Father Paul Weinberger, Pastor
St. William Roman Catholic Church
Greenville, Texas
March 19, 2006
3rd Sunday of Lent
He was speaking about the Temple of His Body.
In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit
Amen
On Wednesdays we are discussing the book, “To Quell The Terror.” This was to put an end to the terror that was the French Revolution that began on Bastille Day, 1789, which was the beginning of modern times. The terror of the French Revolution was terrible for many reasons. There were a number of people who were killed and in the case that the book presents are the sixteen Carmelite sisters who went to the guillotine because they were Carmelites, who prayed for France and an end to the revolution.
The First Reading today is all about the Ten Commandments. If you will notice, there is no expiration date on the Ten Commandments and they still apply today. I know they have been on the shelf a long time but that is ok; they still apply. In the Gospel St. John mentions that Jesus was speaking about the Temple of His Body. The Ten Commandments help to order the body, the mind, and the soul to God and His Will.
I heard a story years ago about a woman, who went to Church with her in-laws on Sundays. On the drive to and from church, her in-laws used God’s Name in vain hundreds of times it seemed. I don’t mean the use of God’s name like some would use it and say,
“Oh, my God!” or “Oh, Jesus.”
No, it was the big one; saying God’s name and then calling down His damnation on someone or something. Some may think this doesn’t matter, but it does matter even in 2006! It is one of the Commandments so take it up with HIM. Ok? If you won’t take it up with Him now, you WILL take it up with Him one day. You can’t say that you haven’t been warned. How many television shows, movies, co-workers and even children take God’s name in vain?
“Well, that is ok…they mean well.”
Oh, I see! And HE doesn’t? And if you have just gotten into the habit of saying this, you need to get out of the habit. This is why we have Lent, to call to mind how we should organize and order our lives according to His Will.
The Temple in Jerusalem was fashioned in such a way that there were fewer and fewer people allowed to go forward and eventually the last person who could go forward to the very back of the Holy of Holies was the great High Priest. He could go into where God’s Presence dwelt. The entire Temple was configured in such a way as to prepare for entrance into the Holy of Holies. Just as this church has as it’s vanishing point, the tabernacle, God’s Presence in this Church. God’s presence is in the Tabernacle and these two sanctuary lamps proclaim His Real Presence; Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity. The temple of the Lord in Greenville, Texas is St. William the Confessor Catholic Church.
The Body is a Temple and Our Lord Himself teaches us this throughout the New Testament and in this Gospel in particular. How easy it is to give ourselves over to passions and desires; the warring of the members as St. Paul refers to it; so much so that it is like bringing dove and oxen, sheep and money changers into the Temple. It would be quite a smelly affair in this Church today if we brought in the oxen, sheep, doves, and moneychangers. It would be a den and then focus would not be on God and His Presence, it would be on all of the buying and selling. The buying, selling, and the money changing…there is nothing wrong with that…we just don’t do it in the Temple of the Lord… not in this Church. It also means that buying and selling has their place in our lives but cannot rule our lives. They cannot be they reason for doing something or for leaving something undone. So, these Ten Commandments are the way God wants us to organize our lives.
Maybe one quarter of the First Reading is about Sunday, the Sabbath day I should say. Of course for Christians it is the first day of the week, not the last day of the week. Did you notice in Genesis that after God spent six days creating, He rested on the last day? One went forward six days and then rested with the Lord; that is the Commandment. With Our Lord’s Death and Resurrection on the first day of the week, He made the first day of the week on Sunday, the day of rest.
William Bush points out that something as basic as the days of the week was changed by the French revolution. He talks about how the Revolutionaries wanted to wipe out even the seven day week because it would remind people of the seven day week in the Book of Genesis; it would remind people of the Commandments and God and they were trying to stamp any thought or consideration for God. Williams Bush says,
The revolution’s contribution to changing the ancient calendar was to wipe out the Jewish seven day week by dividing each thirty day month into three ten day weeks. These were called decades. Thereby disappeared all traces both of the Jewish Sabbath and the Christian Lord’s Day that commemorated the Resurrection of Jesus Christ on Sunday.
The French Revolution was trying to snuff out, stamp out any connection between France and the Church, France and God, France and Heaven. Terrible! The author mentions the life and death of King Louis XV of France. When the revolution began in 1789, France was just four years away from celebrating thirteen hundred unbroken years of service to the Church and Christ. That anniversary went down in flames because of the French Revolution.
Bush tells a story of Louis XV, who married a Polish woman and he took her as his queen, Queen Marie Lashinski and they had ten children. One of the children was a male heir, who didn’t live to maturity. After the tenth child was born the king bent down and kissed her on the forehead and dubbed her, La Derniere, the last one. It wasn’t because they couldn’t afford any more children, although palaces are so expensive and the money they want these days for servants is ridiculous. I don’t know how anyone can afford more than just a couple. Anyway, Louis bent down and named his tenth child, “The Last One.”
King Louis XV then turned his back on his wife and children and submerged himself in revelry and giving in to his passions. With all the palaces and money he was the most powerful king in the world and riding very high. He began to go after younger women in the court, such as Madame de Pompadour or Madame de Berri after his wife died and while she was still alive. It was a scandal to the queen, to their daughters and to France; it was an open scandal. I would say it was as open a scandal as the sex abuse scandal is today in the USA and known everywhere.
When King Louis XV’s wife died the four unmarried daughters were to assume her place in court but were waved aside for one of the ladies in the court, who had begun giving the king attention. Well, he was king and he could do as he pleased. His youngest daughter Madame Louise named for Louis was his favorite. The youngest child always is…don’t bother me trying to deny it, ok? [Laughter] At the age of thirty-three Madame Louise announced that she was entering the convent. Now, at the age of thirty-three that means she has grown up with a feather bed, servants, palaces and the finest food. She turned her back on all of that to enter the convent just outside of Paris, St. Denis. Saint Denis was the first archbishop martyred in France. The Carmel at St. Denis was her destination and she went into the Carmelite Convent, which would be like going into the Marines. It is a very rigorous discipline for women religious. The reform had begun under St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross.
This meant no more feather beds but instead, straw. The convent was probably not heated and the food was probably from basic to deplorable at times and no refrigeration for it. There was hours and hours of servile work and then six or seven hours a day in Choir in the Chapel. She was doing this for a reason. When she turned her back on her station in life she said,
Carmel for me, God for the King.
It was a shot across the bow to her father, the King. She made the aim of her life’s work to help her father get his soul through the narrow gate, for his soul to turn to God and order his life according to the Ten Commandments.
“To Quell the Terror” points out that the King dies and as he was dying he was suffering terribly from Small Pox, which he’d contracted. His mind was still good and he called in a scribe or secretary, some able to write with beautiful penmanship, everything he dictated. The scribe was using a lot of paper and a lot of ink to write down King Louis XV’s every word. Line after line, the King mentioned sins that he’d committed as King of France, as Queen Marie’s husband and as the father of his children. After the scribe was finished the King ordered him to go out into the room adjoining his, where everyone was waiting and to declare what had just been written down; to yell out all of the King’s sins.
When the scribe finished he returned to King Louis and the King told him to go do it again and yell louder. When Madame Louise at St. Denis heard how her father had died she understood that, yes, he had once again turned his life to the straight and narrow. He was aiming for Heaven.
It is interesting how St. John of the cross mentions again and again that people often confuse the straight and the narrow with the wide road that leads to hell. In the New Testament Our Lord says that the road to hell is very wide and is a spacious thoroughfare that leads straight the hell. The road to Heaven is straight and narrow and you have heard people say that they are on the straight and narrow.
I preached the straight and narrow at the 9:30 am Mass and then after I looked at the front page of the Dallas Morning News and Terrell Owens is sitting there with Jerry Jones. Now I am not saying he is the devil but…[Laughter] I don’t have to, the article does! Anyway, the headline says,
STRAIGHT AND NARROW ROUTE FOR ME, Terrell Owens says.
Gee, it is real close to the real broad road. Can you believe that he is actually thinking of coming to the Cowboys as “straight and narrow”? You see how confusing it can be. The straight and narrow is the way our Lord describes the road to Heaven; it is the road that we must use to gain access to Heaven. This should be the goal of every Christian’s life, the see God.
This week we have an anniversary coming up on Thursday. Four hundred years ago was the death of St. Torribio. He was born in Spain and died in the year 1606 in Peru. He was a very honest and studious young man. King Philip II looked all around Spain for someone he could place at the head of the Inquisition in Granada and he chose Torribio. This is interesting because it was a Church court. You’d think in an ecclesiastical court they would have a priest or a bishop but he chose a layman. The reason he chose Torribio is because he was so intelligent and honest and everyone saw it in him. No one had to be convinced of his high moral standards. The King was very pleased with his service.
Many people were leaving Spain to come to the new world. The conquest of Mexico started in 1519. In Mexico people set out for California and Texas, some set out to central and South America and some ended up in Peru. There was an archdiocese constructed at Lima. The diocese was four hundred square miles. When St. Torribio was in Spain serving the Inquisition very well, letters came back from the new world that the Archbishop of Lima, Peru had passed away. He was looking around for someone to replace him but there was great difficulty for the King because communications between Lima and Spain…well cell phone communications were just terrible then. [Laughter] You could hardly get a fax through.
The King also got conflicting reports from Lima so he wondered how he would solve the problem and wondered if the guy he would send there would be honest and a man of integrity. We have that same problem with the Supreme Court don’t we? Once they are chosen to be on the Supreme Court they grow, they turn into people we never knew before.
St. Torribio was the same before and after the King made him the Archbishop elect of Lima. He did bring attention to the fact that there was one small problem. He wasn’t ordained! To be a bishop you have to be ordained so they ordained and consecrated him a bishop and shipped him to Lima. He left a real cushy life in Spain to come to Lima? His diocese included a lot of coastline. The Andes Mountains were very steep and there were a lot of savage animals as well as people who were always trying to kill each other.
This saint is estimated to have confirmed at least a half million people. He did most that on his journeys through Peru on foot, walking through jungles and swollen rivers. Think of everything imaginable crawling over you and you have the image of Peru at the time of St. Torrobio.
Years before the saint died he had a vision of the place and the exact day and year that he would die and he told people about it. He told people that this is how the Lord had revealed to him that he would die. He spent his life ordered on the Ten Commandments. He lived in Lima the same way he lived in Spain. Just so you will know, these are some of the people he influenced, cultivated and directed; St. Rose of Lima, St. Martin De Porres, St. John Masias, and St. Francisco Solano. So he influenced at least four saints.
St. Torrobio would start ever day the same way. The priest who traveled with him would hear his confession and then he would offer Holy Mass. He said that there were many times he was afraid. I mean, who wouldn’t be afraid of walking through wild jungle where people had arrows pointed at you? But the saint said that if God had given him a mission, he couldn’t be afraid and give in to the fear. When his last day came, which was March 23, 1606, he was exactly where the vision prophesied. He was barely able to crawl the length of the little Church up to the sanctuary to receive Holy Communion, Viaticum, from the priest and then he died.
St. Torribio said again and again, in different dialects of the Indians, in Spanish, in Latin and in any way he could, that we will all have to give an accounting to God of how we use our time. Think of the consequences to that. It is like the Irish…we just celebrated the Feast of St. Patrick, who converted the pagans of Ireland. The large families, the clans were mostly converted because he’d converted the head of the clan. He got them to turn from their pagan practices to the living the Commandments. There is a story that says all the Irish will be judged at the final judgment by St. Patrick, as if St. Patrick is just going to give them all a pass because they are Irish. Not at all!
There is an island off the coast of Northern Ireland called Lough Derg and known as St. Patrick’s Purgatory. It is a rock in the sea and the first thing you do when you land there is take off your shoes and socks and walk around on this cold damp rock and wait for the next ship so you can get off the rock. You might say that this is terrible, that it is purgatory. Well, it is purgatory, St. Patrick’s Purgatory. He used to go there so that he could do penance and take time off on Purgatory before he died. St. Patrick’s Purgatory shows that the saint wouldn’t give a pass like was given on Friday. I just can’t believe my ears. St. Patrick is spinning in his grave.
Bishops here and around the world actually gave a dispensation to allow the eating of meat on a Friday in Lent just because it happens to coincide with St. Patrick? I can just see St. Patrick agreeing with this and thinking it is ok. He gave his whole life to spread the Gospel and many people are waved away from the faith for something so ridiculous as whining about eating corn beef on the Feast of St. Patrick. Well you know, even if they were allowed to eat meat on a Friday in Lent, no one gave anyone a dispensation to get drunk on green beer or other liquor, Irish or otherwise. But aren’t these things connected with St. Patrick’s Day? That has nothing to do with St. Patrick at all. If he is going to judge the Irish, well they are going to find the real St. Patrick! And he wasn’t some Barney the dinosaur look alike. He was the real thing and ordered his life on the Ten Commandments just like St. Torribio.
We are going to have to give an account to God about how we used our lives or how we misused our lives. How may hours of this?
Father pretends to have a remote control in his hand, clicking as though surfing.
That is the universal symbol for channel surfing, right? Hours and hours can go by. No, we should be serving God and our neighbors. As Christ points out, that you shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, with your whole mind, with your whole soul, and love your neighbor as yourself when you get around to it. No, I added the last part, which is not in the words of Christ.
Please think about this. What if I told you that I was the only person here that has God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in my soul and I am the only Baptized person here? You would tell me that I was crazy, crazier than you thought I was and you wouldn’t believe that! God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit took up residence in our souls the day we were Baptized. How many times has the Trinity had to sit through some conversation or movie where every other word is taking God’s name in vain? How many times have we dragged the Trinity through the sewer of an “R” rated movie that should have been “X” rated? How about the Internet? Or, how many times have we dragged God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit through some kind of sexual pleasure that is not in accord with our station in life?
This Divine Guest, the Most Blessed Trinity has been dragged through the sewer every time we sin but we are ok; we don’t need any fixing and we don’t need this Lent. Of course we do! We have to order our lives and God will help us to do so. This Lent is given to us as a gift from God so we can turn from living like the town dog and start living like temples of the Lord. The body is a temple because the Trinity lives in my soul and because my parents had me Baptized forty-six years ago; thanks be to God. This demands that I model my life on the Ten Commandments. I will have to give an accounting for how I used and misused my time. I can follow the example of St. Patrick and choose to do my Purgatory while I am here.
In Matthew 6, Our Lord says that we are to fast, pray, help those in need, and that is not just during the commercials. That is our life. About prayer He says that when you pray, go to your room, close your door and pray to your Father in private. It actually says to go to your inner room. Jesus is talking about the inner room of every soul where the Trinity resides and speak to God without any distractions and with out any interference of any creature coming between our creator and us.
The fact is, the temple needs cleaning. We need to ask God to show us our sins and when we recognize them, we need to confess them in a Sacramental Confession. No, no…not the way that is not allowed by the Church. You know, where you fill up the Church and the priest waves his hand around like he is Harry Potter and everyone goes home content because they say they have been to confession. No, that is not a fact. If you happen to be in an airplane that is about to crash in the Andes Mountains, then general absolution is ok But if you fill up a Church twice a year and some priest waves his hand over you, that is not confession…that is an ABOMINATION, which the Church does not allow.
We want to see God but we will not see Him if we take the road that is wide and inclining down. The Lord says the temple needs to be cleansed, that we have made from our lives from time to time what should be a temple of the Lord, a market place. Get rid of everything that is there that should be and focus on His Presence.
He was speaking about the Temple of His Body.
In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit
Amen