Kneading Faith
By Fran Lavelle
I have spent the past three years studying transformational leadership for a doctorate in ministry (D. Min.) Thanks be to God, I graduated on June 1st. One of my favorite courses was titled Transformational Servant Leadership. The course description states, “…the servant-leader is servant first. His or her desire to lead comes from a desire to serve and is manifested in the care s/he takes in ensuring that others grow into greater freedom, wisdom, health, and empowered leadership. Transformational leadership invites the leader to engage in a process of service that lifts the leader and those they serve to a higher level of being and acting that are the bases for personal conversion and social transformation. Both nurture the seeds of a vision that leaders and our society not only long for but can realize.”

When I first read the course description I was struck by the phrase, “nurture the seeds of vision.” Upon further reflection I came to recognize that hospitality is the cornerstone of any vision for ministry. Hospitality exists in places where authentic encounters lead to eternal love. The imperative to truly see, hear, and value one another is difficult. It is a challenge in our work as ministers but also it is a greater challenge in our daily living. In preparing our hearts to receive all others with attentiveness, active listening, empathy and love we rest in hospitality.

In John McKnight’s article, “Why Servant Leadership is Bad” he invites churches to be places of hospitality not social service agencies. Everything he advocates for begins with the ability to go beyond treating the symptoms of our social ills and work to see the other as equal not something to be pitied. Hospitality requires that we be focused on the other – their value, dignity and gifts. A space of radical hospitality is the fertile ground for dreaming, visioning and praxis.

We can dream and talk about vision but in order for visions to be animated, systems to support those visions must be in place. What are the seeds of your transformational leadership praxis? Are you building the structures to support the ministries in your parish or school that support your vision? Are you becoming united with other servant leaders through better communication, opportunities for education and training, regular meetings and celebrating milestones in both your professional and personal lives? Are you underscoring the importance of dreaming and envisioning, the importance of foresight and the value of authentic listening? Do you recognize team members who readily engage in dreaming big dreams, envisioning new ways of being and living a ministry of presence?

What are the desired outcomes of our vision? A question Robert Greenleaf asks in The Servant Leader, “Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants?”

In returning to the connectedness of all life we are called to nurture the seeds of vision. A vision that includes the oneness of our humanity and indeed all of creation. The paradigm shifts a little every time someone on the periphery feels connected to God’s love. Our role as persons of faith and as formational leaders is to cultivate oneness by being present, vulnerable and loving. If we are caught in a “it’s the way we’ve always done it” mentality, we are limiting our ability to learn and grow. Holding on to old ways just because they are comfortable limits the work of the Holy Spirit.

My colleague and dear friend, Abbey Schuhmann and I often talk about the young church. Our youth and young adults are seeking an authentic encounter with Christ. They want leaders who can accompany them on their faith journey, truly listen and hear them, and live out the Gospel in their everyday lives. They are listening to our words but also watching the way we live. Many who have left the church cite an authenticity gap. That is to say we do not live up to our preaching or teaching.

Successful servant leaders articulate a vision or message that resonates with people long after they are gone. I watched Ted Koppel’s segment on leadership a few years ago on CBS Sunday Morning. He interviewed Stanley McChrystal, a retired four star general. McChrystal mentioned a bright woman who came to one of his classes that he was teaching at Yale. She said something that obviously resonated with him, “People will forgive you for not being the leader you should be, but they won’t forgive you for not being the leader you claim to be.”

I pray a litany for all the transformational servant leaders in my life. Chief among them is my father. Forever imprinted in my spirit, he demonstrated transformational servant leadership. Dad was a great practitioner of hospitality. He used his life to serve others and encouraged them to become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous people. I am a beneficiary of his life of service. Nurturing the seeds of vision.

(Fran Lavelle is the Director of Faith Formation for the Diocese of Jackson.)

SENIOR STANDING
By Lisa M. Hendey
”Patience is a virtue,” I try to remind myself as the oncology receptionist hands me the clipboard filled with five separate (and badly copied) forms I know I’ve already completed online.

“Don’t complain. Just smile and say thank you,” I whisper internally.

Truly, I am grateful these days. I’m grateful for access to excellent health care and the professionals who render compassionately. I’m grateful for family and friends who have prayed for me ceaselessly during my cancer treatment process. And I’m grateful beyond measure for my caregiving husband whose love has known no bounds during the last six months.

But I’d be lying if I didn’t also admit to being wildly impatient. This is a new trait for me.

In the past, I’ve had bouts of impatience. As a young professional stymied by a lack of experience, I felt impatient for not having been recognized by my older peers. Raising toddlers and navigating my sons’ teenage years certainly brought occasional moments of parental frustration. And I have confessed to more than one priest my ongoing impatience with my husband’s driving.

But by and large, my impatience in those moments felt like a temporary state, not the preexisting condition I carry with me these days.

My impatience with being a patient is something entirely new.
I am impatient with the endless hours of waiting that come with various forms of medical treatment. I’m impatient with the bureaucracy inherent in the process. Terribly, I feel impatient with the well-intentioned reminders of others that I should avoid “overdoing it.” Most of all, I’m impatient with myself and my inability to more quickly bounce back to my pre-diagnosis self.
In my better moments, it’s occurred to me since I turned 60 in June that this healing process, and aging itself, provide excellent opportunities to grow in the virtue of patience.

There is a saying attributed online to Mother Teresa and although I’ve never been able to find a source for it, it’s sound counsel: “Without patience, we will learn less in life. We will see less. We will feel less. We will hear less. Ironically, rush and more usually mean less.” Since my decision to intentionally work on growing in the virtue of patience, those words have reminded me to pause intentionally during my moments of impatience and to see them as opportunities to learn and grow.

My first step in this process has been to recognize my problem, admit it to myself, and take it to the sacrament of penance, spiritual direction, and counseling. It’s hard to avoid accepting the olive branch that’s typically offered when I’m reminded, “You have a good excuse for being impatient these days.”

The harm that comes to me spiritually (when I simply accept impatience as an ongoing state of mind) is one of my major motivations for wanting to grow in patience. St. Peter Damian, an eleventh-century reformer and Doctor of the Church, taught his followers about the power of patience. “The best penance is to have patience with the sorrows God permits,” he said. “A very good penance is to dedicate oneself to fulfill the duties of every day with exactitude and to study and work with all our strength.”

That helps. Slowing down helps, too – helps me to embrace the small moments each day when impatience can give way to virtue.

The proffered stack of medical forms reminds me to be intentionally grateful for our insurance coverage, and to pray for so many worldwide who go without even the most basic healthcare.

The extra hour spent in a waiting room is a chance to pray what I’ve come to refer to as a “waiting Rosary.” I count the heads of my fellow patients and use them as my “beads,” praying a Hail Mary for each of them and their needs in the silence of my heart.

My frustration with my own exhaustion and inability to focus reminds me to pray for the souls of my parents, to give thanks for the progress I have actually made, and to recognize that this new stage of my life offers many blessings I am only just beginning to realize.

(Lisa M. Hendey is the founder of CatholicMom.com, a bestselling author and an international speaker. “Senior Standing” appears monthly at OSV News.)

By Elizabeth Scalia
(OSV News) – Too often lately, it feels like the offices from which we’ve historically taken our cues – our political and community leadership, the punditry, local authorities and even some church groups – are populated with unserious people who can’t rise to a moment. Those who aren’t peddling pure boilerplate and calling it constructive thought are offering endless scolds about how we should live, think and speak, and how, if things aren’t getting better, it’s because we’re not doing enough of the right things. We should constantly be doing ever more of all these right things, it seems, until the world is saved and humanity perfected and then, finally, we may rest.

These exhausting harangues have become as penetrating (and authentic) as prop knives. They fall upon our ears like an approaching storm we’ve heard for too long – an over-familiar sound and fury, often signifying nothing.

Which is why the Jimmy Buffetts of the world are important to have around, and why it is worth a respectful pause and some consideration when they pass.

There was something poignant in Buffett’s passing at the start of Labor Day weekend, when the days are growing shorter and the flip flops and Hawaiian shirts must be put away along with our fantasies of living on a beach, responsible for nothing beyond bringing dessert to the next get-together. Sweaters come out in the evening and time seems suddenly too valuable to waste away searching for misplaced meaning, too fleeting to reclaim the misspent days which, valued too late, are forever lost.

Some dismiss the laid-back island-escapism of Jimmy Buffett as being something hedonistic or uncaring. The world is heavy with material and spiritual misery on every continent – we see it daily in the headlines – and from that perspective he might seem to have been just another fizzy artist, part beach bum, part vagabond, rolling easily between a beer keg and a few cocktails capped with frivolous little umbrellas while singing of hazy nights and strange tattoos (how it got there, he hadn’t a clue!).

Buffett’s biggest hit, “Margaritaville,” celebrates a life lived in meandering dissipation; its plaintive chorus sounds only mildly regretful as the narrator wonders who is to blame for his under-achieving days until, in the final refrain he comes clean:

“Some people claim that there’s a woman to blame
But I know it’s my own damn fault.”

If you didn’t know that Buffett was raised Catholic, the last line is a dead giveaway.

That nearly everything in our lives will eventually reveal a component of self-accountability at its core is something every Catholic can identify with. Such recognition is a gift that comes to us not from so-called “Catholic guilt,” but from a formed Catholic conscience.

Buffett, like so many, journeyed away from his childhood Catholicism, although he still sang of belief and of prayer. But as any revert to the faith will tell you, the church “stays with you.” Even after walking away, the potency of its sacramental graces – starting with Baptism wherein we are claimed for Christ – means the conscience is always nudged to wakefulness, and then to action, even if we’d prefer the sleep of oblivion.

Buffett was stirred to action after Hurricane Katrina, according to one man. “I worked at the New Orleans Margaritaville (while) in college,” tweeted John Veron. “I ended up in Austin TX with the clothes on my back and little else. … Margaritaville cut us all $3,000 checks immediately after the storm, no questions asked. … They also let employees know that if any of us could get to ANY other Margaritaville, there was a job waiting for us.”

Employees who ended up in Orlando were “set up with clothes, jobs and housing,” Veron continued. “Jimmy Buffett showed up for us when we needed it. He took care of me and my friends. I’ll always be grateful.”

Anyone surprised by the story would do well to remember what St. Teresa of Avila said when a critic disapproved of her unedifying enjoyment of a roasted partridge at dinner. “There is a time for partridge and a time for penance,” the great reformer rightly replied.

Knowing how to strike a balance between rest and action is a very Catholic thing, for we are a both/and church, part Mary and part Martha. Jimmy Buffett knew how to recognize when to take action and when to relax and enjoy the life he’d been given. This speaks to the value of a conscience formed and sustained by sacramental graces, whose effects the Holy Spirit tends.

“To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose unto heaven” (Eccl 3:1). There is a time to work hard for a weary world, but also a time to kick off the shoes, settle back and take our cues from Teresa, or from Jimmy Buffett. It is good, and perhaps the better part of wisdom, to riff off of the prayer St. John XXIII was said to have prayed each night: “It’s your (world), O Lord. I’m going to bed.”

(Elizabeth Scalia is culture editor for OSV News. Follow her on Twitter/X @theanchoress.)

FROM THE HERMITAGE
By Sister alies therese

Maybe he’d never heard this Psalm? “I love You, O Lord, my strength … and I am safe… The breakers of death surged around about me, the destroying floods overwhelmed me … in my distress I called upon the Lord … from God’s temple I was heard, my cry reached God’s ears…and set me free in the open and rescued me, because God loves me.” (Psalm 18:5-7, 20)

I also love the Peterson translation of 18:20, “God stood me up on a wide-open field; I stood there saved – surprised to be loved.” This is the reality of the Job story – a love story – a story that challenges us to come to a deeper understanding of the awesomeness of God’s love for us, the heart of the truth, the place of union. “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him…” (Job 1:8) Yet God later questions Job: “Why do you confuse the issue? Why do you talk without knowing what you are talking about? Where were you when I created the universe? Tell me since you know so much.” (Peterson, Job 38:1ff)

This has been a weird year for me. From January when I ended up in hospital for many weeks with broken bones and infections, to July when our apartments, filled with swift moving rain, flooded, midst extreme heat. When was the last time you read Job? If not recently, I suggest it as part of your study, not because bad things happen but because Job discovers many things he’d never even considered.

The Job story is full of sadness and as C.S. Lewis points out in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, “If you’ve been up all night and cried till you have no more tears left in you – you will know that there comes in the end a sort of quietness.”

Some of our readers are suffering right now in the quiet … perhaps the loss of a child, a fire, in jail, abuse, or hunger, including darkness in prayer or even unbelief. Joan W. Blos, an American author wrote this: “This morning’s sermon reminded us that great though our grief and suffering be, others have suffered more.” Anguish may fill the pages of Job and yet if we stop there, we shall never heal, have hope or happiness and we shall never learn compassion.

Because of the surprise of love, Job moved from being an advice-giving, important, very rich fellow and helping the poor … to becoming poor himself. Job recognized a whole new life when he talked with God (screamed, complained and confessed). How shall I say, he got ‘real,’ unlike his previous life or that of his ‘friends.’

In his poverty Job learned something else surprising, only God unties knots of trauma, pain, disappointment or distress. “You told me, ‘Listen and let Me do the talking. Let Me ask the questions. You give the answers. Job said, I admit I once lived by rumors of You, now I have it all firsthand – from my own eyes and ears! I’m sorry – forgive me. I’ll never do that again. I promise! I’ll never again live on the crusts of hearsay, crumbs of rumors!” (Peterson, Job 42:6)

So, the surprise included this personal relationship with God as reality, not just an idea or a possibility. Job discovered he was known, not through an intellectual exercise, nor a simple acceptance of other people’s stories and experiences, no, his own experience welded him in joy to a God who loves beyond all telling.

Our lives contain many fears, and when they are the focus, obscure divine plans. Over the centuries our various cultures and peoples have enslaved, murdered and warred against one another, executed one another, nuked, gossiped, bad-mouthed and turned our backs on one another. We have done horrible things even in the church by ignoring one another. Why are there no Black US saints? For centuries we have lived through greed, stealth and power, and the funny thing is, we continue today. Slavery, where human beings are ‘owned,’ cannot be explained away with ‘slaves learning really helpful things.’ Job learned only in love can we thrive and obtain forgiveness by experiencing the humility of God, moving us beyond these things.

If you are obscuring the divine plan in your life because you are afraid, stuck in some sin or addiction needing release, do read Job and see how much you are loved. Find a way to pray that causes you to rejoice, to see beyond rumor or other people’s experiences, that you might be surprised by this love so extreme, expressed in Jesus’ love-giving sacrifice for you!

Chester Cricket, in George Selden’s The Cricket in Times Square, “began to chirp to ease his feelings. He found that it helped somehow if you sang your sadness.” Do chirp and sing so that others might be lifted from their anguish. Do learn to listen, as Job did, to the voice of God who desires us more than we can imagine. Do get out of the way, so God’s divine plan for your life might flourish, living anew as Job who disowned what he said and repented in dust and ashes. (Job 42:6)

BLESSINGS.

(Sister alies therese is a canonically vowed hermit with days formed around prayer and writing.)

GUEST COLUMN
By Debbie Tubertini

I recently went to the movie theater to see “Sound of Freedom” which is based on a true story. It tells of an anti-child sex trafficking organization centered on Operation Underground Railroad by a former federal agent, Tim Ballard. Ballard is portrayed in the film by Jim Caviezel, who played Jesus in “Passion of the Christ.”

I was hesitant at first about going to see this movie because I knew it was going to be heart breaking and make me angry. Yes, it was heart breaking and, yes it did make me angry; however, it provided information that made me feel more aware and informed about how this happens all over the world, even in Mississippi. It also made me appreciate how one person can make a difference if they know what to look for and what to do in the event you suspect someone is in this situation.

What is sex trafficking? Sex trafficking involves a wide range of activities where a trafficker uses force, fraud or coercion to compel another person to engage in a commercial sex act. Trafficked victims can be of any age, race, sex, culture, religion, economic class and any level of education.

The traffickers’ aim is to profit from the exploitation of their victims using a multitude of coercive and deceptive practices. Traffickers can be strangers, acquaintances, or even family members who prey on the most vulnerable in our society. They frequently target victims who are looking for a brighter future, those hesitant to call the police, or those who feel excluded or ostracized from family or their community.

Human trafficking is the fastest growing international crime network the world has experienced. It is a $150 billion-dollar annual industry. The United States is considered one of the top destinations for victims of child trafficking and exploitation. The top recruitment location is the internet. Traffickers also use online dating platforms to identify victims. Traffickers will present themselves as recruiters or modeling agents on these dating platforms luring victims with attractive career opportunities. According to UNODC (United Nations Office on Drug and Crime) female victims continue to be primary targets, however there is a huge increase in male targets.

The following statistics are from Angel Studios Fight Against Child Trafficking website.

• The United States is #1 in the world for sex trafficking.
• Over 500,000 children go missing each year in the United States.
• Greater than 50% of victims are between the ages of 12-15.
• 25% of child pornography is created by a neighbor or family member.
• Over 500,000 online sexual predators are active each day.
• Over 80% of child sex crimes begin on social media.
• As of 2021, there were 250,000 websites containing images or videos of children sexually abused and that number continues to rise.
• Globally, 27% of human trafficking victims are children.
  Items to note:
• “Sound of Freedom” was filmed in 2018 and has just now been made available in the theatres in 2023. According to Jim Caveziel they ran into one roadblock after another with this movie. The movie was first bought by 21st Century Fox but shelved when Disney purchased the studio. The movie was finally acquired by Angel Studios.
• A common misconception is that human trafficking requires crossing state lines or national borders. The correct term for this is human smuggling. Human trafficking requires no movement. Victims are trafficked in their own states, towns and even in their own homes. In many cases these children are “groomed” by adults they know.

So, what can we do?

• Pray for the victims who are in this horrible situation.
• Educate ourselves and our children on the specifics of child trafficking.
• If you are a parent, educate your children on ways to stay safe on the internet. They need to know how to protect themselves from online exploitation. Also, monitor their social media activity.
• Make sure your state legislators are putting laws in place to increase accountability for human traffickers in our state.
• Make sure this topic is kept in the forefront of our national security.
• For those who feel called to do even more, investigate ways you can educate and help in your own community. A step further, reach out to organizations within your community that are working to rescue and restore trafficked children.

The National Human Trafficking Hotline is 1-888-373-7888. Anti–Trafficking Hotline Advocates are available 24/7 to take reports of potential human trafficking situations.

(Debbie Tubertini is the Office of Family Life coordinator for the Diocese of Jackson.)

IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI

A number of years ago, I attended the funeral of a man who died at the age of ninety. From every indication, he had been a good man, solidly religious, the father of a large family, a man respected in the community, and a man with a generous heart. However, he had also been a strong man, a gifted man, a natural leader, someone to whom a group would naturally look to take the reins and lead. Hence, he held a number of prominent positions in the community. He was a man very much in charge.

One of his sons, a Catholic priest, gave the homily at his funeral. He began with these words: Scripture tells us that the sum of a man’s life is seventy years, eighty for those who are strong. Now our dad lived for ninety years. Why the extra twenty years? Well, it’s no mystery. He was too strong and too much in charge of things to die at seventy or eighty. It took God an extra twenty years to mellow him out. And it worked. The last ten years his life were years of massive diminishment. His wife died, and he never got over that. He had a stroke which put him into assisted living and that was a massive blow to him. Then he spent the last years of his life with others having to help him take care of his basic bodily needs. For a man like him, that was humbling.

But this was the effect of all that. It mellowed him. In those last years, whenever you visited him, he would take your hand and say, “help me.” He hadn’t been able to say those words since he was five years old and able to tie his own shoelaces. By the time he died, he was ready. When he met Jesus and St. Peter on the other side, I’m sure he simply reached for a hand and said, “help me.” Ten and twenty years ago, he would, I’m sure, have given Jesus and Peter some advice as to how they might run the pearly gates more efficiently.

That’s a parable that speaks deeply and directly about a place we must all eventually come to, either through proactive choice or by submission to circumstance; we all must eventually come to a place where we accept that we are not self-sufficient, that we need help, that we need others, that we need community, that we need grace, that we need God.

Why is that so important? Because we are not God and we become wise and more loving when we realize and accept that. Classical Christian theologians defined God as self-sufficient being, and highlight that only God is self-sufficient. God alone has no need of anything beyond Himself. Everything else, everything that is not God, is defined as contingent, as not self-sufficient, as needing something beyond itself to bring it into existence and to keep it in existence every second of its being.

That can sound like abstract theology, but ironically it’s little children who get it, who have an awareness of this. They know that they cannot provide for themselves and that all comes to us as gifts. They know they need help. However, not long after they learn to tie their own shoelaces this awareness begins to fade and as they grow into adolescence and then adulthood, particularly if they are healthy, strong and successful, they begin to live with the illusion of self-sufficiency. I provide for myself!

And, that in fact serves them well in terms of making their way in this world. But it doesn’t serve truth, community, love or the soul. It’s an illusion, the greatest of all illusions. None of us will enter deeply into community as long as we nurse the illusion of self-sufficiency, when we are still saying, I don’t need others! I choose who and what I let into my life!

G.K. Chesterton once wrote that familiarity is the greatest of all illusions. He’s right, and what we are most familiar with is taking care of ourselves and believing that we are sufficient onto ourselves. As we know, this serves us well in terms of getting ahead in this life. However, fortunate for us, though painful, God and nature are always conspiring together to teach us that we are not self-sufficient. The process of maturing, aging and eventually dying is calibrated to teach us, whether we welcome the lesson or not; that we are not in charge, that self-sufficiency is an illusion. Eventually for all of us there will come a day when, as it was with us before we could tie our own shoelaces, we will have to reach out for a hand and say, “help me.”

The philosopher Eric Mascall has an axiom that says we are neither wise nor mature as long as we take life for granted. We become wise and mature precisely when we take it as granted – by God, by others, by love.

(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser is a theologian, teacher and award-winning author. He can be contacted through his website www.ronrolheiser.com.)