospital in New York. Firefighters, fallen on 9/11 were brought there, and she knew Father Michael Judge, chaplain of the NYC Firefighters. Kathleen came home to Kinsale to die of cancer, but the first responders lost on 9/11 were still on her mind. On some property she had on a hill above Kinsale Sound, Kathleen Murphy created a memorial to the 343 firefighters who perished in the World Trace Center Towers. Three-hundred-and-forty-three trees of various kinds were planted. Each bearing the name of a firefighter. Later, visitors who came, including many family members of the deceased, brought photos and mementos, medals won for valor, quotes and recollections. Kathleen Murphy and the people of Kinsale did what they could.

        In remembering life’s tragedies, in going forward with life, we, too, must do what we can.

        When disaster strikes or enemies attack, we do what we can.

        When the call comes to drop what we’re doing to respond, we do what we can.

        When we think we can’t, we do what we can.

        When it seems that all we can do is pray, we do what we can.

        God is ever present, so with God we do what we can.

        It’s never too late to do what we can.

~ Sister Joan Sobala

The Dignity of Work

Dear Friends,

All of our lives we work. From our infancy to our death, we learn to take in and become all we possibly can about being human. This is major work for which we receive no money, but rather, we receive the human qualities that will inform our lives. For the work of our becoming, we praise You, O God.

On this Sunday of Labor Day weekend, let’s pause to think about the challenge to honor all work, beyond our becoming, and not to resist work as something not worthy of us. For the openness to work you inspire in us, we praise You, O God.

Let’s look upon work with the eyes of God. God is the first among workers, as we read in Genesis. God worked for seven days, and then rested. We are God like when we work, when we produce, create, imagine, enlarge and rest from our work. For making our work an imitation of yours, we praise You, O God.

All work is not of equal value, but all work is valuable. Not because of what we earn, although that is necessary, but all work is valuable because it is how we build, nourish, educate, make music and fun with one another. It’s how we sustain the human community. For the work of our minds, hearts and hands, we praise You, O God.

We have a habit of thinking some work is more important than other work. We tend to believe that, if I make more money, my work is more valuable. But consider the truth that the value of work is within us. As a dishwasher in a restaurant, I contribute to the health and safety of customers. As a beach lifeguard, I watch over the play of children, so that they don’t hurt others, deliberately or not. As a member of the military, my work is to serve the peace and not make war. How I think about the work I do contributes to my being more human. For our work which helps, serves, inspires, empowers other, we praise You, O God.

Some work is dangerous: military service, rescue missions, journeys into the unknown. Bravery is given to us when we need it. For our work which builds peace out of hostility and newness out of darkness. We praise You, O God.

The life work of some people is to organize the men and women who labor at essential jobs so they are not taken advantage of. For them, we praise you, O God.

In this world of brutal climate conditions, and brutal regimes which cause people to flee as refugees, there are women and men who answer the call to be first responders. For them, we praise You, O God.

Gracious, God, First Worker of the Universe and Lover of all You have created, as I study and learn from my life of work, help me to ask not, “Why does he/she have more than I do?” but rather to ask, “What can I be and do with what I have and am?” For the wonder of me, I praise You, O God.          

~ Sister Joan Sobala

Growing in Our Humility

Dear Friends,

Among the best insights into human life in our times is that self-esteem is essential to living fully. You and I need to know, accept and, yes, be glad about ourselves. False modesty and self-deprecation are unhealthy as well as untrue.

To recognize ourselves for who we are and what we are, to value ourselves, are all part of humility, a theme in today’s readings.

The American architect Frank Lloyd Wright was on the stand as a witness in a lawsuit. The dialogue went like this:

“What is your name?”
“Frank Lloyd Wright.”
“What is your occupation?”
“World’s greatest architect.”
“You’re not very humble, are you?”
“Sir, I am under oath.”

While self-confidence is a part of humility, self-promotion at someone else’s expense is not.

That’s the rub. That’s what the guest in Jesus’ story is doing – advancing himself at the expense of others.

Preoccupation with one’s status or position in relationship to others is not just a modern phenomenon. In Jesus’ day, the question of where to sit at a table was no idle matter. One’s honor, social significance and worth were at stake. But Jesus places no value on jockeying for position. Instead, He says to take a lower place. Let the master of the house be the one who invites his guest to a higher place if he so chooses.

How do we grow in humility? For one thing, we can make room in our lives for people who can teach us unexpected lessons. Missionaries who have gone off to foreign lands, fully expecting to bring great insight and value to the poor, often realize how much these people who welcomed them also taught them about life and God. But we don’t have to go off to a foreign land to gain insight from people of other nations. I remember a friend telling me about his own personal reluctance to engage a Pakistani cab driver in a long stop-and-go drive in New Your City. Reluctantly but truly, my friend learned much for his own life in that hour they were stuck together in traffic. Make room for people who can teach us unexpected lessons.

We grow in humility when we make room for new consciousness. It feels so secure to believe that we have the answers to life’s deepest questions sewn up. Or to believe that how we are and what we think is exactly right and we don’t have to change one iota. Humility means letting go of our absolutes about ourselves and our world.

Finally, we grow in humility when we make room for the child in us. As we grow up, we tend to leave behind in inquisitiveness of childhood, our need to belong, our sense of wonder. When we rediscover the child within, that child can lead us to see a new face of God and experience a new connectedness with all people, all creation.

Unlike Frank Lloyd Wright, we are not under legal oath to name the truth. Like him, we stand before God, before one another and before ourselves and are asked to name the truth of our lives.

What do we need to make room for?

~Sister Joan Sobala

The Journey of Our Shoes

Dear Friends,

In late July Pope Francis spent a fruitful week in Canada on a “pilgrimage of forgiveness,” as he called it. Earlier in the year, a delegation of First Nation people, Metis and Inuit, came to Rome to deliver a personal invitation to Pope Francis. They brought with them a small pair of moccasins, a treasured relic from the times when their children were forcibly taken from them to go to government endorsed religious schools to become civilized and made “strangers to their own people.” “Bring the moccasins back when you come,” his visitors told Pope Francis. How could he not come? He had two missions – to utter on behalf of the whole church heartfelt words of apology and to bring back the moccasins.

That got me thinking about other times when shoes of various kinds figured into people’s spiritual journeys.

When Margaret Clitherow was about to be hanged in post-Reformation England for being faithful to Christ in the Roman Catholic Church, she made only one bequest: her shoes were to go to her daughter. “Walk in my shoes, daughter,” was the message.

One of the historic displays on Ellis Island is a steamer trunk overflowing with shoes: singles, pairs, worn out shoes, new shoes, children’s shoes, women’s fashion shoes, work shoes. One wonders: Were they left or taken away? Did their owners have other shoes? Where did the owners settle? Or were they sent back? Or died? The United States is a land of the shoeless and the shoe-d.

On the shore of the Danube at Budapest is a plaza with a variety of bronze statues. Touchingly, one is a pair of a child’s shoes. The plaque next to the shoes says the Nazis took prisoners from this place during their occupation. These shoes were found on the dock after one such raid.

Bridget O’Grady was a senior Irish-born woman who came to daily Mass at St. Mary’s Church in the 1980’s. We all had a hard time understanding her form of English, but we could all see that she wore tattered, sneakers, with rips here and there. Some parishioners wanted to know if they could get her new sneakers? Yes. A few days after the shopping expedition with Bridget, she arrived at church in her new sneakers…rips in all the same places as before. The dawn finally came. Bridget needed a podiatrist. That was (if I can put it this way) the next step.

The Scriptures have a dozen or so references to sandals, but only a few references to shoes, like this one in Ephesians 6.15: “Stand with your feet shod in readiness for the Gospel of peace.”

There’s a lot to think about in that brief line in Ephesians. Are we to be ready to welcome the Gospel of peace or deliver it elsewhere? When we put our shoes on, what are we ready to do? Where are we willing to go? In whose name? For what reason? Is there something of Margaret Clitherow in us? Do we stand firm in the shoes we are wearing? Do we go to help where people suffer at the hands of others?

Today, look at the shoes in your closet. Many? A few? More than you need? Look at your feet now and think, “What shoes do I really need?” After all, yours are the only shoes made to walk your journey. (Charles F. Glassman)  

~Sister Joan Sobala

The Assumption of Mary

Dear Friends,

Monday is the feast of the Assumption of Mary. If you Google images of the Assumption, what comes up are images of a beautiful Mary, most often by herself, being taken up gracefully into heaven.

What follows is a spiritual, meditative, imaginative look at what might have happened and what Mary’s Assumption might mean for us.

One day,
Mary, the Mother of God, died.
        Her friends and
        the disciples of Jesus
        had seen it coming.
        Her heart, which had suffered so much
        during the life of Jesus,
        was slowing down.
        Her energy no longer prevailed.
        Maybe her memory became fuzzy, and
        her hands were marked by arthritis.
        We don’t know.

What we know is this:
one day, Mary, the Mother of God,
did not get up to meet the day.
        Her friends and the disciples of Jesus
        prepared her tomb,
        her body for burial,
        applying precious spices
        and unguents that would enhance
        the fragrance of her body.
        They gathered around her still body,
        and looked upon her face one last time
        before covering it.
        They finished their ministrations.
        They prayed,
        and all withdrew.

But God the Father who chose her to be
Mother of the Word Incarnate, did not withdraw,
nor the Spirit
who had overshadowed Mary,
two other times in her life,
nor did her Son, the Word made flesh, withdraw.
He was there.
Jesus reached out His hands,
marked by the wounds of His Passion,
and scooped up
the fragrant body of
His fragile, aged mother in His arms.
Holding her close as she had held Him
so often in life,
        Jesus bore her
        into eternal life.

Mary, the Mother of God,
hadn’t even known
she was on her way.
Death was already a memory.
Now, she was there.
Now, Mary’s body seemed young and vigorous once more.
Now, she was transformed,
restored to her original beauty.
        “Yes. Let it be so, “
        she had said once.
        “Yes,” she repeated throughout her life.
        And now,
        beyond death,
        her life-song had not changed,
        “Yes. Let it be so.”

Those of us left behind,
Mary’s friends and
the disciples of Jesus,
are wordless in the face of this moment.

And when words are finally restored,
we dare to say:
        Mary, our Mother, our friend
        and disciple of Jesus,
        we honor all you became in life,
        without spending your energy on
        your own becoming.
        You became, through sheer belief, love
        and generosity,
        the Mother of Jesus, the Son of God, and
        our mother, our friend, our companion.

        All that was in you expanded/flowed/flowered into
        forever – an endless day.

It is irrepressible joy to us
that you, Mary, are whole and forever
with God.
We ask that
with you,
as we look ahead
to our own forever,
we may likewise say
on this side of eternity:
        “Yes. Let it be so.”

~Sister Joan Sobala