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All posts for the month February, 2001

Posted by Father Tom Boyer on February 27, 2001
Posted in: Homily.
February 27, 2001
Joel 2;12-18 + 2 Corinthians 5:20-6:2 + Matthew 6:1-6,16-18  
Ashes..on the bottom of a fire place..on the mountains after a wild fire..on pasture land after a late summer grass fire. Ashes..are what remain of great cities after war.are all that is left of life’s savings after a home bums down..are scattered on the sea or buried in the ground after one dies.Ashes..in a bowl on this table..on heads of people who come into churches in this day.here today, gone tomorrow  
In the simplest of ancient rituals today,We affirm the truth of what these bodies we use will one day be, in spite of our diets, our jewels, our make up, our transplants, and vain efforts to hide the inevitable.We tie ourselves to the cycle of nature, to ancient kings and prophets,to public sinners who once stood, covered with ashes and clothed in rough cloth,to Christians all over the world today marked as we are for struggle.Palms yesterday burned beside this church, so green and lovely on Palm Sunday,cut from trees in Texas, Florida, and Mexico,we used them proclaim our faith in the future victory  
Our words, our gestures, our symbols,these ashes we receive are expressions of our heart’s turning from self to God, from a past marked by sinto a future marked by goodness and love.  
What we shall be in forty days is not yet known,yet we take these ashes because we hope and we believe that if we chose to take part in a radical struggleunder the sign of these ashes, there will be a church,a community of love,  
that follows Jesus Christ from tomb to victory, from death to life.We take these ashes today because we are that church, that community of love,engaged in the great struggle of conversion that turns us from self to other,that binds us to every other woman and manwho walk through this day under the sign of the cross. We take these ashes today because we are that church, baptized into Christ Jesus,one with him in suffering, in service,in faithfulness to the Father he revealed.  
Ifwe take these ashes in faith today,if we truly engage in the struggle of conversion and forgiveness, then 40 days from now,that great day of washing when the dust is washed from feet grown weary and worn in service and journey,will be our time for rejoicing and thanksgiving.  
What shall we be like 40 days from now? It is the question we ask ourselves,as we take the ashes of this day  

Ordinary 5

Posted by Father Tom Boyer on February 4, 2001
Posted in: Homily.
February 4, 2001
Isaiah 6:1,2,3-8 + 1 Corinthians 15:1-11 + Luke 5:1-11  
Isaiah of Jerusalem was a prophet in the tradition out of which I spoke last week. He did not see things as everyone else. He did not live comfortably with the safe, the common, and the ordinary His description of the Holy gives us a sense of how he saw things.Nothing common there and nothing ordinary He pushes the limits of the Temple worship and with the images of that experience, he pushes the limits of those who come there to see more than the eye might see and to experience more than incense, cantors, and decor  
Isaiah casts a light by which the human heart is led into the thinking of the Lord. He brings into human terms and human experience the divine mind. He expresses God’s indignation at the oppression of the weaker members of society and insists that such oppression offends the holiness of God. This too is the ministry of a prophetic people, for it by faith they are in the presence of God, then all that offends that presence in every place and at every time is offensive to the prophet. The prophet feels what God feels. The prophet is one who is overwhelmed by the presence of God everywhere and at every time. All is holy, touched and graced by the presence of God.  
It is that presence which moves the prophet Isaiah to repentance and the humble acknowledgment of his unworthiness. It is the same experience Peter had in the boat, when in the midst of the most ordinary events of an ordinary day, doing what he did best, what he did every day, that he suddenly becomes aware of the presence of the divine and cries out; “Leave me Lord, I am a sinful man.”  
Of course, in neither case did the Lord leave, for the fact is, that sinners seem to be God’s select company In the acknowledgment of one’s true condition, there is found the strength to be prophet and apostle. First the recognition of the holy one, then the recognition of the unholy one, and then the partnership begins-the partnership that brings the vision which stirs the heart and moves the soul.  
The sin, the unworthiness, the past, our insecurity, our self doubt, all become our great excuse for doing nothing in response to the  
presence of God. Yet the very life into which we have been baptized stirs in us and makes us restless. We look at the passing glory of this world and know in our hearts how very passing it is. A fire, a tornado, one brief mistake in a speeding car, and it’s all gone. We sit back exhausted from time to time after a month of hard work sitting to pay the bills, only to wonder if this is all there is knowing we’ll be exactly like this again next month.  
That wondering, that restlessness, that longing in us for more is the quiet tug of the divine. What God asks is that we give up everything that keeps us from being free enough live the wild, and full expression of God’s glory God doesn’t want our house nor our job – God wants what keeps us from being holy and filled with glory· sin, laziness, selfishness, self doubt, and the biggest lie of all, the lie of our unworthiness.  
It is the baptized who are called to a prophetic life, not the ordained. It is people like Peter, James and John who are called toexperience the presence of God and invited to a share in the bounty and fullness that this presence brings. It’s not the holy, the high priests, the zealots, nor the scribes. It’s people who go to work everyday, to the boats. It’s people who work day in and day out and have nothing to show for it sometime who are stunned by the presence of God.  
We live in an age when the divine question still echoes across the world and across the cluttered streets and highways of injustice. “Will go for me?” And there is still need for the answer from an unworthy, imperfect people who still don’t have it right: “Although I am unworthy, here am I, send me!” That is not a story from thepast about a prophet who lived long before Christ, nor a story about man named, Peter It’s the story of our lives, our relationship with the holy one, and our faithful response to the discovery that God is here among us, very close, and very real.