the sheep on a frosty morning

Icons

Take a look at the icons I got in the mail from Todd and Jenny! They got a good home on my fireplace mantle!

My Mom and dad visit the farm.

And they took some pictures...

Me and Mom

Me and the ewes...

And the new building.. still in progress.

Homily for 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time A

Here is an oldie but a goody.... A man fell over a cliff. As he fell he was able to grab a branch. Hanging on to the branch, he yelled out for help, “Help! is anyone up there who can help me?” Then he heard a voice saying, “ Here I am.... I will help you.” “Who is that?” he asked. The voice said “I am the Lord, I will help you. All you have to do is trust me.” The man said “I trust you... just tell me what to do.” The Lord replies “All right... just let go of the branch.” There was silence for a while, as the man thought about it. Then he asked, “ Is there anyone else up there?”

Today's Gospel is about God’s vineyard. It is not a parable, which makes a single point. Rather it is an allegory, in which all the elements are important. In this gospel story we hear a description of all of salvation history.

Thus the vineyard is Israel... the tenants are the religious leaders of the Jews;

the slaves sent by the land owner are the old testament prophets;

the son is Jesus, the Messiah; his murder is the Crucifixion.

The other tenants that will produce fruit are the Gentiles. The rich harvest refers at least partially to the last judgement.

One point needs further explanation.. the tenants say to one another, “this is the heir... let us kill him and get his inheritance”.

But is this a realistic plan? Consider this.... foreign landlords owned much of Galilee. They hired out tenants to care for their farms. But if the owner died without an heir.... the property became ownerless and could be claimed by anyone, and.... the tenants could easily claim it first. So in Jesus’ day, the allegory was quite realistic and readily understood by the hearers.

Jesus directed this story to the leaders of the Jews who rejected him. Because of their rejection, the kingdom would be given to the Gentiles, as the concluding verse indicates.

The point of this story is not so apparent to us, for we do not reject Jesus. Rather our failure is similar to the man in the story who fell over a cliff and held on to a branch. We do believe and trust God, but only half heartedly.

In varying degrees, we hold onto human ways, and our superficial Christianity.

Are we willing to trust God completely and commit ourselves to him whole heartedly.... or do want to hang on to the branch.

But is it realistic to let go of the branch?

Not if we mean that we have to let go of every human support.... every security for our selves and our families. I do not believe that God expects that of us.

But if it means that Jesus becomes our standard for understanding lifes meaning, then yes, we should let go.

If it means that we are willing to accept all that happens to us in the spirit of Jesus... as we say in the Lords prayer “thy will be done”. Then we should let go.

Jesus assures us that we are children of a loving God, that his love never fails us, that even “the hairs on our head have all been counted”.

His love does not keep our hairs from falling out (as some of us know better than others) (Father John is the only one I know that doesn’t have to worry about that!).

Gods providence does not keep suffering away from us. He only assures us that no matter what happens, his grace will enable us to accept it in the spirit of Jesus.

All this brings us to Jesus’ final words in the Gospel... “the kingdom of God will be.. given to a people that will produce its fruit. The harvest Jesus refers to is not a worldly one , the harvest Jesus wants is us putting our lives in his hands.

Amen

Homily for 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time A

Homily for 23rd Sunday of Ordinary Time

As a youngster one of our favorite comic strips was Peanuts. No adults appear in the strip but even as I got older it was still worth reading. One episode that is worth noting is the one where Linus and his big sister Lucy Van Pelt are having a chat. Linus had just told Lucy that he would like  to  be  a doctor when he grows up. “You a doctor! Ha, that's a big laugh,” complains his loud mouthed sister. “You could never be a doctor”, she continues. “You know why? Because you don’t love mankind, that’s why!” Then she starts to skip away from him. In the last frame, Linus yells after her, “ I do love  mankind...; its people I can’t stand.”

Paul today asserts. “Whatever other commandments there may be,they are summed up in this saying.... ‘ You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ …. hence, love is the fulfillment of the law” Paul is speaking in a typically Greek fashion, trying to find a single unifying principle behind all the commands of the law. He concludes that there is only one commandment; it is universal and covers every situation.....  the commandment of love. He implies that the separate commandments of the law are no more than illustrations of what love may mean in particular situations.  

But there are two points we can easily miss when we hear this teaching of Paul. First Paul  is talking about love of neighbour. He is not really concerned about people in general, about remote countries of the world or about universal humanity. Rather he is speaking about our neighbour, those with whom we are personally involved, those we meet and relate to every day. Paul’s teaching brings to mind Jesus’ parable of the good Samaritan.... in that parable our neighbour is any one who needs us here and now. Secondly, Paul sums it all up by  urging’ “You shall love your neighbour as yourself. He does not refer to some poetical or abstract norm for our love.... his teaching is very concrete: “as yourself” or...  as being your self.  Still this can be misinterpreted. How much we love our selves is not the standard by which Christ is calling us to love others. Rather , we are called to love our neighbour as being of the same nature as we ourselves are, as being created in God’s image and likeness just as we are.

But there is one point about Christian love that is almost never spoken about. It is this.... is Christian love only agape... a Geek word meaning selfless love or is it eros another Greek word meaning desire or passionate love as well? The fact is, the word eros, or love as desire does not appear in the entire New Testament and only appears twice in the Old Testiment... where it is rejected. But if we understand eros as the very human love that includes desire and passion, then we can realistically find lots of eros in the Bible. In fact, God in the Old Testament is a God who loves his people passionately and jealously. And in the New Testament, God is a passionate  father who wants his prodigal son back. Also Jesus shows a constant warm friendship for children, for women and especially for the apostles, whom he so lovingly calls his friends.

What I mean is this..... neither the Old Testament nor the New Testament is interested in the separation of “heavenly love” and an “earthly love” Genuine human love of husband and wife, father, mother, child, friend is not appossed to love of God but is set within the context of the love. In the past century, the main emphasis in Christianity was on charity, and perhaps it made little impression on some of us, because charity seemed to have so little humanity. It seemed often dehumanized and spiritualized, with no vitality, emotion, affection or warmth and so was unattractive. Recently we use the word love rather than charity to indicate that our Christian love should be truly human.... with depth, warmth, intamacy, tenderness, humbleness, passion, and desire.

What all this means is that we cannot say with Linus, “I love mankind; it’s the people I can’t stand.” But we have to listen to Paul.... “Love your neighbour as yourself.” Most of all, we try to love as Jesus loved, accepting all those near to us with a warm, practical, passionate human love.

Amen

An Eternal Perspective

An Eternal Perspective

Often times we are guilty of being nearsighted, therefore we can only see what is in front of us and everything further away is foggy and unclear. Since we cannot see too far in the distance we tend to concentrate on what is only directly in front of us. The danger here is that we are not embracing all of reality, but only a very small portion of it.

In this life it is easy to be overwhelmed by sufferings, trials, disappointments, fears and a million other things that stand directly in front of us. Our faith reminds us there is a greater part of reality we are not seeing. There is a greater part of reality that we often ignore. It is the reality of heaven!

This world, with all of its struggles and disappointments, does not contain the complete picture of our lives. The Catechism says that “heaven is the ultimate end and fulfillment of the deepest human longings, the state of supreme, definitive happiness” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1024).


Without this eternal perspective we will be overwhelmed by this life and all its drama. Happiness, peace, joy and fulfillment are not simply part of a fairy tale. We can experience them in pieces in this life, yet in heaven they will be ours in abundance. Let us keep heaven before us always and remember that by doing so we are not neglecting anything, but in fact are embracing the fullness of reality.


God bless you,
Fr. Jeremiah Myriam Shryock, CFR
St. Felix Friary, Yonkers, New York

Fr. Jeremiah's web site
http://fromthefriars.blogspot.com/2011/09/eternal-perspective.html

newest farm pictures

shawn in the side car and Garnet is the pilot.

can you see Shawn in the bean patch?

the ewes

our office for a couple of days while construction was going on to the building