Our Sister Darla Vogelsang is celebrating 50 years as a nun in the Ursulines of Youngstsown.  Sr. Darla entered the Ursulines in September 1960 after having graduated from Ursuline High School.  She entered the novitiate in August 1961, which is the date for which we mark Jubilee.

Sister Darla has had a variety of ministries during her 50 years as an Ursuline:  as a teacher at St. Patrick, Youngstown and teacher and principal at Immaculate Conception elementary schools in Youngstown, as a parish minister at Immaculate Conception and Sacred Heart in Youngstown, St. Paul, Canton, and St. Patrick, Hubbard, in service to the Ursulines of Youngstown as a member of the Leadership Team, on the Liturgy Committee and the Retreat Committee.

Most recently Sr. Darla was certified as a Catholic Chaplain.  It is a kind of “encore career.”  She now serves as chaplain for HMHP at St. Elizabeth, Boardman and St.Joseph, Warren.

Sister Darla says that “a 50th anniversary for anyone is a hallmark year.  It is also an opportunity in prayer, gratitude and celebration to look back at the people and the opportunities that have formed me in religious life.  And it’s a celebration of the Ursuline Sisters as well, an opportunity for the community to celebrate the gift of Religious Life in the church.”

Congratulations Sister Darla!  Ad multos annos.

Living with perfectionists can drive us crazy! Not only are they hard on themselves, they are also hard on everyone around them! We tend to avoid perfectionists and perfectionism. When I read our Gospel today and heard Jesus say, “Be perfect just as your heavenly Father is perfect”, I immediately changed perfect from an adjective to a verb! That is, I see “perfect” as a journey to be “holy as God is holy”. The Gospel challenges us to go about living with a greater purpose!

Jesus offers us a model for going the extra mile. Jesus looked at the Romans and saw not enemies, but children of God. He saw lepers not as outcasts but as deserving compassion and care. He handed over not his cloak but his very life! In all of these and other ways, Jesus made visible the holiness of God.

If we live by the Gospel, we are called to radically readjust how we live. We are called not to be limited in our loving, in our responding to the needs of those around us. The poor, the sick, the needy, the disenfranchised, family members, coworkers, all cry out to us for our love and care.

This is how we respond to Jesus’ command to “be perfect”.

Ursuline Sisters, Members of the Company of St. Ursula and Associates throughout the world remember their “Mother” and Founder, St. Angela Merici on January 27th each year. In Youngstown, Ohio, the Spirit was alive and well as the entire Community of Sisters and Associates gathered for Mass and Dinner. After Sister Nancy Dawson’s challenging words to us, seven men and women came forward to enthusiastically announce their decision to be associated with the Ursuline Community. The Sisters proudly responded by expressing their intent to share their lives, their prayer and their ministries with the Associates. Angela was among us as we enjoyed each other with hospitality,encouragement and renewed energy.

Beatitude House began its  20th Anniversary Celebration with a Mass with the Ursuline Sisters and members of its Board of Directors – current and past – on Sunday January 23, 2011 at the Ursuline Motherhouse.  Fr. Richard Brobst presided at liturgy while Sister Patricia McNicholas recalled the origins of Beatitude House in her reflection.

The story of the beginning of Beatitude House is a lesson in communal discernment for ministry in the lives of Ursuline Sisters today.  Sister Margaret Scheetz – Peg, who died in January 2001, was pursuing an advanced degree in computer education at Kent State University in the late 1980s.  One day she watched a TV show about a homeless woman and her struggles to keep her family together.  That show sparked an idea – could the Ursulines do something for homeless women in Youngstown?

Sr. Margaret shared her idea with Sr. Nancy Dawson, General Superior and Sr. Mary O’Leary.  Both responded enthusiastically and Peg began immediately:  looking for a house and a neighborhood, seeking donations, and seeking workers who could help turn an old house into new apartments for homeless women and their dependent children. 

Throughout the of the process of bringing an idea into reality, Peg consulted with the community and counted on their prayers for success.  Lots of the sisters helped with things like cleaning or gathering donations from friends and family. 

What began as an idea of a single sister turned into 4 apartments for homeless families, and then 8.   Check out the video to get all the details of the numbers of women and children whose lives have been changed by their time at Beatitude House.

This is an example of how nuns get things done.  First, a sister has an idea to work for the people of God.  Second, she shares it with her friends and the leadership of the community.  With their approval and support the sister can work to bring that idea into reality.

When members of my family introduce someone, they always give that person an automatic promotion. If she’s a doctor, they will exaggerate, introducing her as a brilliant surgeon. A teacher’s aide becomes a full professor. I am told that I do the same thing. I still turn an ordinary singer into a brilliant musician, a plain-looking person into a great beauty. When I’m talking about a dog, a mutt becomes a golden retriever who can juggle.

In my family, we see life as a series of grand stories that simply must be populated with larger-than-life characters. The problem is that we can get it wrong, and lose the essence of who a person is. For instance, when a labor union organizer is introduced as the head of a corporation’s labor relations department, he has switched sides. If someone is called the perfect mother, she loses the right to tear her hair out when the baby throws raspberry yogurt across the room. In our grand descriptions, however generously offered, we may strip our characters of the right to be who they really are.

We are told that when John the Baptist saw Jesus coming, he declared, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” Talk about a grand introduction! What could Jesus have felt in that moment? Did he want to say, “Stop. I’m not all that”? Or was he comfortable with the introduction?

What John recognized about Jesus was surely something exciting and new. This One is the Lamb of God and the Son of God who will take away sin and baptize with the Holy Spirit. We can recognize him if we actively watch for him.

We are able to see Jesus when we put on the mind of Christ. Our active watching is really living as Jesus did: when we see the face of Jesus in the poor and needy; when we reach out a helping hand to those overburdened, when we encourage the discouraged. This is how we remain faithful to the mission God gave us. All this is possible because the Spirit descends upon us too.

Pentecost! The celebration of… what? Flames on heads? Speaking in tongues? The blessing of the Spirit on individuals?

Although Pentecost was originally a festival celebration of the wheat harvest in ancient Israel, and of the giving of the law which defined Israel as a nation, for Christians it is known as the time when the power of the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples, and is sometimes called the birthday of the church. In that sense, Pentecost, which can also refer to the entire 50 days between the resurrection and the coming of the Spirit, is the celebration of the formation of the church as corporate body. Jesus’ promise to send the Holy Spirit to guide his disciples, just before he ascends to heaven, is sealed with the arrival of the Spirit on Pentecost.

The Spirit of God has, of course, been present since the beginning of creation, but the event of Pentecost marks the moment when the Spirit works to mediate the presence of the Risen Christ to the church community.

Pentecost, then, is more about the corporate body of the church than about the spiritual presence of God to individual believers. The Spirit is now available to guide the church in its mission to bring the Gospel to the world.

The effect on the disciples as they receive the Spirit is interesting in this respect. They begin to speak in languages other than their own, with the crowd who gathers hearing the disciples speak in their own language. This is the reversal of what happened with the curse of Babel, which resulted in confusion and lack of understanding between peoples. Rather, at Pentecost, all are made able to understand the message of the Gospel, and are drawn into the church through the power and understanding given by the Spirit.

What should this mean for us today, as a people of the Spirit? By this indwelling of the Spirit, we ourselves become advocates of God’s presence for others. It maybe as simple as a reassuring touch or a helping hand. It might be a sacrifice of time in volunteering for a task that needs to be done for the good of all. In all, we are called to die to ourselves in order to be the true presence of Christ for others.

Each year the Ursuline Sisters commit themselves to ministry, the Youngstown Ursuline’s do this around the feast of St. Angela in January of each year.  The following is a reflection written about the importance of ministry as it is connected to Jesus’ teaching.

“Home,” the poet Robert Frost wrote “‘is where when you go there, they have to take you in.”  As Ursulines, we would say that our home is in the “heart of God.” When we live there, we are unconditionally embraced by love and acceptance.

However, God’s home is within each of us and among us. So there is ongoing communication between our home and God’s home; our heart and God’s heart.

I have always thought of ministry as a call from the heart of God, a call to share what I have received from God’s heart. For me, ministry is always, where God is asking me to create a “home,” a space where others can recognize and continue to be attracted to God.

However, I also firmly believe that ministry, is God’s work. God is asking for my heart to be so open, so transparent, like a clear pane of glass, that God’s light can shine through me and reflect God’s love.

So how then, do I, as a minister, proclaim this “Good News of God’s Love in Canfield Ohio in 2010 ?

I also believe that in the New Testament Jesus teaches us how to minister – we are asked to watch Jesus and imitate him:

1. Jesus was first and foremost a presence to others, so I need to be with “the other” as a presence, as a companion on the journey.

2. I find when others were with Jesus, they felt “at home.” So in ministry I need to be attentive to creating community so that others can also be “at home.”

3. Jesus nourished others, he taught the importance of being fed. So I am called to provide nourishment for others, in a vast variety of ways.

4. Any reading of the gospel uncovers the generosity of Jesus, always the abundance, whether in the story of the loaves and fishes, or the wedding feast at Cana. So I too am called to reflect this sense of abundance, always the more in ministry.

5. Finally, Jesus gave his life for the people; he gave of himself in Eucharist.  So I am called too, to empty myself, to give, and give some more, to go the extra mile and not count the cost.

Obviously, all of this is done in very human situations, in the simple here and now.

The poster that was created for the 400^th anniversary of the Ursulines entitled “Angela: A Woman For All Times” hangs several places in the Motherhouse and is a reminder when I read the two lines of writing on it that it is always the wedding of contemplation and action – prayer and apostolic ministry that results in proclaiming the good news of God’s love in this contemporary church.

Another poet, this time an anonymous one, uses different images and metaphors to express how to proclaim the gospel. The poet writes:.

“The most visible creators I know of are those artists whose medium is life itself.They neither paint nor sculpt- their medium is being. Whatever their presence touches has increased life. They are the artists of being alive.”

We Ursulines know how to make others “feel at home” we are the “artists of being alive” and we have learned all this at the feet of the master.

The Ursuline Sisters Ministry to people with HIV/AIDS began in 1993 with a monthly support group.  The following year we started to distribute pantry bags on the 3rd Saturday of the month, and in 1995 we decided we needed to bring people together for a longer period of time to have an opportunity to talk and share and visit in a safe environment.  At that same time, one of our volunteers suggested that we feed people since not many of them were cooking on a regular basis.  That was the impetus for launching the monthly Café which soon became a monthly community.

In February of 1995 we held our first Café where the volunteers served dinner to our 25 guests!  In November of 1995 we provided each of our Café guests with a complete Thanksgiving dinner, and have done holiday basket food distribution for Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter from then on.  The Café has served 180 meals since 1995; we have never missed a month and the number of guests continues to grow.  We now provide bags to an average of 65 households, and a sit-down meal to 130 men, women and children.  In the last fifteen years we have been blessed with wonderful volunteers who work hard to provide the food, cook it and get the auditorium and the bags ready, as well as many groups, churches and individuals who have gifted us with food and a variety of donations that we distribute each month.

My nephew was about to “graduate” from kindergarten. He put on his paper mortarboard and marched with his class to the stage. As he received his “diploma”, Jason shook hands with his teacher.  After the ceremony, we each said “Congratulations.”  Jason looked at us and asked, “What does that mean?” His mom and dad answered, “Good job!”

That answer worked for a five year old!

While this may be sufficient for a five year old, sometimes something deeper is intended.  If we look at the Latin – “congratulations” means “to be pleased with” or “graced with.” When we offer our congratulations, we are saying we rejoice with the other and it expresses a relationship.

The Beatitudes in our Gospel today announce God’s pleasure in and relationship to the poor, to those who are excluded and hated. With the Beatitudes, Luke highlights God’s generosity.

Luke seems to be exalting the downtrodden simply because they are downtrodden, and “cursing” the comfortable simply because they are comfortable. What really is at the heart of this Gospel is the manner of  life that makes present God’s reign of love. Jesus asks of us today to become people willing to feel our needs and to depend on God. Then we will also be open to our neighbor, to receive and to give. It is our relationship with God that motivates us to live the blessings that are given to us. And it is our relationship with God that motivates us to reach out to others. The model for this type of relationship is Jesus himself.

In January, when we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, we always see a clip of his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. Each time I see that clip, I am moved and challenged by what he said. The power of his words comes from the integrity of what he said, how he lived, and what he called us to. Martin Luther King, Jr. is a model for us of a response by word and deed to the challenge Jesus gives us in today’s Gospel.

Jesus proclaims a reading from the prophet Isaiah to the people in the Nazareth synagogue. The hearers must have heard, for after Jesus’ proclamation, they looked intently at him. What were they expecting? An explanation of what they heard? Yes,  but Jesus moves them beyond the mere words to an encounter of him as the Word of God made flesh.  The people of Nazareth, heard God’s word and encountered God’s word in the very person of Jesus.

In Jesus, the Word is action fulfilled, for in him God’s plan of love is enfleshed in his care and compassion for the poor, the captives, the blind, the oppressed – anyone who came to him.

Now we – our own lives- announce the meaning of the word proclaimed and enfleshed. The poor we encounter today include not only those who lack material necessities but also those without inner satisfaction. The imprisoned are not only those in cells but also those imprisoned by their fears. The blind are not only those who cannot physically see but are those who fail to see their human dignity.

Like Jesus, we are sent to bring glad tidings to all we encounter, not simply by uttering words but by actions that change the world around us.