by Sr. Barbara Valuckas, SSND from Women's Song (National Sisters Vocational Conference, 1986, Used with permission)
An adaptation of Isaiah 58: 1-9
O Sisters and Brothers in your ministries,
Would that you might fast so as to make your voices heard on this earth and in this Church?
Is this the manner of fasting that I wish of keeping a season of penance:
That you bow down your heads like reeds as if you accepted your conditioning to passivity and submission, and lie in sack cloth and ashes, as if you believed what you have been taught about your worthlessness to Church and society?
Do you call this a fast?
Is this the kind of behavior you think I want of you to make you acceptable to me?
No! This rather is the fasting that I wish for you as women and men:
That you confront injustice in your communities, Church and world as a way of releasing those bound unjustly … to release your own closed heart to create a pure heart to foster the spiral of life
That you untie the thongs of patriarchy that have bound your bodies and your imaginations… that we may celebrate our bodies as Sophia wisdom
That you set free your own potential as women and men knowing that you cannot set free other oppressed persons unless you do… create in us a unbound heart , free us from our own prison of frenzied activity, judgmental attitudes, self-centered visions.
That you work for breakthroughs in the yokes that prevent dialogue, reconciliation and peacemaking.
I want of you to share your bread with the hungry, but also ask and help others to ask about the reason for the hungry….
I want you to shelter the oppressed and the homeless but also ask and help others to ask about the reasons for homelessness and oppression.
I want you to clothe the naked but also to ask and help others to ask about the inequalities that exist among the members of our human family and how we protect the earth that has no voice but ours.
I want you to imagine and to move toward a new future to build the spiral of life without turning your back on those who cannot follow or imagine as quickly as you can.
Then your light shall break like the dawn, and Sophia burst forth in new life within. Your woundedness as women and men shall quickly be healed. Ashes turned into new life. Your vindication shall go before you and my nurturing love will nourish you
Bridget Mary's Reflection:
Amen, may it be so! May we live Christ's loving service to those at the margins of church and society and change unjust structures that cause so much of the world's suffering! May we be prophets and saints that move our world closer to God and call our sisters and brothers to action to make a more peaceful, just and equal world.
Bridget Mary Meehan, RCWP
www.associationofromancatholicwomenpriests.org
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