Father Paul Weinberger, Pastor
St. William the Confessor Catholic Church
Greenville, Texas
13th Sunday in Ordinary Time
July 2, 2006
She said, “If I but touch His clothes I shall be cured.” Immediately her flow of blood dried up and she felt in her body that she was healed of her affliction.
In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit
Amen
On Good Friday, April 19, 1519, Cortez and his men founded the city of Vera Cruz, which means “True Cross.” The name is appropriate for a city founded on Good Friday and thus began the conquest of Mexico. The city was only a dot on the Gulf of Mexico but it would grow and much blood would be spilled in the conquest of the new world. The blood of those slain in this conquest was precious to the eyes of God. Just as when Cain killed his brother, Abel, God says in the Book of Genesis that the blood of Abel, a just man, cried out to Heaven for justice. The blood of innocent victims cry out to God for justice hundreds of years before the conquest of Mexico as well.
Yes, well we are all so much like sheep, led to believe that the evil conquerors, those Christians came from Spain to conquer the people who existed on nothing but wheat and milk. They were known as the Aztecs. The blood thirst of the Aztec gods was so great that, the many pyramids that dotted the landscape of their huge territory, at least once was bathed in human blood. That meant babies, children, teenagers and adults. The blood of so many innocent victims cried out to God for justice.
On April 19, 1775, Paul Revere got on his horse late at night, along with several riders and this is referred to as the “Midnight Ride”. You can trace the beginning of the American Revolution from that point. At the beginning, the revolution was all about representation in Parliament but the king was so stubborn that he would not allow any mediation and so the colonists began to speak of a Declaration of Independence. The idea was formally presented to the delegates at the Constitutional Congress in Philadelphia on July 1, 1776. We have descriptions of July in Philadelphia in 1776. It is like being in Houston, Texas in July with no air-conditioning. That is why God invented Galveston Island…so the people in Houston would have somewhere to go to get away in July. [Laughter]
Anyway Philadelphia was a terrible place and they were rewriting the Declaration of Independence and they had been moved greatly by a small pamphlet written by Thomas Paine, titled “Common Sense” and that was in short supply in Parliament in England and it is also in short supply today among so many in Washington D.C. Toward the end of the document, “Common Sense”, Thomas Paine even talks about how the blood of those who have already given their lives cries out for separation from England in a Declaration of Independence. He writes,
Everything that is right or reasonable pleads for separation, the blood of the slain, and the weeping voice of nature cries. “tis time to part.”
Eventually fifty-six delegates would sign the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. On this day (July 2nd) they were still debating the declaration and it wasn’t the slam-dunk that everyone images it was today. Thomas Paine, through his pamphlet began to sway the opinion of the colonists. No doubt the blood of the slain was helping to turn the tide.
On Good Friday in 1865 President Lincoln was assassinated. He was president of the United States and had just been declared the victory over the South in the War Between the States. John Wilkes-Booth killed him at Ford’s theatre but he was not the only one that day to attempt the assassination of someone. Booth had conspired with others to arrange the assassination of the entire Cabinet. One man was dispatched to the hotel where Secretary Seward was on his sickbed. There was no guard at the door and the assassin walked in, went over to the bed, and stabbed Sec. Seward in the face. This is the Seward who it was said of, that his folly was the purchase of the land up in the northwest and that it was a waste of money to buy Alaska... so much for democracy. Seward was right and it wasn’t his folly but our gain to purchase Alaska.
After Seward was stabbed in the face his daughter ran to his bedside and then a guard came to pursue the attacker. Seward lost a lot of blood and the doctor described in his journal the scene he found when he arrived at the hotel room. He said he found what appeared to be an exsanguinated cadaver. This is a body that has lost all its blood. I imagine the doctor said, “Dear me”, and jumped a little bit when the cadaver opened his eyes and said, “I am not dead.” He recovered from his wounds and as I said, we owe much to Secretary Seward. The blood of Abraham Lincoln was shed on Good Friday, 1865. He is the president who sought to keep the Union together and abolish slavery and he died a martyr for those causes.
Many died in WWI and WWII as well as Korea and Vietnam but of all the wars, the most blood was spilled during the Civil War, the War Between the States. Around 1920 and before many priests, nuns, and Catholic laity were killed indiscriminately by the Mexican government in what was known as the Mexican Revolution. Mexicans killed many thousands of their fellow citizens because they were witnesses to Christ.
On the front of the bulletin you see a little twelve-year-old martyr. St. Maria Goretti was martyred at the age of twelve. You can see she is holding the palm of martyrdom in her arms and the lilies are a reference to her purity. The Church in the background is the Basilica of St. Maria Goretti. Her father died as you and her mother had to assume his chores and St. Maria took care of her younger siblings, without complaint. They lived above the barn on the second floor and share that with another family. Mr. Serenelli was a widower and had a son that was around nineteen, Alessandro Serenelli. Alessandro had a job viewing pornography from morning till night. Yes, they had pornography back in 1902 and he had plastered the walls of his room with it. There was pornography back in the days of the cave men, we just haven’t found the right caves yet, or the wrong caves yet. Pornography has been around as long as there has been original sin.
Alessandro drank deeply from pornography; those people back then were so stupid and we would never imitate their errors…today. After Maria’s father died, Alessandro made many passes and advances toward her. She told him the same thing again and again that what Jesus teaches is that sexual contact before marriage is sinful and in many instances, gravely sinful, a mortal sin.
July 6th is the Feast of St. Maria Goretti and on the same day in 1535 in London, St. Thomas More was martyred. St. Maria was a martyr for purity and you could also say that St. Thomas was a martyr for purity in marriage. King Henry VIII wanted lots of wives, a cafeteria line of wives.
Alessandro attacked St. Maria Goretti when he left his cave of pornography, known as his bedroom. Her mother was out in the field on a tractor bringing in the crops and his father was at the barn asleep. Alessandro overpowered Maria and dragged her into the kitchen; he wanted to have his way with her. She said,
”No, Alessandro, it is a mortal sin and you will go to hell.”
Not wanting to hear anything about hell and mortal sin he began to stab her multiple time and I think he stabbed her fourteen times. Can you imagine the blood of that little girl spread all over that kitchen floor when Mrs. Goretti came in and found her daughter? They took her as quickly as a horse drawn ambulance could take her to the hospital and there the doctors tended to her. They didn’t give her anesthetic because that…might…kill her. She was dying anyway. She couldn’t drink any water because she…might…die. This is how they treated people back then who were in hospitals.
Maria died forgiving her attacker. Alessandro went to prison and being the wretch that he was, he thought nothing of God and asked forgiveness of no one. One night St. Maria appeared to him in a dream and his heart was melted. In 1950 when Pope Pius XII canonized St. Maria Goretti, Alessandro had been released from prison and he was there at the process beside the mother of Maria and her grown siblings. His conversion is traced to the blood shed that day when he stabbed St. Maria Goretti and killed her. Those who attended the Canonization were among the largest crowd that had ever attended a Canonization up to that time.
Blood, blood, blood! If you look over the calendar for June and July there are martyrs everywhere. It is kind of an adaptation on Silas Martyr. I mean Silas Marner, pardon the slip. Blood everywhere, like the rhyme of the Ancient Mariner. All of this blood is so precious in the eyes of God. If the blood of all the martyrs and all the innocent who were ever slain including the Holy Innocents of this country, who have been dispatched through abortion was combined it would create a sea of blood but it would not equal or surpass the Blood of Christ. We don’t think about the Blood of Christ and yet it is His blood that animated the martyrs.
When we prayed the Consecration to the Sacred Heart last Sunday it asked him to make our hands His hands, our ears, His ears, and our eyes His eyes. The martyrs are an extension of the Blood of Christ in this world. Their blood is precious to God because it is linked to the Blood of His Son through baptism. There are actually people in the world that would die rather than offend God and I pray I am in their number; only time will tell. The Blood of Christ is something we should consider.
Recently the Feast of the Most Precious Blood was moved from July 1st and removed from the calendar altogether. That is really sad because there was a beautiful harmony and connection of Feasts. There was Pentecost, Trinity Sunday, Corpus Christi and then the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus in the Body of Christ. With July 1st being the Feast of the Most Precious Blood…what passes through the Corpus Christi by virtue of the pumping of the Most Sacred Heart? It is the Most Precious Blood that was shed for you and me and is the most perfect prayer that we can offer to God for our sins and all our needs.
Before Mass I prayed for a generous rain but so often we don’t think of asking God for what we need. Instead, we just consider God to be a big button on the desk that says, “Room Service”, and we just keep pushing. It is like pulling the rope for the butler and wondering where he is. We don’t get what we want from God because we aren’t asking Him, we are telling Him.
”Send me room service!”
How sad, but we have before us that which will help us on our way.
Last week the blood of two martyrs were recalled with the Solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul, the two Apostles who shed their blood in Rome. I remember the day in 2002 when I was on one side of my father and my brother was on the other side of him as we were walking him into the emergency room at St. Paul Hospital. My father had been diagnosed with Leukemia in 1994. Sadly the doctor whose care he was under before he got an oncologist saw some irregularities in the blood tests of my father but though he would just let it ride for a year or two and then when it was actually checked into, it was discovered that my dad had Leukemia. Those two years probably cost my dad several years of his life. Leukemia is a disease, which afflicts the blood in a terrible way. Many times I accompanied my father to the hospital to get an infusion of blood. He would receive extra blood because his own blood supply had grown depleted and dad always felt better after receiving blood. Six months after we took him into the emergency room, my father died. May he rest in peace.
During those six months I witnessed my dad receiving blood in the hospital more frequently. This usually meant an over night stay but the blood would do what the many medicines could not do and that was restore him to health. When we consider the Blood of Christ, which we don’t as often as we should, this is exactly what the doctor ordered, or in this case, the Father. God the Father ordered that the Blood of His Son be the price of our salvation. This is so different from those Aztecs in Mexico and so many other places.
The devotion to the Sacred Heart and the Most Precious Blood of Christ go hand in hand. In Dr. O’Donnell’s book, which I have previously spoken about, toward the end of it he writes something for Catholics who think this is too old and not really something for our time. He says,
Those who claim the Devotion to the Sacred Heart is not acceptable to modern man are making an unwarranted claim and spreading a falsehood. Is it possible that Our Lord would give to His Church in this most trying hour a special grace, which is incomprehensible, distasteful, and of little spiritual benefit?
Of course not! He goes on to say,
The objection that the Church no longer needs this devotion (the Devotion to the Most Sacred) is ludicrous. It is not our position to judge whether we need this special grace or not that judgment belongs to God. Since He has offered His grace precisely for our time, our age, is it not utter foolishness to reject it or treat it as useless?
Most homes probably do not have a devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus but are beginning the devotion. I reminded you last week that, every week between now and next spring or early summer, we are leading up to the 150th Anniversary of the extension of the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. We receive many graces for consecrating our families and home to the Sacred Heart. To do so is to place ourselves in the Sacred Heart of Jesus daily and offer to God His Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, the Corpus Christi, the Sacred Heart and the Most Precious Blood, along with Jesus being the only begotten son of God.
Since the Original Sin we have been very ill spiritually and it does carry over to the physiological at times. The human race is afflicted with a spiritual infirmity that is passed on from one generation to the next called Original Sin. Adam and Eve could not bear children who could not be without this sin because how could the children be born without it when they were in it themselves? This sad reality often goes ignored by Catholics who should know better.
The only person to be born without Original Sin since Adam and Eve, from the moment of her Immaculate Conception is the Blessed Mother. There is a reason for that. God extended to Our Lady the same privilege He gave to Adam and Eve; that she would come into this world free from any taint of Original Sin. You see, the graces flowing from the Blood of Christ, that flowed from the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus when the soldier’s lance pierced His side as He hung on the cross in the sleep of death, that Blood made possible the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary when she was conceived immaculately in the womb of her mother, St. Anne. Why? So that she could be born, grow, and be asked to be the mother of Jesus. When she did assent to be the mother of Jesus, Jesus took flesh in her womb. We say and hear that so often and we probably meditate on it…never! That which made the bone, organs, and even the teeth of Jesus grow was the blood that flowed through the Immaculate Heart of Mary. This is not rocket science; any mother knows that it is her blood, which nourishes the child growing inside her womb, and this must be maintained throughout the entire pregnancy or the child’s life is at risk.
To consider the graces that come to us from the Blood of Christ is to consider what is definitely needed and how ill we really are. The Blood of Christ is that which can help us, heal us, and transform us. Again I offer the prayer based on the Pope’s words in his Spirit of the Liturgy, words that sound very similar to the words Jesus said to that little girl.
Little girl I say to you, arise.
After worthily receiving Holy Communion, if we pray these words or similar words surrendering ourselves to Jesus and asking Him to please raise us up and transform us He will.
I have provided for you through out May and June in your bulletin, three reminders. The first reminder of the three things to remember from now until Labor Day is to go to Mass on Sunday, even on vacation. We want God’s protection even on vacation.
“God…you do not have my permission to take a vacation from watching over me.”
Why in the world then would I want to take a vacation from Him? But, Catholics give themselves permission to miss Mass during the Summer, Winter, Spring, and Fall but outside those seasons they are very regular in attending Mass. The fact that we have to be reminded to attend Mass is to show how ill we have become. We have no idea how powerful the Blood of Christ is.
In Dr. O’Donnell’s book he mentions a plague that broke out in 1720 on the coast of France in Marseilles. Over forty thousand residents were to die. A thousand people a week died. Look at Greenville, we have 25,000 people and on the weekends probably 20,000. Double that and you get the number of people who died in the plague. The Bishop of the place was working with municipal leaders and they started praying, along with the faithful, litanies to the Sacred Heart as they walked in penitential processions through the streets of the city. From that moment on the plague halted. Plagues are not known to halt as this one did, they are not light switches. The plagued the halted the moment they asked the intercession of the Most Sacred Heart. The litany used in Marseilles may have been derived in part from a litany composed by St. Margaret Mary herself. I will publish the litany of the Sacred Heart next Sunday.
It was also during this plague that Sacred Heart badges were used due to the miraculous victory of Divine Mercy over the disease. They became extremely popular as a sacramental. They were little hand painted cloths shaped like the Sacred Heart and worn as badges and worn called safeguards. If you tell people today about safeguards today they think you are referring to deodorant soap. If you call them lifesavers they will think you are referring to bad breath. These were safeguards that people wore the same way many people wear the scapular, only they didn’t wear it under their clothes but on the outside where everyone could see it.
At the time of the French Revolution these safeguards were an object of special hatred for the revolutionaries, who referred to them as “the livery of fanaticism”, the clothing of fanatics and the all out dependence on the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
If you look at the two figures of the Gospel, it shows Jesus very concerned with our plight. Jesus is hemmed in by so many people it is like a Shepherd herding sheep. The sheep are going in many different directions and Jesus is hemmed in on every side but this woman is intent to touch only the tassel of his clothes. Why that? Perhaps it is because, a woman with such a hemorrhage of blood, according to the experts of the time, render Jesus ritually impure. Contact with a woman bleeding like this could make Jesus unable to enter the Temple for prayer. So, she was only going to touch the tassel. Grace goes out from the Sacred Heart to cure this woman.
It sounds heartless when those people come up and say that she is already dead; don’t bother because the daughter is dead. Perhaps it was heartless but people will always say heartless things. Perhaps they were saying that she is now a cadaver and if Jesus came into contact with a cadaver He would be made ritually impure and won’t be able to go into the Temple. Remember the Parable of the Good Samaritan? The priest walked right by.
“Oh look, there is a cadaver and if I touch him I can’t go to the Temple. I will be ritually impure.”
How many Catholics make themselves cadavers when Our Lord is offered in Holy Communion, Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity? How many Catholics proceed to Communion yawning because of the failure to appreciate the power of His Blood to intercede on our behalf? The only thing that will keep us that from turning into the zombies that this world wants to make of us is the Blood of Christ. I am not using that term inappropriately. Cadavers that walk around in modern parlance are called zombies and catholic who do not receive Our Lord regularly in Holy Communion are zombies, the walking dead. Catholics who do not worthily receive Our Lord and understand that He wants us to surrender ourselves to Him so He can raise us up and transform us… then why in the world do these Catholics approach the Altar for Holy Communion?
The blood transfusions prolonged my father’s life during his bout with a disease that afflicts the blood. The effects of Original Sin will continue to affect you and me until the day we die and the only thing that will help us to combat these effects are the graces that flow from the Heart of Christ in His Most Precious Blood, specifically Communion and Confession. How many Catholics try to receive Our Lord during the week when possible or regularly go to Confession? The blood of so many is important to God but the Blood of His Son is most important. The woman who was hemorrhaging understood this and so did that Synagogue family.
She said, “If I but touch His clothes I shall be cured.” Immediately her flow of blood dried up and she felt in her body that she was healed of her affliction.
In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit
Amen