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All posts for the month March, 2001

Lent 4

Posted by Father Tom Boyer on March 25, 2001

Posted in: Uncategorized.

March 25, 2001 Joshua 5:9-12 + 2 Corinthians 5:17-21 + Luke 15:1-3,11-32

Just a few days ago, I was in a men’s clothing store and walked past one of those three sided mirrors, and I glanced just briefly at my reflection. I was startled by how much I look like my dad. I turned back and looked more closely at my own features, my size, my head and face. I suddenly saw the man whom I last saw when he was sixty-three years old, the man I admired, cnticized, loved, and feared. A lot of energy was invested in finding my own self in the face of that person, and many questions about who I was and who I was to become were shaped by being a son of that man. As I suddenly saw this man appearing in the mirror, I was overcome with the awareness that all the differences I had been aware of during my lifetime seemed so small compared with the similarities. As I have continued to think about what I saw in that mirror, I am beginning to realize that I have been an heir to more than his name and some of his physical characteristics. I am now also one who is admired, feared, praised, and misunderstood by others, as my dad was by me.

We have all listened to this parable as much as we have listened to any in the Gospel. I suspect, that like me, you have listened to it time after time putting yourself in the place of one child or the other, and that’s all fine up to a point. We need to hear the story of the son who takes and abandons his father for his own pleasures, wakes up with the courage to admit he was wrong and goes home. We need to hear about the other one too; that one who does everything right, at least wants to, everything except follow his father’s example. Reflecting on our behavior from the view point the child is fine, it’s easy to identify with them for awhile. Finally however, if we’re ever going to mark any growth in our lives, we’ve got to move on. Getting stuck on the children in the story is missing the point. It’s a story about God revealed in and through Jesus Christ. In as much as the whole point of spiritual life is to become more like Jesus, we don’t get very far analyzing, identifying, and wondering about the children!

The final stage of the spiritual life is to let go of the fear of God, and when that happens, we are free to become like the Father Though we are both the younger and the older child, we are not to remain them, but rather we are to become like the Father No parent ever became a parent without being a child, but sooner or later, every child steps out of childhood. It is a hard and lonely step isn’t it? It is especially so in a time when parenthood is so hard to live well, but it’s still essential.

This parable offers us a chance to do more than just identify with the children. It offers us a chance to be more than just the one forgiven. It suggests to us that we might well become the one who forgives, the one who welcomes home.

Perhaps the most radical statement Jesus ever made is. “Be compassionate as your Heavenly Father is compassionate.” The God Jesus reveals to us is not to be feared, kept at a distance, or avoided. Jesus invites us to become like God. Ifwe are faithful to his wish, we are not just to be the ones who are forgiven, but the ones who forgive, show compassion, understanding and mercy This is the heart of the message of Jesus. It is what it means to become sons and daughters of God. It is what it means be heirs with Jesus of the Father’s goodness.

As long as we belong to this world, we will remain subject to its competitive ways and expect to be rewarded for all the good we do. But when we belong to God, who loves us without conditions, we can live as he does. The great conversion called for by Jesus is to move from belonging to the world to belonging to God. “Father, they do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world…May they all be one.. just as, Father, you are in me and I am in you, so that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe it was you who sent me. ”

On Lent’s fourth Sunday, the Word of God asks us to pass by the mirror of this parable and take a good look at what we see, at how much of the eternal parent we reflect in that mirror, at how far we have come in our maturity, growth, m holiness and wisdom. True heirs inherit more than an earthly treasure. Sooner or later we shall, we must, we will begin to look more and more like the one who has given us life, or we shall never inherit the Kingdom of God prepared for us from the beginning.

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Lent 3

Posted by Father Tom Boyer on March 18, 2001

Posted in: Homily.

March 18, 2001 Exodus 3:1-8,13-15 + 1 Corinthians 10:1-6,10-12 + Luke 13:1-9

Lent’s third Sunday takes us to Exodus and Moses who ascends the mountain. It is long before he stands on the same mountain and enters into Covenant. This is the beginning of his great task. He has fled to the wilderness after killing, and there he meets God who has something for him to do We tell this story not as a sentimental exercise of nostalgia, but because remembering is a way of experiencing and so the memory can do for us what it did at first. It makes actual, it retains in time and space the mystery of God’s presence.

A bush bums. Moses could have looked at it thought, “Oh, that bush is burning.” and walked on by; but he didn’t. He stopped and he wondered, and by doing so, he came in contact with mysteiy Out of wonder and mystery springs all creative human experiences. art and science, philosophy and theology They find their beginnings in wonder and mystery “Why?” asks Moses, and in that “Why?” is life long relationship with God, his creator and redeemer begins. This mingled sense of wonder, reverence and awe is what distinguishes religion from morals, it is what distinguishes faith from momentary infatuation.

He stands in front of God, curious and cowed, drawn by the mystery and yet overwhelmed by how insignificant he is and unworthy of such an experience. In that moment of mystery, God speaks revealing how He is to be remembered. I AM, he says. I am creator, I am liberator, I am redeemer, I am Father. I am Brother, Sister, Spirit. I am Bread, I am Life, I am the Way, the Truth. I am Shepherd, I am Love, Lover and Lord, I Peace, I am Justice, I am Light and Life. I AM, He says, I am with you. This is the God who has called each of us into existence, and because God remembers who we are, we continue to exist.

These Lenten days are for remembering. They are for telling again the stories of this God, for remembering what God has done for us. They are days to stand before the mystery in awe and humility They are days for asking “Why?” and days to recognize our unworthiness. Moses leads again instead of 40 years, it is 40 days. For those who follow his lead, there is Passover and Promise, Freedom from slavery, and the life among the chosen.

Lent 2

Posted by Father Tom Boyer on March 11, 2001

Posted in: Homily.

March 11, 2001 Genesis 15:5-12,17,18 + Philippians 3:17-4:1 + Luke 9:28-36

On each of the six Sundays of Lent, the scripture readings invite us to look into our spiritual scrap book, as it were, in an effort to reconnect with some of ancestors in faith. This week it is Abraham, our Father in Faith who stands before us. He stands there as a figure of promise, and for those who remember his story, he pushes back the limits so often self imposed that keep us from seeing beyond the moment and the limitations of the present. If you don’t see the big picture, he looks like an old man beyond his years with a wife just as old and the two of them without children and a future.

Today, Luke takes us on the mountain, and there other figures of the past emerge in the mist, figures so well associated with Abraham. Moses and Elijah – two guys who had the big picture.

There on the mountain, Peter, James, and John for just a moment, get the big picture. I think they get what I’d like to call. “Mountain vision.” Abraham had it as he look ahead, He was invited to see from the Wadi of Egypt to the Great River of the Euphrates, it says. Moses had it on Sinai, and Elijah had it. They saw more than just the day in which they lived. They saw more than just themselves, and the circumstances of their lives. Peter, James and John saw more than the carpenter’s son from Nazareth.

On Lent’s second Sunday, we are invited to try a little “mountain vision.” We are invited by the word of God to see a little more than just today and just ourselves. In some ways, it’s the trouble with most of our lives. We don’t have “mountain vision.” We only see what is right in front of us. We are too close. We don’t get the big picture. We fail to see others, the delicate balance of our relationship with them. We fail to see what Peter, James and John saw. We fail to see how things are so connected, dependent, and how our past and our future all fit together

With a little mountain vision, the things up close may not seem so serious, so important, and so demanding. With a little mountain vision, we might come to understand how what we buy, what we use, and what we throw away affects the earth, the environment, and other people who work for so little so that we can have so  much. If we see the big picture, we understand that we are responsible for much of the systematic injustice in this world.

This issue, which I’m calling “Mountain vision” is one of the most significantly distinctive characteristics of our Catholicism. It is one of the distinguishing marks that makes us different from Protestants and their individualistic theology We are a people of the mountain- rooted in that vision. The opposite is the individualism that sees the single person as independent, free to chose without consequence, and left to see the world through one set of eyes, their own.

We are invited today to ascend the mountain, and to look again at the big picture. We are invited in this season, to back away a bit from the things we hold so close, and see them a bit more clearly in relation to everything else in creation. We are invited to see each other too with a little mountain vision. Up close and isolated, we look at each other and see every wrinkle, blemish, weakness, sin, and fault, but with a little mountain vision, things might look a little different. The apostles, until they had their mountain vision saw the carpenter’s son from Nazareth. On the mountain, they saw God’s Son. With a little mountain vision, we might see the same thing in each other and recognize a brother or sister a child of God, and all those blemishes and faults are harder to see, and make less difference.

Abraham at first saw only old Sarah, but once he had a little mountain vision, he saw those children who became the people of Israel. Peter, James, and John, never could have imagined on their own what was going to happen to their friend, but once they got a little mountain vision, they never saw things the same again.

It’s time today for us to get up the mountain, to get the bigger picture, to use some of that mountain vision to take another look at what’s important and what isn’t, at who were are, and how much we are a part of a world that is bigger than our little selfish vision would fool us into thinking and acting.

Lent 1

Posted by Father Tom Boyer on March 4, 2001

Posted in: Homily.

March 4,, 2001 Deuteronomy 26:4-10 + Romans 10:8-13 + Luke 3:1-13

On each of the six Sundays of Lent, the scripture readings invite us to look into our spiritual scrap book, as it were, in an effort to reconnect with some of ancestors in faith. This week it is Moses who stands before us, next week, Abram who became Abraham after his encounter with God. The purpose of this look into our old family album is not just to reminisce over heroes of the distant past, but rather to realize veiy consciously our roots in them and their stoiy so that we might share in that experience unfolding in our own time the consequences of that experience which we share with them.

The people are being instructed by Moses about their conduct after they arrive in the promised land. Once they are settled and begin to produce harvest from their labor and the land, they were to take the first fruits of that labor and bring it, as we read from today’s verses, as an offering of Thanks to God. The acknowledgment of gifts received is made by gifts given. Grateful people are giving people.

It works that way with forgiveness. A people who believe and acknowledge that they are forgiven by God then forgive others.It works that way with talents. Music, Art, Skills of all kinds, the gifts with which we seem to have been born and have been willing to develop. A people who believe and acknowledge that these are gifts that come from God, knowing full well that they did nothing themselves except seize an opportunity, do use those gifts to enrich the lives others, lighten their burdens.It works the same with the produce of our labor, whether it’s the fruits of the field or the paycheck we receive from our work. A people who believe and acknowledge that these are gifts that come from God, acknowledge the gifts received by gifts given.

This is what we do at this altar The gift of Jesus Christ is given back to the one who gave.This is what we do in this liturgy The gift you have, the gift that sustains and feeds you, clothes you, houses you, gives you fun and pleasure, keeps you healthy is, in the behavior of faithful and grateful people, returned to the one who has given.

The three-fold discipline of Lent: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, calls us to examine our spirit of gratitude and honest

acknowledgment of gifts we have been given. Our Lent is often marked by all sorts of prayer and fasting. All of that is convenient and easy An extra Mass now and then, some prayer at home, stations of Friday, not too hard, really Many take the fasting seriously with chosen acts of self denial that turn our hearts back to the Will of God, but that’s not too hard. It’s only for forty days. It is the sacrifice however, the offering, the giving that is so hard and so easily ignored, or put off to another time.

There is probably nothing that reveals our values and exposes our faith more than what we do with our money All the talk, all the prayers, all the fasting comes to nothing if there is no behavior to give it credibility Sitting in this church week after week, singing and praying for all to see is nothing when the instruction we receive from Moses is ignored, postponed, or rationalized away It is theJirs_t fruits that go to God, not the left overs. Before the electric bill, the rent and the groceries, the gift to God comes first if we understand what God asks of us through the prophet, Moses, not what’s left after we pay the bills, eat out, see a movie, and buy new shoes.

Now those of you who are uncomfortable, I’m not talking about “money” today I am talking about gratitude, faith, the acknowledgment of God’s gifts, and Lent’s call to examine our lives, our values, and our behavior This is the time, these forty days, for conversion’s change, for a renewal, and for openness to God’s Will, to God’s further blessings, and to God’s gifts. We’re in the promised land now, that’s what Jesus came to reveal. The measure of what we give to God shows what we think God has given us. If we are not generous with our forgiveness of others, then I guess we don’t believe that God has forgiven us very freely Ifwe don’t have time to share our talents, and use them only for ourselves, then it would appear that we think we are the source of those skills and talents.The season asks us to look at the proportions – the measure of our acknowledgment, awareness of God, and gratitude. It asks us to finally put God first in the use of our time, in the use of our talent, and the use of our treasure. Practically speaking, it might be a good Lenten practice to look at our tax return and wonder why we might chose not to itemize our gifts. The straight deduction is sometimes a way of hiding the truth of how little we give, not just a way of saving time throughout the year It’s Lent now Time to do the difficult things, time to look honestly and sincerely at our values and behavior, and time to change.