Covid-19: An Unwelcome Visitor

Sister Loretta in recovery

Recently, I received the weekly ponderings of a friend who reflected on a poem of the great poet Rumi.  She commented that in The Guest House he compares human beings to a guest house, “where every morning [there is] a new arrival.  A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor… Welcome and entertain them all!”

I definitely did not smile and welcome the visitor called COVID-19 that came to visit me in person on April 23, 2020.  I wanted to slam the door and pretend that it wasn’t there on the other side. Since I had not experienced any symptoms of the dreaded virus and had been in close contact with the Sisters here at the Residence, my greatest fear at the time was that I had unwittingly infected others. That fear was alleviated when only two others were declared positive at that time and I didn’t think I was the result. 

In spite of my reluctance, I could do nothing but allow that very unwelcome guest to take up residence in my body.  During the time it remained with me, there were days when I didn’t even have the energy to complain to God and ask, “Why me?”  or to express my gratitude that I was still able to breathe with the help of my ever-present oxygen tube.  

Now that I have recuperated, I do try to remember to express my gratitude for my health and being able to enjoy the ease of breathing and the beauty of God’s lovely nature as I take my daily walks in the great outdoors. 

- Sister Loretta Hagen, csj

Here is the poem:

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

— Jalaluddin Rumi, translation by Coleman Barks (The Essential Rumi)

Praying Our Way Through Covid-19

Praying Our Way Through COVID-19

I sit in our darkened chapel as rain softly pelts the windows and waters the thirsty leaves of trees that kiss the windowpane. My spirit is quiet, yet a deep ennui niggles at my soul.  “Are we near the end of this COVID pandemic”? my burdened heart asks. Deep within, I hear, “Wait and see”.

For months now, we have longed as a group of 70 Sisters, to sit in solidarity in this beautiful place of worship to pray together, sing in chorus, and worship at Eucharist.  However, “Not yet”, I hear, “Not yet”.  Only five are allowed in the chapel and today we’re up to ten. 

During COVID time, rules change daily but not quickly. Nonetheless, we’ve managed quite well, thank you, due to the creativity and ingenuity that we’ve always used to solve a host of problems during our 160-plus years in Canada.

No doubt, most people are aware of television’s Lobby Watch Channel.  Well, we just happen to have it on every tv in our residence.  Every Sister from her room can link to our chapel services. 

No matter where we are in the house, coronavirus has not stopped us from carrying out our spiritual practices and prayer for the world.  Usually, at 11:30 am we tune in to the chapel channel to view and take part in the liturgy’s readings of the Word of God.  Due to Sr. Loretta Manzara’s vast experience and ministry as a liturgist, we have daily scripture readings, responses, meditation, and singing, all led from our technically-equipped chapel.

Evening prayer? No problem.  We know this ritual by heart and participate on Channel 988 with our well-worn psalm books.  We don’t worry that no one can hear us singing alone, yet together, in our rooms.  Sunday liturgies consist of the Word of God with uplifting reflections, intercessions, and prayers given by our Sisters from the chapel lectern.  Yes, it’s all woman power!

Stained Glass in the chapel, Sisters of St. Joseph, London, ON [Artist: Ted Goodden]

Now, as we wait along with the rest of the world for lifted restrictions and better days ahead of us, we join our hearts, hands, and voices in solidarity, waiting, and praying, as promised for these days to end.

As Adrienne Arsenault says, concluding the National, “These days will end, and when they end, we’ll still be here,” faithful to our prayer and good works, ready to embrace the future with hope and resilience.

-Sister Jean Moylan, csj

Virtual Prayer

Multiple voices are weighing in on the experience of Covid-19 – what we are learning, examples of resilience and kindness, hopes for a changed social fabric in the future. I too long for systemic change that brings us to a more humane living of universal acceptance and care of one another and creation.

Sisters of St. Joseph Chapel in London, Ontario

Since my life has been very confined these days, I share a minute experience from the reality of our residence. In our community of women religious, like many parishes and faith gatherings, we have not been able to assemble for communal prayer, although our prayer patterns continue privately, in our rooms.

The action of gathering, as an assembly to praise and encounter God, is just as essential as gathering together at the table to enjoy a meal. It is in our DNA. The Jewish community gathers at the synagogue, the Muslim community at the mosque, the various denominations of Christianity strive to assemble in meeting houses, churches, chapels, and outdoor venues. The gathering is the action that says I intentionally want to participate, to engage with others in offering praise and worship. It is a response in relationship with our ever creating God.

So for the past few months, we have tried to continue a sense of gathering in creative but safe ways.

We can’t celebrate Eucharist, but we can celebrate the Word of God, and we can praise in song, and offer lament and intercessory prayer for the sake of our fragile world. And we can do this communally through closed-circuit TV that was planned in the design of our 2007 residence.  This functions like the lobby channel in an apartment building that allows you to see who is at the main entrance ringing your bell. Each individual person is united to the whole community as we intentionally listen to the Word proclaimed over closed-circuit TV, and join in singing and prayer from our rooms.

One day, as I waited alone in the chapel, to start to pray at the appointed time, I  awakened to a new sense of how the many years of song and prayer, joy, and sorrow that had been offered here, somehow continued to resonate in the space. The chapel is the heart space of our life together. It pulses with the rhythm of daily prayer, Eucharist, funerals, Jubilees, special services of gratitude for the gift of creation, feast days of foundresses, etc.

This accumulated wealth of ritual activity and silent contemplative prayer is the foundation of our prayer together while apart. Although separated by walls and floors, each of us at the appointed time intentionally turn our thoughts and mind to the prayer at hand.

Perhaps for the first time, I realized in concrete time and space the church’s phrase the Mystical Body of Christ. Each of us has been baptized into the one Body of Christ. Being one body is obvious to me when we are all gathered around the Eucharistic table and singing our favorite hymn. But there are other times that it is lost on me. That day while leading prayer in the empty chapel I was assured that Christ has drawn us together in great Love.

Covid has challenged us to experience a whole new approach to intentionally praying together. Gratitude is the primary expression that fuels our days. I wonder what else we can learn from this experience . . .

- Sister Loretta Manzara, csj 

Welcoming the Wild Goose: An Invitation For Pentecost

Sunday, May 31st this year marks the celebration, in the Christian Church, of the Feast of Pentecost commemorating the descent of the Holy Spirit on the followers of Jesus in Jerusalem. There is something striking about the chosen Scripture readings for the celebration. They present a seeming contradiction! In the selected Gospel (John 20: 19-23) we read of the resurrected Jesus entering the locked room in which his disciples are hiding in fear. It is Jesus in this narrative who breathes the Holy Spirit on them offering them peace as he sends them out. It’s a comforting story. Isn’t it also the way in which we so often depict the Holy Spirit as a peaceful dove; a soothing Presence? Of course, many of us will have experienced God’s Presence in that real, appropriate, and peaceful manner. But there is more …

By contrast, the reading from Acts recounts the “arrival” of the Holy Spirit as “like the rush of a violent wind … as divided tongues of fire”. This dramatic portrayal of the Spirit is a quite different experience. It represents a disturbing, disruptive event.

Pope Francis in a 2013 homily resonates with such an experience of the Holy Spirit. He says, “The Holy Spirit upsets us because the Spirit moves us, makes us walk, pushes us forward.” But “we want to tame the Holy Spirit, and that is wrong.” In a similar vein, the late Irish poet John O’ Donohue remarks, “I think there is a wonderful danger in God that we have totally forgotten. Because one of the things humanoids like to do is they like to bring in the tamers to tame their deities.”(See: John O’ Donohue, “Imagination as the Path of the Spirit” YouTube) There is, O’ Donohue says, a wildness in God and we are called to “make God dangerous again.” The image of the Holy Spirit as a dove isn’t the whole story!

In Celtic Christianity, the wonderful portrayal of the Holy Spirit was rather that of a” Wild Goose”. When I first encountered this early spiritual image, I was taken back to my childhood growing up in Cambridge, England. Often, my mother would take me on walks to the University grounds, to the beautiful so-called “Backs of the Colleges”. We would enter through the gates of Queen’s College where a gaggle of geese (albeit somewhat domesticated) stood guard. They were noisy, erratic, frightening animals. They definitely seemed dangerous to a small child. I couldn’t wait to hurry past them. Perhaps that is also our motivation when we avoid or resist the wildness of God. It is much more comfortable to be with the gentle dove. The dove may comfort me as God comforts, but the dove may not call me to the fullness of the dynamic relationship to which God calls each of us. The Wild Goose does.

The Wild Goose is untameable, uncontrollable, sometimes frightening, a dangerous creature! The Wild Goose invites us to let go of all that is static, to live life on God’s terms rather than from our preconceived and safe ideas of how life should work out. This alternative image of the Holy Spirit beckons us toward the unexpected, to life’s ultimate questions, to fresh horizons and perceptions, to grow into the dynamic world of the Spirit. It calls us to be open to a “dangerous” journey; one in which we have to trust God wholeheartedly remembering at the same time that geese also protect; to a divine adventure impassioned by the Spirit with the tongues of fire gifted to the disciples.

Perhaps this Pentecost invites me to go on “a wild goose chase” where not I but the goose does the chasing - of me!  On this Feast may I welcome the Wild Goose. May I let God act, call me to be and do something different, to risk life in the Spirit, to embrace a dangerous God, but a God, nonetheless, who remains with each of us on the wild and wonderful journey as a dove of peace sending us out like the first disciples, to love and live in freedom and joy.

A prayer of an Anglican priest, writer and founder of a contemporary Celtic community, Ray Simpson, says it all:

Great Spirit, Wild Goose of the Almighty.
Be my eye in dark places;
Be my flight in trapped places;
Be my host in wild places;
Be my brood in barren places;
Be my formation in the lost places.

(Ray Simpson, “A Holy Island Prayer Book: Prayers and Readings from Lindesfarne, Church Publishing Inc., 2002)

A blessed, happy, peaceful, and dangerous Pentecost!

-Sister Mary Rowell, cjs

(Photos: Courtesy of Unsplash.com)

Celebrating Joyfully

National Vocation Awareness Week: November 3-9, 2019

National Vocation Awareness Week is an annual celebration of vocations to consecrated life and to ordained priesthood and the place they have together with all others through their vocations to live the good news of the Gospel in service in the world. The week-long celebration was begun in 1976 as an initiative of the Catholic Bishops of the United States. Recently, and thankfully, the celebration had begun to “creep across the border” and is now finding a place in Canada.

In addition to celebration this event is a call through prayer and education to re-create awareness of the joy of consecrated life and priesthood in the Church and world. It is an invitation to young people to consider where God may be calling them in loving and fulfilling lives. It is also an invitation to each and all of us to renew our prayers for an increase in vocations to consecrated life and priesthood - that is, to lives of “living faith, living mercy, living joy and living beauty” for a world so in need of the hope and promise of Christ today.