Father Paul Weinberger, Pastor
St. William the Confessor Catholic Church
Greenville, Texas
Sixth Sunday of Easter
May 21, 2006
Jesus said to His disciples, “As the Father loves Me, so I also love you. Remain in My love. If you keep My Commandments you will remain in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s Commandments and remain in His love.”
In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit
Amen
With a bit of shame I remember my father’s frequent words to his children, especially to my younger brother and me about the things that he expected to be accomplished after school and before he came home. Invariably when he pulled in the driveway fear ran through the both of us because instead of attending to our homework and chores, we had spent the time playing, wrestling, fighting, or a combination of these three. We wasted the time that he had set aside for certain tasks, even though his parting words to us were very explicit. We disregarded them and did our own thing. Fortunately our father was very patient; some days he was more patient than others.
What you see on the cover of the bulletin is an artist’s rendering of the Ascension. You can see two scenes which are very common in art, art that is recognizable and art that is not recognizable. The scene at the bottom is obviously a scene where Jesus is teaching His last teaching and then you see in the other scene He is ascending. He wasn’t ascending while teaching. The Apostles would then wonder what Jesus had said because He was teaching and ascending at the same time. This is a beautiful picture of the Ascension.
The calendar of the Universal Church placed the Ascension on Thursday, a Holy Day of Obligation. Rome will be celebrating Mass for Ascension Thursday on Thursday. The New Testament says that forty days after Easter Jesus led them out to a hill near Bethany, which was very near Jerusalem. There Jesus spoke to them and taught them His last teachings and then He ascended into Heaven. So, forty days after Easter is Ascension Thursday just as forty days before Easter is Ash Wednesday.
However, in this Diocese, Thursday is not a Holy Day of Obligation; it is a Holy Day but the obligation to attend Mass has been removed and the Feast has been transferred to the following Sunday. So May 28th, next Sunday Catholics here and throughout other dioceses in the country will celebrate Ascension Thursday on Sunday…whatever that means! It is rather confusion because Ascension Thursday comes forty days after Easter.
The Bishop’s Conference have been questioned about this and they always cite that they don’t want to put a ‘hardship” on people, having to attend Mass during the week. They say it would be a ‘hardship for the people and the priests. Of course put that way you always come up with that answer. If one recognized the many blessings that God is wishing to extend to you, it would seem extreme to not attend Mass on such a day so prominent in the life of Christ. Be that as it may, next week we will be celebrating Ascension Thursday, Sunday.
The very last words of Christ before He ascended into Heaven are the opening and closing words of a document that is easily obtained from the Vatican. If you look on page three of the bulletin at the bottom is an excellent web site, the same company that puts out the hymnal in front of you, the Adoremus Hymnal. It is only fifteen pages in length and of course the added end notes. This is an excellent document released in the year 2000 so it is only six years old, or will be in August. The document is called Dominus Jesus and can be found here. http://www.adoremus.org/910-00DomJesus.html This is the “Adoremus” web site I referred to a few minutes ago. This was a letter that came out with the mandate of Pope John Paul II and Cardinal Ratzinger, who is now Pope Benedict XVI. When Dominus Jesus came out it was reviled and there are still those who will never forgive Pope Benedict for having been the author of this document six years ago. The document begins and ends with the last words of Jesus to His Church before ascending into heaven, as I said before. Paragraph #1, quoting St. Mark’s Gospel 16:15-16, says,
The Lord Jesus, before ascending into heaven, commanded his disciples to proclaim the Gospel to the whole world and to baptize all nations: “Go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature. He who believes and is baptized will be saved; he who does not believe will be condemned”
This is very explicit; there have even been saints down through the centuries that have preached to the fish. They really took this business about preaching to all creatures very seriously. In the paragraph I just mentioned, Jesus is leaving us work to be completed. You and I are to go out into the world and teach what He teaches and call all who believe to be Baptized and thus, to be saved.
In the next paragraph of the document, St. Matthew’s Gospel is quoted and it gives the saint’s take on these final words of Jesus. There was no camcorder, tape recorder or court recorder there so St. Matthew and St. Mark give a first hand account and essentially say the same thing. One supplies what the other left out. In chapter 28 of St. Matthew’s Gospel Jesus says,
“All power in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Go therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the world”
These are the last words of Christ before His ascension and yet His words are distorted or absolutely ignored. There is work to do but is seems we have other things to do to occupy our time.
Over the last few weeks we have heard Jesus refer to Himself again and again as a vine, just as He says He is the Good Shepherd. He said,
”I am the vine, you are the branches.”
That was last Sunday. Jesus also said that without Him we can do nothing. If a branch is removed from a vine it is good for nothing and you can’t do anything with it except to throw it into the fire. This is all it is good for. So without a connection to Jesus, we can do nothing and that connection to Jesus is love. In the Gospel today Jesus says,
”As the Father loves Me so I also love you; remain in My love. IF you keep My commandments you will remain in My love. Just as I have kept My Father’s Commandment and remained in His love.”
He is saying that you will remain “connected” to Him.
It was in the last three or four years that a terrible thing happened in Washington through a subcommittee of one of the committees there, of the USCCB, Untied States Catholic Council of Bishops. On it’s own and supposedly without any authorization from any head of the committee, this subcommittee announced that the Church would no longer have a missionary effort to evangelize the Jewish people. It came out in the paper so it must be true. The document, in a very succinct way was saying that we no longer should preach to and teach the Jews because they were the chosen people and other reasons that we should not go out and call them into the Church.
When this came out it was amazing to Catholics around the world. In fact, they later had to retract that statement and essentially say,
”Oh…never mind.”
Think of how this sounds, that the Church does not have a missionary appeal to the Jewish people. In other words, Jesus is calling everyone to be saved except for the Jews? We don’t want them saved? That is discrimination, extremely insulting, and it doesn’t square with the last words of Jesus on earth before He ascended into heaven.
In the First Reading today St. Peter is talking to those who are circumcised and uncircumcised. St. Peter himself, a Jew followed Christ and is speaking to Jews and non-Jews alike in his audience. But now somehow the Church has gotten past that point and no longer exerts the missionary effort to evangelize the Jews? Those thoughts are totally contradictory to the fairly recent document, Dominus Jesus. Dominus Jesus is brief; it is only fifteen pages but very helpful. The document states other things as well. It states that not only does the Church have a mission to evangelize all peoples but go into the whole world and proclaim the whole Gospel to every creature. How much more universal can the call be, right? We are instructed to go and teach all nations; again how much more universal can the call be?
Even though the last words of Christ are so explicit, we don’t preach and teach to all the nations or all creatures. I think it has to do with another aspect of this document. It talks about how Christ founded a Church, ONE CHURCH. Think about it. Last Sunday we heard Christ say that He was the vine and we are the branches. He didn’t say He was the vine(S) and you are the branches. He specifically stated that He is the vine. Christ has founded ONE Church and yet today on official lists there is presented over thirty thousand Christian churches. This goes against what the Lord said at the Last Supper; when He allowed His apostles to overhear His prayer to His Father in heaven. He said,
”Father, may they be one as You and I are One.”
We have to admit that there is great scandal in the Church by having so many splinters of splinter Christian Churches. Again, Jesus founded A Church and so a splinter of a splinter of a splinter is not a church but a piece of a splinter.
What Dominus Jesus points out is that there are Christian communities, regardless of how they identify themselves, that possess the truths of Christ to the degree that they produce light to the world. The Church that possesses the fullness of that Light is the Church that Christ founded; the Catholic Church. This of course is very disturbing to some. People may wonder then about their sister in law, brother, neighbor and all those people who go to such and such a church. Those are all good questions. The work that Christ has left to me and to you is to go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature.
St. Francis of Assisi, loved by so many people once invited another Franciscan brother to go into town to preach a sermon. The other brother agreed and they walked into town to it’s central area in silence and then they returned to the monastery. The brother mentioned to St, Francis that he thought that they were going to preach a sermon and the saint responded,
”We just did!.”
At another time he said,
” "Preach the Gospel always, and if necessary, use words. ...”
The way that St. Francis preached in the world is reminiscent of the way Mother Teresa of Calcutta gave many sermons in the world, through her actions and the way she loved. That is exactly what Christ is telling us in the Gospel today. The First Reading says that God shows no partiality; He has no favorites. His call is universal and He wants all of us to be saved.
What does God mean when He says He wants all to be saved? To be saved means to obey His Commandments, to love Him and to listen to what He teaches while living accordingly. That is how we are to model our lives but a sad reality in the church is that we don’t. Many have never heard the Good News preached to them because of our defects and deficiencies, along with our hesitancy we have not preached to the whole world. Our Lord says in the gospel today,
”As the Father loves Me so I also love you. Remain in My love if you keep My Commandments you will remain in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s Commandments and remain in His love.”
.”
Do you notice the “if” clause?
“Remain in My love; if you keep My Commandments”.
Please notice that on Wednesday night, May 24th we will continue studying the 16 Carmelite Martyrs of the French Revolution. In 1906 they were beatified. These 16 Carmelite Martyrs were martyred on July 17, 1794. The prayed that their death would help bring the terror of the French Revolution to an end. “To Quell the Terror” is the title of the book. On the 27th of May, next Saturday is the 100th Anniversary of Pope St. Pius X canonizing these 16 Carmelites. They were dressed just like the statue you see behind me of St. Therese. After having been charged by the prosecutor of the French Revolution’s court, and tried, they were found to be fanatics. One of the sisters held back what she was feeling and in a tranquil way asked for clarification of the term “fanatic”. It is as if it was beyond her grasp to understand the definition of the word. The prosecutor, Fouquier-Tinville, the coward and wretch said that these 16 Carmelites were guilty of being to religious. So their crime was that they loved as Jesus loved, even to the point of laying down their lives for their friends. Jesus says this in today’s gospel.
”No man has greater love than to lay down his life for his friends.
These 16 sisters did exactly that. As they were led to the scaffold they sang aloud joyful hymns and parts of the Office as they approached the instrument of their death, the guillotine. Saturday will be the 100th anniversary of their beatification as I said. One is beatified first and then canonized.
Before one of the sisters placed her neck in the wooden stocks of the guillotine, her last words to the silent crowd were,
“I just want to let everyone know I forgive you with all my heart because I want God to forgive me all my sins.”
Then they cut off her head. This sister taught in pagan Paris when religious teaching had been forbidden. She used the last words she would ever speak to teach that crowd a lesson that has to be repeated again and again. Just as my father and mother were so patient with me, having to repeat things over and over again until I learned, we have to be patient with those in whom we come in contact.
The mission of the Church has not ceased. It is as irresponsible for us to stop preaching and teaching those around us as it is to say that the missionary effort of the Church is not to all peoples and that, for example, the Jews are excluded. This is discrimination in the extreme and we can leave no one out of our efforts. Jesus said last Sunday that He is the vine and we are the branches and without Him we can do nothing.
The Church has always prayed at this time of the year, a Novena to the Holy Spirit. In fact, this is where the idea of praying a Novena originated. People think Novenas came from the 1500s or the early 1900s. No…after Jesus ascended into heaven the Church closed in on itself and went into the upper room with Our Lady. They closed the doors and the windows and spent nine days in prayer, praying for the Holy Spirit, Who Christ promised to send. We would do well to imitate their Novena by lifting up prayers to the Holy Spirit for this mission Christ has entrusted to His Church. If you are part of the Church then you are part of the mission and you have to lift your part of the load with your family, friends, neighbors, and the strangers with whom you come into contact. It isn’t an effort that is fraught with gimmicks. So much evangelization today promoted by large conferences of bishops seem to be full of gimmicks. There is nothing “gimmicky” about the evangelization effort. The effort is to be an effort of love, remaining in Jesus and keeping His Commandments is the initial way and the secondary way, as well as the third, fourth and fifth way we are to preach and teach.
It says in the first paragraph of Dominus Jesus,
The Church's universal mission is born from the command of Jesus Christ and is fulfilled in the course of the centuries in the proclamation of the mystery of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and the mystery of the incarnation of the Son, as saving event for all humanity.
We must preach this to everyone, to all creatures and we do this supported by Christ and His Spirit. We don’t attempt this on our own. If we fail and choose not to work we won’t be free of responsibility but will have merely shirked our responsibility in order to pursue our own agenda; just like my brother and me when we decided to fight or play and wrestle or fill in the blank, until my father came home.
This Feast of the Ascension, which the Universal Church celebrates this coming Thursday is the Ascension of Christ into Heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father until He returns to judge the living and the dead, and He will return and judge the living and the dead. His Commandment is to imitate Him, to lay down our lives for our friends and we do this by keeping His Commandments.
Jesus said to His disciples, “As the Father loves Me, so I also love you. Remain in My love. If you keep My Commandments you will remain in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s Commandments and remain in His love.”
In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit
Amen