Oct 8 Homily Prep

-Last Sunday's homily is available by email
-This Sunday's Scriptures can be found at www.usccb.org
-check out this week's LinC Letter on the back of the parish bulletin or at www.saint-albert.org/lincletter
-I will be celebrating mass at 4pm Saturday and 8am and 11am on Sunday

What you fear is how you choose!

 Both the father and the tenant farmers are looking at the same person, the son, but they are seeing two very different realities. What they see reveals what they value. The son in the story is functioning like a biblical Rorschach test (the psychologists show us ink blot images and ask us what we see).  What we see reveals how we are. Depending upon one’s emotional/psychological disposition, we can see very different things  present in the same ink blot . What the father sees is a precious and valued son. What the tenant farmers see is an enemy, a competitor, a threat to their plans for  personal fulfillment and success.

This is a very dangerous and costly consequence of Original Sin and a testament to the power and presence of evil in our lives,  throughout our human history and in our world .   Our hearts are imprisoned in our own fear, sadness, and anger so much so that we cannot see the other as God sees them. What we do see reveals the  condition  of our hearts.  What and who we see dictates our choices, our loving. We see this at work in our very personal lives, our family lives, our political lives, and in our international relations. Depending on one’s values, one’s relationship to God, one's sanity,  one’s freedom, we alter or change the value of the neighbor, spouse, child, coworker, international partners, etc.

Here are a few images...what do you see?
a moody sad teenager or a truly depressed kid at risk for suicide
A 20-week gestation fetus who can be aborted or a person who can feel pain
The disrespect of the flag or protest of real racism
The person in the womb or the threat to your 16 year old daughter's successful life
A criminal alien in America without papers or an economic refugee fleeing a life of poverty in latin America

What you see reveals what you value.  What does God see?

 What our Catholic faith is calling us to is to be liberated from the prison of our self defensive, self aggrandizing, and life-destroying egos so that we can begin to see our brother and sister as God sees them.  That freedom will help us to choose to love, hate, kill, judge,  fear, reject, abort.   That’s what it means to be a child of the father, to know to love and to forgive from a heart that is free. From that type of liberated heart we can and must choose.