Father Paul Weinberger, Pastor
St. William Roman Catholic Church
Greenville, Texas
5 / 22 / 2005 Trinity Sunday
Whoever believes in Him will not be condemned but whoever does not believe has already been condemned because he has not believed in the Name of the only Son of God.
In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit
Amen
Last week we were celebrating the birthday of Pope John Paul II. If he had lived, he would be eighty-five years old. Also on that day, my niece, Sarah, was born. She is still in grade school so she isn’t eighty-five yet. I remember when she was four or five years old my brother brought her over to Blessed Sacrament where I was stationed, and we were visiting out in the plaza after Mass. Sara was so cute at four or five and of course she still is. When she was that age she had eyes as big as saucers and beautiful blonde hair, cute as a bug.
I told Sarah to go over and wave at her dad using her little pinkie finger. It took a little convincing because she knew I was setting her up. She finally gave in and went over to her dad. From across the plaza my brother said, “What is this?” I replied, “This is exactly where she has YOU.” My brother wrestles 18-wheelers around and this little four or five year old girl had him right there, wrapped around her little finger. Being the youngest in the family, of course she is favored. Anyone here who is the youngest in your family…and don’t give me any grief about this because we all voted and agreed, that you who are the youngest always get favored the most.
St. Therèse was the youngest in her family and her mother died of breast cancer when Therèse was four and a half years old. Because of her mother’s untimely death, her father and her siblings gave her much love and being the youngest, she knew that she was the apple of her father’s eye.
Today is Trinity Sunday and on Trinity Sunday St. Therèse made an important break through. One hundred years ago St. Therèse did something very important and this was when she made her Act of Oblation, a total Consecration to God, an offering to God of her very self. It was called an Act of Oblation to the Merciful Love of God. Pope John Paul II perfected a theology of the gift; he spoke often about how a gift demands a gift in return. Today is Trinity Sunday and is always the Sunday after Pentecost, which is always ten days after the Ascension of the Lord, which is always forty days after Easter. Fifty days after Easter is Pentecost and we remember God the Father and God the Son sending the Holy Spirit; this Sunday is always Trinity Sunday, separating God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, who are Three Persons in One God as we will pray in just a minute, “We believe in One God”.
St. Therèse understood that the gift that God had given her demanded a gift in response and so all of her life was offered to God as a gift, putting herself totally at God’s disposal and holding nothing back. So, on Trinity Sunday in 1895, she made an Act of Oblation to the Merciful Love of God. She knew from reading the Bible that God loved her in an incredible way. “God so loved the world that He gave His only Son”; when we hear these words we are looking around for a football. Why are we looking for a football? Well, because someone is always holding up John 3:16 at a football game, right? We don’t know why. I thought it was a Hail Mary pass but they are always holding up John 3:16. God so loved the world that He gave His only Son. Those are the opening words of today’s Gospel.
St. Therèse studied the Gospel of St. John and prayed over the beautiful words. As you see in your bulletin there is a long sheet that says at the top, “This is a prayer to God the Father, inspired by the writings of St. Therèse. The first two lines of that prayer give us the important verse, John 16:23. Jesus says,
Whatever you ask the Father in My Name, it will be granted to you.
When she saw those words, St. Therèse turned an important corner in her spiritual life. She began to see things very differently and began to spend spiritually, like a drunken sailor. She began to write spiritual checks that only God, her Father could cash. She knew that she could ask anything from the Lord in the Name of Jesus and it would be granted to her.
This book I am holding is on the life of St. Therèse. It is a beautiful book and inside of it is an account of her first “spending spree”. Here it describes the object of her spending spree. This is a face in wax that depicts “him” just before he was executed; a man who had killed three people, a triple homicide. Kind of the exact opposite of today’s Feast Day because he had committed an unholy trinity. Because of this, Pranzini landed in the newspapers when he landed in jail and the case was very wide spread because Pranzini not only admitted to having killed three people but he defied God and would not go to Confession. Every time a Priest offered to hear his Confession he brushed them aside.
The Catholic Church has a lot of people like Pranzini today; “Confession? Get away from me!” There just hasn’t been a triple homicide. Pranzini was notorious at the time because of this crime and because he wouldn’t repent. He went to the platform of his execution in Paris, on that day in September 1887 and St. Therèse prayed that he be converted. You see, he would be her first spiritual child that she would pray and sacrifice for that his soul be saved for God. She prayed and sacrificed and asked God the Father for a sign that he would not be condemned and spend his eternity in Hell.
Pranzini was making his way through the crowd. Priests were stationed along the way but he would not have anything to do with them. He got to the platform and climbed the steps. At the top of the steps was a priest holding a large Crucifix and he walked right past the priest and went over to his place of execution. Then came the sign that St. Therèse was looking for. In the newspaper the next day, La Croix, (the Cross) it was recounted how just a moment before his execution, Pranzini went back to the Priest with the large Crucifix, bent down and kissed it twice, then he was killed.
St. Therèse saw that her first spiritual spending spree had been a success and of course she wanted more. She began to ask God the Father for more and more because she “could”. She knew that God had allowed himself to be placed at her disposal and that when God the Father said in John 16:23, Whatever you asked the Father in My Name will be granted to you, He meant it. St. Therèse had not always had such confidence in God and had not always seen things as clearly as she did when she started asking for the moon, so to speak.
When Therèse entered the convent at the age of fifteen with special permission, she left a family that had kept her closely guarded. From there she went into a cloister where she couldn’t leave the walls of the Convent. She wasn’t a prisoner; she was a cloistered Religious. In the Convent she began to have doubts, feeling that she was going to be condemned by God for all eternity to Hell. You see, she had these feelings and discussed them with her confessors in the Confessionals. Different priests would come to the Carmel to hear the confessions of the nuns. There was a Jesuit who heard her Confession and she told him of her desire to be a great saint. Famous last words of this Jesuit confessor were, “You know, don’t aim so high, moderate your desire to be a saint.” Famous last words of that Jesuit! Hahaha!
Eventually a Franciscan priest came along and heard her confession and she brought up to this priest what she’d told the Jesuit and the Franciscan said to her, “No, you are right. You should strive to be saint, and you should do it right now.” St. Therèse felt confident enough in him that she mentioned her feeling about being condemned and never enter Heaven or be worthy of it. The priest pointed out to her that no one is worthy of Heaven. It is part of God’s generosity. This is what the priest said to St. Therèse in the confessional. “If you want God’s justice then you will have God’s justice and nothing more.” He was correct and if St. Therèse was going to emphasize God’s Justice, that is what she would get and nothing more, plain and simple. He said, “The soul receives exactly what it expects from God.” If you want to be condemned and experience God’s justice, keep praying for it.
This helped St. Therèse turn a corner in the spiritual life; she would never be the same. She would begin to pray to the Merciful Love of God. This is a picture of the Divine Mercy, which is our Lord’s Self-revelation to St. Faustina just before WWII. The Sacred Heart is another image of the Divine Mercy. St. Therèse began expecting more from God than mere justice. This is when she went on that spiritual spending spree. She said that all of the sacrifices and good works that she did, she didn’t want any of the graces back and that she wanted those turned into more spending. She would be perfect in Washington. She wanted everything to be turned around and spent but great good comes from the spending of St. Therèse as opposed to so much spending in Washington.
St. Therèse said that she knew as a little child that she could go before God the Father empty handed and with just one look from God, if she wasn’t ready, He could make her so. If she weren’t ready for Heaven, with one look from God she would be ready. She had so much confidence in God, her Father. She began to “put out onto the deep” so to speak, as the Holy Father, Pope John Paul II admonishes us to do. She began to do more and more, offering herself totally and wanting God to take possession of her soul, not so that she could be God’s little zombie, but she wanted everything in her to be dedicated to God. A gift demands a gift in response and this was the joy of her soul.
For example; at the time of St. Therèse it was not common practice for Catholics to be able to go to Communion every day. You had to ask permission from your pastor and if you were in a monastery or convent, you had to ask permission from your religious superior, but that kind of permission wasn’t granted so Therèse was obedient and didn’t go to Communion every day. Instead, this is what she did and you could just hear her rubbing her hands together. She said to God the Father in the Name of Jesus, “If I cannot go to Communion everyday then allow me the privilege of Jesus being in my soul from one Communion to the next, the same way Jesus stays with us in the Tabernacle.” Great prayer! If you read the life of St. Therèse, she was very ill the last year or two of her life and was not able to go to Communion very often. She had asked Jesus to stay with her in a beautiful way with the utmost wisdom.
St. Therèse was scouring the Old Testament one day and she came across the story of Elijah and saw that just before he took the fiery chariot to Heaven; he chose his successor Elisha and said to him, “Ask for whatever you want, I am in a hurry and am about to leave.” So Elisha said Elijah, “I want a double portion of your spirit.” It was granted to him. When the Little Flower read this she just went to town. She requested from God the Father in the Name of Jesus, a double portion of the love that exists in Heaven between the angels and the saints. The angels and saints love each other and so she wanted a double portion of that love they showed to one another. Whatever the soul expects of God, it receives. St. Therèse knew that she could just keep writing zeros and her Father would keep covering these spiritual checks that she would continue to write.
St. Therèse literally understood that there was no end to God’s merciful love for her and she was going to do everything she could to become love while still on earth. Love is to the Mystical Body of the Church what blood is to our physical body. Anything that is not enriched by blood is not alive. St. Therèse understood that her vocation in the Church as a religious, was to be love. She was wise in what she asked God for. For example, how many times have you heard someone knock on your door early in the morning and your wife says to you, “You get it, I don’t even have my face on.” St. Therèse said something similar to God. This is part of her self-offering to God, her Act of Oblation to Merciful Love. “Since You love me so much as to give me Your only Son as my Savior and my Spouse, the infinite treasures of His merits are mine.” I'll take the checkbook! “I offer them to You with gladness, begging You to look on me only through the Face of Jesus and in His Heart burning with love.” No, no, no, You can’t look at me; only look at me through the eyes of the Sacred Heart.
Wow! What a beautiful prayer; what a wise prayer. She did not want to be seen by God the Father except through the Merciful Eyes of the Sacred Heart. Now, lets bring it into our feast today, Trinity Sunday. The day you and I were baptized, God took away Original Sin and gave us His Divine Life; God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit took up residence in our souls on the day we were baptized. That gift has been given to us but it demands a total giving in response. You weren’t baptized so someone could take a picture of you in a long white dress and later on bring it out to embarrass you; you were baptized so that you might receive the Life of the Trinity in your soul and so that you might produce much fruit.
In St. John’s Gospel, Jesus says that we give glory to God by producing much fruit. But… when you and I go before God to pray we act as if we don’t know how to pray. If you go to pick out a home…”No, we don’t want this one, it has a pool and we don’t want a pool.” Or, “That one doesn’t have a pool and we want a pool. This house has only one story and we want two; the counter tops are wrong, the layout is bad and only a two-car garage.” You know exactly what you want when you go to pick out houses, clothes or other items yet you go before God in prayer and you expect nothing from God and then you marvel at it when you receive nothing. The soul receives from God exactly what it expects! St. Therèse woke up in the morning adding zeros to numbers knowing that God would spiritually cover everything.
This prayer to God the Father is a start showing us where we need to go in prayer. It is a way of saying, “God, from the top of my head to the tips of my toes and everything in between, please take possession of me.” And as it says, “God the Father, in the Name of Jesus, send me the Holy Spirit.” This is inviting the Holy Spirit into every single part of who we are. Let's say the exterminator comes to your house and parks his truck on the street and right next to the street is your mailbox; the exterminator gets out with a can and goes around the mailbox with insecticide then he comes up to the door and knocks, tells you he is finished and then hands you a bill for $100.00. You would say, “Uh uh buddy! You get in here and treat the closet, behind the stove, the washer and dryer and you make sure every crawl space is treated.” You might even make him go under the house! You are going to make sure he finds every nook and cranny to spray and that is exactly what this prayer is doing.
Look at the first section where is says, “Holy Spirit, I ask you to come into every part of my memory.” When we look back on our lives we may think about mortal sins we have confessed, received absolution for, and done our penance for, but the memory of those mortal sins can live on in our lives. The “other team” can actually use these memories to tempt us in the future. Wouldn’t it be great if we could just erase the board, turn the etch-a-sketch upside down and shake it? We actually can invite the Holy Spirit into our memory. The prayer says, “Holy Spirit I ask you to come into every part of me and whatever you find in me that is not in complete accord with your Divine Plan for me, then I totally surrender it all to You. Holy Spirit, please take it all away and in its place fill me with Your Divine Presence.”
Pentecost Sunday was last Sunday and Trinity Sunday is today; God wants us to offer ourselves as a perfect oblation, as a perfect offering back to Him and to His Merciful love. Look at the next area concerning personal development. We are saying to the Lord that we are disposed to continue our ongoing development. Of course physical development comes just so far and begins to diminish, depending on where you are in the rate of diminishment. With the spiritual, social, intellectual and moral developments, we have to try to continue to develop until the day we die. If we don’t it might be very difficult living across the street from you or me, being married to you or being related to you and me. The prayers says here, ‘Holy Spirit, if I am not where I am supposed to be emotionally, spiritually, intellectually socially, or morally, then in Your Charity, by tomorrow raise me up to the next level.”
You can see how, in wisdom, the prayer is asking very much of God and all done in the name of Jesus. The prayer itself is wise just in the very first request. “God the Father, in the Name of Jesus, send me the Holy Spirit.” Do you pray this simple prayer everyday? “God the Father, in the Name of Jesus, send me the Holy Spirit.” What gift is greater than the gift of the Holy Spirit? Times up! Nothing is greater than the gift of the Holy Spirit. The rest of this prayer to God the Father descends from that request and when you get down to doubles it shows the confidence with which we can and should ask, that by tomorrow God will double my faith, hope, charity, confidence and trust in Divine Providence. So often we go before God expecting nothing and that is exactly what we receive from God. We have such a ridiculous understanding of our faith but God can inform and guide us and make us stretch when we don’t know how too. He can help us but we have to turn and ask in a daring way.
The last daring petition of St. Therèse I will use to close with. When it came time to open up the canonization process for St. Therèse they asked her sisters in the Convent, “Well, we know she made this Oblation to Merciful Love on Trinity Sunday in 1895; did she ever renew that Consecration?” Well, she had it written into the prayer itself saying to God, “At every heartbeat, O my Beloved, I wish to renew this offering an infinite number of times, till the shadows retire and I can tell you of my love over and over again, looking upon You face to Face eternally.” So when is a heartbeat not just a heartbeat? When it is dedicated to renewing her total self-giving gift to God, when she has dedicated a biological or even a physiological function of her body to God, recognizing a spiritual commitment. She said she wanted to renew this an infinite number of times until she could tell God of her love face to Face.
Just think of this, the Little Flower, St. Therèse, had nearly gone terribly astray in her temptations of justice. She had the feeling that she was condemned by God. So often we depend on our “feelings” to guide us. “Oh, I know for sure because I have a feeling about this and I have a feeling about that.” Maybe your feeling is wrong, maybe it is just gas, right? [Laughter] “Oh no! I had a “feeling”!” Instead of leaving it up to your feelings that can be right or wrong like trick knees when they work and all of a sudden they go out and you are flat on the ground, feelings are the same way. Don’t allow your prayer life to be run merely by your feelings; otherwise you can land flat on your face.
Ask God with great confidence according to the mind of St. Therèse, who would ask God for the conversion of sinners and the good of others because she knew that God would prepare her when she went before Him empty handed. She knew that with just a glance at her, He could make her ready; she had such great confidence in the Name of Jesus. As it says in the Gospel today,
Whoever believes in Him will not be condemned but whoever does not believe has already been condemned because he has not believed in the Name of the only Son of God.
In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit
Amen
To access the Prayer to God the Father, please click on the link below.
http://www.semperficatholic.com/page6.html