Father Paul Weinberger, Pastor
St. William Roman Catholic Church
Greenville, Texas
6th Sunday in Ordinary Time
February 12, 2006
Jesus, moved to pity, stretched out His hand and touched him and said to him, “I do will it; be made clean.” The leprosy left him immediately and he was made clean.
In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit
Amen
The cure of this leper is connected with the first reading from the Book of Leviticus. It is a little early to be faced with the first lines of the first reading telling us that if someone has a scab on his skin or a pustule, which appears to be the sores of leprosy, you might be thinking that you would rather go back to Him talking about exorcisms like last Sunday. But Our Lord cures many lepers in the Gospels. In fact, look at the way the reading ends today. Jesus remained outside towns in deserted places. He exchanged place with the leper that He cured. The leper went into the city and Jesus was exiled in a sense, after His cure of the leper.
Who can think of cures without thinking of the many cures which Our Lord continues blessing with people today at Lourdes. You will see over there are the statues of Our Lady of Lourdes and St. Bernadette, which will remain there for the rest of the weekend. They will come down next week but were up for yesterday’s Feast Day. February 11, 1858 was the first time Our Lady appeared to St. Bernadette in the south of France. We recall one of many accounts where St. Bernadette had to give to public authorities such as the police and the church authorities as well as her family. Again and again she had to repeat what had happened on that day, February 11, 1858. Here is part of what she reported.
I had gone down one day with two other girls to the bank of the River Gave, when suddenly I heard kind of a rustling sound. I turned my head toward the field by the side of the river but the trees seemed quite still and the noise was evidently not from them. Then I looked up and caught sight of the cave where I saw a lady wearing a lovely white dress with a bright belt. On top of each of her feet was a pale yellow rose, the same color as her rosary beads.
St. Bernadette is being very descriptive. We are very grateful that our Lady appeared to St. Bernadette and not to a fourteen year old Frenchman, Bernie. At the end of the day Bernie goes home and his mother asks while at dinner how his day was. He mutters that if was fine and then she asked if anything happened and he just says “no.” That is what we would have heard about Our Lady appearing at Lourdes if she’d appeared to a boy, but instead St. Bernadette goes into tremendous detail about the lady’s lovely white dress and belt and roses which she described as pale yellow and on top of each foot. She even describes the rosary beads being the same pale yellow.
Our Lady appeared in the south of France to give France and the world hope that they had not been separated from Christ by something as ignominious as the French Revolution of 1789. Yesterday, February 11,in 1906, Pope St. Pius X published a letter to the people of France, “Vehementer Nos”, in which he lamented how the government of France was persecuting the Catholic Church in France and how the government wanted to totally separate the church from the state and the pope warned against exactly that.
This document can be found at the link below.
http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius10/p10law.htm
There are many people in our country that think it is a wise thing to separate the Church from the state; that the Church and the state must be separated because it says so in the Constitution or Declaration of Independence but neither of those documents mention separation of Church and state. The phrase comes from a private letters of one of the founding fathers here; there can be no official establishment of religion. In the same tone there can be no official persecution of religion in our country.
With the French Revolution things were changing for the eldest daughter of the Church. France had been loyal for centuries and a close collaborator with the Church but now felt herself totally separated, isolated and alone. In 1909, several years after the death of St. Therese, Pope Pius X wrote that France was taking a very great risk in separating herself from the Church. Things had settled down a bit after the concordat with Napoleon; things had kind of leveled off. Anti-catholic persecutions began anew in 1906 in France to totally sever any ties with the church.
The second to last time that Our Lady appeared to St. Bernadette was the Feast of the Annunciation and revealed to Bernadette that she was the Immaculate Conception. Below the statue of Our Lady on your bulletin, you can see the words written in a mixture of French and Spanish.
I Am the Immaculate Conception
The angel said to Our Lady at the Annunciation 2000 years ago that with God all things are possible. And, what pope St. Pius X was warning about, 100 years ago yesterday in his “Vehementer Nos”, is that without God all things are permitted.
WITHOUT GOD ALL THINGS ARE PERMITTED!
Without God you can marry a giraffe or a zebra; you can marry someone from your immediate family and you can marry more than one person. Without God everything is permitted. That is only the tip of the iceberg and we see it in our own country where people have no connection whatsoever with God or religion and they can do as they please…but with terrible consequences. If without God, everything is permitted, then the consequences of those actions will come very quickly as well. Pope St. Pius X was telling France and the rest of the world that God had sent His Blessed Mother to the south of France in 1858 to be a sign of hope and that they were not outside and exiled as lepers were exiled at the time of Christ or Moses, but that they were very dear to the Lord. God set His Blessed Mother to be an ambassador of that tremendous good will. Leprosy…leprosy in our time is treatable but at the time of Christ it was not. It is also known today as Hansen’s disease.
About three weeks ago I mentioned to you that a very dear friend of mine could have very easily passed away. She is eighty-two and use to teach at a Medical school at the graduate level. Since the beginning of the novena to Our Lady of Lourdes she has rallied and is miraculously growing stronger every day. You may or may not have noticed the new shelves here that hold the statues. I had them installed this week in her honor. I donated them in honor of her miraculous recovery, but even these shelves are a miracle. I am glad you are sitting down. I talked to the contractor on Monday and we decided on the project. He promised to do it a certain way and to come up here at certain times and leave at certain times. He finished by Friday and what do you know, it all happened as promised. I refuse to give anyone the name of this contractor. Don’t even try! [Laughter] I attribute this miracle to Our Lady of Lourdes. You try doing that with a contractor; it is just not possible.
The Blessed Mother at Lourdes has been the ambassador of so many physical cures and yet most of the cures at Lourdes are cures of a spiritual nature; people recognize how ill they really are through sin. If you know nothing about leprosy, it is enough to know that leprosy attacks the body when untreated. A nose can be attacked and disintegrate leaving nothing but a hollow nasal cavity exposed. Ears can be attacked and fall off; the same with fingers, toes, feet and the limbs. It is a terrible thing.
At the time of Christ, lepers were exiled away from civilization without any hygiene and exposed to the elements and wild animals. Normally people could smell a leper approaching before they saw them because of the smell of rotting flesh. This is why they were isolated according to the Book of Leviticus. When Jesus reached over and touched the leper and cured him, this was quite amazing.
St. Francis recalled with great shame, the day he met a leper, who extended his rotting hand to St. Francis and the saint turned away. He turned back, recognizing that he had missed an opportunity to honor Christ. St. Francis bent down and covered that hand with kisses. This ambassador of God covered that foul smell coming from the flesh. St. Francis understood that Christ was offering him the opportunity and he was not going to pass it up. That was in the 12th century.
About the same time Our Lady was appearing to St. Bernadette in the 19th century, a priest left Belgium, which is a neighbor to France, and traveled half way around the world to Hawaii. This priest was Blessed Damien De Veuster, a priest of the Sacred Heart Missionaries, and he went to the island of Molokai to serve and spend the rest of his life. Shortly after that time it was made impossible for him to leave the island, which was filled with those who had leprosy. Little babies that were diagnosed with leprosy were literally taken from the arms of their mothers and left on the island, as well as children, teenagers, adults and senior citizens. The moment that the leprosy was detected they were ushered off to Molokai never to leave.
There were no homes on the island and they had to make crude huts or live in caves; something like on Gilligan’s Island but nothing that convenient. Children were exposed to the abuse of some of the adults and men and women were all mixed together. There was no regular food service or medical care. These supplies were merely dropped lie garbage onto the island.
Very much like Our Lady went to the grotto in the south of France, Blessed Damien went to the island to spend the rest of his life. He began to construct homes for them as well as a hospital and clinic. He built separate homes for the men and women. Bl. Damien taught the children their prayers and taught them about God. What is worse than having leprosy? Being abandoned is worse. Soon others came to help the priest such as Blessed Marianne Cope, who was beatified less than twelve months ago.
To live on the island during this time meant that the people had a priest for the first time. The life of Bl. Damien was one of solitary work in the vineyard of the Lord. At first there were no priests who would join in. They knew if they went to the island that they would never leave. After Blessed Damien was there for several years he was to receive a visit from his bishop and this meant that another priest would be on the island. It also meant that Bl. Damien, who heard confessions, could have his own confession heard.
I will just pause here and say that at that time in the 19th century that is was evidently possible, because today with the new Code of Canon Law, a bishop cannot hear the confession of his priests. A bishop has to be very impartial in the treatment of his priests. There is a wall of separation according to the Code of Canon Law, which does not allow a bishop to hear the confession of one of his priests because he must be impartial. I tell you this so you can brace yourself. There is a case going forward to the Supreme Court, which began in California in the Archdiocese of LA. Cardinal Mahoney has stated that he believes that there is this wall of separation between Church and state and that the state cannot go into these archives, these records of conversations between bishops and priests. It is so easily shown that other diocese do not hold to this.
The D.A. of Dallas, Bill Hill, investigated our own diocese in the last twelve months. He went in to look at all of those archives and files between the bishops and the priests. How many times have I gone to confession to the present bishop or the previous one? None! I am sure they also think that is ok too. There is a wall there for the protection of the priest and the protection of the bishop, but it is dangerous for a cardinal of the Church to promote something like this because people can see that he is comparing the Seal of confession with the conversations between the priest and his bishop. That puts the Seal of Confession in peril. A prince of the church has served no one.
Getting back to Hawaii, which is just off the coast of California, when Damien’s bishop arrived he didn’t disembark. Damien rode out to meet him in a small boat to pick him up and take him to the island. The captain of the ship, who was surrounded by his men would not allow the bishop to enter the small boat. If he entered the small boat and came in contact with Damien and the other on the island, he could never leave. This news was communicated to Blessed Damien and when he heard this he began to sob because of the slight of his people as well as the fact that he wanted to go to confession himself.
Blessed Damien requested and received permission to make his confession to his bishop from his small boat. He yelled out his sins to the bishop, who was standing there with the captain and his men. He yelled out his sins the way you and I whisper our sins in the confessional. Why would he do that? He understood that leprosy is to the body is what sin is to the soul; sin left unchecked will eat away at the very soul of a person. The person’s soul that was made clean at baptism becomes impure and rotten with the accumulation of so many sins. Blessed Damien believed this enough to actually walk the walk and talk the talk to the point that he was willing to go to confession in such a manner.
The fact that he wanted nothing to do with sin and so humble himself in this fashion in order to receive the touch from our Lord in the Sacrament of Confession, which would restore his soul to health, is quite impressive. It should especially impress those who give themselves permission, which no one can give, in which they absent themselves from frequent Sacramental Confession. Oh, I don’t mean when they fill up the church and someone waves their hand and says after this wave that they are all forgiven. No, I am talking about individual auricular Sacramental Confession as is stated in Misericordia Dei by Pope John Paul II. You see, the Lord wants the Church to continue taking spiritual lepers under her care.
That friend of mine who was very ill and is now miraculously recovering, when young her father was one of the chief surgeons in San Antonio, Texas. He had the care of a leprosarium and would go there on a regular basis and volunteer his services. When she was old enough, he would take his little girl, the youngest of two daughters with him to the leprosarium to show her how fortunate she was have her health and to show her the plight of these lepers; most especially he showed the lepers how much he loved them by bringing her with him. He was not merely taking care of their physical needs but also seeing to their spiritual needs as well.
The sight of someone with leprosy would give anyone pause. The sad state of someone with Hansen’s disease, which has gone untreated is a frightening site for the inflicted person as well as those who encounter them; and yet if we could only understand that our souls can be so disfigured by sin when we are far from Confession, we would run with speed to the Sacrament of Our Lord’s Divine Mercy. As often as this is preached, people turn away from confession and say they don’t need it.
It is interesting that in the Office today we began the Book of Proverbs and God is speaking to those who refuse His counsel and refuse to turn away from sin. This is part of that reading today.
Because I called you and you refuse, I extended My hand and no one took notice because you disdained all My counsel and my reproof you ignored. I in turn will laugh at your doom. I will mock when terror overtakes you. When terror comes upon you like a storm and your doom approaches like a whirlwind and the stress and anguish befall you, then they call Me but I answer not. They seek Me but find Me not. Because they chose knowledge and not the fear of the Lord; they ignored My counsel, they spurned all my reproof and in their arrogance they preferred arrogance and like fools they hated knowledge.
He says that terror comes upon you like a storm. When the French Revolution separated Church from state it separated individual Catholics from their faith. In the heart of Paris is that beautiful Church, the Cathedral of Our Lady, Notre Dame. The revolutionaries went into that Church and went up to the Tabernacle, removed the Blessed Sacrament and threw the Blessed Sacrament on the ground in sacrilegious outrage. Then they rededicated the Cathedral and called it the “Temple of Reason.” They took paper mache and molded it into a large statue and called it the “Goddess of Reason.” They said that they disconnected with God and would only connect with reason. Without God everything is permitted and so they did these terrible things. Perhaps you have seen the façade of Notre Dame; it is lined with carved statues all the way across and side to side with the kings of the Old Testament. In the ignorance of these revolutionaries, they severed the heads from the bodies of the kings. They thought they were the kings of France but how ignorant they were in their wisdom, foolish arrogance, and folly.
The Lord says very directly that if we will not listen to His counsel that He will laugh at our doom. If we don’t care for our souls while we live and do not turn to Our Lord and ask Him to touch our soul and make it pure, then we will appear before God as the leper appeared before Jesus. At the end of our lives we will appear before God and what a sad thing it will be when we appear so totally disfigured for having followed our will and not His own.
With God all things are possible; without god all things are permitted. This year, 206 is the 100th anniversary of the canonization of fourteen women that lived just outside Paris. They were the Carmelites of Compiegne. As a result of the French Revolution and their foolish arrogance and ignorance, they dragged these women from their convent and eventually tried them in the Revolutionary Court and sentenced them to death using the guillotine. And this was done because their crime was that they would not sever their connection with God. These sisters were obviously praying and interceding before the Lord for all of France. The sisters went singing to their execution; they were joyful in going to their execution because they knew that they were prepared. They had not severed their connection with God and France would learn much after the fact, that without God everything is permitted, even the callous killing of fourteen beautiful Carmelites, a treasure in any state. But the French Revolutionary government saw them as insurrectionists and could not abide them and so they were sentenced to die.
Without God everything is permitted. Our country is going down the road of separating from God. Many around us consider those who pray daily a fanatic, anyone who receives the Sacraments, a fanatic or some kind of oddball and yet Our Lord is to be found in prayer and the Sacraments. A correct understanding of the Sacraments, especially the Sacrament of His Divine Mercy is that He reaches out His hand and touches the penitent and says to Him,
I do will it; be made clean
At that point the leprosy of the soul then sin leaves the person and is immediately made clean.
Jesus moved to pity stretched out His hand and touched him and said to him, “I do will it; be made clean.” The leprosy left him immediately and he was made clean.
In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit
Amen