Father Paul Weinberger, Pastor
St. William the Confessor Catholic Church
Greenville, Texas
22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
September 1, 2007
Rather, when you have a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. Blessed will you be indeed because of their inability to repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous
In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit
Amen
In 1992 I went down to Mexico, a four-hour drive from the border. I went down to work with the poor and study Spanish. I was there for about a month and took over a parish in a very poor area. Many of the people in the neighborhood had homes built of sticks and then next to them were decent homes made of cement, and we take for granted dry rooms, heating, and water.
In the Church, the Sacristy had been filled from floor to ceiling with clothes sent from the United States, probably from Texas and through Catholic Charities. The pile of clothing was a nuisance because now that we were using the Church the critters that were attracted by the clothes had to go. I saw a big rat run out of there. I told the people of the parish that there was only room for one big rat and I wasn’t leaving for eight months.
We gave all the clothes away and it was amazing to see the people coming to receive them. The clothes were good and not just garbage someone had thrown away. The people really appreciated these clothes. Kids grow fast and so there is always a need for larger sizes.
I started to see the clothes coming back into the Church. One little boy had on one of the shirts and he wanted me to translate his t-shirt. I started laughing and I told him that his shirt said, “I am only here for the beer.” He was so proud; I bet he never gave that one away. His little friend had on a t-shirt that was written in English as well. His shirt said, ” Someone in Florida loves me.” He pondered this, the little philosopher, because he had never been to Florida but somebody there loved him.
Someone in Texas loved those people enough that they sent these clothes down and the parents were very grateful for the anonymous gesture by someone who loved them enough to get these things together and send to the mission. The kids didn’t get together and click their tongues complaining that these clothes weren’t from the Gap or that the clothes were not in style and were used. In our country we are jaded by success and we have to admit it. Our Lord speaks about generosity toward those, who find it impossible to repay us. The consideration of a Corporal Work of Mercy, like sending clothes down to Mexico is only one manner.
On the back of the bulletin you can see a picture of St. Therese holding the roses in the midst of holding the cross. Her Feast day is coming up. St. Therese entered the convent with special permission as a young teenager. She didn’t make it to her twenty-fifth birthday but the saint didn’t let grass grow under her feet in putting into practice what Jesus mentions in this gospel. In fact, she knew that she was indeed invited to the Wedding Banquet by Jesus and she was not going to refuse the invitation.
In the Pope’s most recent book, “Jesus of Nazareth”, he mentions the Wedding at Cana from St. John’s Gospel, and that the first miracles of Jesus were performed there and the Wedding Feast of Cana represents the invitation of Jesus to us to dine with Him, an invitation to an intimate relationship with Christ beginning with this Wedding Banquet and is a foretaste of Heaven. In fact, when it is Jesus inviting us to the banquet it is Heaven on earth. That is why you are here on a Sunday evening on the vigil of Labor Day. Yes, you recognize that there is an obligation but overarching the principle that is most important here is the fact that you would not turn down an invitation to a feast at this Wedding Banquet, which is the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
St. Therese would not pass up the opportunity to serve Our Lord the way that He enjoins us.
When you are invited by someone to a Wedding Banquet so not recline at table in the place of honor.
The admonition is to go and take the lowest place so that when the host comes to you He may tell you to move up to a higher position. St. Therese understood from the very beginning that there were many people in need of her prayers and sacrifices, so she got right down to work. One of the first jobs she was given was to sweep the stairwells at the convent in Lisieux, which is north of Paris and is a cloistered convent, which means that the nuns who enter can never leave. If they do leave they can never return to the Cloister. There are bars on the window.
“Gasp! Bars on the window? Are they in prison?”
No, they have bars on the windows for the same reason that many of you have bars on the windows of your home; they are to keep those inside safe and to keep out those who wish to break in.
St. Therese freely entered the cloister, which was an ample one but when you are there with about fifteen other women you can’t really run away. You are there to work, pray, and support one another. After a while living with fifteen women can become trying. It is analogous to being born into a family. In fact, more than a few of St. Therese’ siblings were also in the convent at Lisieux. She was the youngest and we all know how the youngest is favored so we don’t have to cover that.
After St. Therese entered the convent she began a race to see how much she could sacrifice for the good of others, especially in an anonymous way. How can we know all of this because they were maintaining silence most of the time, praying and working in silence, and the little time they had in conversation was during their recreation every day in the confines of the cloister. Eventually St. Therese was ordered by her Superior at the time to write down her life under pain of obedience.
Therese was ordered to write down the events of her life starting with childhood memories right up until the date of the directive, which was given by her sister Pauline (Mother Agnes) who was then Prioress.
So, St. Therese wrote; she couldn’t leave things out because she was ordered to write this under obedience. The other sisters had nothing to worry about because she was doing this only because she was ordered to; this wasn’t a hatchet job by Therese as is so common today in modern publishing.
I mentioned earlier the first job Therese had of cleaning the stairwells. It entailed sweeping the stairs and under them as well. She had a terrible fear of spiders. Now ladies, don’t cringe thinking of spiders just because I mentioned the word. That is how St. Therese felt; even the word made her skin crawl. But, she didn’t complain or refuse the job handed to her because of her fear, but instead took the broom like St. Joan of Arc taking the sword and going into battle. This caused her great emotional pain and she offered this pain and suffering as a sacrifice for many people, who never realized they were benefiting from her prayers.
There was a particularly wretched individual along the lines of Fidel Castro, who, by the way is at the point of dying and has led a life of killing thousands of people and hurting thousands of others. He has one foot in the grave and another on a banana peel and it is “looking” like when he falls it will start to get very warm. No one is inclined to pray for Fidel Castro and yet, God does not want anyone in hell. But, if we do go to hell God doesn’t send us, we send ourselves. There was a character very much like Fidel Castro at the time of St. Therese, whose name was Henri Pranzini. Like Castro, Pranzini was a killer and like Castro he wasn’t cute and cuddly. There is a death mask of Pranzini still in existence and it is a pretty scary sight. Maybe he could just scare someone to death.
St. Therese read in the paper about Pranzini and how he was not in the least bit sorry for what he had done and the people he had hurt. He was a hardened criminal with a stone for a heart and throughout the entire court proceedings he was unmoved by any attempt of even a priest to speak with him, perhaps to get him to turn and reconciled before his death. Pranzini was found guilty and was sentenced to death. In a prayer to the Lord, St. Therese said she was going to start her spiritual family with Pranzini. She wasn’t starting with training wheels; this would be like your granddaughter wanting to ride a bike so she goes to the edge of Snake Canyon and climbs on Evil Knievel’s motorcycle. She is going to jump Snake Canyon with the motorcycle.
St. Therese was going to start with Pranzini, an easy one, right? No, it was the hardened heart of a criminal named Pranzini. She told God that she wanted him. And men…you know what it is like when your wife says that she wants something or another, it is kind of hard to dissuade them. Can you imagine the position that God was in when St. Therese was piling on anonymous sacrifices, prayers, and penances? She asked God very specifically to give her a sign that Pranzini would convert before he died so she would know that he would not rot in hell.
The day after the execution, Pranzini was in the paper. It said he walked through the crowd just as hardened as ever and the people were shouting at and mocking him. He walked right by the priest standing at the foot of the stairs that led to the place of execution. The priest was holding a Crucifix, very much like the one St. Therese holds in pictures. He offered the Crucifix to Pranzini and he just brushed it away, mounted the steps quickly and went over to the instrument of execution. Then something happened; he pivoted and descended the stairs and kissed the wounds of Christ three times. He went back and was executed. He didn’t go to confession or rip his garments and start crying, but Therese knew she has spiritual child number one, if not in Heaven then on the way. So, she embraced the life of taking the lowest place. Can you imagine anything lower than interceding for someone so dastardly and hardened of heart as Pranzini?
This is why Saint Therese was so effective in life and even more so in death. Like St. Pio, she stated that she would not enter the Gates of Heaven until all her spiritual children had gone ahead before her.
That sounds like a good mother hen in the spiritual sense. St. Therese had much to sacrifice and she didn’t have to go shopping for the sacrifices because they were right there inside the walls of that cloister.
One of the first jobs Therese was assigned to was to help the sister, who worked near the door. This sister was probably given that job just to get her away from everyone else. She was difficult to work with and probably had what we call today, “Obsessive Compulsive Behavior”. Everything had to be on the shelf, so many inches from the corner. The broom probably had to be so many inches from the corner with the dustpan perpendicular. We have all met people like this and pray they get promoted to work under someone else. Sister was very difficult. For example, if the books weren’t just as she wanted them, St. Therese would take them all out and then start the process of putting them right back the way sister wanted them. St. Therese didn’t go to the Superior and say,
“I want another job; she is a nut. I don’t like working there because she is difficult. Have you seen how she stacks the books? Have you seen the broom? Sister needs help.”
All of these things were probably true but St. Therese knew that the interest rate, the spiritual bank account, if you will, was climbing with every sacrifice that she was offering up for her spiritual children.
Things got just as bad in the dinning room; maybe even worse. The good thing about it was that every sister had her place. Of course with a house full of women, they always set a nice table. There were plates and silverware and every sister had a jug of cider with a cup turned upside down over the jug. The sisters ate in silence and rarely watched TV. Oh yes, that is right, TV had not yet been invented; this is the late 1800s. Back then they ate in common and in silence while one of the sisters read the lives of the Saints. In some ways this can be nerve racking.
One day the sister sitting next to Therese noticed that she wasn’t drinking her cider. Well, sister had probably just finished her cider off and was ready for some more. So she reached over and took Therese’ cider. She was just going to help out finishing off the cider. If I had been sitting there in the place of St. Therese I would have probably given the sister a swat and we would have been done with it, or we would have had a fight, right?
Once sister took the cider, she did it again at the next meal. St. Therese got thirsty eating the way we all do. Even the French get thirsty when they eat. St. Therese didn’t complain and she could really have used the cider because the nun in the kitchen was…well…very much against wasting food. Back then they had no refrigeration. We have refrigeration galore so that we can preserve food and throw it away later. So, the sister in the kitchen never wasted food and if they served fish one night and some went back to the kitchen, there was no refrigerator to put it in so sister would just serve it again the next day and then serve it again to some of the sisters. Some of the sisters would say,
“Are you trying to kill me? I am not going to eat this garbage.”
The sister found out very quickly that St. Therese never turned down a meal and ate whatever was put in front of her. She was God’s holy garbage disposal. If the fish were a day or two old, Therese would consume it. When I was talking about this at the 9:30 Mass this morning, just the mention of this made my stomach growl and almost on cue. No doubt that Therese was in gastric distress having to eat the slop that was placed in front of her. The only reason we know this is not because she complained but was ordered to write it all down and give an account.
There was a Crucifix in the courtyard of the convent and near the crucifix the sisters would take recreation. The family of one of the nuns gave it to the convent. Sister Theresa of St. Augustine’s family donated it. Then again, that wasn’t the only cross they gave to the convent; they gave Sister Teresa of St. Augustine, who was a great cross that the sisters in the convent had to bear. In St. Therese’ comments about Sister Teresa, she wrote,
Other than that…St. Therese found this sister repugnant in every way, kind of like fingernails on a chalkboard. Everything about this nun grated on the nerves of St. Therese, probably her voice and her demeanor. But at recreation time, every time the sisters saw Sister Teresa of St. Augustine relaxing, there at her side was St. Therese. Like Heckle and Jeckle they were always found together. This is interesting because St. Therese had more than a few siblings in the convent and of course they always played that down. They treated everyone in common.There is nothing about her which pleases me,”
After St. Therese died and the process for her canonization was opened, they interviewed all the sisters in the convent, to find out good and bad things about this servant of God, Therese. One of her siblings came forth with this little tidbit. It seems that one day she knocked on St. Therese’ door and went in and burst into tears, going on and on about how Sister Teresa of St. Augustine was the favorite of St. Therese. Therese’ sister poured her heart out about the fact that she was her blood sister and that every time there was recreation she didn’t speak to her but always with St. Teresa of St. Augustine. She wanted to know why St. Therese favored Sister Teresa over her.
These were two siblings, who were Carmelites, but they were in a “time out” in the room and St. Therese could have leaned over and whispered that she couldn’t stand Sister Teresa because she grated on her nerves. She didn’t say any of that but kept a real poker face and let her sister pour her heart and tears out and leave the room. St. Therese was indeed close to every one of her siblings, but even to them her demeanor with Sister Teresa was such a command performance that even an older sister couldn’t tell. Now, when you can fool a sibling then it is amazing.
St. Therese was offering things such as this up for people like Pranzini or people who would write to her, such as the priest in the Belgian Congo. In the chapel at the convent there is a beautiful window of a priest in the Belgian Congo who wrote to St. Therese asking for help and she miraculously interceded for him. The way that St. Therese was able to help so many people is that she took the lowest place.
Consider where we are right now in the calendar year. Oh goodie, school is starting! Kids have this attitude about a week or two and then they feel like they are in a communist concentration camp, right? School…how terrible. Parents have to put up with this attitude as well as buy school supplies. Oh yes, every parent or grandparent is happy to shell out a lot of money for paper and pens or things they just can’t live without. Parents do this every year because they have to and yet, it is amazing that because of their youth, children seldom consider the sacrifice that their parents make.
My father died five years ago but the last six months of his life I was able to care for him at the rectory. I was able to take him to his doctor’s appointments and other things and those last six months were a big burden for me but I gladly embraced it for my father; I was happy to do this. I didn’t even scratch the surface on what I owed my father, even though it was difficult and arduous. I was considering today the way I was thinking about this and then I thought about how my father saw it. He probably thought that not only did he have a few months to live but he didn’t do enough penance in life so he would come and live with me for a while and make it up. Living with me would be a penance for him.
When I think about what my parents gave up for me, I know I will never be able to repay to them. They took the lowest place when it came to their children and that is what parents and grandparents do. This is what Jesus expects of us and we don’t have to go searching into some convent north of Paris to find people like the ones I just described, such as Sister Teresa of St. Augustine and Pranzini; they are given to us in our families and we are probably like that to them. Our Lord says to mature and pass on from what it is like to be a child and give others the place of honor. We understand that when a mother or father gets ready to go to the store or post office, the kids are going to fight about who will get the front seat. It doesn’t matter where kids are; they are going to fight about this. They don’t care where they are going; the front seat is a place of honor.
What are adults? We are just children who happen to be chronologically older and yet we still want the places of honor. This is true for priests, deacons, and lay people alike. Our Lord warns us against this and we will have no spiritual traction with him if that is how we go through life. Remember what the pope described in his book, “Jesus of Nazareth”? When all lined up to be baptized by St. John the Baptist, as they were being baptized they confessed their sins as St. John poured the water over them. When Jesus was baptized He got in line with sinners and merely association declared Him a sinner no doubt, even though He had no sin. Jesus took the lowest place in order to exalt His human nature and show us the way to Heaven. There is no other way and yet Jesus tells us that we will get it all back with interest.
You will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous
That is why, for you and for me, our charge is to invite to poor, the cripple, lame and blind. They happen to be related to us or living next door to us. They could be working across the office from us. Those characters I described from that convent are found in our lives. There are all kinds of opportunities for us to anonymously sacrifice and offer up for the salvation of people we will never meet and, that is good because if we never meet them they can never repay us. If they can’t repay us then God will give it to us with generous interest on judgment day. So, our Lord tells us,
Rather, when you have a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. Blessed will you be indeed because of their inability to repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous
In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit
Amen