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The Immaculate Conception

Posted by Father Tom Boyer on December 8, 2000
Posted in: Homily.
December 8, 2000
Genesis 3:9-15 + Ephesians 3:1-6,11-12 + Luke 1:26-38  
Back to the Book of Beginnings we go to understand and to affirm what we have come to know and believe. The Immaculate Conception takes us back to our beginnings – deep into the plan of the Creating God who still makes all things new, who still chooses to redeem, who still insists on remaining with us to enjoy I suppose what is good. Today my friends, we can step out of the routine of a December Friday and celebrate what is good, remember that we are not left alone to our own destruction, and continue to bind ourselves to that saving, loving, redeeming God in the Covenant he has offered freely offered us and prepared for us from the Beginning.  
Now take those Old Testament facts and put them against what we celebrate today and view them with the experience we treasure in the life and stories of Mary. We are celebrating today the Promise of Salvation. We are confirming the free choice of God who has chosen  
Once the theme is understood, it is possible then to see how the author shows us the story of God’s care, God’s plan, for these special people to be the first citizens of His kingdom and the source of God’s revelation.  
So, three themes emerge: 1) Promise of salvation, 2) free choice of those through whom the promises would be fulfilled, 3) and lastly, the way which these promises will be brought to realization – through covenants between God and man.  
Today is a good day to follow their example, and so the church leads us to Genesis, the “Beginning Book” that unfolds for us the story of God’s intentions. It is a book that begins with the first woman and man in paradise and ends with the twelve sons of Jacob in Egypt. The ending is as significant as the beginning. It shows what the author has been leading up to: an explanation of where these twelve sons, the immediate forefathers of the Israelite people came from. The main theme of the book then is the origin of the Israelite people.  
The earliest church, its leaders and its inspired writers turned to the Bible they knew when they wanted to understand what God was doing, saying, and revealing to them in the course of their experience with Jesus of Nazareth. The Bible they knew was the Prophets, the Psalms, and the Law which comes out of the first five books called the Pentateuch.  
At the same time, the Book of Genesis shows how mankind after the fall and the promise of ultimate triumph gradually deteriorates when left to itself without God’s help; how god began to fulfill his promise of triumph over the forces of Satan by setting aside one family through whom salvation would come in a new covenant; and how this covenant would be made only with those God freely and independently chooses – not by inheritance or birth order those through whom the promises will be kept, not necessarily those expected because of their birth right or birth order; and we affirm by the covenant in Jesus Christ, that salvation is at hand.   

Advent 1

Posted by Father Tom Boyer on December 3, 2000
Posted in: Homily.
December 3, 2000
Jeremiah 33:14-16 + 1 Thessalonians 3:12-4:2 + Luke 21:25-28,34-36  
Jeremiah, Baruch, Zephaniah, and Micah will be our guides through the season of Advent. Each of them, wise, Old Testament prophets speak to us through the din of tiny bells at store fronts, carols, and advertisements that will try again and again with increasing pressure to convince us that we are inadequate, incomplete, unready, and even unworthy of Christmas if we don’t have one thing or another under our tree. If we listen through all of that noise during these four Sundays of Advent, we’ll be ready, we’ll be joyful, and we’ll be peaceful.  
In a rural mountain village, the only thoroughfare was made treacherous by the presence of an enormous boulder While the villagers were adept at avoiding it, tourists and other travelers who were unfamiliar with the road frequently crashed into the huge rock. After each accident, the villagers hurried to the aid of the injured, took them into their homes and nursed them back to health. This is charity After several such accidents, the villagers decided that they would pool their efforts in order to do whatever was necessary to remove the boulder This is justice, biblical justice and this is the reason for rediscovering and rededicating ourselves to realizing this justice among us.  
It’s Jeremiah this week. Think of him with the “J” – the “J” of Justice. Think of this too, every time you hear the familiar carol in the weeks ahead. “Deck the halls with boughs of holly.  T’is the season to be JUST!” Those lyrics don’t exactly make music, they don’t rhyme, but they capture the season and the spirit much more than fah la, la, la!  
We shall celebrate Christmas, suggests the Bible, to the extent that we have justice, not for ourselves, but to the extent that we have brought about Justice for those who still wait. All this talk about Advent as a time of entering in the wait for the Messiah is not some exercise of nostalgia or pious, sentimental imagining for those who experience injustice day in and day out. Their Advent is real and longer than four weeks in December Jeremiah invites us to really experience and celebrate the coming of the Messiah through the coming of Justice, and this is its season.  
Jeremiah’s vision for the time in which we live is the age of Justice. His vision of what is to come is not directed just toward this “just shoot” that shall rise up, but toward Jerusalem itself which shall be called. “The Lord my justice” In his vision, the holy city, the community of the redeemed and holy ones will be called, known, and named “Justice.” What happens here in the words of the prophet is that the messianic title is extended from individual to community What the messiah is shall also be what the messianic community has become.  
‘Tis the Season to be Just” in which we find ourselves. Real members of the community of the redeemed are people of Justice, and by it they shall be known, not by what they buy, own, consume, or destroy They shall be known by Justice. The members of the community of the redeemed celebrate this season with a renewed commitment to Justice, not with a short lived thrill that comes from what they get, or how sentimental they may feel singing fala la la while their brothers and sisters wait yet again for another chance to see the end of their misery, want, poverty, and isolation. We are not simply recipients of God’s Justice; we are the agents of that Justice.