Fr. Paul Weinberger
St. William’s Roman Catholic Parish
Greenville, Texas
8th Sunday in Ordinary Time
February 26, 2006
But the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast on that day.
In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit
Amen
The first reading from the book of the Prophet Hosea, talks about the desert as a place of intimate conversation.
Thus says the Lord, “I will lead her into the desert and speak to her heart; she shall respond there as in the days of her youth when she came up from the land of Egypt.”
God was calling the Israelites out of Egypt into the desert. Some of those who were called out of Egypt raised their fists to Heaven, saying that God had called them to the desert so that He might torture them and kill them. What a terrible thing to say about God; that god would lead them into the desert to watch them writhe in agony and then do away with them.
When we look at the life of Jesus Christ before He began His public ministry, Jesus began by going into the desert voluntarily and secluding Himself there, where he fasted for forty days and nights from food and water. In the end of those days was when He was very tired and the devil began to tempt Him; when He was at His weakest, but He did not give in to temptation. So our little bitty attempt to imitate Christ by our fasting and abstinence during lent is merely a pale imitation of the beautiful fasting and prayer of Christ for us before He began His public work.
You will notice the schedule in your bulletin for Ash Wednesday. All of the Church, on Ash Wednesday will hear the same readings from St. Matthew’s Gospel, chapter 6. Jesus says these three things to you and to me as well as all Catholics around the world. He says that WHEN you fast…do it this way. WHEN you pray…do it this way. WHEN you give to the poor…do it this way. He is not inquiring as to whether we are going to; this is His expectation. WHEN you fast, WHEN you pray, WHEN you give alms to the poor are the words of Christ that we are going to hear very soon in the beginning of Lent. We should be prepared to fast, pray and give alms to the poor.
There are many things that go against what we are about to attempt. There are so many things that work against us during these forty days of Lent and so we have to be very supportive of each other and that we will indeed fast, pray, and help the poor.
On page seven of the bulletin I have listed two things that often get confused; fasting is confused with abstinence and abstinence is often confused with fasting. People are confused so they do absolutely nothing…absolutely nothing!
“I can’t figure this stuff out; it is just all a bunch of legal rules. Forget it!”
For some people this is what it comes down to. The very short version of abstinence is,
From age 14 to age 124 you may not eat meat on Ash Wednesday or on the Fridays of Lent.
You have to abstain from meat next Wednesday, two days later and every Friday during Lent. There are only forty days in Lent. This means no red meat, poultry, pheasant, duck, quail, platypus, elk, rhinoceros…I am sorry but people just get so bazaar about this stuff.
“ Oh no Father! It is ok to eat chicken! Some priest told me it was ok!”
As I have said before and I will say it again, I could find a priest that would tell me, Fr. Paul, that I could marry a giraffe as long as our house had very high ceilings.” I could find a priest that would tell me that and I wouldn’t have to look far and wide to find one that would tell me to go ahead. So, if you found a priest that gave you permission to eat meat and other stuff, I am not going to tell you to go ahead because it is not what the Church teaches. There were people before 1965 who had to fast and abstain every day during Lent, but we have to abstain from meat on Ash Wednesday and all Fridays of Lent.
We all have our morning rituals such as having juice, coffee, two pieces of toast and the newspaper. You watch; Ash Wednesday comes along and …
“Boy, I would like some bacon this morning.”
Or you find your care turning into the parking lot of cracker barrel, right? That ham smells so good. You never divert from your morning ritual but all of a sudden on the day you can’t have meat….Adam and Eve, call your office. Right? They could eat from all the trees in the garden; it was just that one tree they couldn’t eat from and what happened? Right! You may try to convince me that you can eat pork because it is not meat; tell that to the pig! Right? This is so small and yet Catholics raise their fists and shake it at God asking why He is torturing them. What is the deal?
“The Church says I have to eat fish on Ash Wednesday!”
No, it doesn’t! Eat vegetables! There was a time before ours when, during Lent you couldn’t eat eggs for forty days. It was very serious but now we have little baby steps of abstinence and fasting and we are dying. The fact is, we have to support each other in abstinence for a greater good. I remember when I graduated from grade school at St. Philips; I think we had thirty students in the class. Then I went to Bishop Lynch High School and thought it was great and it would be fun. In my freshman year we had Health class and the teacher that taught health was a coach and a big guy. He had this podium, this stand that he used to speak from. He would wrap his leg around it as though he was trying to climb a fireman’s pole. He would lean forward and we thought he would fall over but he never did. Then he would lean backward. I guess it was boring teaching us.
One day Coach left the room to go to the office and I thought this was my big chance, right? I went up to the front of the room and wrapped my leg around the podium and started leaning forward and backward and who walked in? Coach Blake!
“Weinberger! Sit down; you look ridiculous.”
He was right and I am so glad he didn’t kill me.
You might be at McDonalds or Wendy’s on Ash Wednesday or a Friday and you just took a bite of that hamburger when Father Paul shows up and asks if you are eating a filet of fish. With a mouth full you answer “Yes.” Then Fr. Paul asks why you are putting the rest back in the sack.
We all have to support each other. This stuff, especially abstinence is difficult to remember so we have to support each other; not because this is a way of God torturing us but because great good can come from a little discipline when it comes to our bodies. After Lent is over…you can read about this later but, no meat on those Fridays’ either.
“What? We don’t do that anymore! This is the first time I have heard of it!”
Really? Read! I mentioned it last year on the Sunday before Ash Wednesday and also the year before that so either you weren’t here or you were asleep. The way it works is that outside of Lent we are still bound to not eat meat on any Friday of the year. If you are fourteen or older, you have to abstain on Friday.
“Well, we have a trap door…we can do something else and go to the bbq.”
No…flag on the field. We have to do something else BEFORE we bite into that bbq or the steak or whatever. If you think it isn’t fair, then welcome to life. Again, we practice a little discipline during Lent and carrying it over after Lent. If you never heard about this then now you know.
Fasting…here is the short version of fasting.
AGE LIMIT for Fasting: from 18 years of age, to age 60.
“Oh, I just don’t know if I will be able to make it! Two whole days? The Catholic Church is so incredibly cruel and mean! Ash Wednesday and Good Friday both?”
Of course, nothing important happened on Good Friday, right? Wrong! Two days is all…the beginning and the end of Lent. It comes down to one regular size meal and the other two meals, if added together, would not equal or surpass the regular size meal. There is no snacking in between meals. There is a condition…
If you are sick or have a medical condition, which is hurt by fasting, DO NOT fast! You do not have to ask your Pastor’s permission. Why? Fasting is not designed as a punishment or a penalty. If fasting will make you physically ill, do not fast.
People who are diabetic have to eat many small meals and you might be taking medicine that you have to eat food with. Well, on Ash Wednesday it doesn’t mean you take that medicine with a hamburger, right? It just says take it with food. So, you don’t have to fast if you are under medical care that requires you to eat but you still have to abstain from meat. Be sensible.
What the Church is trying to do is get our bodies and souls moving in the direction of Christ. At the end of the Jubilee Year, January 6, 2001, Pope John Paul II wrote in his Encyclical that we must contemplate the Face of Christ. Prayer, fasting, and helping the poor are ways we can contemplate the Face of Christ, knowing how fortunate we are.
The magazine, Catholic World Report, came in the other day and I could barely look at it; I had to turn it over. One the front cover of the magazine was a little ten year old girl in some rotten country…not ours…where she is a slave and she must make bricks in order to support herself and her family. The article says that there are in the neighborhood of ten or twelve million just like her around the world. No, there are a lot more than that! Aren’t there a billion people in China? Try to go for a walk outside of China and see if you get shot. A billion people in China are prisoners so they are slaves. We are so fortunate. So, this is what we are focusing on during Lent; prayer, fasting, and giving to those in need. If we do this then we are contemplating the Sorrowful Face of Christ.
On the front of your bulletin this weekend are the Stations of the Cross, or seven out of fourteen of them. Chris did a very good job on this and Sandy Clark found the images. This is half of the stations and you will get the other half next Sunday. You can see in these images the voluntary suffering that Christ takes upon Himself. In the First station, Christ allows a human being to sentence Him to death. When we make the Way of the Cross, we are contemplating the Sorrowful Face of Christ.
On page eight of your bulletin you will see what is taken right out of the handbook, “Enchiridion of Indulgences.” Now, we talk a lot about indulgences here so we don’t have to go back through it but, if someone goes into the confessional and confesses, receives their penance, makes an Act of Contrition and then come out and find their child doing something they aren’t supposed to be doing or the child is sick so they taken them out of the Church. In the meantime they forget to do their penance.
So what about that penance that they have not done? It either has to be done here or on our way to Heaven. The sins have already been confessed but the penance hasn’t been done. What an indulgence does is to take away all temporal punishment due to sins already confessed. It sounds too good to be true! It comes from the power of the Keys. On the bulletin last week the picture depicted Jesus giving the Keys to St. Peter.
To you I will give the Keys to the Kingdom; whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in Heaven
We heard that gospel recently. Last Sunday we heard Jesus tell the man his sins were forgiven. For all those present, Jesus tells the man to rise, pick up his mat and walk. This is the power of Jesus to forgive sins, which He has given to His Church until He comes to judge the living and the dead. The indulgence connected to making the Stations of the Cross is something you and I can take advantage of every day of the year if we have sense about us. I can offer a plenary indulgence for the dearly departed or myself but I can’t offer it for you who are living. You can do that for yourself or the dearly departed.
When we read this concerning the indulgence attached to the Way of the Cross, we see how easy it is and some people may be shocked at how easy it is. St. Francis of Assisi first popularized making the Way of the Cross. He knew it was impossible for everyone to go to Jerusalem and walk in the footsteps of Our Lord. The introduction talks about this; when we make the Stations of the Cross we are following in the footsteps of Christ. I will skip down to number three of the norms for gaining this indulgence. The custom is that we usually have little booklets and they have pious readings and prayers in them. That is great and you can use them. The second paragraph of number three says,
But, in order to perform this devout exercise [of making the Stations of the Cross] it is required only that you devoutly meditate upon the Passion and Death of the Lord. It is not required that you meditate upon each of the individual Mysteries of the Stations (of the Cross)
So what is on the front cover of the bulletin isn’t necessary. Say you have kids or grandkids.
“Ok now kids, we are going to make the Way of the Cross but we aren’t going to use pictures.”
You start meditating and all of a sudden you hear the Barney Song coming from the kid. Uh huh, right! Kids are very visual and you have to kind of keep them focused, right? The Way of the Cross keeps them focused otherwise they are going to drift off and start singing nursery rhymes. You don’t have to use the pictures but they can be helpful. Look at number five and how the Church is bending over backwards.
#5. Persons who are legitimately prevented from fulfilling the above requirements can obtain this (Plenary) Indulgence if they at least spend some time in devout reading and meditation upon the Passion and Death of our Lord Jesus Christ (for example, a period of 15 minutes).
Fifteen whole minutes thinking about Jesus? Evidently we are Amish, we are just fanatics, right? Continuing with number five;
Those who would fall into this category would be any or all of the following: the sick or those who are shut-ins or those without a means of transportation or those who have the care of children or the sick.
Now this means that you don’t have to go to the church to make the Way of the Cross, you can do it at home and gain a Plenary Indulgence. Now, if you went out to Wal-Mart or out dancing later in the day, this kind of defeats the whole purpose. The Church is telling us that this privilege is given to one and all. The Church is a good Mother and teacher and She wants to help us during this Lent to make some new changes; to put new wine…the graces God wants to give us, into new wine skins. The Lord is asking us to submit a little bit of our will to Him.
If you do not fast, if you do not abstain, and do absolutely nothing, then you are just a bump on a log during Lent. By the time Good Friday comes and Easter Sunday arrives you won’t be the same you will be worse than you are at this moment now because you have just thrown Lent away. It is like a child at the table that is served a very good meal and he throws it in the face of his mother and father. Maybe we can understand a child doing that but to have a Lent laid out before us and to do nothing with it is to waste a spiritual gift that God is intent on giving us.
This Lent may be our last and who knows how many of us may not make it all the way through this Lent and live to see Easter Sunday. We have no control over when we live and die and so we make the best of this Lent beginning with our brothers and sisters around the world, supporting each other, teaching our children and grandchildren and supporting our brothers and sisters. This is not a penalty nor a punishment but something we take on voluntarily…taking on suffering. Isn’t that what parents do when they have children? They voluntarily take on suffering, right? Oh, a baby, right? You can imagine the joy with my parents! Thanks be to God that there are people who do voluntarily take on suffering.
Our Lord is asking us to use the suffering that we voluntarily take upon ourselves for beautiful new graces that He has in store for us.
But the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast on that day.
In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit
Amen