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All posts for the month January, 2002

Ordinary 2

Posted by Father Tom Boyer on January 20, 2002

Posted in: Homily.

January 20, 2002 Isaiah 49· 3,5-6 + 1 Corinthians 1 1-3 + John 1:29-34

You may have noticed that in John’s Gospel today, there is really no direct mention of Jesus being Baptized. The focus is shifted to our baptism by Jesus. These verses given to us by the church today concern the historical beginnings of the Jesus story, and they involve not only the witness of the Baptist, but the gathering of those who will be companions to Jesus in his ministry There is a kind of “chain reaction” in this early part of John’s Gospel. It begins with the witness of the Baptist, and then it spreads widely in just a few verses that follow today’s Gospel. Once John reveals the one who is to come, the one upon whom the Spirit rests, he fades out of the scene so that others may step into his place.

The first two chapters of Johns Gospel are structured in a series of days that invite us to think again of Genesis and the sequence of days that gradually reveal the plan of a Creator-God. In John’s sequence of days, the evidence of God’s presence is gradually unfolded until the first great sign at Cana in Galilee. In the days before that, more and more people are drawn into the circle of those who will witness the signs of John’s Gospel and ultimately bear witness to the final sign of God’s Love in the resurrection of Jesus.

So the focus of this story is not so much the Baptism of Jesus, since there really isn’t one here, but rather, it is a witness to Jesus who comes to baptize with the  spirit those who will be his companions in ministry:  .you and me, just as much  as Andrew, Peter, James and Philip and Nathaniel who all emerge in the next ten verses. Isaiah and John keep our eyes on the fact of Jesus being called and consecrated by God for the service of salvation. God said: “You are my beloved.” Itis from this kind of love, from this kind of call that mission comes: not from .ill!1Y.but from love. It is love that motivates this mission in Jesus, not duty, obligation, force or fear It’s like a child who says: “Daddy, why do I have to do this?” “Because I said so.” is not the answer we get from God, but rather “Because I love you and want you to succeed at being the best.” Mission comes from love, from being chosen, from being invited into and allowed to witness a relationship between an only Son and his Father, between the created and the loving creator, between the human and the divine.

This Spirit in by which we have been Baptized is a Spirit of Love rooted deep in a relationship that is profoundly human and yet divine in origin. Recalling the Baptism of Jesus in John’s Gospel is a reminder of our call into discipleship, and our invitation to share in the mission of Jesus. It is one that springs from love, right out of the heart because God’s favor rests upon us, the favor of a people chosen as God’s own. So, the reason we shall do the.right thing, live in accord with God’s will, accept and forgive one another with all the intimacy of sisters and brothers,  respect and preserve human life in everyone, all springs out of love, Divine Love, set in us at Baptism. This is what it means to be “Baptized in the Spirit” It has nothing to do with strange phenomena or charismatic excess. It simply means love that reveals itself in service; a service that reveals the Love of God for all human kind. Or, to put it another way, it’s back to the child who says: “Daddy, why do I have to do this?” The answer is not: “Because I said so.” or “If you don’t you’re going be in big trouble.” but rather: “Do it because I love you, and because you love me, and because it’s the best way for both of us.” This is the Spirit in which we  called, baptized, and reborn. It is not a Spirit of Fear nor a Spirit of Slavery spirit of freedom, and spirit of Love.

Mary Mother of God

Posted by Father Tom Boyer on January 17, 2002

Posted in: Homily.

January 1, 2002 Numbers 6:22-27 + Galatians 4:4-7 + Luke 2:16-21

We are culture that does not always take names seriously As a pastor I have faced that fact on numerous occasions when it comes to the Baptism of infants. As a consequence, I have come up with a personal rule: I will not Baptize a child named for a place or a meteorological condition. There are no children listed in Baptismal registers above my name called: Elk City, Bug Tussle, Tornado, or Dusty Dawn.For generations the Church insisted that children be named and under the protection of Saints, but then we began to be less exclusive about who was and who was not a “Saint.” Certainly, any family is capable of acknowledging the holy one among them, and honoring that holiness by a name continued through another generation. A child named: “Rose” in our family would not be named either for St. Rose of Lima or for the best bush in the garden. That child would be living  in the shadow and memory of Grandma  who taught all of us in my generation to  pray after getting four sons alive through the Second World War

This issue of Name is the central focus of today’s Gospel. The Name chosen, the Name given, the Name spoken is a powerful experience in this Gospel, and at the moment it is given, it is also claimed along with everything that goes with it. The obedience of these parents to the Will of God   their fulfillment of what was asked of them is important to understand, and the Name carries with it all the hopes and expectations of creation. It becomes a life focus for the child, and it puts a vision before him.

Several years ago, there was a film called: “Quiz Show” It was about the Van Doren family, the father and son, and it concerned cheating on the TV  Quiz Show The son shows his arrogance and his shallow sense of himself by claiming that his cheating on the show affected no one. “It’s my name being accused”, he jokes to his fathea:.ffs father shudders with pain, anger and even devotion to his son and respond”our name is my name!” With that, floodgates of realization open for the shallow and arrogant son, walls of isolation collapse and reconciliation begins.

We have a common name in here, and our failure to recognize t at your name is mine and mine is yours often leaves us desolate and lonely, isolated, and cold. Our name is CHRISTIAN. At our Baptism we were claimed by that name, and the sooner we remember that and reclaim it for ourselves, the sooner we shall who we are and see each other in a profoundly different way

The Baptism of the Lord

Posted by Father Tom Boyer on January 13, 2002

Posted in: Homily.

January 13, 2002 Isaiah 42· l-4,6-7 + Acts l 0:34-38 + Matthew 3: 13-17

In the 64th chapter of Isaiah the prophet it says: “Oh that you would tear open the heavens and come down.” That prayer of Isaiah has been answered, and Matthew wants us to know it. With images ripe with Old Testament highlights, Jesus emerges into the Gospel of Matthew and speaks his first words to John the Baptist. In some way, those words hold the key to insight into the Jesus Matthew will give us: a Jesus fashioned in the image of Moses. Desert and Water will play significant roles as the Exodus theme develops into the scheme of the ministry Jesus has chosen. He tells John the fulfilling the Will of his Father is reason for everything, and so the dispute between them about who is to baptize and who is to be  baptized is a mute issue  doing the right thing  doing what God asks is all that  matters between the two of them.

The very thought of the Spirit hovering and a divine voice should stir in the memories of the faithful images of creation from the Book of Genesis. For Matthew this scene in the waters of the Jordan heralds a new creation, not just of Jesus, but of all who will set aside the things of the past and seek the Will of God. In Mark’s reporting of this event, only Jesus hears the voice, but Matthew sets the scene so that all of us here the voice   and the message is for the listener, no private revelation to Jesus, but a public affirmation that now, in him and by his willingness to do the Father’s Will, communication between God and humankind is established.

For the church that lives, celebrates, and proclaims this Gospel, it is new day and all things are new, created again by the Spirit of God that once hovered over the waters of chaos. Empowered by that same Spirit, all who are Baptized share the same relationship with a God who claims us as his own. This is not just a story about Jesus. It is an instruction about Baptism and a revelation of Divine purpose. Heavens once figuratively closed by sin have broken open again. The voice of God once silenced by the roar of pride and independence no longer speaks through prophets. Now the voice is heard in all its glory and power by those who will rise up from the waters and seek to do the right thing in following the Will of God in the footsteps of Jesus.

Now empowered by this Spirit, Jesus will walk from the river into the desert and then, like Moses of old, he will battle temptation, prove his fidelity, and emerge into an Exodus/like life that ultimately will bring a new Passover We listen today to the Prophet’s reading at the beginning of this Mass, and we who have come to know Jesus cannot help to hear the proph t’s fulfilment, and even more so in the later Prophet’s 64th chapter: “Oh, that you would tear the heavens open and come down – in

your presence the mountains would quake, as fire sets brushwood alight, as fire makes water boil – to make your name known to you foes; the nations would tremble at your presence, at the unexpected miracles you would do.”

We live in those times. The heavens have opened. He has come down, a bush has been aflame, and wonderful expected things have happened and continue to happen. We are the ones chosen to receive not only this good news, but a place in this mission. At the heart of this Gospel story there is not just a revelation of the identity of Jesus Christ, there also rests the revelation of the identity of all rise up from the waters of Baptism and hear the voice that calls them to be God’s own.

Epiphany of the Lore

Posted by Father Tom Boyer on January 6, 2002

Posted in: Homily.

January 6, 2002 Isaiah 60: 1-6 + Ephesians 3:2-6 + Matthew 2:1 12

In the Old Testament prophetic literature, the return from Exile and the end of the captivity in Babylon was the historic saving event. Today’s prophet in poetic images and musical verses captures the sense of that time and records for all time the mood and the hope while he chronicles the transformation of these people who once so proudly ruled and worshiped from Jerusalem.

In the New Testament literature, the birth of Christ, is the historic saving event that ends the exile from Paradise, and in equally poetic images and musical verses, the sense of that time is recorded for us with no less hope than before, and the transformation of these people who again proudly worshiped and ruled from Jerusalem is recorded for us.

A people rooted in that living tradition then, continue to see, feel, and understand their lives in the same way In lower Manhattan, a heap of smoking ruins is no less an opportunity to rise in faith than the smoking ruins of the Temple the Romans left in about the year 70     still very powerfully set in the memory of Matthew and his Church. But it isn’t always that dramatic, and that obvious. There can be just as well, the smoking ruins of a relationship gone down, the smoking ruins of a life and a dream drowned in alcohol or drugs, the mess of a business venture in which everything has been risked pulled down by an economy that collapses in profit taking and greed, or the smoking ruins of an automobile that has snuffed out the life of a young person at the threshold of greatness.

“Faith” was once defined as the capacity to remember in the dark what we once saw in the light. As a child, when frightened or alone, I would sometimes hum familiar tunes to just make some sound to build up courage and ward off the evil I imagined and feared. I believe we pick up Isaiah the prophet these days to let his poetic images and the sounds of his words hum for us in the background as we face darkness uncertainty and fear Things were disintegrating for Matthew and his Church. Something new was coming, something new had happened, something new was unavoidable, so Matthew picked up the Prophet and in a sense, began to hum, because he knew from being in the light that someday, when the forces that rule now within the mysterious mix of good, evil and human freedom have run their course, God’s gracious plan for us will prevail. We will be one human family revealed as God’s chosen people, destined for an eternity of communion.

The story we tell from the ancient text of Matthew is the story of people moving from darkness to light, and doing so is to t_ake up a life long discipleship. God disturbs our comfort, challenges our prejudices, forces us to consider the demands

of love by taking his place among the poor as he did in Bethlehem. In Jesus again, God challenges disciples and goes before them, waiting again for disciples to find him. He waits, but not in shrines or in doctrines, but among the hungry, thirsty, naked, imprisoned, sick and alien, and we walk there in darkness now remembering what we have seen in the light.

It is the hope of our faith that we live now in the dawn time with the light coming, and far enough along for us to know which way to look. It will be light again, says the faith affirmed by Matthew’s Gospel, and we shall know it is light when we can  see well enough to recognize the divine presence in the face of another  not  someone who looks like us, but someone who is alien and different from us. If we have expected God to look like us, we have been fools looking into a mirror The God whose coming Matthew heralds is a God Herod and people like him cannot  see, for they are unwilling to abandon their power, their control, their expectations and be swallowed up in darkness.

Today what Isaiah hoped for as a future blessing, Matthew proclaims as a present reality; in Jesus, all humankind is drawn together from the darkness of whatever has isolated us and kept us from seeing Today what Isaiah hoped for and Matthew proclaimed we shall live and celebrate in as much as we can welcome th Light and all that reveals about us and for us. Today we stand beside the Magi, or they stand among us and we gaze in wonder at what we see: heaven on earth, earth in heaven, man in God, God in man, one whom the whole universe cannot contain now enclosed in a baby’s body They brought gifts: incense for God, gold for a king, myrrh for someone who was to die. We can’t stand here empty handed and claim to be disciples. It is time to gather our gifts, and in them and through them reveal what we believe and what we have become as we move from the darkness into the light.