Easter Reflections - Faith Happens In Community Wednesday April 27, 2011 by Fran Rossi Szpylczyn

Faith Happens in Community - A Reflection for April 27

Four years ago today, I walked into St. Edward the Confessor and my life changed forever. Mark and I were going to be married here at the church the next day. However, on Friday the 27th, I made a split second decision to go to daily mass. Even if I had not done that, my life would have changed on the 28th, but this decision set other things in motion.

In a rare moment, I was cooperating with grace!

During the homily Father Pat Butler asked a question and me being me, I decided to boldly answer it. A brief discussion occurred and as a result I was made known to the community gathered for liturgy. After mass some of the women wanted to talk to me and this also opened the door for me to get to know Father Pat.

Which, if you read this blog at all - has resulted in many things.

This was to end a long cycle of silent, anonymous church attendance and to create a life for Mark, Erica and me that we could not have imagined.

So what on earth does that have to do with today's readings?

Faith happens in community.

Today's Gospel from Luke is the story of Emmaus. While many of us know it well, it bears some repeating, as the Gospel always does.  The two disciples are walking along the road when a stranger starts to talk to them. This stranger seems to not know what had just happened, so the two disciples start to tell him the story. They end up inviting him to eat with them and that is when it is revealed in the breaking of the bread... He is Jesus the Risen Lord!

The two were walking away from their community, even if unintentionally. They seem to have given up and are still smarting since they thought that Jesus was "the one." Well as it turns out, Jesus is of course "the One!"

It is in the meal, it is in community that Jesus is found and our faith comes alive.

That is what happened to me 4 years ago as I was preparing to marry and move to a community where I knew my soon-to-be husband and step-daughter and no one else. I was not walking away dejectedly - no not at all. But I was walking alone and about to become part of a family. And I was committed to church but was I really committed to community?

Recent history had seen me separate from a long standing group of close friends and I had sat silently in pews of Catholic churches that I faithfully attended but never became a part of. My belief and faith were strong enough - but had not fully blossomed.

To encounter Jesus is not just the sustenance of silent, contemplative prayer - although that is a part of prayer - but to encounter Jesus is to be in community. The sacramental nature of the Catholic church is lived out in encounter and grace is mediated in sacrament. This ultimately means that in bread and wine and one another, through Big S and small s sacraments, we encounter Christ.

That is why (no offense intended to those who identify as such - which I once did, a long time ago), being "SBNR" doesn't make sense to me. Even my being Roman Catholic but doing so in a completely isolated way does not really make sense.

It is not until we are part of community - with all the gifts and burdens that community brings - that our faith can be deepened. Perhaps this means another community besides the Roman Catholic church, but ultimately it is only through and with one another that we truly can meet the God who walks with us as the Christ.

Walk with Christ, come to the table, engage and be a part of the community. That is the message of Emmaus that I experience and that is the ever present invitation from our God who cannot be understood, but experienced.

I Have Fixed My Eyes On Your Hills - A Meditation on Palm Sunday 2011

Palm Sunday is here and Holy Week begins. Many liturgies today will begin with a portion from Matthew's Gospel; the I am not at home this weekend and it feels very strange to be away from my own parish community on such a day.

As I read the readings and Gospel for today, I am reminded of something very personal - the recent passing of my husband's sister, Olga Szpylczyn. Is this too personal and far from the readings? I don't know - it is all I can offer today. Like Jesus, Olga knew where she was headed and it was not going to be pretty. Death would not come by riding on the best horse.

Say to daughter Zion,
“Behold, your king comes to you,
meek and riding on an ass,
and on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden.”


Olga, who was anything but meek in life began to embrace who she was as she plied her way on the journey. She did so without fanfare or remarkably without much fear. Olga, as the very hard-working daughter of extremely hard-working immigrants was used to achievement in the classic American cultural sense of the word. If she wanted to book the limo, she could. While she would not typically do such a thing, she did know that she could because she had worked hard and achieved it. She was not arrogant, but she was clear about the relationship between work and rewards as seen in our society.

Her journey into death was not the one she imagined. Will any of our own journeys into death be what we imagine? Probably not - most of us can't or won't imagine them until we are forced to. That is when the game change begins.

So she rode on her beast of burden as all of us who loved her surrounded her with prayer. We wanted the limo to take her back to us. She stayed on that damn ass with her eyes on the Lord. The song in the video below reminds us "though I cannot see the end for me, I cannot turn away." She did not turn away.

There is so much more to the Sacred Scriptures for today, but all I can think of is Olga, settled in for her ride. She met death without compromise and tumbled into the arms of God.

She journeyed to Jerusalem, as we all must do. Rest in peace dear Olga.

The Smell of the Resurrection

A reflection on today's readings, Sunday, April 10, 2011.

"This gorgeous NE Missouri spring morning is the kind of morning that reminds me that the home stretch of Lent is always the hardest--that the smell of the resurrection of nature is just around the corner, and about to burst at the seams--It makes me absolutely itchy for Easter resurrections of all sorts." - Maria L. Evans

I read the words you see above on Maria's facebook page; she blogs at Kirkepiscatoid. When I read them, they knocked me back a bit, but that was a few hours ago and I had nothing that I could say about them. Or about today's readings.

We are coming upon it now... This is the Fifth Sunday of Lent, we've been at this awhile and we are tired. Well, I'm tired anyway, I can't speak for you. I'm really tired. Lent began and my sister-in-law Olga was alive, now she is not. Lent began with death and ashes and it got to be real death and ashes around here. I feel weary and frustrated. I do not doubt but I do get to shaking my fist at God from time to time.

In any case, I read Maria's words and they rested in my heart. I read Shannon's blog post about today's readings. I read Richard Vosko's homily. I thought about how today is the 56th anniversary of the death of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ. I read about Faith and the Cosmos. I continued to ponder the often angry  and vitriolic dialogue I often encountered on the internet, diatribe that I once participated in and am still tempted to. That made me restless so I watched a TV program about women rabbis, including the first Orthodox woman rabbi, Rabba Sara Hurwitz. (Also featured were Andrea Warnick Buchdahl and Dianne Cohler Esses.)

Nothing. Dry bones in my heart and in my head. There was nothing else that I could do, so I got the leash and Gracie and I headed out to the beautiful day.

I decided to check out a nearby park/path that I had never explored before, so off I went with ideas like the smell of the Resurrection, science and faith, and the ordination of women dancing in my head. The sun was warm and comforting, the scent in the air held promise.  Plus, I was in the mood to go somewhere that I had never been before.

Turning into the parkway and path, I immediately noticed the woods all around. Many of the trees were fallen, strewn like toothpicks after a giants' banquet. They lay crisscrossed on either side of the path. Some had holes bored into them and I could imagine the din of the woodpecker that left his signature. Some had peeling bark, reminding me of bad sunburns gone worse. Some were just remnants of the fine trees they once were, left to die on the side of the pathway.

Gracie pulled me forward, this was a cornucopia of scents for her, such delight. We crossed one little wooden bridge over a creek and then another. I stopped to look down.

Oh. My. God.

The water that ran was clear and light, it was dancing through the furrow in the dirt. However, it wasn't the water alone that caught me off-guard, it was the green. Coming up all around were green shoots. Some were more unfurled than others, but they were all there. Evidence of life, new life.

Then there were those fallen trunks. As I walked I began to study them more closely. Some had moss growing on them, others had ferns. Ferns and flowers were pushing up in the open areas too.

Those decomposing trees were giving new life. The dry bones were coming to life, like Lazarus called back! It was the smell of the resurrection made manifest in this patch of forest in my sleepy suburb!

That was it. New life comes all the time, even if I do not expect it or want it. Olga had died, but she comes to new life. Teilhard de Chardin is dead but his ideas are not and he is no longer silenced. Some of my ideas about life took their last breath and I continue to have a hard time letting them go, but die they do and they bring new life.

The bones will come to life, the dead will dance and the spirit will be put into us. I always wonder -will I, will we, be ready?

Hmm, That Can't Be Him!

A reflection for April 9, 2011.

Today's Gospel from John, ends with this line:

"Then each went to his own house."

Of course, each Gospel was written to have meaning beyond basic, literal words, but I am always reminded of how John uses nearly every word to convey something. When I read that line, in the context of the Gospel itself, I am reminded of how we misdirect ourselves.

Let's step back a moment however and go back to the text of the Gospel verses for today.  We come upon a crowd who upon hearing Jesus arrive at different conclusions.

Some in the crowd who heard these words of Jesus said,
“This is truly the Prophet.”
Others said, “This is the Christ.”
But others said, “The Christ will not come from Galilee, will he?"

As we can see, some of the people present thought they heard a prophet, others knew that this was the Christ but others were quick to say that Jesus was not the Christ at all.

And why not?

Christ was apparently not coming from Galilee!

What a trap we fall into when we "each go to our own house," to paraphrase the last line of today's Gospel. When we retreat into our own opinions and go off with them, rather than be in community with understanding that may be difficult to understand, we close off.

One need only open a newspaper, or some so-called Catholic publications, to see who is "in" or "out." Read many Catholic blogs? It is even worse!

We can all find ways to dissect and eviscerate each other in the name of God. It is very easy to use Scripture, documents and teaching to justify the exclusion of others because... well, because "“The Christ will not come from Galilee, will he?"

Judging others is easy, dismissing them is also done with ease because we want to believe that we know who is who... Perhaps not.

Is our invitation today to meet and encounter the Christ in surprising places? What will happen if we follow Jesus and go places that are not clear? How can we find Jesus if we just go "back to our own house?"

Will we encounter Jesus the Christ? Where will you meet him today?