2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time 2009

[Fr.Paul Weinberger]

2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time 2009
Homily by:
Father Paul Weinberger
Saint William the Confessor Catholic Church
Greenville, Texas
January 18, 2009

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

Amen

The body is not for immorality but for the Lord and the Lord is for the body. Avoid immorality. Therefore glorify God in your body.

These are the words of St. Paul the Apostle in his first Epistle to the Corinthians. They come from today’s Second Reading and how fitting, especially today when our country has embraced immorality and has taken it to the level of a sacrament in a culture of death. When you see the cover of the bulletin you see the Flight Into Egypt by Gerard David.

When Jesus, Mary, and Joseph were on their way to Egypt they left Bethlehem in hast for the safety of Egypt because King Herod wished to kill the baby Jesus. And don’t kid yourself, if King Herod had found the baby Jesus and had positively identified Him do you think he would have spared the lives of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Joseph? Absolutely not! So, the life of the baby Jesus was threatened from the beginning by one, who had temporal power. In fact, December 28th is the Feast of the Holy Innocence. The evil king, who was looking for baby Jesus, martyred the little baby boys in the area, who resembled Jesus because of their age.

Next week we have some very historic moments, some in the making and some looking backward. We have the Commemoration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who gave his life working to end discrimination. He must be rolling in his grave today. How sad because so much discrimination is all around and it is the very worst discrimination.

Last week as I was standing there in front of the abortion clinic a preponderance of black men and women approached the clinic near the central business district in order to go in and have an abortion. I addressed each man and said, “Excuse me, do you know that out of every two black babies conceived in this country that one is aborted?” Then I added, “The CLAN couldn’t do worse. They all continued walking in. If it wasn’t true they could object, but it is true. The Guttmacher Institute, that terrible statistic gathering entity of pagan origin, keeps excellent records and so one out of every two black children conceived in this country is aborted.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s niece, Dr. Alveta King spends her life traveling around the world speaking about her two abortions. Again, Dr. King did not plan this kind of genocide to be visited upon the blacks of this country and yet, it has. Next week when we have our first black president that coincides with the week that Dr. King is commemorated, we can’t be rejoicing as we see over fifty million children in this country alone who have been dispatched through procured abortion.

Next week is also that ignominious anniversary of Roe V Wade. If you are not familiar with Roe V Wade, it started in Dallas, Texas. Fortunately the District attorney, Henry Wade, was opposing the abortion that Jane Roe, whose real name is Norma McCorvey, was asking for. It was all a tissue of lies, which Norma McCorvey freely admits too late because, now however, Roe V Wade is now the law of the land. If you took all the causalities from the Revolutionary War to this day, all the men and women who have fallen in battle, and you combine those wars that number would be dwarfed by the fifty million children aborted since 1973. If you took all those in this country who were ever affected by slavery or killed by lynching, that number would be dwarfed by the number of blacks in this country, who have been aborted. And we are all supposed to remain quiet as this genocide continues.

Please tell me what is more pressing than this issue; there is none more pressing than the death of fifty million Americans. Around 1920 the Spanish flu took millions but it didn’t take fifty million Americans. There is no crisis from Al quida, there is no economic crisis more overshadowing than the crisis of abortion. But it is all about morality so we can’t talk about it.

Right now there are many people, who are worried about the future of Social Security. Yes, they have good reason to be worried. Imagine thirty of those fifty million; if they were in the workforce paying into Social Security it would be a very different tune. They never bring that up but of course Washington is anything but reasonable. These crisis we are facing now, the economic crisis, the threat from Al queda, and other terrorists is nothing compared to what we are doing to ourselves. FIFTY MILLION CHILDREN.

Look at your bulletin on page seven at the top. Deuteronomy, chapter 21, verse 1-8, is one that you should return to again and again because you see how God views the taking of innocent lives, the spilling of innocent blood. This is what God tell the Jews and how they are to respond when they find the body of a slain innocent victim in their midst. They get the leaders together from all the surrounding towns and villages and they measure the distance from the slain victim to their different towns and villages. Whichever town or village is determined to be the closest then the people of that place have to acquire a heifer, a cow, which has never been used in farming and take it to a nearby valley with a flowing stream and they are to break the neck of the cow. Then everyone in that town is to come out and wash their hands over the cow and say to God,

“Our hands did not kill this innocent stranger and our eyes did not look on as he was killed. Forgive O Lord your people and let not the guilt of shedding innocent blood remain in the midst of your people Israel. In this way they shall be absolved from the guilt of innocent blood.”

Children, since 1973 have been thrown into garbage dumpsters, some of them have been ground up and dumped into the municipal water system. YES, the same water that is used for drinking water! There are so many ways in which the blood of these innocent children has been spilled across this land. And of course fifty million, every state in this union could absorb another million. If they couldn’t then they could send them to Alaska; there is plenty of room up there. Or how about West Texas? How about East Texas where we are? An extra million people living out here would be pretty nice! Echo, echo, echo…. that is what you hear in many of these states. The cities say not to build there or there. There are some states in the USA that don’t even have a million habitants. Amazing huh? Fifty million people would fit in nicely in this country because it is so large and it is so generous.

Last week I saw a special about a couple that have a disabled child. The little girl was born with both legs fused together so she had no outlet for her waste. They had to make a port for her intestines and bladder, which the parents have to change once a day kind of like diapers. The child is about four or five and very precocious, very smart, and very beautiful. They call her “the little mermaid girl” because of the way her legs are fused together. Toward the end of the special and after we all got to know the little girl, who is a delight, the mother put her head in her hands and started crying and she said, “Sometimes I feel like I was so selfish that I wanted this baby so badly that I gave birth to her and now look at how she is suffering.”

In just moments you and I will pray the Creed in which we say week after week that we believe that the Holy Spirit is the Lord and Giver of life. What has happened with abortion on demand as a business, as an industry, and that is exactly what it is…cha-ching…it makes us now believe that we are lords and givers of life. No, a man and woman are instruments, which help bring new life into the world, but only God is the Lord and Giver of life and He doesn’t take well the spilling of innocent blood. And people try to get you sidetracked with the war in Iraq or capital punishment. Sorry, innocent blood is what we are talking about here, in abortion.

Distract, distract, distract, is what people what to do. Those other things are for other discussions but life begins at conception; that is what science shows and tells us. Without conception, nine months later you have nothing. With conception, nine months later there is a birth.

Last week when I was in front of the abortion clinic I talked to a couple from the cathedral; they are in their late twenties. I knew after talking to them for twenty-five minutes that they were sincere people. I told them that they had been tempted to come there but that they had not sinned “yet”. After twenty-five minutes I knew that I could talk to them for two days and after two days when I finally shut up and went to get a drink of water, in they would go. So I told them to follow one of the women praying there and that she would lead them over to the
White Rose.
They were Mexican and I told them, “You both haven’t spoken with your mother and father about this.” They agreed.

Just before Christmas there was a strikingly handsome black couple about twenty years old, not poverty stricken at all, healthy, in college, and just beautiful. They were going in for their abortion. After the first forty minutes they left and came right back, and went back in. I told them the same that I told the Mexican couple and that was that they had not spoken to their parents. Do you know what they said? “Yes, we have.” The parents told them that they, the couple, would have to decide because it was their decision. What if that young lady had gotten up that morning and threatened suicide? Would her parents say, “Well ya know, it is your body.” The same with the young man. No, they would not have told their children that, they would have called 911. They would have done anything they could to save the lives of those two and now it is too late to save the life of their baby.

Many of you pray and sacrifice every week; you carry your cross and offer part of that up to God for those people who are counseling in front of abortion clinics. Everyone can’t be out there. You won’t know how many babies you have saved until you see God face to face. We know that four were saved last week through our efforts.

The front door to the abortion clinic is about as far as from me to that wall over there. This white couple came with their daughter and they were going into the clinic. For very obvious reasons people don’t like to stay in there while they are waiting; it is like death row. Everyone sitting in that waiting room won’t look at anyone else and the place smells terrible. Everyone knows what is going on back there, right? There is a screen fashioned on the porch so people can go out in between the building and the screen and still be in the open air but not have to look at us.

Every once in a while when the planes overhead cease passing by and the traffic behind me would die down it would get very quiet. This is what I said to those people behind the screen. “Jesus loves you and your baby and your grand baby. “ Isn’t that terrible? It is terrible saying what I said. Now if I told them that Jesus loved them and the baby and to others I said that Jesus didn’t love them or their baby they would have reason to start hitting me. It is discrimination. Of course Jesus loves every one of us weather we are born or not and yet, saying something like, “Jesus loves you, your baby, and your grandbaby,” is sometimes an insult and sometimes it is a compliment. This is ridiculous in the extreme. This is the worse kind of discrimination because lives depend on it. This is the worse kind of immorality but I know that men and women that have been involved with abortion and who have been pressured into abortion or were fast talked and taken to the clinic or whatever, I know they are speaking to others over a cup of coffee or at work are changing hearts. We cannot presume that God just doesn’t really care.

As St. Paul says,

The body is not for immorality but for the Lord and the Lord is for the body. Avoid immorality. Therefore glorify God in your body.

In so doing we proclaim that the Holy Spirit is the Lord and Giver of life.


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

Amen