14th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2008

[Fr.Paul Weinberger]

14th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2008

Homily by:
Father Paul Weinberger
Saint William the Confessor Catholic Church
Greenville, Texas
July 6, 2008

Jesus said, “Come to Me all you who are labored and are burdened and I will give you rest.

In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit

Amen

We just celebrated our Independence Day on July the 4th. July 14th is Independence Day in France, which is Bastille Day. One priest, who was an expert at the time of the Second Vatican Council forty years ago, wrote that every problem that afflicts us in the world today could be traced back to the French Revolution.

Our revolution here and the French Revolution were very different. Our revolution was to separate us from Great Britain, which we did succeed in doing with the help of the French. However, the French Revolution was an ignominious thing, which desired to separate the French people from God. For example, that beautiful Cathedral in Paris, Notre Dame, which means “Our Lady”, was rushed by a mob and they pulled the Blessed Sacrament out of the Tabernacle and threw the consecrated Hosts on the ground and stepped upon Our Lord. They broke the stained glass windows and any statues they could find. Then they fabricated a larger than live size statue made of paper mache and called this thing “the goddess of reason.” They moved this thing into Notre Dame and called the Cathedral “a temple of reason”. It was anything but reasonable.

The people who headed the revolution were centered in Paris, which was then and is now the largest city in all of France. They called their group “The Commune” Of course we can see a connection between the Paris Commune and the blight on civilization known as communism, because the French Revolution and the Commune of Paris were used as a template by the Bolsheviks of Russia to start their revolution.

Yesterday was First Saturday. In 1917 Our Lady appeared to the three children at Fatima and she mentioned that the errors of Russia, which would later be called the Soviet Union, would be spread throughout the world if the world was not consecrated to Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart, if the people didn’t come to their senses and become reasonable. You know what happened; communism did spread. All of this sounds so remote; Russia and the Soviet Union are so far away. Did you know that one of those initial figures in communism from the Soviet Union ended up in Mexico and died there? His name was Trotsky. But all this seems so far away but then again it is as near as Alaska isn’t it? When you are watching the Olympics in a few days think of this; it is kind of like a twisted version of what you see on the McDonalds signs, “Over a Billion Served.” But in China there are “Over a billion enslaved.” The errors of Russia were passed on to China and so over a billion are enslaved there.

The communists have the idea that work is an imperative; everyone must work and after you work you die and then that is it. There is nothing more to life than that; it is very nihilistic and going nowhere. This vision of work is not the vision of communists you see on the cover of your bulletin. Yes, there is a “communist” on the cover of your bulletin. St. Benedict is the founder of western monasticism. He died in the year 543. St. Benedict was a “communist” and wanted men and women to live in separate communities within the community. The center of the community was very different from the communist state. In fact, St. Benedict insisted on work. Work was an imperative and he had it carved in stone over the main door of every monastery or convent. “WORK” But before that word there were two other words written in Latin… “Pray and” Work. St. Benedict had the men and women in different monasteries do just this, pray and work. If he’d reversed the order, “work and pray” they would never get around to the prayer. The work would never finish.

In 1985 I went down to Mexico. Near Mexico City there is a place called Cuernavaca, which is a beautiful place. I was there to study Spanish for six weeks with three other seminarians and we lived with a family. One other seminarian and I shared a bedroom and the two brothers who lived there and shared that room went to another part of the house. This was an upper middle class Mexican family. The husband had a good job; he worked for the government and the wife spent the money. That was the way it worked out. They had a very nice home.

It rains everyday in Cuernavaca and usually at the same time. The climate is so nice that the people open the windows, which are open most of the time. You can imagine how often the home needed to be cleaned, right. There was another lady there, who had a room separate from the house. She didn’t live in the home where we stayed, but she would show up very early in the morning and stay until very late. Her name was Delphina. She worked to keep those floors clean and keep the house dust free.

Delphina was a tiny person. Once the lady that owned the home found Delphina doing something terrible; she was eating the leftovers from one of our lunches. She chastised Delphina in a terrible way. A Mexican woman was chastising a Mexican woman.
Delphina was paid the princely sum of one dollar a day and that didn’t include meals buddy! That is a terrible thing. Mexicans can come north to the USA and be taken advantage of and abused here or they can stay at home and receive the same abuse.

A couple of weeks ago I was reading the Dallas morning News and my eyes fell out of my head and rolled across the table; I like to have never got them back in. Georgie Anne Geyer wrote an editorial about Mexico and how the last presidential election was so close. Calderon was elected but Lopez Obrador was right behind him. Obrador is a communist and he has been crisscrossing Mexico every day, running for presidency for the next time around. As I said, he is a communist and Georgie Ann Geyer said he has a very good chance of being elected. Now, Fidel Castro is across the Gulf of Mexico but Obrador, the communist is right next door to us. The people in Mexico have been terribly mistreated by themselves. This is a great image of what you and I can do to ourselves. In the Gospel today the Lord says,

Come to Me all you who labor and are burdened and I will give you rest.

Jesus also said,

All things have been handed over to Me by My Father.

Do you notice how Jesus says, “ALL THINGS?” All means ALL, which includes rest, peace, serenity, tranquility, meditation that refreshes, and all of these things are in the possession of ONE individual and that is Jesus. Why? Because all thing have been handed over to Him by His Father. The temptation is to believe that somehow, instead of getting those things from Jesus we can just get the generic version of peace and serenity, tranquility and meditation, which refreshes. It is impossible!

Right now we are at a time when people take vacations and during vacations it is not uncommon for people to take a vacation from Church on Sunday. The people who do this usually turn out to be hypocrites. Oh, they could go to Church but they decide to stay away from Church. In that sense, they take a vacation from going to Church. Oh…but they aren’t taking a vacation from praying.

“Lord, please help us get to the next gas station. Oh, Lord please help us to have enough money. Saint Anthony, help me find my car keys.”

How many times on that vacation will they call out to the Lord to help in one way or another? It is like the guy in an office and for months you hear about his vacation that is coming up.

“Boy, I can’t wait to get away from this place!”

Then day finally comes when he leaves and you thank God that he is finally gone. Two or three days later he shows up and you ask what he is doing there and he says that he just had to come and check on some things. Then he leaves again and two or three days later he is showing back up again.

Not only are we committed to Mass on Sunday because we need the rest, but also to prayer every day, prayer in the morning and prayer in the afternoon along with prayer in the evening and night, otherwise we are going to be swallowed whole by work. It is interesting that during the French Revolution the first thing the French did was take the seven day work week and they made it a ten day work week. You had to work ten days before you got your first day off. Woah, woah woah! Sorry, that is a little French. [Laughter] But, it was too late; the first thing that Henry VIII did when he took over in England and made himself Pope there, was get rid of the fifty Holy Days on the calendar, where people got the day off. The people didn’t need that; he thought they needed to get to work. Isn’t it interesting how work will swallow us whole?

When we don’t pray, isn’t this something like the situation in Mexico? We do it to ourselves. We don’t pray in the morning because we don’t have time. We have to get to work. Maybe we mumble a prayer once a day.

”Bless us oh Lord, I am hungry. Lets eat!”

This is not prayer but some false prayer and somehow we believe that in the end this is what will sustain us.

Last night I got a phone call. After the last Mass I had to go to an institution to see someone I have never met before. A very nice man from hospice called me and he was trying to be very considerate of everything. This is the kind of people hospice hires. He told me that Mrs. “So and So” was in the institution and that she was dying but that she had not been to Church in a long time and her son wants a priest up here right now, but he is mad at the Church. Well, every person in this room has had one thing in the Church to be mad at during their lifetime. I asked the man if the son would be there and he told me that the son had already left because he didn’t even want to meet me. I guess I am making progress now! People who never even met me are avoiding me! [Laughter] Rodney Daingerfield, call your office. So, the son is mad at the Church. I have been mad at the Church before but I got over it. It is like being in a family isn’t it? It is not to say that bad things don’t happen to people in life or in the Church but where are we going to go for rest and the peace that only God can give.

I was saying the prayers for the dying over this woman and she was laboring, working for every breath she was taking. I don’t know if she died, maybe she did. But, I said the prayers for the dying. Two very lovely nurses were there and they were helping each other help this woman. They were probably hospice nurses. They prayed with me. I prayed Psalm 23, figuring that maybe something may be heard or understood by this lady.

The Lord is my Shepherd, there is nothing I shall want; in verdant pastures He gives me repose. Beside restful waters He leads me; He refreshes my soul.

It is kind of like the Psalm that says,

If the Lord does not build the house in vein do the builders labor?

The same Psalm says that in vein is your earlier rising, your going later to rest. The fact is that we can get up earlier and go to bed later; it does no good because God is the One Who dispenses rest, peace, tranquility and serenity.

We have been afflicted and the family has been under attack by the communist teaching that has been spread throughout the world, mainly coming from the French Revolution, but the way we can rest in the Lord is here at Church. You don’t come here because of me; you come here to rest in the Lord.

I received my First Holy Communion in the second grade. I am forty-nine now and I am about to finish fourth grade. [Laughter] I have never missed Mass on Sunday and I thank God. I would have even bigger problems if I had. There is no one else, who can give you or me rest or refresh us. The world can sing its siren song and tempt us all it wants. Even if you stay home and watch EWTN how are you going to go to Communion? Are they going to fax or mail Holy Communion to you? No.

Mass on Sunday is the greatest prayer that God has given us. The perfect prayer Jesus Christ offered on the day of His Resurrection is the Mass and if we have no knowledge of mortal sin we can receive His Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity and rest in the Lord. This moves us to rest in the Lord throughout the days ahead in prayer. Maybe every prayer isn’t as long as every other prayer but we rest in the Lord.

Jesus said, “Come to Me all you who are labored and are burdened and I will give you rest.

In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit

Amen