Fr. Paul Weinberger
St. William’s Catholic Parish
Greenville, Texas
March 3, 2006
1st Sunday of Lent
The Spirit drove Jesus out into the desert and He remained in the desert forty days tempted by Satan.
In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit
Amen
If you look at the bottom of the song we just sang in your Adoremus Hymnal, page 363, you will notice the text is ascribed to Pope St. Gregory the Great fourteen hundred years ago. Notice he speaks about some very great figures starting with Christ, who was led into the desert, Moses fasting, Daniel in the lion’s den, Elijah and his fasting, and St. John the Baptist. All these men were led into the desert just as Christ was. Moses going before pharaoh is in the Office of Readings today. He is given a difficult problem and it seems like there is no way for it to be resolved.
There is something very interesting on the first line of the Gospel today.
The Spirit drove Jesus out into the desert and He remained in the desert forty days tempted by Satan.
That is the Holy Spirit driving Jesus into the desert where Satan could tempt him? Very puzzling!
A couple of weeks ago I went to the hospital to see a little girl that belongs to this parish. Jacinta is seven years old and was having her appendix removed. Her sister that is twice her age had hers removed a couple of months ago so Jacinta knew it was going to hurt because her big sister mentioned how much it hurt. When I got to the hospital I found out that Jacinta had been up to a few tricks. There is a chart at the hospital that show from zero to five; this is a scale to show pain. Zero means no pain and five is terrible pain. They kept asking Jacinta where she was on the scale and she kept pointing to zero. She didn’t want to have the operation so she would point at zero. [Laughter] But, her white blood count and other information said that her appendix needed to come out and so they did.
Just before they took her away I managed to get there and anoint her. Just to clear something up…people think that if the doctor is assembled with all the nurses and are about to make the first incision and some shouts that Fr. Paul is here, that the Red Sea parts and I just walk through the emergency room. That is not the way it works. I have been told many times that I would have to wait. Fortunately I got there just before they took her away. Jacinta was there with her mom and dad but she is not use to having strange people come into her bedroom, which is what a room is at the hospital. They come in and poke and probe and do tests but her parents were there and it made all the difference in the world to her.
I gave Jacinta the anointing of the sick and just as I was putting my things away, I turned to Jacinta and she looked very worried. This is the same little girl that likes to run and jump and play with her brothers and sisters but now she is worried and not feeling so carefree. So I told her not to worry, that if worrying would help her then I would tell her to worry.
We just got finished with the Olympics, if there had been a category of “Worry”, my paternal grandfather would have several Gold Medals to his credit. He was a champion worrier; he worried about things like his garden, other people’s gardens, and people who didn’t have gardens. [Laughter] He worried about work and other people’s jobs etc. He was always worrying.
When I told Jacinta not to worry I told her if it would help I would tell her to worry, but I have had my own detour and not shown confidence in God’s providence. Those times all came rushing back to me; the times that I worried. Worrying is a desert in which we can wander about aimlessly and where we can also be sorely tempted again and again. It appears that this world is nothing more than pain, worry, and suffering.
Last night I was reading a recently released biography of Mao Tse-Tung , who was in charge of China. WHAT A WRETCH! Back in 1918 early in his writings this is what he wrote.
Some say one has a responsibility for history. I don’t believe it! People like me are building achievements to leave for future generations.
He is saying that he has no debt to the world and he doesn’t have to make things better for other people before he dies. It is kind of like the Tennessee Ernie Ford that came out in the 50s,
You load sixteen tons and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt.
It is just useless trying to get through this desert of a world. When Lenin died he was embalmed many times and put in a mausoleum and Mao and his entourage went by to see the whole display and Mao said the superb preservation of the corpse was only for the sake of others and irrelevant for Lenin. Once Lenin died, he felt nothing and it didn’t matter to him how his corpse was kept.
I also read last night that today is the day in which Stalin died in 1953. He had a stroke and the next day he died. All of these men believed that this was just a desert that was it. Of course they did what they could to make more areas of the world a desert with their atheistic communism.
Even as Christians we should see the world as a desert. This is not Heaven; I don’t care where you live or what your zip code or income is, it is still not Heaven. Because this is not Heaven and we know Heaven is a possibility and awaits us, we know we are in the valley of tears. We are here in a desert. Speaking of a valley of tears, the First Reading has Noah in the desert. I thought Noah had that business about a ship with all the animals? Well, the ocean can be a desert or a flood where you can’t find the shoreline can be a desert looming in every direction endlessly. Of course the dove was the resolution to that desert; it brought an olive branch to Noah. We know that the dove is a symbol of the Holy Spirit.
The Spirit drove Jesus out into the desert and He remained in the desert forty days tempted by Satan.
Why would the Holy Spirit drive Jesus into the desert just so he could be t-boned by the devil? St. Teresa of Avila was crossing a river and as a reformer of the Carmelite order she had to do that quite often. The river was swollen and there she was in her full habit from head to toe ad the horse and the saint barely made it to the other side and were soaked through and through. She had prayed to God for help in crossing so when she got to the other side she looked up to Heaven and said to God,
If this is the way You treat Your friends, no wonder You have so few.
She is a Doctor of the Church; she is someone who really depended on the Holy Spirit. Why in the world would the Holy Spirit do this to Jesus?
Last Saturday I was talking to some parishioners who had a very difficult problem. It is the kind of problem that no matter what the outcome, it appeared that no one was going to be a winner. It was going to be a lose-lose situation no matter how the problem was going to be resolved. As I left them I told them I was going right to the church and kneel in front of the tabernacle and say this prayer and I told them I wanted them to say the prayer the next time they were in Church in the Presence of the Blessed Sacrament. The prayer is based on John 16:23, where Jesus says that whatever you ask the Father in His Name that it will be given to you.
“God the Father, in the Name of Jesus, please send me the Holy spirit. Holy Spirit, please come into my life and into this very difficult problem and in a big way, help me to see the truth.”
I had my answer by Monday morning. UPS can’t do better than that. The answer was just delivered to me. The problem that appeared to be a lose-lose situation actually turned out to be a very positive resolution for those who were involved. Having a personal problem or a problem of someone else set before you can be a desert; you can wonder through it and turn it around looking at it from all different angles and get no resolution…it is a desert in which you can wander. Take the desert of worrying, and problems can be a desert as well.
Friday night I went into Dallas, picked up my mom and we went over to a nursing home. There is a lady there, who is dying. She could have died by now.
My mom has known this lady for about twenty-three years and she calls my mom her “sister”. My mother’s only sister passed away about five years ago so this friendship has been a great solace for my mother. When we got to the nursing home the children of the lady were there. This lady has lung cancer and it has spread throughout her body. Just a few days ago they repaired her hip, which was another operation. Her daughter could only get her to eat a spoon full of food and her son was not successful in getting her to eat but a bite as well. No one survives on so little food or a sip of water here and there. The cancer has just ravaged her body and she will die soon.
About five years ago this lady had to bury her husband and before that she had to see him through the stages of Alzheimer’s, which is very difficult on the people caring for the patient. It isn’t so difficult for the patient because they are usually oblivious to what is going on. She took care of him in an exemplary way all the while considering how her children and grandchildren were feeling about all this. A year or two later her oldest son was diagnosed with brain cancer. She did the same thing she did when her husband was ill; she rallied the troops and helped with the medical care and organized a trip to Rome and Lourdes asking for miracles. The doctors couldn’t understand how his life had been extended because this particular kind of brain cancer just mows you down so quickly. Eventually he passed away and his mother stepped right up to help his widow and children. This lady is just worn out and has been wandering in a desert without her husband the past five years. You can throw on top of that the desert of suffering and constant pain, which she was able to hide very well.
Father says this on March 3, 2006. The lady he speaks about passed away last night, March 9, 2006. May she rest in peace.
The fact is, these are all different kinds of deserts and when the Holy Spirit sent the Lord into the desert where Satan tempted him, it was for our benefit. In the Office of Readings today St. Augustine, who is a Doctor of the Church, said this about Jesus having been tempted in the desert.
Jesus made us one with Him when He chose to be tempted by Satan. We have heard in the Gospel how the Lord Jesus Christ was tempted by the devil in the wilderness. Certainly Christ was tempted by the devil. In Christ you were tempted; for Christ received His flesh from your human nature but by His own power, gained salvation for you. He suffered death in your nature but by His own power gained life for you. He suffered insults in your nature but by His won power, gained glory for you. Therefore, Christ suffered temptation in your human nature but by His own power He gained victory for you. If in Christ we have been tempted, in Him we over come the devil. Do you think only of Christ’s temptation and fail to think of His victory? See yourself as tempted in Christ and see yourself as victorious in Christ. He could have kept the devil from Himself but if He were not tempted He could not teach you how to triumph over temptation.
This Doctor of the Church speaks very succinctly of temptation. Don’t forget the victory over temptation. This needs to be said because too often the other team can convince Catholics that temptation equals sin. We think if we were tempted then we must have sinned. Let me give you an example. Maybe you have this problem.
You get up in the morning and are having your first cup of coffee and looking out of the window. The same thing happens that happens every morning. Even though you have asked your neighbor to stop it, he opens the door and lets his little dog out and the dog walks across the street into your yard and walks through it. You have told the neighbor a million times that you don’t like this but he is still doing it. Now, did you cause that to happen? Of course not! In a similar way absolutely every day temptation comes our way just like the good comes through that yard every day. We didn’t ask for it to be delivered but it comes our way. Satan will tempt us but it is up to us to concentrate on who is at our side.
So far I have mentioned the First Reading and the Gospel but there has been no mention of the Second Reading in which St. Paul speaks about Baptism, which takes away Original Sin and all personal sin. For the first time in our lives, when we are baptized, the Spirit comes to take up residence in our souls. The same Holy Spirit that drove Jesus into the desert where Satan tempted Him comes to take up residence in our souls the day we are Baptized. This is a tremendous gift.
Earlier I was talking about people worrying; some people worry that the government is going to make us have a chip implanted somewhere in our body and worrying about the government getting too close. I guess that is a good concern. As far as a chip goes, it would have nothing on the Holy Spirit, which has been with us since the day we were Baptized. He is not implanted just below the surface of the skin; He is in our very souls. If the Holy Spirit is with us it doesn’t matter where we are in this desert or valley of tears, as long as He is in the driver’s seat. If the Holy Spirit isn’t driving and isn’t our counselor, then I am the counselor or worse, the other team is. With the Holy Spirit to help and guide me in prayer, fasting, and giving to the poor, I can make it through this Lent and come out on the other side having been tempted of course, but victorious. That is the whole idea of what Christ through His Church attempts to get across in these initial days of Lent. Jesus said,
When you pray go to your room, close the door and pray to your Father in private and your Father who sees what no man sees will repay you.
He is speaking of the inner room of our souls. This kind of approach to Lent is one that is leaning totally on the Holy Spirit. If the Holy Spirit drives you into the desert here or there you can be guaranteed that He will not leave you but will be there to guide you all the way through temptation to victory.
I have a friend and a while back she got a phone call on a Saturday morning. She told me that she never gets calls on Saturday morning. That morning she heard the phone ring and she let the answering machine pick up. She didn’t hear the message that was left. She started wondering what this message could be and started thinking about all kinds of different things that were going on and problems that were occurring and she convinced herself throughout the day that she knew what the message was. She thought maybe this had collapsed or that had blown up or something had not worked out and the situation was going to be just terrible so why even bother to listen to the message.
That evening she walked over to the machine and pushed play. A friend had called her early in the morning to wish her a nice day. [Laughter] She had made the entire day a desert. We don’t have to make the day a desert because it already is. She had worried herself into such a froth that the message was going to be terrible news. What we learn from this is, never wish anyone a nice day. [Laughter]
The Holy Spirit drove Jesus out into the desert but never left Him and St. Augustine tells us that if we remember His temptation let us not forget His victory. His victory is our victory. Yes, His temptation is there to demonstrate His power over it. Temptation does not equal sin but the other team would like us to consider that temptation equals sin.
I was talking to a mother once and she could have been my mother. She said that it was raining and the kids were screaming and she felt like getting up and walking out of the house and never going back. She was confessing it as a sin. I asked her if she’d left and she said of course she hadn’t. I told her that what she just confessed as a sin was called VIRTUE. Virtue is when we are tempted to do something and we don’t give into it and we fight against it. I am sure my mom was just the same way.
“I'll just fight against this and make Paul take a nap.”
[Laughter]
“But mom, I am eighteen!”
[Laughter]
This is how Satan can get in under the guise of temptation and he can convince us that our virtue, fighting temptation is actually a sin. That woman wanted to confess virtue. She had to fight the temptation she had about leaving and she did but she misunderstood temptation and was confessing it as a weakness.
The Holy Spirit won’t allow us to fall into such error but the other team hopes to trip us up because if virtue is later on recounted as sinful or vice, why get out of bed in the morning? Why bother? We bother because we know when we are out and about in this valley of tears, in the desert of problems and worries, suffering and death, the Holy Spirit is with us.
The Spirit drove Jesus out into the desert and He remained in the desert forty days tempted by Satan.
In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit
Amen