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Fr. Tom Wilson, Pastor March 11, 2018

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It’s a good time of year. Over the next several days millions of people will fill out brackets for the college basketball tournament and people will, a large number of them will really have no knowledge of what’s going on. They’ll complete their brackets based on teams they don’t like or the colors of the uniforms or where they come from geographically and all those sorts of things. I suspect my losing streak will hit 22 or 23 years. But the season does give me an opportunity to share a little story about one of my favorite basketball players of all time.
The truth is I never got to see her play in person, or live. I’ve seen a few clips from her career and read a lot about her history. But she is one the greatest basketball players certainly of the 1980’s. She was so good that her high school team that she played for never lost a game. She went 4 years in a row without losing a high school game.  She went to Villanova University and to this day I believe she still has the record for the most points of any player in Villanova basketball history, men or women. 
Her shot was so good and so pure that a guy who has hung around the Philadelphia basketball community at Villanova and throughout the community and if you know anything about it, it is a huge basketball city, said, if my life depended on one 15-foot jump shot I would want Shelly Pennefather to take that shot. That’s how good she was. 
She was so good that she was named the women’s basketball college player of the year in 1987.  She was the big east player of the year for 3 years in a row, All American at least once, maybe a couple of times and after she was done playing in college – at that time there was no opportunity for professional woman’s basketball in the United States – so she signed a contract to play professional basketball in Japan. 
She went over as she was playing in Japan she became very, very popular among the Japanese fans of that team, not only because she was really good, she was a great player, but there was something about her personality that the Japanese were very attracted to. She obviously didn’t know the language. She worked hard to learn a little bit of the language. She was a very humble person by nature and they’re very attracted to that. So, she had this career as a professional basketball player in Japan. After her first three-year contract was up, in which she made a good deal of money certainly by 1980 standards, the team wanted her back so bad that they offered her another contract that doubled her salary. She politely declined the offer and functionally what she said to the team ownership was, I got a better offer. I’ve got a better offer. 
Because what she had done during the off season of her professional basketball careers is she would come back to the United States. She worked with, for a month or so in the summer, with Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity. She Served in some of their ministries and services and while she was there she got connected with a spiritual director who was also the spiritual director of Mother Teresa for a period of time. Father John Hardon. 
In the conversations that they had and the direction it became quite clear to her that she was called to religious life. So, she declined this contract in order to become a religious sister. The fact that she became a religious sister was not surprising to anybody who knew her. Anybody who knew her during her time at Villanova, she was very active in campus ministry, she went to mass every day. Despite the challenges of that high level of athletics it was clear that God was the first and most important thing in her life. So when she announced to her community, her family and her friends, her teammates and such that she was going to be a sister, nobody was surprised. What surprised them and really shook them up was the fact that she had been called to a contemplative religious community, a community of Poor Claires in Virginia that she had never heard of. Father Harden had sent her to and said you know what, you should check this community out. Try it out and spend some time with them and see if that might be what God is asking you to do.
So she knocks on the door of this religious community that she’d never heard of, they never heard of her and said Father John Harden sent me. Well what that means essentially in ecclesiastical, religious and church terms would be the equivalent of John Wooden sending somebody to a college basketball coach saying this is where you should play. No coach is going to say no. No coach is going to say no. 
She becomes a novice in 1997 sister Marie Rose of the queen of the angels took her final vows as a poor Clair sister and the truth is when people heard that, they responded in a way, but Shelly you could join a teaching order, you could coach and you could give all these gifts to these kids and all that. Her response to them was quite direct.
 I didn’t choose this, I did not choose this. God chose this for me. God chose this for me and what she was doing was absolutely right. She was responding to the place of God in her. Her story is inspiring, it really is and several years back they were doing a lot of history on women’s basketball in the United States and they highlighted her story. You can see as the reporters are talking about it that both TV and in print that there is a respect that oozes out of them. 
It says, “you know what, here is this woman who had an awful lot of what the world says is success in front of her and she said no to it.”  And entered into willingly a life of sacrifice and it is admired. It is very, very clear that these people who are doing the stories on her truly admire her. But as you read between the lines there is also a sense that they don’t completely get it. The don’t completely get it because, I think, what they’re focusing on is the fact that she shunned the world. That she turned her back on the world. 
And I suspect if Sister Maria Rose could tell us right here and right now why she did this she would not say, “I turned my back on the world.” She would say, “I responded to the light of Jesus Christ.” I responded to the person of Jesus in what He was asking me to do. As simple as that. Nothing particularly heroic, nothing particularly outstanding, nothing particularly saying I can’t stand the world I am leaving it. 
Therein lies the challenge of discipleship, We can look at this I think maybe as an image or a story about an incredibly talented young woman, but in fact it’s the story of discipleship. It’s the story of faith for every single one of us and it seems a bit ironic I suppose in this fourth Sunday of Lent when we do our rejoicing Sunday and we get to pull out the Rose vestments and the whole bit. That we have 2 readings that are actually a bit on the dark side and we are remined on this rejoicing Sunday of Israel and they’re turning their backs on God.
They turn their backs on God. The way the chronicles authors say it, said they built infidelity upon infidelity upon infidelity. They rejected the messengers of God, they backed off from God and that resulted in them ending up in exile. They rejected God and only to be restored by somebody from the outside, by King Cyrus of Persia who then lifted them back up at least religiously, maybe not in the world, but at least religiously they could restore their faith.
In the Gospel reading we have Jesus, we have John reminding us that Jesus came into the world not to condemn the world, but to rescue it. But John, who never minces any words and never gives us a word that is unimportant doesn’t waste any words, Says also very clearly that He came into the world to be the light, but the verdict is this, that some people preferred darkness to light.
Some people preferred darkness to light so that the dark of what is going on in their hearts wouldn’t be exposed. So that the comfort that they had might not be taken away. Jesus did in fact come into the world not to condemn but to rescue, to save, but he also came into the world to give each and every one of us who hears the message a choice. A decision, do we choose the light of Christ? Do we choose the darkness of the world? Do we choose the voice of God or do we choose the voice of the world? And the truth is this is not just a historical reality in the Old Testament. This is not just something John had to say to his immediate audience 2000 years ago, but its something that rumbles in the heart of every single person because darkness and light live in there and we have to choose between it.
The voice of God and the voice of the world are in there and we have to discern and choose the voice of God every single day in our lives. Every single day and when Sister Rose Maire chose to embrace that life of light in the context of the cloistered community it wasn’t out of context, it was everywhere in her life because she had already made that decision. She had already made that decision to live for Jesus she already made the decision to listen to the voice of God and not the voice of the world.
I didn’t say this at the other Masses but I am going to throw it in here because I think it is so important. It is so important in our lives of discipleship. When she was receiving her All America award she got up and gave a very, very brief speech and what she said in front of all of these people very, very talented and gifted people, she said my only hope is that these gifts and talents that we have all been given, that none of us would ever shame the God who gave them to us. Can we use these things?
Can we use the things, the talents and gifts that God has five us to Glorify Him and not to say yes to the world. Her situation obviously makes a wonderful example because she was so talented. The truth is this (the basketball father is holding) does not represent darkness. It does not. But it certainly represents something that could become very dark in the life of people by saying yes to the world instead of saying yes to God and the truth is at every single day of our lives every one of us has decisions to make. Are we going to listen the voice of the world or are we going to listen to the voice of God? Are we going to follow the light of Jesus Christ or are we going to follow the darkness that might feel more comfortable at the time? If I had another minute I could list a dozen different things in our social life, in our work life and our family life. 
Everywhere where these decisions have to be made. The truth is that as we continue our path through this beautiful, holy season it is a wonderful time to reflect. When are the times in my life when I have said yes to the world and no to God and the times in my life when I have said yes to God and no to the world?
Sister Marie Rose is a wonderful example, not just a unique story of someone who chose and responded to God’s call to her to be a religious, cloistered sister, but a reminder to all of us in our own discipleship that we have decisions to make. We have an important decision to make, to choose for the light. To choose for the voice of God and the truth is that darkness is trying to pose as light. The voice of the world is trying to drown out the voice of God.  We see every single day and we’ve got decisions to make. Do we go along to get along or do we respond and say yes and embrace the Light of Christ?
Sister Marie Rose, Shelley Pennefahter had a decision to make and she’s simply by the way that she lived her life put herself in a place to be able to listen to and respond to the voice of God in the Light of Jesus Christ.  It’s not just for All-American basketball players and religious sisters. It’s for every single one of us. Every single day. 
Speaking to the Lord, listening to the Lord, following the Lord, following the light and turning away from the darkness.  That is our journey, that is our call as people of faith. 
The truth is a God in his goodness always gives us the grace to do it and when we fail we’ve got to be humble enough to say I chose the wrong direction, have mercy on me.
That’s the way it works in our equation of faith. It’s a wonderful story. It’s not about March, it’s about discipleship, it’s about being faithful, listening to the voice of God, pushing away the voice of the world, embracing the light and turning away from the darkness.

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