Benedictine Sisters of FL

Holy Name Monastery
Founded 1889

pandemic

Lent 2021 – Part 4

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Jesus’ Peace

 

This is the last post from Abbot Gregory J. Polan’s Circular Letter.  You can read the three prior parts on our website under “Articles of Interest”:  www.benedictinesistersoffl.org.  The Abbot’s brief bio is at the beginning of the first post.

The following is from Abbot Polan’s recent Circular:

The conclusion to Chapter 4 of the Rule of Saint Benedict on the “Tools of Good Works,” reminds us that we must never despair of God’s mercy (R 4:74). This speaks to the passage of the Gospel according to John. Jesus’ teaching about peace (and we note that this is the first time the word appears in the Fourth Gospel) is not sugar-coated. It calls us to faithful endurance, to hope in what God will accomplish through difficult times and how it will end in God’s unique expression of peace – a kind of well-being that touches every part of our existence. And because the unfolding of this peace is part of a divine plan, its unfolding will be unique, accomplished in God’s time and offering us a teaching that is for the good of our eternal soul. Patient waiting is not an easy task. We live in an age of immediate results and instantaneous gratification of our needs and wants. That is not how the spiritual life unfolds. Rather, in God’s time, divine grace unfolds in a perfect way that leaves us in wonder at the wisdom of God’s plan – touched by heavenly perfection.

The challenge of this pandemic cannot be lived in vain. What have we learned from this time? What is the good that we have found hidden in the sadness of these times? What are some of the paths forward that we have considered as we look to the future? I invite all to consider these three questions and to share your thoughts. We can inspire one another with our reflections. May God guide us forward with deep faith, genuine hope and generous charity as witnesses to God’s presence in our midst “bringing us all together to everlasting life” (RB 72:12).

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Sister Find Sustenance

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Sisters find spiritual sustenance during year of COVID-19 hardship

~Article by Elizabeth Eisenstadt Evans for the Global Sisters Report, a project of National Catholic Reporter

 

Sr. Marie Duffy had it all planned out, she said.

Settled comfortably into her congregation’s retirement facility, Camilla Hall, the 87-year-old Immaculate Heart of Mary sister, a former guidance counselor, would embrace the “second calling” in her life. “I can’t wait until I can have coffee, have time to pray and not to drive, and just be with God,” Duffy said she remembers thinking. She enjoyed a year with friends on the independent living floor.

Then came the pandemic. After that, a fall. And on Sept. 11, 2020, Duffy entered a local hospital, where she had three surgeries on her leg and hip. For five months, she was bed bound.

“It was a year of very mixed emotions,” said Duffy. “I felt that God was playing a trick on me.”

Cut off from community life and aware that many others were struggling with the impact of the COVID-19 virus, she felt a “deep sadness” even though she was being treated, she said, with love and tenderness. “I found it difficult to talk with my God. I would say, ‘Where are you? Where are you, not just for me but for other people?’ ”

For Catholic sisters, as for many others in America and across the globe, it’s been a brutal year.

Isolation. Disrupted schedules and forced adaptation. Dark nights of the soul. Loss.

Sisters have experienced the death of community members, separation from loved ones, painful months of isolation, and uncertainty. Some sisters shared in candid reflections how the past year had brought not only lifestyle changes, but also prompted them to grapple with deep spiritual questions, such as the purpose of suffering, community and what it feels like when God seems to go quiet. Some provided examples of how — in addition to prayer — spiritual practices rooted in activities such as cooking, acts of kindness and dancing provided a sense of peace and stability.

‘Not in control’

“The pandemic has reminded us that we are essentially not in control of our lives,” said Sr. Sallie Latkovich, a member of the Congregation of St. Joseph living in Chicago who serves as spiritual director and as part of her congregation’s leadership team. “For sisters there’s a fundamental belief, but [also] a new kind of questioning, coming to new awareness and probably actually a deepening of faith.”

Spiritual directors like Latkovich have logged many hours, mostly online, with those navigating uncertainty amid the pandemic. Their directees, a diverse group who often include people of faith who aren’t sisters, are struggling to find meaning and purpose amid pandemic upheaval, loss, and sacrifice.

Requests for spiritual direction have gone up by about 10% during the pandemic, estimated Sr. Carole Riley, 78, a member of the Sisters of Divine Providence who directs the West Virginia Institute for Spirituality. “I can only communicate with people through Zoom, and it’s been intense,” said Riley, who used to travel regularly to Pennsylvania and Ohio. While older sisters have had more training in quiet contemplation, “the loss of touch and ability to communicate [in person] has increased the need for spiritual direction, particularly among the younger 30s and 40s age group.”

The sheer number of people dying sparked deep reflections for her directees, she said, including wondering what they are supposed to be doing with their lives, and how to live them more fully.

Suffering, pain and anxiety were themes that surfaced often in conversations with sisters. Her directees had something else in common: “Across the board, they are talking about decluttering, how to lead a less hectic life. I don’t think we realized how hectic the [religious] life was,” she said. “Then we had to stop, there was a lockdown, and in the face of possible death we were forced to look.”

“My own policy is to feel the fear and the anxiety, acknowledge it,” said Riley. “My first step is to feel the feelings before I turn to prayer or Scripture.”

In New Orleans, Sr. Dorothy Trosclair, a Dominican Sister of Peace, said that her directees, who include sisters, have found themselves bringing their most profound emotions into prayer. “They find God working amid contemporary suffering, political unrest, racism and violence. All of these seem to bring people into deeper dependence on God and each other. They wrestle with suffering and understand on a deeper level that God is also suffering.”

Many faces of loss

In many communities, particularly where older sisters lived in large numbers, those who stayed healthy have been keenly aware that others were not as fortunate. Since May, 47 sisters in Camilla Hall have tested positive for COVID-19, with seven deaths caused by the virus or strongly related to it, according to Immaculate Heart of Mary Sr. Anne Veronica Burrows, Camilla Hall administrator.

“Being in a nursing home, you really do think of suffering and how you would relate to it,” said Camilla Hall resident Sr. Anne Kelly, 83. But “being in a situation where everyone is experiencing some diminishment, you can feel blessed. We pray for the sister who is in great suffering.”

Even younger sisters admit to at times feeling overwhelmed by the pain around them. In the early months of the pandemic, 40-year-old Sr. Erin McDonald, a member of the Congregation of St. Joseph in Detroit, Michigan, who serves as chaplain, said she felt helpless, unsure and scared. She wrestled with some big questions, she said, “how do I respond to the dear neighbor? How do I stand in solidarity with the needs of the time? How do I pray?”

She sought solace by adding two long walks a day to her routine, and a lot of cooking from scratch. “Cooking for me is a contemplative practice,” she said. She answered the question of how to pray by praying more, adding 45 minutes to her evening prayer practice.

Sr. Amanda Russell, 29, said that she’s been praying for a year to be a light in a sometimes-dark world. “I think we religious have had a very important role in the midst of this pandemic,” she said. Given the blessing of time to pray, said the Immaculate Heart of Mary sister, “if we don’t share what we’ve received as grace, then I don’t know what we are doing. Even if it is saying, ‘This is a struggle for me,’ and standing with someone in their struggle.”

She’s had her own struggle, moving from Philadelphia to Savannah, Georgia, to be a teacher at St. James Catholic School mid-pandemic. Because of the timing of the move, she had to miss her renewal of vows ceremony. Though she’s adjusted to her job and the sisters in her new convent, she’s ached for the companionship of her family, still living in a Philadelphia suburb, and her close friends.

“Virtual isn’t the same in any sense as being able to spend time with people.”

In spite of the difficulties, she has tried to do everything in a spirit of joy, she said “because you’re doing it for other people, for God. It all sounds beautiful and holy and sacred until you have to live it.”

Praying through a plague

Prayer, whether it was personal, communal or part of the Mass, was an anchor, many of the sisters said. The upside of a lockdown is that there’s “lots of extra time for prayer,” said Kelly at Camilla Hall. “I have spent a lot more time in the chapel and feel a closeness with the Lord. There are no distractions.”

In addition to solitary devotions, she participates in the liturgical cycles of morning prayer, evening prayer, special prayer services for national events like the election and the insurrection, and community Mass.

“During the shutdown, we had Mass every day in the convent chapel with the priests of our parish. It is hard to put words on what that was like,” wrote Immaculate Heart of Mary Sr. Danielle Truex in an email from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where she is the principal of Sacred Heart School. “First, I felt very privileged and guilty that I was able to attend Mass and receive the Blessed Sacrament when so many others were going without. At the same time, I felt blessed to be able to carry all that was in the hearts of God’s people with me during that time. One of the most meaningful things we did in my local community was to have Adoration each afternoon in our chapel. Normally, our school schedule wouldn’t allow for that amount of time for prayer together and it, along with Mass, became the pillars of each day.”

Some sisters said that they were taking advantage of the opportunity to experience virtual liturgy outside their normal parishes or convents. “I certainly do miss being in person with the community of faith.  However, there is a sense of the community as people post comments through the service,” said Latkovich, who noted the “exquisite” quality of the eucharistic liturgy at Old St. Patrick’s Church in Chicago. “It’s as good as livestream liturgy gets,” she wrote in an email.

Riley said frankly that she doesn’t miss attending Mass. She’s enjoying the experience of exploring online services in other venues — like the Vatican. “Emotionally, I’m free to pray rather than fret I’d bring home the virus and kill my sisters,” she emailed.

The biggest impact the pandemic had on her, said Felician Sr. Desiré Findlay, 34 was that as vocation minister for her community she couldn’t travel to the schools and churches visited regularly before. Nor could she lead in-person retreats. Yet as she moved retreats and discernment opportunities to Zoom, Findlay found that “it opened up an opportunity for us to journey with a wider audience.” Findlay, who has long expressed her spirituality through movement, also began to host liturgical dance Zoom groups.

‘Powerful learnings’

Several sisters said that they made an intentional connection between the social unrest of the past year and the tragic impact of the virus. The killings of George Floyd and others by police, the resulting Black Lives Matter protests of last summer and grappling with pervasive racial injustice will always be intertwined with their experience of the pandemic, they said.

A member of the Adorers of the Blood of Christ, Sr. Mary Kevin Rooney called this past year a “backward grace” that offered the possibility of awakening to some uncomfortable truths about American life. “We can never walk away from what we know about the injustice to our Black brothers and sisters. We can’t go back to ‘that doesn’t involve me.’ ”

The epidemic of inequality has reinforced the “urgent need to look at Black lives in general,” said Findlay. “It definitely got me to ask more questions about these issues. When people of color say that they are worried about getting the vaccine in the first place, I get it.”

In St. Louis, Missouri,  Sr. Clara Mahilia Roache, a member of the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, said in an email that the hardest part of the pandemic for her had been “seeing the disparity across the nation in handling the pandemic and the effect on the poor.” For help, and a sense that God is present she has turned to “prayer, podcasts and people,” recommending in particular the podcast “Ask Father Josh” and the weekly audiences held by Pope Francis.

Sisters said that they have developed an even deeper appreciation of the bonds of community. “I see people learning to appreciate the time we can spend with each other, celebrations, all those things,” said Findlay. “God gave us each other, and what we do affects the other.”

In addition, she said, the pandemic has sparked creativity and a deeper desire for connection with sisters here and around the world. A discernment retreat she hosted via Zoom included women from the U.S., Nigeria, Australia, Ireland and Canada. Some have continued these conversations once a month via Zoom, she said.

That sense of community goes beyond congregations. Latkovich praised the mutual care taken by neighbors in her apartment complex, where residents often now check in with each other or offer to shop for someone else when going to the store. “There’s a new sensitivity and a desire to help. The gospel of ‘love your neighbor as yourself’ is happening. I find God present in all of that,” she added.

For sisters here and abroad, the pandemic has been a time of “powerful learnings”, suggested Sr. Lynn Levo, a member of the community of St. Joseph of Carondelet. “We have been strongly reminded that we are relational, emotional beings, with a humanity that is rooted in connection with others,” said Levo. A therapist, Levo said she has been busy since last March helping American and global Catholic leaders, sisters and first line responders understand the impact of the pandemic and how cope with it.

As spiritual people, sisters already know that their own pain is integrally connected to that of others, she said. “It means the opportunities to respond in some way to the injustices happening all around us.” As one elderly sister in a meeting Levo facilitated put it: ” ‘It’s o.k. to be sad.’ I was there offering assistance, and here was a sister who allowed accompaniment.”

In such an unsettled time, cultivating human relationships based on similar candid self-disclosure is crucial, added Levo. She recommended that everyone to have a go-to confidante, even if they aren’t a close friend. “Now we have the gift of time, not only to talk to God but to feel the support of a loving God. One of the things we want to include is our feelings, which are really a deeper sense of who we are.”

New beginnings, new hope

Now on a walker after months of confinement, Duffy is retooling her original game-plan. Still hopeful that she will be able to return to the independent living floor by August of this year, she’s also willing to adjust her expectations if she can’t.

In the meantime, she’s making the best of the situation, taking the opportunity to talk with those on her floor with Alzheimer’s that she sees on her walks up and down the hall, or who stop by the door of her room to chat. That may be, she said, a way she is being called to serve in these circumstances. “I feel that God is somehow using this as a teaching moment for me,” she said. “This is why you have a second calling: time to reach out to people.”

 

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One Year Later

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Our hearts and prayers go out to the many monasteries and convents that have lost Sisters due to the pandemic.  While the Benedictine Sisters of Florida have suffered financial loss, we have been immensely blessed.  None of the Sisters have become ill with the virus nor suffered any serious illness during the pandemic.

With the coronavirus, we are faced with the fragility of life.  Our day will come to meet our Lord and Savior which should be a reminder to be ready.

 

One year later, it’s impossible to know how much we have lost to COVID-19

 ~Article by Dan Stockman for the Global Sisters Report, a project of National Catholic Reporter

 

When the COVID-19 pandemic began a year ago, I read The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History by John M. Barry about the 1918 influenza pandemic.

The book tells how, when the number of infections exploded in Philadelphia, the first major city in the United States hit by the deadly flu, 2,000 nuns from all over the country came to nurse the sick. Hospitals were overwhelmed, so sisters set up clinics anywhere there was space. As a result, 23 of them died from their close contact with the infected.

It occurred to me that hundreds of women religious must have died in that terrible outbreak. There would have been deaths not just among those caring for the sick, but in convents across the country. After all, an estimated 50 million people died worldwide from what became known as “Spanish flu,” and an estimated 675,000 of those deaths were in the United States.

But I could not find any organization that kept track of how many sisters died in that pandemic, let alone told their stories. Hundreds of sisters killed in the United States, and we have no comprehensive record of it beyond those 23. It is an incalculable loss made incomprehensible as it is lost to history.

As I was reading and pondering this in March 2020, convents were going into lockdown, trying to keep sisters safe from the virus that has ravaged their age group. Visitors were barred, travel was canceled, events were postponed.

But it wasn’t enough.

The most insidious part of the COVID-19 virus, of course, is its long incubation period: One can be infected and infect others for up to 14 days before having any symptoms. Some apparently healthy people were, in fact, contagious, and the virus worked its way into convents, retirement homes and assisted-living facilities, where it exploded among the vulnerable population.

As sisters began to die, it quickly became clear that once again, no one was keeping comprehensive track of the religious we were losing. Their ministries, the people they touched, the mountains they moved: All of those stories are in danger of being lost.

I have tried to track them as best I can through Google Alerts and the reader tributes submitted to Global Sisters Report. At least once a week, it seems, there is another sister lost, and sometimes, there are horrible strings of them — a slow-motion story of pain and grief. Occasionally, there are shocking bursts of them all at once.

On April 9, 2020, there were reports that four sisters at the Our Lady of the Angels Convent in Greenfield, Wisconsin, a suburb of Milwaukee, had tested positive for the virus and another had died. Four days later came another death. Then a third, until eventually, six sisters had died at the convent, which specializes in memory care and is shared by the School Sisters of St. Francis and the School Sisters of Notre Dame.

Then came the awful news that four Maryknoll Sisters had died, then a Sister of Charity of Nazareth, a Sister of Mercy, and on and on and on, week after week, month after month.

Among them was Sr. Annelda Holtkamp of the School Sisters of St. Francis in Milwaukee, who was 102. She ministered for decades as a homemaker at convents in Illinois, Nebraska and Wisconsin, serving her fellow sisters until she retired at age 87.

Sr. Raquela Mesa-Acosta from Colombia died while ministering to the Hispanic community in Bridgeport, Connecticut. In her early years in the Congregation of Missionary Sisters of Mary Immaculate and St. Catherine of Siena, she served as a personal assistant to the order’s founder, St. Laura Montoya.

Sr. Georgianna Glose, a Sister of St. Dominic of Amityville, New York, spent 51 years serving people kept poor in Brooklyn’s Fort Greene neighborhood. She also helped sound the alarm on sexual abuse by priests within the Catholic Church. I met her in 2017 while working on a story about Sr. Sally Butler, with whom she lived, and she was outgoing, gregarious and passionate about her ministry.

Sr. Irene Loretta Cassady was beloved at the schools where she taught in Philadelphia. One student said she helped save his life when he was in a coma from a rare blood disorder: She held him in her arms while a priest said last rites. Another time, she insisted on visiting a student in the hospital even though she was in a wheelchair after a severe back injury. She died after nearly 70 years in the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

How many others, though, will we never even know about?

I suspect we all question life and death and God’s plan and what it all means when there is a death close to us. But watching these reports come in week after week, the litany of lives ended too early, left me a little numb.

Then I saw the pain up close and in person.

The Congregation of the Sisters of St. Felix of Cantalice, or Felician Sisters, in Livonia, Michigan, lost 12 sisters from April 10 to May 10, 2020, and a 13th on June 27, 2020. Making the Felicians’ anguish even worse: They could not observe their usual traditions when a sister dies. In fact, they largely couldn’t leave their rooms at all, in an effort to stop the spread of the virus, and spent months in something like solitary confinement.

They were in shock. They had been through profound trauma and had almost no way to express it — until I reached out and asked whether they might be interested in telling their story to GSR. Once they were out of quarantine, I visited them, spending a day doing masked interviews conducted at least 10 feet apart. I was probably the first guest at the convent in months.

They had suffered such incalculable loss, but they wanted to tell their story. They wanted the world to know about these women, who had been teachers, a librarian, an organist, a nurse. They found some comfort in telling their story and even more comfort from the reaction: gifts, notes, love and condolences from around the world.

I had to enter their pain to write about it, but I took comfort that their story was told and that it brought them some measure of healing. You cannot share in someone’s grief and not be changed.

The reports of sisters dying continued through the summer, fall and winter. And my efforts to track them are completely inadequate: The Google Alerts and reader tributes only find the late sisters that someone wrote a news story about or sent in to GSR. If there is only an obituary, the sister’s death won’t show up in a news search; a search of obituaries would miss any that do not include the words “COVID” or “coronavirus,” which is most of them. My sifting of sister deaths overseas is even worse, as it only includes English-speaking countries or English-language coverage.

This poor accounting has found 95 sisters lost to COVID-19 in the United States, but the true number must be at least triple that. The deaths I know about outside the United States number only 155. I hate to even think about what the real number — and scope of the loss — is.

One community I talked to explained they have a standard practice when a sister dies: An obituary is published, and she is added to the list of deceased sisters on the website. They do that whether the sister was well-known with significant public achievements or whether she had a ministry of prayer. To issue a press release or allow a news story about only some sisters who died simply because of what caused their death wouldn’t be right, they told me.

I understand that. But the greater church needs to know the extent of our loss. We have no full concept of what this pandemic has cost us. We cannot fully mourn these sisters if we don’t know they’re gone.

We’re supposed to learn from history, yet we are repeating it. I can only imagine someone 100 years from now wondering what the toll was among those who dedicated their lives to serving God and his people and finding that no one counted them.

Perhaps this is a job for researchers rather than reporters, or each country’s umbrella organizations for religious. I don’t have the answers, only the questions that need to be asked.

This reaping is already tragic. We owe it to those who died to be able to tell future generations what we lost.

 

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Reflect

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Reflect

This has been a particularly long year and as at the end of most years, we find ourselves reflecting on what has transpired.  While there has been great pain, fear and loss, there is much for which to be grateful.  Healthcare workers have shown tremendous strength and commitment; communities have exhibited extraordinary resiliency; and individuals listened with the ear of their heart (Saint Benedict) and showered others with kindness and generosity.

Florida Trend magazine named the Non-profit sector “Floridian of the Year” for this pandemic year.  The work of these organizations is made possible because of so many individuals who support their causes.

Thank you for making our community and the world stronger through your compassionate giving.  Tomorrow will be brighter as recovery continues.  God bless you and your loved ones!

In gratefulness for your help with our cause,

Benedictine Sisters of Florida

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Advent is Upon Us

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Advent is Upon Us!

Today, this year, Advent has already dawned, the sun is up in the east.  It arrived in a world in the midst of a pandemic in a way that reminds me of Carl Sandburg’s poem “Fog.”

Here, in our country, it seems, more so than usual, that Advent is being eclipsed to begin celebrating Christmas…. TV ads, house and yard light displays, Christmas music (What happened to the plaintive Advent songs?).  Others are experiencing anticipatory dread of a holiday separated from loved ones.  Thousands of heavy hearts daily grieve the loss of family members, neighbors and friends.  Circumstances have left many without work, no dependable source of income or the means of providing food and life’s necessities.  A pale of depression and loneliness hangs over people aching for a human touch, a phone call …  any sign that someone is aware of their pain.

Every Advent we have to delve into the Scriptures in order to feel the sense of the messages of hope, peace, love, and joy.  Our nighttime darkness will continue to lengthen until December 21 and the winter solstice moving us ever closer towards the celebration of Jesus’ birth.  The advent hymns we’ll sing – and the antiphons used at Morning and Evening Praise – keep impressing upon us the need to pray for “comfort for those who sit in darkness” and those whose “hearts yearn for the light of Christ.”  We must announce to a “world that waits in silence” that “our souls in stillness wait.”  We believe the words of the prophet Habakkuk:  The message I give you waits for the time I have appointed. It speaks about what is going to happen.  And all of it will come true.  It might take a while.  But wait for it.  You can be sure it will come.  It will happen when I want it to.

While Advent is certainly a time of waiting it is also a time of anticipation and celebration in its own rite.  It is the between-time that Karl Barth speaks of: “Unfulfilled and fulfilled promises are related to each other, as are dawn and sunrise.  Both are promise and in fact the same promise.  If anywhere at all, then it is precisely in the light of the coming of Christ that faith has become Advent faith, the expectation of future revelation.  But faith knows for whom and for what it is waiting.  It is fulfilled faith because it lays hold on the fulfilled promise.  This is the essence of Advent.”

We’ve all had experiences of waiting … that’s part of all our lives.  The season of Advent reminds us that waiting is often the cost of love.  In waiting for someone, our own everyday business becomes almost meaningless as we anticipate, worry, and prepare for a loved one’s return, or an estranged family member or the unknown visitor who becomes the friend we had just never before met and now recognize as Christ personified.  In waiting, we realize our own powerlessness; we realize our deepest hopes, and needs and yearnings.  People and events we didn’t know we missed until we encounter them.

More than ever, this year, in the midst of the pandemic, I suspect the spirit of Advent will pale in the face of the hurry to put up decorations and play some Christmas music.  People can’t wait for Christmas to come with the promised vaccine.

May our waiting for the coming of the Holy One this Christmas help us understand and carry on the mystery of compassionate and generous waiting.  Don’t expect a dramatic vision but do try to become more conscious of the Christ coming through our doors, in one another as each   enters our community room or are seated to “break bread” at mealtime.  In our corporate commitment we pledge to be the embodiment of the compassion of Christ.  And it is obvious from our visitors’ comments that this is one of our signature ministries.  Our guests, and we who live here, know that our companions care for us …  the question at times may be: “do we care about each other?”  One litmus test: “Until you know what hurts me, you cannot truly love me.”

In his 2020 Advent letter, Pope Francis reminds us: “Advent, a time of grace, tells us that it is not enough to believe in God: it is necessary to purify our faith every day.”  We pray: “O Holy Spirit, fill our hearts with Advent hope so that we may learn to cope with the delays and disappointments we encounter with patience and wisdom.  May a spirit of gratitude and humility guide us on our journey to your dwelling place, enabling us to endure, with joy, the costs of waiting for love, reconciliation, and peace.”

Ask yourself as you turn off the light each night…

+ To whom did I offer a word of hope, affirmation or comfort today?
+ How was I a ray of light to someone who felt the darkness of loneliness?
+ Tomorrow, how will I prepare for Christ to be born anew in my heart?

~Reflection by Sister Roberta Bailey, OSB, Prioress

 

First Reading  Isaiah 63:16b-17,19b;64:2-7                Second Reading 1 Corinthians 1:3-9
Gospel Mark 13:33-37

 

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A Little Trivia to Help Focus Prayer

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A LITTLE TRIVIA to HELP FOCUS PRAYER

October 4 is the feast of Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint Faustina whose name is forever linked to the feast of the Divine Mercy.  It is also Fire Fighters Memorial Day and Respect Life Sunday.  In the past month we experienced the Fall Equinox, when the sun slipped over that imaginary line we called the equator and the sun appears to be moving southward.  Also, in the past month, the church celebrated the Fall Ember days – the Wednesday, Thursday and Friday following the feast of the Holy Cross.  Ember Days were placed at the beginning of the traditional four seasons of the year for fasting, abstinence, and prayer to thank God for the gifts of nature and to bless the Fall crops.  They were intended to teach us to exercise moderation in our consumption of the fruits of the fields and to come to the aid of the needy.  Knowing this, we can begin to see the prudence of the liturgical commission in placing the “farmer” parables right now in cycle of readings.

This particular Gospel invites us once again to focus on agriculture – a familiar topic here in Florida.  A little information (trivia?) in hopes it will help you realize the magnitude of a problem and the importance of the farming industry.  In the latest statistics Google could find for me, 2017, Florida ranked first in the U.S. in value of production of cucumbers, grapefruit, tangerines and tangelos, oranges, squash, sugarcane, snap beans, and tomatoes.  The state ranks second in production of bell peppers, strawberries, watermelons, cabbage and sweet corn.  At that time (in 2017), Florida had 47,000 commercial farms and ranches, using a total of 9.5 million acres of land.  Aquaponics and hydroponic farming are both on the rise in Florida with the Google map showing 20 licensed farms across central Florida.  (Readers can go to our website to read about the Benedictine Sisters program coordinated by Sister Miriam Cosgrove.  See www.benedictinesistersoffl.org)

I can see your wheels turning …  “So, what is your point?”  Well, maybe you’ve noticed that this is the third Sunday in a row that Jesus and Matthew have shared parables calling our attention to tilling the earth: the mustard seed, vineyards, lazy workers, late hires, wishy-washy sons, disappointed overseers and generous owners.  We are invited to consider the difference in attitude between tenants and owners; sons and indentured servants; wise waiting for growth and rash action to weed out suspected imperfection.

We, here in fertile, though sometimes drought ridden, Pasco County can help us empathize with the farmers and ranchers in the fire-ravaged areas in California and the far west.  Also, sense the feelings of desolation and devastation of farmers in the mid-West as they stand overwhelmed (once again) and survey their flooded acres and acres of lost crops.  How do the people of India – second largest producer of wheat and rice, the world’s major food staples, recover when their prospect of annual income is washed away by the monsoons and the gushing waters from the dams that were opened upstream, miles away?  And what are the ripple effects in our country and throughout the world?

How is it in the richest country in the world we see food sacristy and insecurity?  Before the pandemic, in the U.S. more than 35 million people, including 10 million children, suffered from food insecurity, meaning they have uncertain access to enough food to support a healthy life.  Since the pandemic began more than 54 million people, including 18 million children, are experiencing food insecurity.  Insufficient income, due to loss of employment and low wages, is a major cause of food insecurity.  “Food deserts” are also a problem …  lack of nearby food markets – and lack of transportation to food stores – especially for persons who are home bound or are not on public bus routes.  Couple that with schools that are closed or families who choose to have virtual classes for their children.

Let’s look at our “back yard” here in Pasco County.  54% (or 42,000) of the children (in Pasco County) are eligible to receive free or reduced meals at school.  Agencies and churches strive to staunch the tide of hunger and “fill tummies”:  Daystar, Meals on Wheels, Pasco Feed, Suncoast, Homeless Ministries, Feeding Tampa Bay, others.  There must be times when these volunteers feel like they are putting a finger in the dike only to watch another crack appear.  Fear and anxiety weigh heavy on many: will their food stamps be cut off, will they lose rent subsidies, “my children – what will they eat tomorrow.”

The problem is HUGE.  What can we do?  More specifically, what can I do?  Some simple things – (maybe they even sound simplistic) –

+ Be grateful for what we have; make do with what is available

+ Be conservative in purchasing; be patient when supplies run out

+ And, yes, pray!  There is a saying, “When all else fails, pray.”  But let’s don’t wait for “all else to fail” – pray for wisdom and discernment; examine where election candidates stand on issues – not just what they are saying, but what is their record, what are their actions telling you?  Don’t be complacent or fail to exercise your right to vote.  Be wise voters.

In Proverbs (4:6-7) we read: “Do not forsake wisdom, and she will protect you; love her, and she will watch over you.  Wisdom is supreme; therefore, get wisdom.  Though it cost all you have, get understanding.”  We just celebrated our Guardian Angels (October 2nd) – call on yours for the gift of wisdom.

~Reflection by Sister Roberta Bailey, OSB, Prioress

 

1st Reading: Isaiah 5:1-2            2nd Reading: Philippians 4:6-9        Gospel: Matthew 21:33-43

 

 

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