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All posts for the month June, 2002

Ordinary 13

Posted by Father Tom Boyer on June 30, 2002
Posted in: Homily Archives from 2002.

The 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time at St Mark the Evangelist Church in Norman, OK

June 30, 2002

2 Kings 4:8-11, 14-16 + Romans 6:3-4, 8-11 + Matthew 10:37-42

It is Matthew’s community that speaks to us today – a community that has already chosen to follow Jesus Christ. They know the demands of that life style, and they know where it leads. Their story can and ought to be our story. These are a people who are not just followers of Jesus. They are a community growing more deeply into his life and have centered their identity upon the risen Lord. They know who they are because of what they have experienced in response to that Word not just because of where they hang out and whose company they keep.

The Word of God is their focus and the source of their identity. By that Word, they understand and interpret what happens to them. That Word is still among us, and just as it did with the community of Matthew, it has an impact upon us. It calls into question our perceptions and judgments. It checks our awareness. It intrudes upon and examines public policy, and it demands change in human behavior, ideas, and ethics. What Matthew’s community says to us today concerns our relationship to the one we call “Lord.” When we proclaim his words here it is not out of nostalgia, but our first and best way of coming to a deeper understanding of what it means to live in faith and be disciples. We proclaim these words of Jesus, not just to remember him, but to be drawn more deeply into his transforming presence.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ and the fulfillment of his promise to send the Holy Spirit has changed us from simple disciples who follow Jesus around through life into prophetic participants in his work and mission, and that is exactly what Matthew’s tenth chapter is all about. It is about defining the mission of a prophetic church.

Pay attention to how Matthew articulates this mission.

Whoever receives a prophet because he is a prophet….

Whoever receives a righteous man because he is a righteous man…..

Whoever give a cup of cold water to a little one because they are little…..

We must find within ourselves the quality of the prophet before we can welcome the prophet.

We must be righteous before we can welcome the righteous.

We must be little in order to welcome the little ones.

We have to know what this is before we can really be one with the prophets, the righteous, and the little ones.

The hospitality this Gospel proposes begins within ourselves. It is the prophet who best welcomes the prophetic, the righteous who best welcomes the righteous, and the little ones who best welcome the least among us.

Prophetic is what we are as God’s people and disciples of Jesus Christ.

By God’s own command the privilege and responsibility of the prophet is, according to Jeremiah, “to root up and tear down, to destroy and demolish, to build and to plant.” The prophet speaks in every season of human life giving comfort in sadness, courage in anxiety, affirmation in success, warning where virtue is lacking, and challenge where improvement is needed.

The people Jesus would have for prophets of the Kingdom of God are experts in humanity, people who know the depth of the human heart, who can share the joys and hopes, agony and distress of their companions in this life, and at the same time are people who have fallen in love with God. Prophetic people reveal God’s purpose. If God’s purpose is to love, prophetic people love. If God’s purpose is to forgive, prophetic people forgive. If God’s purpose is to welcome all made in God’s image into the Kingdom of God, prophetic people make it so in their own lives, in their own homes, in their own hearts.

Ordinary 12

Posted by Father Tom Boyer on June 23, 2002
Posted in: Homily Archives from 2002.

The 12th Sunday in Ordinary Time at St Mark Catholic Church in Norman, OK

June 23, 2002

Jeremiah 20:10-13 + Romans 5:12-15 + Matthew 10:26-33

It is Jeremiah who speaks the first words to us today. For me and for St. Mark Parish it is blessing and a fortunate assignment of texts. Jeremiah is one of my favorite personalities of the Old Testament. He is a model for any who would seek to explore the prophetic call into which we are all baptized as a people of faith. He is a man of choices, who lives with courage his relationship with God: a man who grows, who suffers, who is thoroughly human, yet always tuned to the divine call, the Word of God, and prayer.

I am beginning a new time in my life. I come here this week grateful for you and the warm welcome you have extended with compassion and understanding. As a priest, I have moved only five times in 35 years. I tend to stay and go for the long haul. Three years at the Old Cathedral in Downtown Oklahoma City as my first assignment at twenty – five years of age. Four years at Mt. St. Mary High School as a teacher and administrator. Five years at St. Joseph Church in Union City. Six years at St. Thomas More Parish in Norman; and most recently, fifteen years at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Cathedral in Oklahoma City. For fifteen of those years, I was Director of Youth Ministry and Director of Vocations for fifteen years as well. I told the people last week at the Cathedral that I had begun to expect that my move from there would be announced in the Obituary column of the Daily Oklahoman, and that I would go out of there in a box rather than go out carrying boxes. Perhaps it shall be so here, but this move has been different from all the others because of so many of you. Never before have I anticipated a move with such a warm welcome. I received emails, phone calls, and hand written notes extending a welcome, offering to help with the physical side of such a move, and simple, personal kindness. I am deeply grateful, and you have revealed more about yourselves and the spirit of your parish than you might have imagined.

At the same time, I am sorry that you must go through a transition that you did not ask for, were not consulted about, and are left to work through on your own. It is not my style of leadership. I am uncomfortable with it, and you will find in time that what you think and how you feel matters to me. I shall listen to you. At the same time, as the leader I may not always choose to do what you want, but it will not be because I did not listen, and you will always deserve to know the reasons for my decisions even if they are contrary to your expectations and wishes.

What all of us have right now is an opportunity to grow, but it is a choice we can make, but growth does not happen unless we choose to make it so. We make choices every day. We choose whether to feed and exercise our body in a healthy way or let it grow old and frail. We chose whether to engage in community or to cultivate isolation. We choose whether to develop a healthy relationship with God through prayer and God’s Word, or to fill our days with worldly activity. We choose whether to live “awake” by sharing and standing up for our beliefs and our faith, or to spend our days in slumber.

Most of the time, the choice to grow brings some pain. We’re physically sore from a workout, emotionally confused, and sometimes spiritually uncertain. We might be called a “health-nut”, a “crack pot”, or worse. If our chosen lifestyle or spiritual path differs from that of family and friends, we risk ridicule, rejection, physical attack, and sometimes death. We hear this experience echoed in the today’s readings from Jeremiah, Romans, and Matthew. Our God is one who encourages growth and has an endless supply of lessons for teaching us this fine art. Putting aside fear is the first step into the divine classroom; and in its place, we are invited today to put faith. Rather than be sucked into the crises and drama of everyday life, of trying to control the people, places, and things in our life, with might with simplicity and love choose to grow.

I will take Jeremiah as a model for ministry and leadership here among you. I would like for his prayer to be our prayer today. It is a prayer of confidence and hope. It is a song of praise and thanksgiving. In one form or another, the words “fear” or “afraid” appear over 700 times in the sacred scriptures. In almost every case, the appropriate response to fear is faith: faith that trusts in and hopes in God’s power to save, to deliver, and to protect. Jeremiah knew what it was to be afraid. His whole career was riddled with countless fearsome experience. He feared he was too young. He feared that he would not know what to say or how to speak to his contemporaries in God’s name. He feared facing others with the truth of their sinfulness. He feared to speak God’s Word. He feared not to speak it and when he did speak it, he feared the consequences.

Like Jeremiah, disciples of Jesus are charged with speaking God’s word of truth, and like Jeremiah they often bare the brunt of disdain because of it. Yet Jesus sends them and sends us gifted with grace and a message to proclaim from the housetops. I ask you to come with me a little further into the deep water of discipleship and the prophetic life of faith. It is a faith that conquers fear, or at least keeps it at bay. Together, we can become prophetic and real deep-water disciples: “Fear imprisons, faith liberates, fear paralyzes, faith empowers; fear disheartens, faith encourages, fear sickens, faith heals; and most of all, fear puts hopelessness at the heart of life, but faith rejoices in its God.

Ordinary 11

Posted by Father Tom Boyer on June 16, 2002
Posted in: Homily.
June 16, 2002
Exodus 19:2-6 + Romans 5:6-11 + Matthew 9:36-10:8  
On June 28, 1987 I stood up in the assembly at St. Thomas More Parish in Norman, Oklahoma and said: “More years ago than I care to remember, I learned this little saying in the seminary: Quidquid recipitur, recipitur secundum modum recipientis. It means: Whatever is received, is received according to the capacity of the receiver. Now that sounds a little complicated and highly philosophical, and I want you to know that “Philosophy” was not a subject with which I was con;ifortable as a twenty something year old student. But I am not twenty-something any more, no matter how I might wish it were so, and the things that seemed complicated and difficult then are really not. You cannot put a quarter into the nickle slot of the parking meter The quarter is the quidquid reciptur, and it will not reci.pitur into the five-cent slot because it is meant to take nickels only – that is the modum recipientis.  
This old principle came to mind this week because I think it has a lot to say about us who gather here week after we k and work to put into practice what we have been sent from here to accomplish. It also says a lot about what I am doing here this morning and how I feel about it just as much as it did fifteen years ago on June 28.  
He sent them out to proclaim that the Kingdom of God is at hand: to cure the sick, to raise the dead, to cleanse the lepers, and to drive out demons. Yet, the mandate is not just about doing and giving, it is more about receiving: “Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give.” Herein lies the heart of this Gospel.  
The quarter will not fit unless you are the size of a quarter……… Youcannot cure the sick unless you have known the sickness. You cannot raise the dead, unless you have faced death itself. You cannot cleanse the lepers unless you know the despair and loneliness that comes with the disease. You cannot cast out demons unless you have been cleansed. This is the mystery of the Incarnation. God does not save us without becoming one of us, and this is what we celebrate in this place week after week, and we do this together or it is not done at all. We do this with and through each other as church who knows sickness, death, evil, and loneliness. We can and we have cured sickness here. The sickness of despair and discouragement, the sickness of distrust and isolation. We can  and we have raised the dead. If you doubt it, look at this place and look at yourselves, your commitment to this city and its heart, to this parish school, and to children being raised in the faith and the values that built this place eighty years ago. We can and we have driven out demons. The demon of fear, the demon of ignorance, the demon of blame and selfishness is on the run. No longer is this an isolated, aging, poverty bound community trapped here like lepers of old. You have heard the command, and you have responded.  
I used to think that this place, this parish, this community was complex, difficult, a huge challenge. I came here with fear, my friends. I read the homily from July 5, 1987 several times in the last few weeks, and I could still feel the fear between the lines. But I was approaching this opportunity the way I used to approach Philosophy: out of my head, not my heart. I’m not twenty, nor forty­ five any more. I am sixty, and things that seemed too complicated do not seem so any more. This is not a complicated nor difficult community mixed up in an transitional urban setting with languages and cultures that are confusing, tangled up, and sometimes conflicting. Our ministry here is really very simple. It is a matter of relationships, not programs, Renaissance, meetings, events, schedules, weddings, funerals, and schools, contracts, and sacraments. It is a matter of friendship, of trust, and of charity.  
I don’t know where the time has gone, nor why it had to go so fast. When I came, I was fearful and concerned that you might be disappointed or not like me; that I wouldn’t know what to do nor be able to make the decisions to lead. But it was not so for long, because I quickly realized that it wasnot going to be about me anyway It was goingto be about Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God, and I realized that it was going to be about relationships that were ruled by forgiveness, by trust, by faith, and by abiding joy that would show itself again and again in the way we celebrate and most of all in the way we ,give thanks.  
“Without cost, we have received, and without cost we are to give.” instructs this Gospel. All of which stirs in the heart of a believer deep and abiding gratitude. I believe that the behavior of the Christian community says something about gratitude. Saying thanks just once is never enough, especially when the Lord is involved. Since Eucharist is about thanksgiving, we keep on doing it over and over again because it is just never enough. Next Sunday when I stand at the altar of St. Mar Parish Church, I shall continue to give “Thanks” for you, because once and today is just not enough.  
and we have raised the dead. If you doubt it, look at this place and look at yourselves, your commitment to this city and its heart, to this parish school, and to children being raised in the faith and the values that built this place eighty years ago. We can and we have driven out demons. The demon of fear, the demon of ignorance, the demon of blame and selfishness is on the run. No longer is this an isolated, aging, poverty bound community trapped here like lepers of old. You have heard the command, and you have responded.  
I used to think that this place, this parish, this community was complex, difficult, a huge challenge. I came here with fear, my friends. I read the homily from July 5, 1987 several times in the last few weeks, and I could still feel the fear between the lines. But I was approaching this opportunity the way I used to approach Philosophy· out of my head, not my heart. I’m not twenty, nor forty­ five any more.·1 am sixty, and things that seemed too complicated do not seem so any more. This is not a complicated nor difficult community mixed up in an transitional urban setting with languages and cultures that are confusing, tangled up, and sometimes conflicting. Our ministry here is really very simple. It is a matter of relationships, not programs, Renaissance, meetings, events, schedules, weddings, funerals, and schools, contracts, and sacraments. It is a matter of friendship, of trust, and of charity.  
I don’t know where the time has gone, nor why it had to go so fast. When I came, I was fearful and concerned that you might be disappointed or not like me; that I wouldn’t know what to do nor be able to make the decisions to lead. But it was not so for long, because I quickly realized that it wasnot going to be about me anyway It was goingto be about J”‘ esus Christ and the Kingdom ofGod, and I realized that it was going to be about relationships that were ruled by forgiveness, by trust, by faith, and by abiding joy that would show itself again and again in the way we celebrate and most of all in the way we ,give thanks.  
“Without cost, we have received, and without cost we are to give.” instructs this Gospel. All of which stirs in the heart of a believer deep and abiding gratitude. I believe that the behavior of the Christian community says· something about gratitude. Saying thanks just once is never enough, especially when the Lord is involved. Since Eucharist is about thanksgiving, we keep on doing it over and over again because it is just never enough. Next Sunday when I stand at the altar of St. Mar Parish Church, I shall continue to give “Thanks” for you, because once and today is just not enough.  

Ordinary 10

Posted by Father Tom Boyer on June 9, 2002
Posted in: Homily.
June 9, 2002
Hosea 6:3-6 + Romans 4:18-25 + Matthew 9:9-13  
True religion involves deep faith in the mercy of God found in love. If you think about the religious experience of people outside the revelation of Jesus Christ, you can’t help but notice the reign of fear, terror, and wrath that marks this kind of religion. The constant work of these religions is to appease or buy-off the anger and punishment of the gods. No matter what culture or age, religion boils down to a matter of fear and punishment. Sacrifices are offered to calm a god who is always too ready to pounce, too anxious to punish, and too ready to pass judgement against the faithful. All of this probably says as much about the culture in which it is found as it does about anything else, but it stands in absolute contrast to what begins to unfold and be revealed by the work of Jesus Christ.  
Already with the covenant of Abraham something different is unfolding, and the God who reveals himself to and calls Abraham is interested in more than terror and fear, but it takes a long time to work that out, and sometimes it is just easier to make up a god made in our image than realize in ourselves through conversion the image of the God in whose image we are made.  
What was to come in Jesus Christ had already been the fondest dream of one of history’s most extra ordinary lovers: Hosea. His own life of patient, loving, mercy expressed in prophetic ways what was to come and be revealed in Jesus, the ultimate prophet of mercy. What we finally may discover in what Jesus has revealed is that God has been looking for us while we’ve been playing with our golden calves. It is God who has been looking for the people made in His image in order to make his home among them.  
This is the story behind the story we tell today in our Gospel: the story of God looking for the people who will reveal the truth about God, the truth about mercy, and the truth about love. As Matthew tells it, he finds one that day, sitting at his post, collecting taxes for the Romans. At first thought, he is an unlikely choice, but that turns out to be the way it will be all through the story. Yet when you consider that Matthew’s call is an opportunity to gain a deeper  understanding of the mission of Jesus, it might not be so unlikely, for who better can teach us about conversion of heart than someone who has himself collaborated with the enemy who offered him security and power and yet found the courage to leave it all behind? That is Matthew He walked away from a lucrative position of power and influence into the arms of mercy He accepted because he was accepted, what Jesus offered him was forgiveness, mercy, and love. The first to know forgiveness, mercy, and love in the New Testament, becomes the first to proclaim it.  
Jesus does not condone the sins of Matthew, in fact, he calls him away from them. He actively reaches out to him, seeks him, and brings him into fellowship with his followers. In doing so, he shows us the kind of love that overcomes disgrace and separation. This undeserved gift that values a person regardless of what they have done is the meaning of grace. There is no judgement here, there is only mercy There is no punishing God here, there is only Love.With this revelation, the meaning of Hosea’s words, “What God wants is mercy, not sacrifice.” begins to make sense.  
In the Old Covenant, and in all those other religions of the past, sacrifice was the way to deal with and satisfy God. The problem with sacrifice is that it always degenerates into some form of bribery What starts out to be a token of love ends up being a substitute. What is offered is not the real thing. God has had enough of that. God does not want our tokens. God wants us. That desire on God’s part is what Jesus comes to begin – and what we now come to complete.  
There is no replacement for love. Those who love us do not want what belongs to us, they want us, not a piece of us, but all of us. The God who went looking for Matthew is still looking and offering us the healing acceptance offered once to Matthew Who better than you and me can show the mercy and share the love we have received without merit? The sacrifice we come here to offer is thegift of mercy, forgiveness, and love we have received. God is not interested in anything else. The instruction of Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel is as clear today as it was when he first said the words: “Go and learn what this means. “It is mercy I desire, not sacrifice.”  

The Body and Blood of Christ

Posted by Father Tom Boyer on June 2, 2002
Posted in: Homily.
June 2, 2002
Deuteronomy 8:2-3,14-16 + 1 Corinthians 10:16-17 + John 6:51-58  
For fifteen years, I have preached about this Feast every June. As I turned to the scripture texts one more time a couple of weeks ago, I wondered what I would hear this year and how I could possibly say something I have not said in one way or another in the previous years. Father Mollan, who generously dispenses “fatherly advise” to me suggested about a month ago that a good reason for moving from parish to parish is that you only need a good set of three or four sermons for each Sunday of the year which you can polish up and use again place after place. I am taking that advise into consideration, but printing homilies and having them on the web page runs the risk of that plan being revealed, so for now, I am only thinking about it since I moved into a new understanding of these words this is time around by hearing one word I don’t think I had noticed in all the years before It’s strange how that happens – how one word can suddenly jump off the page at you and open your heart and mind to a new dimension of the message. The reason I heard it so clearly is that the translation has changed, and as soon as I heard the new word, the old one rang out. Let me show you, because to lead you into this thought, we used the older translation todayNew one: “For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.”Old one: “For my flesh is real food, and my blood is real drink.”Now getting into some serious study about why the change from “real” to “true” might be interesting, we would do better to simply sit and wonder about both of them, since there isn’t a lot of difference anyway John, who never misses a detail as an opportunity to teach and reveal is leading us somewhere, and it might be about time to go thereThe suggestion here is that we deal with what is real orwhat is true, and that calls us to make some distinction between what is fake or false, or what is symbolic as a substitute for the real thing.Our lives these days are filled wi h fake substitutes for the real thing. Whether it’s food, art, music, or sometimes even people, we are always running the risk of being satisfied with less than  what is real. Sometimes the fake even looks better, having eliminated the unique touches of what is authentic by the perfection of technology The other, less troublesome substitute is the “symbolic” that mental “slight of hand trick” that uses a substitute or symbol for the real thing. It fools us into thinking or believing that the symbolic is just as good as the real thing. My favorite example of this is the dollar bill “symbolic offering” at Mass – as though the $1.00 bill was just as much a gift to God as the twenty dollar bill next to it.People who are going to use John’s Gospel to dig into the revelation God gives us in the Body and Blood teaching of Christ are going to be concerned with the real thing, nothing symbolic or fake It is going to make them real people, real disciples, who do real things because Jesus is real to them, no distant memory, or pious thought, nor a symbol of some religious experience.Those people will do real things, and those who long for justice will know a real response, those who are hungry will get some real food, not a program, a promise or a prayer Those who long for companionship will get real company and real compassion. What we receive here is not a symbol of Communion with God. It is the real thing. It is not just a remembrance of the saving work of Jesus. The salvation and redemption is real. Our communion here is not symbolic. It is concrete, committed, and lasting. We are one, not just faking it, acting like it, or wishing that we could be. This last time that I have to share with you the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ might be the best of them all if we can get real and be true. In our Eucharistic celebration, believers encounter the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ – the real Christ of this time and this age, not a symbolic Christ of the past. We are nourished with real food and real drink so as to be of real service and authentic, true, witness. There is nothing about is that simulated. There is no faux faith. This altar is the place where things get real, where the believer truly and really begins to experience eternal life and encounter in the broken flesh and poured-out blood of Jesus the very real life of God.Fed here, we are turned out to feed others. Healed and forgiven, we go out to heal and forgive others. Here, all our needs are met, and then the needs of others are our mandate.