As Sisters of Saint Joseph,
we enter the New Year more sure of and committed to God’s desire, that all may be one. “Like our First
Sisters, we are “eyes wide open, ears attentive, spirit alert, sleeves
rolled up” * to heal the divisions of our day. With you, we look at the
world God loves and see a country divided, a crisis of what media to trust, a
world of devastating piecemeal wars, orphaned children, countless refugees,
festering pockets of hate and a resistance to what science is telling us about
the plight of Earth. Violence and threat are palpable. It is easy to be
overwhelmed and paralyzed by the scope of the needs, and that can block us from
the small but great good we can accomplish where we are.
 |
| Sr. Rita Woehlcke |
We
believe God desires a different future and that we sisters and you who love our
mission are all God has and exactly who God wants to help make God’s dream a
reality. We hear the challenge:
“The
human heart can go to the lengths of God.
Dark
and cold we may be, but this
Is
no winter now. The frozen misery
Of
centuries breaks, cracks, begins to move;
The
thunder is the thunder of the floes.
The
thaw, the flood, the upstart Spring.
Thank
God our time is now when wrong
Comes
up to face us everywhere,
Never
to leave us ‘til we take
The
longest stride of soul men ever took.
Affairs
are now soul size.
The
enterprise is exploration into God.
Where
are you making for? It takes
So
many thousand years to wake,
But
will you wake for pity’s sake?”
“A SLEEP OF PRISONERS” from the play with
that title, by Christopher Fry, 1951
And so the question
looms, “How big is my soul?” Our first sisters physically felt the
hunger, the miseries of 17th century France. They were ONE WITH. Our
lives prepare us for the same heartfelt connections. What heartbreak and loss
have stretched my heart so that I feel and know the grieving parents and widows
of the Middle East? What personal trauma creates solidarity in me with all who
suffer oppression, derision or shame, simply for being who they are? What debt
of gratitude for unmerited blessings I have received binds me to those in need
of my blessing?
While the Sisters of Saint
Joseph are grateful for your appreciation of their spirit and good works, we
are longing for more than admiration. We are longing for you to be one with us,
God and all our dear neighbors. Join us in “exploration into God”— not
through big projects, but by building daily relationships of reverence through
the practice of non-violence.
Pope Francis wrote this
message for the 50th World Day of Peace on January 1, 2017:
On
this occasion, I would like to reflect on nonviolence as a style of politics
for peace. I ask God to help all of us to cultivate nonviolence in our most
personal thoughts and values. May charity and nonviolence govern how we treat
each other as individuals, within society and in international life. When
victims of violence are able to resist the temptation to retaliate, they become
the most credible promotors of nonviolent peacemaking. In the most local and
ordinary situations and in the international order, may nonviolence become the
hallmark of our decisions, our relationships and our actions, and indeed of
political life in all its forms. Violence is not the cure for our broken world.
Countering violence with violence leads at best to forced migrations and
enormous suffering, because vast amounts of resources are diverted to military
ends and away from the everyday needs of young people, families experiencing
hardship, the elderly, the infirm and the great majority of people in our
world. At worst, it can lead to death, physical and spiritual, of many people,
if not all.
“All
of us want peace. Many people build it day by day through small gestures and
acts; many of them are suffering, yet patiently persevere in their efforts to
be peacemakers.” [24] In 2017, may we dedicate ourselves prayerfully and
actively to banishing violence from our hearts, words and deeds, and to
becoming nonviolent people and to building nonviolent communities that care for
our common home. “Nothing is impossible if we turn to God in prayer. Everyone
can be an artisan of peace.” [25]
With Pope Francis, with you, we, Sisters of Saint
Joseph, can say, “Thank God we have one another, this mission and our ever
faithful God to help us be more great-hearted than we dared to dream, ask or
imagine.
Rita Woehlcke SSJ ministers as Director of SSJ
Associates in Mission.
