Jubilarian – 2009
Reflection for the Jubilee Mass – June 15, 2009
By Sister Mary Benilda Dix, SSND
Look at what happens when you say yes!
Today we celebrate Jubilee, that elusive provincial day that is always so far in the future and then suddenly pops up in front of us. It’s the time when each jubilarian gets to take credit for a piece of the total of (approximately) 3,300 years of service represented here. And here we are, all dressed up and celebrating, knowing we are favored by a loving God, filled with memories (most welcomed; maybe a few, not), still living in anticipation of things to come.
I’m sure we have already taken time, to do as Sister Mary Maher, our general superior, invited us to do on page two of her jubilee message: “to come before God once again, to take time in God’s presence to reflect on the wonder of it all.” In God’s presence and that of our community I’d like to take Sister Mary up on that invitation to reflect on the wonder of it all – and I invite non-jubilarians to join us, as well.
In that, we are certainly supported by the first reading chosen for today. In Jeremiah, God says, “I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have drawn you with loving kindness. Again I will build you and you will be rebuilt…” Looking at our congregation, specifically our province, who can deny the verity of those words?
We have lived through much in our years of vowed life, but I would like to concentrate on just two rebuildings. First, there were our “refounding days” leading to the approval of our new constitution. Didn’t you feel God with us through those days of dialogic discernment – finally yielding our inspired You Are Sent? Who can deny the days of that graced period – marked as they were by challenge, resistance, exhilaration, doubt, anticipation, and a tinge of fear?
Remember all the meetings on the local level and the extra chapter meetings in Rome? The endless community discussions? The equally endless position papers? But we got our wonderful You Are Sent out of it! That’s simplifying a complicated process, but here we are admitting the wonder of it all.
Another “rebuilding” was initiated by our renewal team – and more meetings, more searches for consensus, changes in government structure, and realizing that Notre Dame of the Lake was more space than we needed. How many other provinces have a history of four different centers (possibly a fifth in our immediate future)? We actually moved three times in 38 years: 1959 to Mequon, 1983 to Marshall Street, and 1997 to Elm Grove. (And the sisters here from the Atlantic Midwest/Chicago area can identify with that from their own journey.) All of us jubilarians, even the “young” goldens have been here for all the moves – if not physically, at least in spirit and via communications! And soon we will probably be in for more change as we form a new entity.
These are just two of the provincial rebuildings that our loving provident God has led us through.
Now to our Gospel with its glorious Magnificat, that exuberant burst of love and wonder! Elizabeth Johnson writes, “Singing of her joy in God and God’s victory over oppression, [Mary, the young Nazarene] becomes not a subjugated, but a prophetic woman.” – page 272, Elizabeth Johnson, Truly Our Sister – A Theology of Mary in the Communion of Saints.
“As Mary and Elizabeth meet,” she says, “they powerfully convey the resounding good news: women themselves embodying the mercy of God which they prophetically proclaim. They do so in the context of meeting and affirming one another. Elizabeth, in being able to name the grace in her own life, is prepared to recognize and name the grace of another when Mary comes calling. Her experience of God’s fidelity is used to give confidence to another. Together they proclaim their ‘yes’ to solidarity with the project of the reign of God.” Are we called to anything less?
My question is “How did Mary come to her canticle?” Even before her visit from the angel of the Annunciation, there must have been other yeses – some joyful, some heart wrenching, some easy, some hard, some with support of family and community, some without. That seems to be the everlasting pattern of the yeses that all of us are called to say.
Remember how as teens in Catholic high school settings and later in the candidature and novitiate, we were encouraged to be Mary-like; little did we realize what that meant. Mary, too, had no idea of what her yes to the angel would eventually mean for herself and for those who loved her, so, too, we courageously – maybe with a bit of trepidation – dared to make our perpetual vowed commitment. Oh, the wonder of it all!
Strengthened by the grace of our baptism and other sacraments, we confidently responded yes to our first call to the new life of being a School Sister of Notre Dame. It didn’t take most of us long to realize that yes is not as easy and uncomplicated as y-e-s looks. Each time it is uttered, it has implications. For instance, just to use our common experiences, our yes in the Milwaukee province at the time we took our first vows had implications none of us dreamed of and now we are in awe and wonder at what we have gone through together – attested to by the rebuildings we just touched upon.
Mary’s yeses and ours were fraught with anxiety and letting go, but “in our attitude of listening and openness, we follow Mary,” as You Are Sent, paragraph 32 proclaims. As a result, our last Chapter gave us the Call to Solidarity, where we proclaim that “we are ready personally and communally, to risk all we are and all we have for the sake of the mission of Jesus Christ.” That is presupposing a lot of yeses as we, through the years, continue to live out the last sentence of paragraph 32: “Prayer and life are an attentive listening in order to do, a basic willingness to be led by God in order to bear fruit in mission.” Prayer and listening – therein lies our strength.
Sister Mary Maher’s letter takes it for granted that we have looked back on all that the years have held for us. Looking at the yeses that precede our own Magnificats will help us to do that again. Our yeses have been many and varied: yes to first, renewed, and final vows, of course; yes to the obediences we received; yes to the relationships in the communities we were called to; yes to moving to new locations. And, as years go on, yes to possibly giving up active ministry in parish and school to take on the different kinds of service to one another that retirement might call us to; and finally, yes to slowing up physically and mentally, yes to hearing aids, yes to a wheelchair, scooter, cane, or walker. Right now, these are the yeses that cost, aren’t they? There are even some yeses that are best spelled n-o, when we know we can’t handle a situation anymore.
We are told that we are now wisdom women – and that is really something else to say yes to. Who we are really called to be is Elizabeth, the older woman called to say yes to being affirming and supportive of those who are beginning to stand on the shoulders of those who came before them. We are beginning to be those shoulders (weak as they are)!
I sometimes think of Mary, too, as she grew older (Mary of the Pentecost, I like to call her) a behind-the-scenes kind of woman – supportive, ready to help when asked, ready to go along with decisions she might not agree with, ready to help as much as her physical strength allows, to let go of being in the loop, of knowing and understanding everything that was going on in the young Church.
Mary was the wise comforting presence, there to welcome the followers of Jesus, to hear how they were spreading the word – her son’s message of love. She was there to encourage, to challenge, to pray with those going out into the mission field and with those returning.
If we are really willing to be this Mary as we grow older, as we say yes to what is happening around us, we might have to drop some responses from our vocabulary. It is no longer useful, nay even wise, to say things like “when I was young, we did things this way”; “we never did it that way before”; “we already tried that in (some bygone year) – it didn’t work”; “you’re too young to understand.”
Changing our ways or our words are the kinds of yeses we will be called to, as we celebrate 50, 60, 70, or 75 years of vowed life. And we are all moving relentlessly toward that final yes. As You Are Sent, paragraph 47 says, “In death, we say our ultimate yes to our Creator…. our final earthly proclamation of the Good News.”
I’d like to end with the words of Mary as given at the beginning of the Magnificat in the Message Bible translation. On this special day, I think we can make them our own:
I’m bursting with God-news;
I’m dancing the song of my Savior God.
God took one good look at me, and look what happened—
I’m the most fortunate woman on earth!
What God has done for me will never be forgotten,
the God whose very name is holy, set apart from all others.
His mercy flows in wave after wave
on those who are in awe before him.
– Message Bible translation from Internet
THE WONDER OF IT ALL! Amen!
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