Father Paul Weinberger
Saint William the Confessor Catholic Church
Greenville, Texas
Pentecost Sunday
May 27, 2007
Whoever loves Me will keep My Word and My Father will love him and We will come to him and make our dwelling with him.
In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit
Amen
A dwelling…. Our Lord says,
[We will come to him and make our dwelling with him.
A Tabernacle is such a dwelling; Pentecost is the Feast of Tabernacles on the Jewish calendar. On the cover of the bulletin is a picture of this Tabernacle, Our Lord’s dwelling here in our midst.
Today is the Feast of Pentecost, which is 50 days after Easter and 10 days after Ascension Thursday. It is the Feast on which we celebrate the Coming of the Holy Spirit, the Descent of the Holy Spirit. I cannot think of anything I desire more than to have the words of the Gospel fulfilled in my life and in each of your lives.
Whoever loves Me will keep My Word and My Father will love him and We will come to him and make our dwelling with him.
At the Ascension of Jesus ten days ago, Jesus is there as our friend. Again and again He said,
I no longer call you slaves but my friends
But, as Pope Benedict mentions in his new book, “Jesus of Nazareth”, Jesus is not merely my friend but also Son of God. The friend, Who is Jesus, is also the Son of God and for Him to come and make His dwelling in my soul, makes my soul a tabernacle like the one you see on the front of the bulletin.
Father Paul is referring to this beautiful Tabernacle
http://semperficatholic.com///Tabernacle_S.JPG
Notice that the Holy Spirit is above the door of that Tabernacle. On the Tabernacle door you can see the Sacred Host and Chalice. To actually see that the love of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit would make His dwelling in me; I don’t deserve it. I absolutely do not deserve it and neither do you. But, this is the Truth. It sounds too good to be true but, it is True.
As I just mentioned, the Pope has a new book out and it is on the New York Times Best Seller List. There is also a book right behind it on the same N.Y. times List called, “God is Not Great.”, by Christopher Hitchens. We have to pray for Christopher Hitchens because he is indeed a wretch, just like in the old hymn “Amazing Grace”. What is the definition of a wretch? It is someone, who as a commentator at Blessed Mother Teresa’s funeral, began to remark that Blessed Mother Teresa was a hypocrite. Hum…. I think if you looked up wretch you would find a picture of Christopher Hitchens, who has a book, which is selling very well. Fortunately it is trailing “Jesus of Nazareth”. Thank be to God!
In Pope Benedict’s book, he speaks of Jesus in this way on page #7.
He is speaking of Jesus as resting His head on the Heart of God the Father.Jesus’ teaching is not the product of human learning of whatever kind. It originates from immediate contact with the Father; face to Face dialogue from the vision of the One Who rests close to the Father’s Heart.
That is amazing He places Jesus in Heaven, not merely at the Right Hand of the Father but reclining His head on the Heart of the Father.It is the Son’s Word; without this inner grounding His teaching would be pure presumption. That is just what the learned men of Jesus’ time judged it to be and they did so precisely because they could not accept it’s inner grounding, seeing and knowing face to Face, God the Father.
If you look over to your right you will see two statues surrounded by azaleas, and mention is made of that inside the bulletin, concerning the anniversary of the Sacred Heart coming up on June 15th. Recall that in St. John’s Gospel, St. John being the youngest of the Apostles, that at the Last Supper in the Upper Room, he was next to Our Lord and reclined his head on the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Remember how another wretch, who needs our prayers, Dan Brown, who wrote the Da Vinci Code, took St. John the apostle and switched him out with St. Mary Magdalene. And then they made it into a movie…. cha ching, cha ching! All for money, Jesus is sold again for more than thirty pieces of silver. And, there are people who have no idea what the truth really is. St. John the Apostle reclined on the Heart of Jesus.
In St. John’s gospel, instead of calling himself “I John”, again and again, he refers to himself as “the Apostle who Jesus loved.” So you see, He is more than a friend; He is also Son of God. This is one of the points that Pope Benedict makes in his most recent book, which I do recommend to you. St. John the Apostle lived to be very old. One of the disciples of St. John was St. Polycarp. He was personally educated or catechized by St. John the Apostle. St. Polycarp catechized St. Irenaeus.
In the Office of Readings today, the prayers that priests and religious have to say and many laity takes part in as well, there is a quote from St. Irenaeus. Notice how close to the time of Christ St. Irenaeus wrote. St. John was an Apostle of Jesus, St. Polycarp was taught by St. John and St. Polycarp taught St. Irenaeus. Today’s Office of Readings is about today’s Feast of Pentecost. St. Irenaeus says,
This is why the Lord had promised to send the Advocate. He was to prepare us as an offering to God; like dry flower, which cannot become one lump of dough, one loaf of bread without moisture. We, who are many, could not become one in Christ Jesus without the water that comes down from Heaven.
St. Irenaeus is referring to the Holy Spirit. Using a different symbol as in the stained glass window, the dove is a symbol of the Holy Spirit. St. Irenaeus is using a very ancient symbol for the Holy Spirit, one that people in north Texas will recognize in connection with the last nine days.
Like parched ground which yields no harvest unless it receives moisture, we who were once like a waterless tree could never have lived and born fruit without this abundant rainfall from above. Through the Baptism that liberates us from change and decay we have become one in body; through the Spirit we have become one in soul.
Our bodies and souls are now Tabernacles of the Lord through the power of the Holy Spirit. It sounds too good to be true but it is true. This is what is conferred in Baptism and completed in Confirmation, the sending of the Advocate, the Holy Spirit. We are not worthy of this.
I am reminded of the time the Sacred Heart appeared to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque in the 1670s. When St. Margaret Mary asked why she was chosen, Jesus told her that it was because she was an abyss of ignorance and unworthiness but that His heart was so full of love for mankind in general and her in particular that it could not be contained. It is like the waters of a lake that are full to the brim and then when more rain comes they spill over the dam. The love of the Sacred Heart for mankind in general, and you and me in particular, cannot be contained. The reason He reveals to us His Sacred Heart is due primarily to His love. Not to me! If you look up the word “insignificant” in the dictionary, there is my picture. Isn’t that your picture right next to mine? I think so! If you take a glass and fill it full of water and stick your finger in the water and pull it out, you see it leaves no hole; that is the same kind of impression we will leave in many ways on the day we die. That is how the world will see it if we take people with us to Heaven but that is a different story all together.
The same thing happened ninety years ago in Fatima. Our Lady appeared to three children under the age of ten, who could not read or write. Can you find anyone more insignificant than these children? When Our Lady appeared to St. Bernadette, it was February 11, 1858. Next year will be the 150th Anniversary of this appearance or apparition. St. Bernadette was from the poorest family in town. Her family had been very wealthy but was eventually reduced to poverty. Her father had given many people credit at his flourmill and when they didn’t pay he lost everything. Bernadette’s family had to move into a condemned jail. They weren’t allowed to live in the jail itself but in the basement, and it was only a loan; they could not set up housekeeping there forever. That is poor!
On February 11, 1858, St. Bernadette and two of her friends were out looking for firewood and bones to burn at home. If you live in the mountains of the Pyrenees, separating France from Spain, you are going to be out most of the day looking for anything to burn. It is so cold. Bernadette was separated from her two friends momentarily and just as she was preparing to take her shoes and socks off to cross the stream she heard the sound of a strong driving wind. It sounds very similar to the First Reading.
When the time for Pentecost was fulfilled they were all in one place and suddenly there came from the sky the sound like a strong, driving wind, and it filled the entire house in which they were.
When Bernadette heard the sound of the driving wind she looked up to see if the trees were bending or the leaves were moving but there was no movement there. Then she saw the Beautiful Lady. There was a cave near the edge of the river and above the cave was a little niche, a hollow. You have seen this lady; as a matter of fact you saw this lady today. As you walk up to the doors of the Church, there is the statue of Our Lady of Lourdes. It is a beautiful marble statue that has been there for many years.
Saint Bernadette referred to this lady as the Beautiful Lady; this Beautiful Lady continued appearing there and on March 25th she finally identified herself.
I am the Immaculate Conception.
The Beautiful Lady and St. Bernadette had a face-to-face meeting there. Bernadette saw the Beautiful Lady raise a Rosary, which was yellow, and the Lady made the sign of the Cross. St. Bernadette reached into her skirt pocket and pulled out her Rosary and began to pray the Rosary. After the Rosary the beautiful Lady disappeared.
I want to bring this up because of the similarities between St. Margaret Mary, the three children at Fatima and St. Bernadette. You cannot find more insignificant people in the world unless we look at ourselves. We have to make the connection here; otherwise this is just a study of history. We have to make the connection of what happened at Pentecost two thousand years ago, which happens again in the bodies and souls of Catholic Christians throughout the world; we do become Tabernacles of the Lord through Baptism and this is fulfilled at Confirmation.
Let us look at the setting; Pentecost took place most likely in the Upper Room of the Last Supper and the appearance of Jesus on Easter Sunday evening. Recall that on Easter Sunday evening that Our Lady, the Apostles and disciples were gathered in the Upper Room with the windows and doors closed for fear of the Jews. Then Jesus appeared and what were His Words?
”Peace be with you”, and then He breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit; the sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven; the sins you hold bound, they are held bound.”
Don’t pass over the part about Him breathing on them. Do you remember when we see God breathing for the first time over men in the Book of Genesis? That is when God cast a deep sleep over Adam and then from Adam’s side took a rib and fashioned Eve to be a helpmate for him. Not a doormat, but a helpmate! Then God breathed His Divine Life into Eve and she became a helpmate for Adam.
What is happening on Easter? On Easter Sunday evening Christ is alone for the first time with His Bride in the Upper Room. How appropriate for a bride and bridegroom to be together with the windows closed and the door locked. Christ has waited for this moment a long time and the first time He is alone with His Bride, the Church, after His Crucifixion, He breathes life into His Bride, the Church. The fullness of that Breath occurs on Pentecost, when the very breath of God descends on Our Lady, the Apostles and Disciples. They are gathered again in the Upper Room, fifty days after Easter, doors and windows having been closed for fear of the Jews.
Stop right there! It appears that this day is against the Jews…anti-Semitic. Not at all! The people inside the room are all Jews but they are afraid of the Jewish leaders, who did this to Our Lord. So, it is not anti-Semitic; get past that and don’t be distracted by it.
How did Jesus get into the Upper Room on Easter Sunday evening? Did He knock on the door? The accounts that we have say that He appeared in their midst. He didn’t knock on the door! How did the Holy Spirit get in? They heard the sound of strong, driving wind. You know how much wind you are going to get inside of the Upper Room if the doors and windows are closed.
And tongues as of fire came to rest on each of them
We all have homes with light switches. There is the off and then on function of the switch. Now let us concentrate on the Apostles. They have been cowards and most of them were uneducated cowards; they were weak individuals. Many of them observed the Crucifixion at a safe distance…correct? But after receiving the Gift of the Holy Spirit, the light switch, if you will, went from off to on. They went out from that place to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ, as it says in the Gospel.
The Holy Spirit will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you.
This is exactly what they did, even to the point of shedding their blood for Christ. These cowards, these ignorant, uneducated, weak men became symbols of valiant proclamation of the Gospel, and it is because of this day. The beauty of Pentecost is that tongues as of fire descended upon their heads. It didn’t singe their hair or give them a third degree burn. Doesn’t that remind you of the bush in the desert at the base of Mt. Sinai? Moses was tending the flocks when he noticed something amazing. There was a bush on fire, which was not consumed. He had to take his sandals off because he was standing on holy ground. Just as in the Old Testament story of the Tower of Babel, where the men are tying to build a tower to Heaven, not needing God and thinking they could just walk into Heaven, many different languages divided man. They began to babble to each other, not understanding one another. This was the division of man. On this day, Christ unites His Bride, the Church, in a common language of love, which is the Holy Spirit. This is not fancy or symbolic talk; this is real. This is the reality of what it means to be a Tabernacle on this, the Feast of Tabernacles, which is Pentecost.
I want to talk about how this is possible for you and me on a daily basis. You and I are not as strong as we should be; we are not as forceful as we should be, when in fact we have everything we need. What if it were to happen that tomorrow in the paper you read that the island nation of Haiti declared war on the USA. Would you rush out and buy tarpaper and cover your windows at night in a blackout? Would you stop all night driving and turn out all exterior lights? Would you tremble in fear? NO! And yet, when we think about the other team, when once in a while we actually recognize the evil, which is near us, we tremble when in fact we have everything necessary to obliterate the other team.
If you look on the back of the bulletin you will see the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit, which we possess. We are given these at Baptism and they are fulfilled at Confirmation. We have everything we need to blow the other team out of the water and yet, the mere mention of something concerning the other team makes us afraid. This is not as it should be; we need to be strengthened in the Holy Spirit on a daily basis. Parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles do this all the time.
Children marvel at how mom can see around corners. My mother said to me the other day that, it is amazing how some children today sass their parents in public or in private. She said that if her mother heard them say those things, she would backhand them. I loved my grandmother; she was very gentle but she wouldn’t put up with sass. My mother said my grandmother would even do it if they had not said anything because she could read their minds. How does that happen? How can they read minds? It is a gift of the Holy Spirit. How can parents see through doors or around corners? It is impossible to see around corners. How many times has a mother or grandmother dismissed a three or four year old child telling them to go and play and the child goes into the other room and something tells the mom to go in there. When the parent goes in there, they find the child with a box of matches.
“PAUL, put those matches……..”
[Laughter]
Sorry, I was having a flashback; I am better now. How many parents return home a day early from a long vacation and wonder why all the cars are at their home and why there is loud music coming from inside?
“I thought you were going to be back tomorrow?
Right? It is not “feminine intuition”, nothing is wrong with the ladies. It is a gift of the Holy Spirit. So when parents and children are living as they should in accord with the love of God, God gives so many gifts to help them carry the cross. You can carry the Cross in this world with the Holy Spirit or you can carry the Cross of this world without the Holy Spirit. Without the Holy Spirit it is like the Song of the Volga Boatmen.
“Do do do DOOOOOOO”
It is drudgery, it is pointless, and it will wear you out. But, with the Gifts of the Holy Spirit it is amazing what can be done. That is the kind of thing that you and I should be striving for. As Fr. Nyquist said at the grave of his sister, Mary, when we buried her,
The first question that God is going to ask you and me when we go before Him to be judged is, “Whom did you bring with you? If you come before Me without someone else, you are not getting in. ”
How is God going to take insignificant individuals such as we are, and turn us into apostles to bring people along with us to Heaven? What did St. Bernadette find in the pocket of her skirt? She found a Rosary. Now first o fall, whatever you believe about the Rosary…if you do not believe that this is a meditation on the Life, Death and Resurrection of Christ, you are wrong! It is as simple as that. What does the final prayer say? It says that this is a meditation on the Life, Death and Resurrection of Christ. We have to make a place for meditating on the Life, Death, and Resurrection of Christ every day. This is what Our Lady asked for at Fatima and Lourdes. Instead of just doing it because it is on the “to do” list, think of it as a way of bringing upon yourself the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
Look at your bulletin on page ten and you will see that famous quote from St. Louis de Montfort made about the same time of St. Margaret Mary. We know that the Holy Spirit IS the Spouse of the Blessed Mother. If you read the first chapters of St. Luke’s Gospel you see where Our Lady asks how all this is to happen since she does not know man. The archangel tells her that it is by the power of the Holy Spirit, hence the offspring to be born will be called Holy and Son of God. So, the Spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary is the Holy Spirit. Getting back to the quote….
In other words, if you have given no place to Our Lady, you are not going to find the Holy Spirit. This is essentially what St. Louis is saying about the Holy Spirit.When the Holy Spirit, her Spouse, finds Mary in a soul He hastens there and enters fully into it. He gives Himself generously to that soul according to the place it has given to His Spouse. One of the main reasons why the Holy Spirit does not now work striking wonders in souls is that He fails to find in them a sufficiently close union with His faithful and inseparable Spouse.
Let me give you the greatest example in the history of the world, which is not overlooked, it is so profoundly forgotten on a daily basis that, being overlooked would be progress. Right across from me is an image very similar to Our Lady of Guadalupe’s image in Mexico City. Our Lady appeared to St. Juan Diego, who was an Indian from the area. She appeared to him in 1531 and she left her image and told St. Juan Diego to please tell the bishop she wished a chapel to be built on the site she appeared. The last time Juan Diego went to her, the image of Our Lady was revealed in a miraculous way. If you are not familiar with it, you can study it. The bishop built a chapel right on that specific site. Our Lady didn’t ask for a Basilica but a chapel. The chapel was just big enough to keep the rain off of the image.
Twelve years before Our Lady appeared to St. Juan Diego, there were two hundred thousands Baptisms in all the New World. The ten years after she appeared, there were over nine million Baptisms. Think about it; nine million Indians from North America and maybe some from Central and South America, streamed in requesting Baptism. Can you consider anyone more insignificant to Europeans than Native American Indians? Yet, this is overlooked. There is so much prejudice today.
In the history of the world, after Pentecost two thousand years ago, there has never been such an outpouring of the Holy Spirit and it is connected to the Spouse of the Holy Spirit, the Blessed Virgin Mary. Catholics today will not make room for the Blessed Mother.
Let me give you an example. You are in traffic; imagine that, traffic in Dallas. Anyway, you are in traffic and there is an accident on the interstate and you are held up for an hour and maybe two. You get home and you are fuming that you just wasted two hours in traffic. After you stomp around for a while the first thing you do is sit down and turn the TV on and really waste hours. We waste hours left, right, and center. There is no one who can say with a straight face that they don’t have time to make room in their lives for the Mother of Jesus. Our Lady requested that we meditate on the Life, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus and there is nobody here that can’t do that. If we make even a small space for the meditation, then as St. Louis says, the Holy Spirit will rush in with all of His Gifts and will work His miracles but we have to make the time.
I do not intend to spend the days, months, and years ahead of me without the Holy Spirit. The only thing that can distance me from the love of God in my body and soul is mortal sin and me. If I choose to sin I am telling God that I love person, pleasure, things, money, and power more than I love having the love of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in my soul; think of what a loss that is. Mother Angelica’s little book, by Raymond Arorro, I discussed last week has this in paragraph two.
We can use that wasted time to draw others to Christ like the Apostles did when they left the Upper Room. God wants us to bring others before Him; He demands it and He gives us all the Gifts we need for the task. Most especially He gives us His Divine Love.Self-control is one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit, which requires us to decide what enters our memory and what remains there.
Whoever loves Me will keep My Word and My Father will love him and We will come to him and make our dwelling with him.
In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit
Amen