Father Paul Weinberger, Pastor
St. William the Confessor Catholic Church
Greenville, Texas
23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time
September 10, 2006
They were exceedingly astonished and they said, “He has done all things well; He makes the deaf hear and the mutes speak.”
In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit
Amen
Last week I surprised myself. I was able to get through a minefield and talk about some very important issues concerning catholic universities. Don’t worry, I am not breaking my arm, patting myself on the back. Over a year ago when I spoke on the same topic I didn’t do so well. I tried relating all of this yesterday at the 4 pm Mass and did a terrible job. I think I can straighten it out today.
Over a year ago I mentioned specifically Catholic U, Georgetown, and Notre Dame University and the problems that these universities are facing. I guess it resonated with my love for the Church but especially my upbringing that says that you always defend the “lady”. Of course, Notre Dame is named for Our Lady. The name Notre Dame means “Our Lady”. I mentioned last week the problems these universities were having and I mentioned them anonymously. But over a year ago I mentioned it specifically and really left these universities no alternative except to close their doors and dismantle. What do you know…they didn’t do that? I am so powerful.
Also, to my discredit I never wrote a letter to those universities expressing my concerns with the issues I brought up last week. The fact is, those universities are not perfect and are making progress I pray. But what an insult it was to one who might be sending a child there or someone who is connected to the university. So, this is my public apology, or “eating crow” if you will. I made the comments publicly and must apologize publicly. Last week after having done it without naming names, I wondered why I could not have done that over a year ago when I spoke about it. So, a little humble pie before noon doesn’t break the fast.
Before I came here to St. William’s I was at Blessed Sacrament and we offered a Monsignor Botik Lecture Series sponsored by Catholics United for the Faith. Once during the series we probably had one of the most distinguished figures in all of Catholic universities in America. Dr. Ralph McInery came on the Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas to speak on St. Thomas himself. What an honor and what a tremendous Catholic Philosopher. He has been working at the University of Notre Dame forever.
Perhaps you have had the same things happen to you that I have experienced many times. You will be driving along minding your own business and then see something that looks totally out of place and tremendously ugly and you wonder if it is some thing they store nuclear waste or spent fuel rods in. Then you turn the corner and see that it is either that or a Catholic Church. Right? Modern architecture for Catholic Churches in this country and in others is just terrible. There is one School of Architecture in the USA that has a return to classical architecture in building modern Catholic Churches. Duncan Stroik at the University of Notre Dame is a wonderful architect and I have admired his work for years. I bring up two very clear examples of something they are doing that make them stand out, head and shoulders above the other Catholic universities.
This reminds me of something that happened to me last week while I was away in Alabama. Two spiritual children of mine, former parishioners are in the convent in Hanceville, Alabama. I went there to witness one of the spiritual daughter’s Profession of Temporary Vows. It takes eight years to be a permanent member of that Order. It was beautiful. I was able to spend time with the family of these two spiritual daughters. Since I was there several months ago they have added goats, chickens, ducks and other livestock. There aren’t many but if you have a few it is amazing how they multiply. They also have two donkeys, imagine a donkey called Rose and a gray one called Colette.
The first day I drove out for a visit something happened to Colette, which seems to never happen. I got out of the car and was looking at all the animals and all of a sudden Colette saw me and wouldn’t stop braying. The family made the remark that this had never happened before and was odd. I had my suspicions, which were confirmed the next day when I drove up and got out of my car. I didn’t go to visit the animals on this day but from a distance Colette saw me and was braying, calling me…recognizing a brother when he saw one. Donkeys are known for their stubbornness and so am I. It takes a lot to penetrate my hard head. Fortunately I am a Catholic and am blessed to receive the Sacraments frequently so God can work through any deafness or blindness on my part and eventually show me the light.
When I was preparing my homily for today I was thinking of how on this day in 1870, Pope Pius IX received a personal letter delivered by King Victor Emanuel II. This king was trying to unite Italy. Up until that time Italy had been just separate countries, separate nations on that long boot and two islands. King Victor united Italy the same way Bismarck united the nation states of Germany. Neither Germany nor Italy was united until the 19th Century.
The king sent the pope a letter because the pope had a piece of Italy called the Papal States. The king was going to help the pope save face by entering Rome with the pope’s blessing. He could either have the pope’s blessing or it could be messy! Pius IX didn’t believe in letting go of the Papal States so he opted to do it in the less delicate manner that was proposed by King Victor. On this day in 1870 Pius IX said,
“I am no prophet nor am I a son of a prophet but, I will tell you now that your army will never enter Rome.”
Nine days later they entered and took Rome and unified Italy. Evidentally the pope was fallible, which is very interesting because just as Garibaldi was entering Rome the bishops of Vatican Council I were going out the other door. What was affirmed or ratified at Vatican I was Papal Infallibility, which is very interesting. The pope had prophesied but he was wrong, he was fallible. Infallibility involves Faith and Morals but what the pope said in response to the King's letter wasn’t said on the basis of Faith and Morals. It is an interesting contrast.
To look at the life of Pope Pius IX on the basis of that prophesy and declare him not worthy of the Chair of St. Peter is kind of like what I was doing to Notre Dame, Catholic U and Georgetown. Those universities are Catholic and they have non-Catholic and Catholics there, but they are universities that need our attention; all universities need our attention in order to help them proclaim the truth.
When I was in Alabama I was able to see a friend of mine that had come over from Atlanta, who is a priest in that Archdiocese. We were talking and a third priest walked up, whom we didn’t know. He told us he was from the diocese in which Notre Dame is located so we tied him up, hitched him to our bumper and dragged him around the parking lot. We were roasting him for the things that have gone on at Notre Dame. We were discussing the Monologues and he said that Bishop Darcy spoke to some people at Notre Dame and they are no longer hosting this play. There is progress being made but every Catholic university should strive to be better.
I have to say that this is a wrong that needs to be corrected on my part. It is amazing how God can break through my deafness.
On the front of the bulletin is a picture of the Triumph of the Cross. Look closely and you can see some of the saints in Heaven. Can you find the fish or the Indian and the canoe? The fish is at the bottom of the Cross on the right side. Sitting on the fish is obviously Jonah with his back to us and up in the far right are two people without clothing and they are obviously Adam and Eve. They are a respectful distance. Down in the front in the center with no shirt, reading the Bible is St. Jerome. This picture is of the Triumph of the Cross and there are many saints surrounding it.
To view the picture please click on the link below
http://romansacristan.blogspot.com/2006 ... cross.html
On the Feast of the Triumph of the Cross I nearly left the seminary. This was in 1982. I remember this very well because I was in the seminary almost a whole month at the time. Eventually I was there seven years. On this Feast Day in 1982 we’d all settled into our benches in the circle shaped seminary chapel at Holy Trinity. This is near that other great “shrine” in Irving…Texas Stadium, which kind of looks like a modern Catholic Church but prettier. Now I don’t remember everything but I do remember this. The deacon, who later went on to become a priest got up to read the Gospel and preach the homily but before he did he left the pulpit and walked over and pressed this button. It was either a cassette deck or an 8-track player; remember this was 1982 when 8-tracks were still the cutting edge, so I am told.
When the deacon pressed the button the huge speakers that were for use with the electric organ, began to blare out the entire song from the rock group, Queen called ”We are the Champions.” I was fit to be tied and that is when I nearly left the seminary. You can see that I didn’t because they eventually ordained me.
What an abuse!
Yesterday I tried to detail the first million things that I can find wrong with the Catholic Church and how it has impacted someone I love or me in the last forty-seven years. I could name them and then speak on them at length. So there are a million reasons why I should walk out that door and never enter a Catholic church again. But then on the other side of the scale there are the Eternal Graces that come from receiving Our Lord just once in Holy Communion or the other six Sacraments. Of course I can’t get married so I will limit myself to the other five.
Experiencing Our Lord and His Sacramental Presence in Holy Communion outweighs all the times that those who make up the Church have let me down and disappointed me in one way or another. St. Paul says it this way;
The sufferings of the present life are nothing compared to the glory to be revealed in Christ.
He is referring to the Triumph of the Cross. Each one of the people in this picture on the bulletin is a depiction by the artist of someone who really had a difficult time and was no doubt disappointed by the members of the Church or family members. These saints persevered to the very end and now they are experiencing the glory that St. Paul speaks of in his writings.
Several Sundays ago I spoke of St. Augustine, who is one of the saints pictured around the Triumph of the Cross. He was someone who really struggled with his weaknesses and met them head on. Until he was thirty he was a regular at sitting against chastity, which are sins against the proper use of sexual powers. In his Confessions, St. Augustine writes about how he used to pray at that time. He would say,
Lord, give me chastity but not yet.
A beautiful prayer, right? You will find it on page six of your bulletin. NO, it is not here…of course it is NOT there; it is a terrible prayer but he writes of it to show us how deaf and blind he was. After his conversion he was incredibly different. He writes in the Confessions how God broke through and pierced his deafness. It is amazing how he opened his eyes and loosed his tongue. This saint speaks so eloquently of God because God penetrated the gloom and darkness of his soul, heart and mind; his whole life. The Confessions are amazing to read and this is why so many for generations have been drawn to his book, Confessions.
Someone who is a self declared Augustinian is our current pope, Pope Benedict XVI. He loves St. Augustine and recently wrote on the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the Liturgy of the Hours, or the Divine Office as it is described there in the bulletin. The pope specifically stated last week that he singled out the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the Divine Office as being in a sense, head and shoulders above the rest. These are to be prized by us as Catholics. He referred to them as “zones of freedom or liberty.” If you think of this in terms of going on a long trip, they would be called “rest stops.” On a long trip we generally get out to stretch our legs and get fresh air. We want to get out of the vehicle and get back to being a regular human being instead of being attached to a mechanical vehicle.
When the pope refers to the Mass and the Liturgy of the Hours he calls them “zones of freedom.” This pope as well as Pope John Paul II have hearts of a poet. He identifies the reason why we are so insistent on praying the Divine Office. Priest and men and women religious vowed to pray the Divine Office everyday. The Office consists mainly of the Psalms. As a devout Jew, Jesus prayed all 150 Psalms everyday. The Psalms are a treasure for us because Jesus has already made them special by His use. It is like the Lord’s Prayer, He gave it to us. The example He gave to us in praying the Psalms throughout the day is special. The Liturgy of the Hours start in one place and then as the world turns and the sun passes across different nations; they begin the next set of the Liturgy of the Hours. It is as if a chain of prayer is surrounding and embracing the world in this prayer.
There has been a lot of talk about the space shuttle going up recently, and they talk about how much work this takes to make it happen. Invariably you will see on the news the astronauts and they are floating around in some chamber at NASA, where there is no gravity. They are floating and doing back flips. Of course this is costing us a million dollars a second to do but they are having fun. For them this is a “zone of freedom.” This is a good image of a zone of freedom. One that would resonate better is the maximum-security prisons here in this country. Prisoners are locked in their cells and food is delivered to them. All that they need is right there. They have no contact with anyone else but the guards except for that one-hour a day when they can leave the cell and go into the prison yard to exercise. It would be as if they were also allowed to soar into the air with their own wings under their own power and go wherever they wish and then return in an hour. That would be a good example of how we should value the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the Liturgy of the hours.
The exact opposite is true of Catholics; we so often see Mass as an obligation. Priests also see this as an obligation. Look at the Sacrament of Confession. The Confessional is viewed more like the penalty box in hockey as opposed to a place where someone loosens your handcuffs and sets you free. It is a “zone of freedom”, but by priests scheduling Confessions for thirty minutes a week or by appointment, we show ourselves to be unconvinced that these are capable of bringing to us the Messiah. In the First Reading today the Prophet Isaiah shows all the signs of the Messiah and that these are the great things that will note His coming. When He comes today we expect no miracles, no insights or no epiphany. We see the Sacraments or the Liturgy of the Hours merely in mechanistic terms and so we are not changed or transformed. This is why I love that prayer on the last page by Pope Benedict. After receiving Holy Communion we read in the last line,
“Lord, please raise me up and transform me.”
This is an invitation to have Him penetrate my stubborn dispositions or my difficult personality, or whatever you want to call it…and I am sure you do! [Laughter] The Sacraments are zones of freedom, especially the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the Liturgy of the Hours, which are ways in which Our Lord can break through. You can feel Him loosening the tongue of the mute and opening the ears of the deaf and the eyes of the blind if we allow Him this opportunity. The very opposite is true of sin. Sin is all around us and so pervasive; we are individuals living in the world.
The Divine Office Ordo can be found at the link below
http://www.semperficatholic.com/page23.html
Sin is all around us and so pervasive; we are individuals living in the world. After Garabaldi took control of Rome and unified Italy Pope Pius IX told all the Italian Catholics that they would not be involved in politics. They would only be involved in politics locally because of what had happened; they came in and unified Italy and took the Papal States. What happened was, people elected anti-Catholics. Duh! Right? Saying that they couldn’t participate as a Catholic in the national political races in Italy was a mistake made by the pope, one that opened the door to Mussolini and fascism later on. It weakened the Church. When they saw the advent of fascism and Mussolini they began to allow Catholics to enter political races and they were elected but a lot of damage had already been done.
The fact that we can wall ourselves off, and I am speaking of personal experience, the bright hope is that I get to offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass everyday and receive Holy Communion and pray. I think that if the pope was questioned on it, I bet he would include personal prayer and the Holy Rosary as being in a zone of freedom.
Whenever you read the life of St. Padre Pio you notice that when he wasn’t chewing someone out in the Confessional because they needed to hear it, he was praying the Rosary. When he wasn’t offering the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, you always saw him with the Rosary. He never wasted a minute because he was evidentially suffering so much that he wanted relief and it would only come in prayer.
I was speaking recently with a woman who said that every minute of every hour of every day she is in constant physical pain. Author her friend is always near by, meaning arthritis. She said that the only two minutes out of 168 hours that she is pain free is at Mass during the Consecration. This is amazing and she is someone who understands what is involved in the Triumph of the Cross depicted on the front of the bulletin. She is carrying her cross and realized she had to be open to it; she looks forward to attending Mass and not because she will be pain free for two minutes but to meet Our Lord. Our weakened human natures, our sins and our problems can shackle us like handcuffs can shackle a prisoner. It is compared to being handcuffed to someone who is dead and in the gutter; they are more than you can carry or drag.
Our Lord doesn’t want us to have that kind of life but He wants to set us free as with the deaf man who had the speech impediment. Jesus, as the Messiah loosed his tongue, opened his ears and restored the man giving him the freedom that God desired him to have. God desires all of us to have this freedom but He won’t force it on us. He will penetrate the darkness of our lives with His grace but he calls us to live a very different life from the kind of life mentioned in that list of sins we discussed last week. All of those sins can make man impure.
When I think of those sisters in Hanceville, as well as the men and women religious around the world running to prayer, it is no doubt their prayers as well as those who receive the Eucharist throughout the week that maintains our world. We have a fragile peace and 9/11 comes to mind. Last week the Israelis pulled out of patrolling the coastline of Lebanon and that is a plus. We have not had another attack in the USA in the past five years and that is a definite plus. There are so many plusses. How is it that we do not destroy ourselves? I have to say it is because of the prayers of the religious and committed people around the world who receive Our Lord and offering the most beautiful prayers on behalf of the world.
They were exceedingly astonished and they said, “He has done all things well; He makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.”
In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit
Amen