THE  LORD 

IS  NOT  A  MOUNTAIN! 

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily for this 16^th Monday in Ordinary Time is, “The Lord Is Not A Mountain.”

Today’s first reading from the Book of the Prophet Micah begins with a very visual image. The Lord says, “Present your plea - your voice - to the Lord before the mountains.” [Cf. Micah 6: 1-8]

“Stand before the mountains - yell - and hear your voice. Hear the echo of your sounds.  Pay attention to what you are saying, pleading, asking, praying for?”

In other words, listen to your own prayers and pleas.

EASY TO PICTURE

It’s easy to picture a mountain. We’ve been there - or we saw them in movies or on television.

When kids draw - they often draw mountains - so easy - along with trees and cats and dogs.

So imagine yourself standing there facing a gigantic mountain.

What is your biggest prayer in your life right now? For family? Self? Friends? Our world?

Yell it out. Hear your echo. Listen to what your saying - attentively. Carefully.

Then Micah says to us: Listen to what the Lord speaks  back to you.

WE ARE NOT MOUNTAINS

We are not made of stone - but sometimes we are stone deaf. Sometimes we feel like a rock or a stone. Isn’t that  the sense of Simon and Garfunkle’s song, “I am a rock. I am an island….”  

Prayer, a conversation, is two sided. 

Unfortunately, sometimes we talk to each other and we’re really not being with, listening to, looking into the other’s eye and being - and hearing what the other is saying.

God is not a mountain. Yet God is pictured as a mountain - in the scriptures.  Mountains don’t have eyes, ears, a heart, an understanding.

Yet mountains can be very powerful.  Imposing. Overshadowing. Overwhelming.

I was on Gibraltar. I was inside Gibraltar - inside the big caves  and tunnels  within. It was a moving moment.

I’ve hiked up some of the Rocky Mountains and the Presidential Range of Mountains in New Hampshire.

Momentous moments

I’ve prayed on Mountains.

However, God is not a mountain.

God is 3 Persons - a community of 3 persons who are so together, they are 1.

TODAY’S MESSAGE

Today’s message is to be in communion with God - however you imagine him: mountain, ocean, father, mother, shepherd, spouse, bread, wine, fortress, wall, woman in labor, farmer.

Whichever, whatever, image you use when you’re with God, make sure it’s personal and particular - one to one with God.

Make sure you’re not alone - as a person standing before a mountain - but as a spouse or child in your parents arms.

CONCLUSION

Let me end by making a few conclusions.

So God is not a stone mountain.

God’s voice is not an echo.

As Elijah discovered while he was hiding on a mountain, “God was not in the earthquake, the wind or the fire. God was the sheer silence.”

[Cf. 1 Kings 19: 11-18]

Listen.