Homily

As a child I learned an important lesson, and that lesson was that you should never tell a certain mother that there was "nothing to do." In the same way you should never tell that same mother that you were "bored." Especially not in a whiney voice. She always had an answer, a reply, for these type of complaints, and you would quickly find yourself raking, sweeping, dusting, or pulling weeds. It may have taken several times to learn this lesson, but once you did it was not forgotten. It made such a deep impression that later in school when I read of children working 12-hour shifts in the sweat-shop factories of New England, the first thought that would come to my mind was, "Well, at least they're not bored."

I was thinking about why the Prodigal Son wanted to leave his home and set off for other lands. There is probably more than one reason, but I think one of those reasons is that he was bored. He found his life at home to be dull, uninteresting, full of weariness, and the dissatisfaction you can feel when there's no excitement or thrills to stimulate you. It was pretty much the same thing every day, and he craved the excitement and pleasure he knew he could find if he was out on his own and had his pockets full of money. We can be sure he spent many days and nights far, far away from any chance of becoming bored. It's not hard to imagine him living an exciting, fun-filled, party-making lifestyle.

When the money runs out, so does the fun, and when the cash is gone the excitement dries up with it. The best he can do is to land a job as a pig-herder, which I think we can agree is not at the top of the list of the ten most stimulating and fulfilling jobs for young Jewish men. On top of it all, like the icing on a mud and slop cake, he has to take care of animals declared unclean by Mosaic Law. Dull has taken on a new meaning because it now describes the pain of the hunger he feels in the pit of his stomach, as even pig food is looking good to him. This is a boredom, a weariness, a type of dissatisfaction he had never come close to before in his life. When he realizes what he has given up by leaving home he repents and decides to return.

When he gets back home he finds the last thing he would ever have expected: a big welcome-home party! A party? In this boring old home? And here comes the surly older brother who is more bored than his younger brother ever was as he complains about the misery of living in a wealthy home and how horrible is the father who provides him with such a living. No lost brother, no loving father, no fatted-calf banquet can cheer this dull and empty soul.

On the other hand the Prodigal Son learns a great deal when he arrives back home: the party is here! The real party is here! It's always been here. It's not to be found in the temporary pleasures that can be bought for cash. It's not to be found with those who love you as long as you pay their way. The real party is not to be found in what is stimulating for a short time and then fades. It's not to be found in what money can buy or in having the power to live as you please. This fatted-calf banquet is just a sign, a pointer to show the son that the "real party," so to speak, has always been here at home. It's found in the peace of mind that comes from good character and moral living. It's found in the wisdom to look for what is good and seek after it. It's found in the heart that loves and is open to love. It's characterized by the most compassionate and loving care of a father who is always willing to forgive, and it's found in relying on his advice and his guidance rather than foolishly seeking to go your own way. A banquet every day would soon become boring, but a father like this, a home like this provides for a most rich, satisfying, and worthwhile life every day.

So it strikes me that one of the reasons people get into trouble is because they are bored. They are looking for some excitement, some stimulation that will move them from what they see as the dullness of life into feeling something more. And even though they would not describe it as boredom, it is still out of the boredom they act. They will even repeat the same actions again and again, do the same things over and over in order to try and gain a pleasure which is only temporary. Excited to move in together, now bored again and moving out. So happy to get married, now bored and headed for divorce. Drinking, drugs, sex, gambling, video games can all be means by which we try to escape the boredom we believe is weighing us down. Gossip, lying, stealing, fighting, pornography, excessive shopping, risk-taking, and many other activities that are wrong in themselves, or wrong when they are badly used, become tools to pop us out of boredom. It's not the child-like boredom of "there is nothing to do." It is the boredom as found in the dissatisfaction that we can experience in our lives, and the desire to escape it in ways that are not good for us no matter how good they may feel at the time.

And we also may try to escape boredom by avoiding those things we believe are boring. We may neglect our spouse, children or parent, avoid work we don't like to do, hide from responsibilities, be deaf to cries for help, abuse the goods that are in our care. We may even find God, prayer, and Liturgy to be a source of boredom.

The cure for our boredom is not found in the places where we are often tempted to look. It takes wisdom, grace, and strength to see that we are never more alive, never more satisfied, never more fully human than when we are willing to turn ourselves over to our heavenly Father, in trust, in hope, in faith, and in love. To grow up, no matter how old we are, to be like Him in Whose image and likeness we were made. And to see heaven as our only real and genuine and lasting home, because it is only there in His perfect love for us that we will never again have to battle the boredom that attacks us so often in this life, because there we will only know the deepest satisfaction of an eternal life.

For the present time, let us fight against the boredom that wants to drive us from our Father's house, and betray us by leaving us in the mud with the pig. Rather, in prayer and repentance we should call on our Father to always keep us close to Him, and may we continue to learn, oh how deeply and genuinely He loves us all.