Father Paul Weinberger, Pastor
St. William Roman Catholic Church
Greenville, Texas
4 / 24 / 2005 Fifth Sunday of Easter
Good Shepherd Sunday
Jesus said to him, “I Am the Way the Truth and the Life, no one comes to the Father except through Me.”
In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit
Amen
This is a time of great grace; in a sense, tremendous graces have been released and showered down on the world through the life and the death of Pope John Paul II, the Novena of Masses and the election of the new Pope, Pope Benedict XVI who was installed today in Rome.
Perhaps you haven’t seen the news but today without any fanfare, the army of Syria pulled out of Lebanon; they have been there forever. Lebanon is a fiercely Christian country and has been occupied by Syria for years and it appears that the free elections by it’s neighbor, Iraq and Afghanistan, sparked the Lebanese people, who are know for their tremendous catholic faith, to push for Syria to leave and today they did. What a coincidence! Isn’t it neat how lucky those people are?
I was talking to an ophthalmologist this morning; boy, he is the only ophthalmologist I know that has office hours on Sunday…no, I wasn’t speaking to him in his office, he was here. I was in the office and he came with his daughter who just passed M-CAT and she is about to be married at the end of May. Anyway while we were talking she said she had taken the M-CAT and she was going away to graduate school to be a doctor. So I told her, “You know, you out to study the life of St. Gianna Beretta Molla.” She asked me who this was and I told her that, Gianna Molla was canonized by the Pope recently and then I said, “OH, wait a minute!” I reached back and the only thing on the table was this, the National Catholic Register. From it I read,
Huh! The young woman said, “What a coincidence,” and then I had to kill her. [Laughter] I said, “Oh, a coincidence? Your father is an eye doctor and you are so blind. You need to study her life!” I just happened to have on hand the most current edition of the National Catholic Register and on the front is the story about a doctor who is a mother…I said, “I don’t need a house to fall on me to see that God is part of your decision. Make sure that you allow Jesus to guide you in whatever you are supposed to be doing.” She is going to be studying about St. Gianna Molla; what a coincidence, huh?St. Gianna Beretta Molla refused her doctor’s advice to abort her fourth child even though an ovarian cist threatened her life. She died in April 28, 1962 at the age of thirty-nine, one week after giving birth. Pope John Paul II beatified her on April 24, 1994 and canonized her May 16, 2004.
What a coincidence that Syria would pull out of Lebanon today. There are so many graces available today for you and your children; you just have to ask for them. Perhaps you can’t see them but that doesn’t mean they are not there. The Lebanese Christians are so incredibly strong in their faith because their faith has been tested again and again and again. It is just like that hymn we sang at the beginning of Mass, hymn means something. It is not one of those modern hymns sung in catholic Churches today saying, “Me? I am so great, how about you?” Isn’t that what most modern hymns in Catholic Churches say? “Me? Nothing wrong with me!” “Well, you have something right there. There is always something wrong with you but me, I am perfect!” We have all had to endure those hymns but this hymn we sang at the beginning of Mass actually means something; Faith of Our Fathers; even when tried, Faith of Our Fathers! Tremendous!
I was talking to Fr. Mitch Pacwa several years ago; Father Pacwa has worked with the Lebanese up at Lewisville, Texas at our Lady of Lebanon Catholic Church and they can say Mass in the Maronite Rite which is tremendous. Father Pacwa is a Jesuit and a tremendous son of St. Ignatius, being true to the spirit of its founder. Anyway we at the Chapel of the Incarnation at the University of Dallas and we were talking and were looking at the Stations of the Cross there. Someone came up with the great idea of, instead of following the traditions of the Church and placing the Stations of the Cross on the wall, they would put them in the floor so you HAD to walk on them.
Fr. Pacwa once said to me, “You know, if we were in the Holy Land in the presence of Palestinian Christians and you walked on a Cross, you would be dead before you knew it. They would kill you for walking on a cross. Of course we are much more modern and we understand better. No! They appreciate the Cross. Fr. Pacwa is right; he has been to the Holy Land many times. You have seen him on EWTN, Mother Angelica’s apostolate. A few years ago he left the University of Dallas and went to Alabama to sit in and lead for Mother Angelica. It is great to have someone at EWTN that is so familiar with the Holy Land.
The Holy Land is a place where many faiths converge and so your faith is tested. The strong Christians are there but there are also strong Muslims and Jews that converge on the Holy Land. In yesterday’s Dallas Morning News there is a picture of several Jews around a fire; they just began Passover. When you look at this picture in the Dallas Morning News, you see that these are Orthodox Jews, the ones who are the serious followers of Judaism. Here they are lighting a fire and throwing into it, everything in their home that contains yeast or leavening. The Passover that they are celebrating now uses only unleavened bread and this goes back to the time when they were fleeing Egypt. They didn’t have time to let the “dough rise”, they had to eat unleavened bread. These were the instructions of Our Lord as to how to use unleavened bread, how to cook the lamb and how to eat the bitter herbs.
And He led them out of Egypt to the Red sea, through the desert to the Promised Land.
“Oh, but that is just a detail”, you might think. It is a detail that the front page of the Dallas Morning News article can be used to remind us that there is a connection to our Mass and use of bread at Mass. You see the Tabernacle up here…the ladies always take great care to see that there are a couple of vases of flowers on each side if it. I always asked the kids at CCD, “Now, what do you think is in those two vases there; flowers and what else? Water! Now you know exactly what is in the host that we use at Mass, flour and water; not flowers, but flour and water.” The kids think it is great. I offered to give the kids a test. “Is there any oatmeal in the Host?” They say, “No.” I ask if there are chocolate chips in the Host and they say, “No.” I ask if there is salt, honey, sugar, or yeast in the host and they say, “No!” I ask again what is in the host and they say, “Flour and water!”
Yesterday was the one-year anniversary of the publication of the Document called Redemptionis Sacramentum, the Sacrament of Redemption that talks about Holy Communion. It is a beautiful Document put out by the Congregation of Divine Worship and published with the obvious approval of the then, Cardinal Ratzinger who today has a more difficult job if that were possible, Pope Benedict XVI. So it was yesterday a year ago on the 23rd of April that Redemptionis Sacramentum was published as an instruction on how to offer Mass. It is amazing that these are things we should already know. The Church is here to help us and the Document mentions different things. I like paragraph number 112. It is a personal favorite of mine because it says something I have always known but, for the past thirty or forty years people have said, “No, you can’t do that!” Paragraph 112 says that a priest is “always and everywhere permitted to offer Mass in Latin.” In other words, no permissions are necessary. “He is always and everywhere permitted to offer Mass in Latin.” Outside of those cases…then you have to get permission.
The Document even talks about the vestments the priest is supposed to wear and it sounds really basic because it says that the priest should wear Mr. Alb and Mr. Cincture; then he should put on Mr. Stole and Mr. Chasuble. Why are we going through this? Why does it have to be written down? Because priests aren’t doing it! Priests are not following the Tradition of the Church and they are calling the priests back to the tradition that we had for the last two thousand years.
A friend of mine is a pilot and the weekend that the Pope died, he flew up Saturday to Boston, stayed over night and flew out the next day. He learned on the flight that the Pope had died. The next day we saw the pictures of the many churches that had black bunting over the door in memory of the Holy Father. My friend while in Boston went to the Hotel Concierge and asked inquired as to where there was a Catholic Church. Of course we know how “solid’ Boston is in its “catholic” faith. He was directed to two Churches; one was the Paulist Center downtown and the other was the Church of St. Anthony near the Franciscans.
The closest was the Paulist Center so he went over there and was a little early. He grabbed for the kneeler and it wasn’t there. “Is this a Catholic Church,” he said to himself. So he knelt on the floor. The center looked to be wealthy and nicely appointed; there was actually a Tabernacle where the tabernacle was supposed to be but he saw that there was no remembrance of the Pope there. One wonders if they even had a picture of the Holy Father there. Someone walked by him with the elements for communion to be brought up during the offertory procession; the bread and wine. There was a flagon of wine and a plate. Redemptionis Sacramentum says that “flagons” are not to be used. The glass pitchers are not to be used and anyone who has children knows what happens to glass, right? That is why they invented plastic or lakes, because they can’t break a lake, right?
Anyway, the person walked by carrying a flagon of wine and a plate of bread, put it down on a table and walked away. My friend went over and looked at the bread, which was the consistency of sour dough. That means it had yeast in it and we all know that Redemptionis Sacramentum says that only flour and water are to be used in the bread used at Mass. He ran back to the hotel and got the information on masses and location of St. Anthony’s. St. Anthony is always helping you find something when you are lost. He helped my friend find the church in time. In St. Anthony’s was a beautiful picture of the pope and used the proper elements; they were following Redemptionis Sacramentum. These two Churches were merely a few blocks apart and imagine that; someone actually read Redemptionis Sacramentum and the other guy…who knows! How sad!
I am making a prediction right now that what you are going to see in the next few years out of this Pope benedict XVI is a continuation of what we have seen with Pope John Paul II. In fact, instead of being called Pope Benedict XVI he could be called Pope John Paul II point five. He has worked like this with the Pope for twenty-three years. I know, what’s twenty-three years, right? I see many people here not even twenty-three years old. These two men worked closely together for twenty-three years and now like it is like opening up a telescope where one part extends and another part comes out; they are all attached and you can see off in the distance.
That is what has angered so many people; the fact that cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict, is an extension of Pope John Paul II and they were hoping that Pope John Paul II could just be dead and buried and we could move on to something breaking with our tradition. You name it and they would like to break it! You name it and they would like to depart from the tradition. Yet, these are the same people who say that we need to “reach out” to other faiths.
When I picked up the Dallas Morning News yesterday and saw the fire on the front page with the Jews standing around it, it reminded me of what happens here on our highest Holy day.
A fire is built in Church and from that fire, after it is blessed, that large candle over there that represents Christ our Light, is lighted. There is a one to one correspondence; when people start throwing elements that are basic to our faith overboard, we are not connected to these people anymore. Things get lost and thrown away and then connections are dulled or broken. Thanks be to God we have someone who is fighting to preserve the tradition because in the end, Cardinal Ratzinger now Pope Benedict, can do nothing else; he is bound every which way to preserve the tradition and uphold and preach what the Church teaches.
There was a Letter to the Editor in this same paper yesterday about a young woman titled, “I lied to the Pope to His Face.” We can all take a gasp and say, “Someone lied to the Pope to his face?” Yes! I will read just part of it.
He didn’t put his finger in her face and say, “DO YOU PRAY THE ROSARY EVERY DAY? DO’T LIE TO ME, I KNOW IT! Instead he said that Rosary was a great name for a school. Listen to what she says.When I was in college I got the great opportunity to have a private audience with Pope John Paul II. When he came to me he asked me where I was going to college. I replied, “I was a student at Rosary College.” He said, “Rosary! Rosary is a great name for a school. Do you pray the rosary often?”
”Do you pray the rosary often?” I was stuck.
Uh huh, you know what’s coming….
I was stuck. At that point in my life I had never said the rosary.
Now I want you to listen to this; there was active voice and there was passive voice. Listen to how active voice begins and how passive voice follows.
That was active voice…I was stuck. At that point in my life I had never said the rosary.
That as passive voice; somehow she found it possible to enroll in college, drive herself there but someone has to spoon-feed her the Hail Mary in bed over a breakfast tray, right? “I never said the rosary; no one ever taught me the Hail Mary.” There is an interesting change from active to passive. Moving on with the article;Heck, I was never even taught the Hail Mary let alone how to say the rosary.
Just for the record people, you never disappoint the Pope when you tell the truth, ok? You will never see and Encyclical that says, “Well, the Holy Father is really sad today because people told him the truth.” [Laughter] He has cardinals, bishops, priests, and plenty of lay people who can lie to him any time they want. What are priests? Priests are lay people who have been ordained. So, the Holy Father is not disappointed when people tell him the truth. She didn’t want to disappoint the Holy Father so she lied to him.In that instant when she was lying to the Pope I couldn’t face disappointing the Pope by telling the truth.
I just couldn’t do it so instead in a moment of true cowardice here is true connected to cowardice; instead of truth it is true cowardice I lied to the Pope.
The Pope said that Rosary was a great name for a school and he asked her if she prayed the rosary often and here was her lie, ‘
Have you ever gone into someone’s office at Christmastime and they had a big bowl of M&Ms; all those seasonal colors? You walk up to the bowl and pick up one M&M and put it in your mouth and say, “Oh gee, that is all I want.” NO! It is, “Oh! M&Ms, yummy!” Right? Lies are the same way because one lie leads to another. When she said her brother had the rosary blessed by him, what if the Pope had said, “I knew I had seen this rosary before; I blessed this fifteen years ago.” What if he told a lie right back? “The Pope lied!” Anyway she goes on and says,Yes, all the time. I use a rosary that my brother had blessed by you when he was here in 1982.
I told the kids in CCD about this yesterday and I told them to wait until they are about thirty five or forty years old and they are telling their parents how they lied back when they were ten or twelve or fifteen, and their parents are going to say that they already knew. They will ask the parents what they mean and the parents will tell them that every time they lied they would go like this or raise an eyebrow, right? “We knew all the time when you are lying.” You ask why they have never said anything and they say, “Why, and break the code?” [Laughter] So, the Holy Father gave her a big smile and moved on.The Pope gave me a huge smile and told me the rosary was a wonderful way to pray and he moved on to the next person.
God gives parents graces; a kid can be in one room and mom can be in the other end of the house when the kid silently opens a drawer and is about to touch the scissors and mom will yell, “Don’t touch those scissors!” How did she know? God gives graces to the parents and God gives graces to the Pope and He gives them to the Pope to help lead us and to help us on our way to Heaven.
Look half way down the Gospel reading for today please. I want you to use this and to think about it during the week so locate it.
Jesus said to him St. Thomas, “I Am the Way and the Truth and the Life; no one comes to the Father except through Me.
Another way to say that would be, ‘No one goes to Heaven except through Me.” But, how many times have I heard someone talk about a “back door” to Heaven? I guess Jesus has never been in the back yard. HUH? No one come to the Father except through Me. You notice it says, ‘I Am the Way”, not “I Am the Ways.” Jesus says, I Am the Way, the Truth and the Life, no one comes to the Father except through Me.
August 6, 2000, the Feast of the Transfiguration, Cardinal Ratzinger the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, published a fifteen pages document called Dominus Jesus, The Lord Jesus. What a beautiful document this is. What are in those fifteen pages is essentially what are in these two lines; Jesus says, “I Am the Way and the Truth and the Life; no one comes to the Father except through Me”. If you are at the water cooler someone may say, “Well, I believe all faiths are the same and I believe we are all going to the same place.” Then you say, “Look, Jesus said that no one goes to the Father except through Him.’ They will say, “You can’t say that; you are a bigot and you are mean!” Then they will probably throw water on you. Think about it; Jesus speaks very clearly even when St. Phillip is not getting it and says, “Ok, so show us the Father.” Jesus says to him, Have I been with you this long Phillip and still you do not know me? The patience of Christ with the Apostles…but that patience will not be extended to us who have access to Documents like Dominus Jesus.
When cardinal Ratzinger wrote the Document in 200, he said, “To the degree that other faiths religions have contained truths, then they are connected to the catholic Church which contains all of the truth Christ revealed.” Now think about this; there are a lot of people who say they don’t like to drive at night and that they would rather drive during the day because they can see better, right? But at night there is light; the stars are out and maybe the moon and so there is some illumination but there is more light during the day. What Cardinal Ratzinger was saying in the year 2000 in Dominus Jesus was that other faiths contain truth and to the degree that they contain truth, they are connected to the Catholic Church.
Perhaps you have been unaware that now our military is being forced to allow people of all faiths, practice their faith on military bases and on ships. How would you like to be on a military ship in the middle of the ocean in a raging storm and know that in the next room Satan Worshippers were practicing their religion? Uh uh! No, there is no connection with the truth in that religion and yet our military is being forced today to honor something that is deserving of no honor. What Christian principles can the Satanists invoke to force us to do this? Anyway, it is happening.
In other Christian and also in non-Christian faiths there are truths. People have commented about how peaceful the Buddhists are and they are right, God bless the Buddhists but…look at that first reading. As the number of disciples continue to grow the Hellenists complained against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution of food. Up until recently there was a part of the Buddhist religion that had a special solution for widows. When a husband died and left a widow, what they would do is collect a lot of firewood and perfectly arrange it without lighting it. Then on top of this big stack of firewood they would respectfully place the body of the deceased husband, light the fire and when it was going really strong, they would throw his widow onto the fire alive. We all believe the same thing; all religions are the same, right? We all believe in getting rid of widows that way, right? It is called “sati” and is a part of the Buddhist faith that was practiced until recently. Sati…that is how they dealt with their widows. All of a sudden you begin to think, “Well, maybe we don’t all believe the same thing.”
Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope benedict XVI is fearless in promoting the truth but he can do nothing else because his hands are tied. Not next Thursday but the Thursday after is the first Thursday in May; forty days after Easter which is the Ascension of the Lord. The last word of Jesus to us is “Church”. It wasn’t a suggestion; it was a direct order and command. Jesus said,
Full authority has been given to Me both on earth and in the heavens. Go therefore; make disciples of all the nations. Baptize them in the Name of the father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit; teach them to observe all that I have commanded you and know that I am with you always until the end of time. What I have just quoted to you is quoted in Dominus Jesus, August 6, 2000. Our Lord bound us to teach only what He teaches.
[color=red[I Am the Way the Truth and the Life, no one can come to the Father except through me.[/color] This is hard for people who have been on a spiritual diet of fast food for the last forty years. People who know better have told us things that have not been true. This Pope and the previous Pope want to see a mature faith; in fact, just before he was chosen Pope, Cardinal Ratzinger addressed his fellow cardinals and said exactly that. He said that what is needed today in the Church is a mature faith. Why? Because it is going to be tested and you are going to be tried and you are going to suffer so you better have a faith that can sustain you through difficulties and trials.
I predict that over the next several years if God grants Pope Benedict the life, that he will be celebrating every anniversary from the Pontificate of Pope John Paul II; every document that has gone unimplemented, he will note it. Take for instance Ex corde Ecclesia that speaks on how Catholic Universities should be Catholic. He will bring up Redemptionis Sacramentum and show how sad it is that it is not being implemented and how the people have to suffer. He will talk about canonization’s and beatifications and will continue what Pope John Paul II began just like the pope after him will continue his work.
I want to leave you with the last comment about something from the first year of Pope John Paul II’s Pontificate given before a large crowd of people. He said;
Allow Jesus to speak to you.
That is what I told the young lady this morning about St. Gianna Molla; allow Jesus to speak to you. Here she is at a pivotal point in her life, going to graduate school and doesn’t know what direction of medicine she is going to pursue.” Allow Jesus to tell you where he wants you to be. Allow him to speak to your heart. Use this passage, I Am the Way the Truth and the Light, no one comes to the Father except through Me. Allow Him to guide you!”
In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit
Amen