4th Sunday of Lent 2006

[Fr.Paul Weinberger]

Homily by:
Father Paul Weinberger, Pastor
St. William Roman Catholic Church
Greenville, Texas
March 26, 2006
4th Sunday of Lent

Jesus said to Nicodemus, “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up so that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son so that everyone who believes in Him might not perish but might have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world but that the world might be saved through Him.”

In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit

Amen

Years ago I saw a cartoon called “The Far Side.” There were two dogs depicted as husband and wife living in a home and the wife had an apron on and was busy over at the counter and she had already served her husband lunch. There was a big can on the counter that said, “Dog Food” on it. The husband had a large pile of it on his plate and he’d just bitten down on something and his eyes are looking nervously behind him at her. He said,

“Another chicken bone; I think she is trying to kill me.”

[Laughter] What does he know; it is all dog food.

The Israelites grumbled against the Lord in the desert. They accused God of trying to kill them. Such a charge could not go unanswered. God sent seraph serpents to bite the people and many died. Regardless of all of the wonders He performed for them, they thought He was trying to kill them.

"Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up so that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life." When God, with outstretched arms, led Israel from Egypt, from the slavery of Egypt with all the wonders that accompanied it, the crossing of the Red Sea, the destruction of pharaoh and his army, the charioteers; how God in His beauty and love ushered Israel out of that place and into the desert so that He might lead them to the Promised Land. It wasn’t long before the people began to grumble and complain against the Lord. They accused the Lord of bringing them there to kill them.

Just so that everyone here understands the great sin of Israel, imagine how you would feel if one or all of your children, said this to you.

“Mom…Dad….I think you are trying to kill me!

This would cut you to the quick.

God sent the seraph serpents to bite the people and many died. Just before some of them died, they called out to Moses, begging him to talk to the Lord. Moses then interceded again on the behalf of these Israelites. The Lord told Moses to fashion a serpent out of bronze and put it on a pole, telling Moses that anyone that looked upon it with faith would be healed. Well, after you have seen so many died of the serpent bite, the last thing one wants to do is look at a bronze serpent and going beyond that, having faith that you will be cured. Those who had faith and looked at the bronze serpent were cured. That which was repugnant to them was actually their salvation or cure.

Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up so that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life.

The forty years that the Israelites spent wandering in the desert, well there was a reason for that. Because of their grumbling and complaining, whining and lack of attention to God, they were consigned to wander in the desert for forty years so that those who grumbled and complained against God, those blasphemers would not enter into the Promised Land. If their children survived they would be the heirs of that promise.

The forty years in the desert are mirrored in the forty days of Lent. Forty years…forty days in a microcosm. We are to shed that which is repugnant to God, that which offends God and holds us back from the Promised Land, which is all the grumbling and complaining we do when something comes our way and we are not prepared for it.

Friday I was preaching at the morning Mass and I was preaching about faith. St. John of the Cross refers to faith as if it were a muscle and muscles need exercise in order to grow; they need the stress. How ironic that I am speaking of this, as though I am your pastor, Fr. Jack Lalane.[Laughter] My parents only told me about Jack. I am not old enough to know who he is. Kids are saying,

“Jack who?”

I'll tell you later. The fact is that faith has to be employed. That means that, if I have in my hands what I want, I can’t have faith in it because I have the certainty of having it right here. Or if it is before my eyes…no faith there because it is right here and I can see it. St. John of the Cross says that God sometimes sends us an arid time as though in a desert with no consolations. Or, He allows certain things to happen to us; He doesn’t cause them but He allows them to happen so that we can depend upon Him more and more until we reach that point where our faith is only in God. St. John says again and again to accept nothing less than God. So, all the beauty and consolations of this world, including spiritual consolations are to be put aside if they keep us from focusing on God himself.

So often when difficulties or problems come our way we become distracted and get off on the service road and never get back on the highway, which leads to Heaven. We then become fascinated with taking apart how wrong or rotten this is or how unjust or difficult that is and God could actually be allowing it to happen to draw us to Him. Look at Job, all of his many possessions, many children and everything he had were taken from him and he said,

Blessed be God! The Lord has given and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the Name of the Lord.

That is faith! On Friday after speaking about faith I got into the car to go to Irving to KSKY studio to be with Michael Medved, who spoke last night to fifteen hundred and eighty people at the Anatole. This was the largest crowd they’d ever had. This is the night that the Catholic Pro Life Committee makes all of their money for the next year as they save the lives of children in promoting a culture of life. In many ways the Catholic Pro Life does so much good through the year and so last night was very important.

Michael Medved got up on Friday morning at 4 am and was at the airport very early to come to Dallas. Security was heavy and the plane was packed. He got on the plane and ten minutes into the flight, the engine caught fire. The plane turned around went back to the airport without incident. Evidently there is a difference in something in the engine catching fire and the entire engine being enveloped in flames. It wouldn’t make me any less nervous. They were going to see if they could repair the engine but after and hour or so they told him they would have to get him on a different plane.

All this happened to coincide with spring break in the northwest so the next flight for Dallas was packed and there was not a seat available so Michael Medved left the airport thinking that there was no way for him to get on the plane so he would just go back to the local studio and figure out what he could do from there. Well, why couldn’t he take a later flight? Michael Medved is a observant Jew and Friday at sundown everything stops. They cannot ride in cars or elevator or planes. They cannot turn lights on and off. Maybe you think I am making this stuff up.

Do you remember the First Reading from Exodus last Sunday where one quarter of the reading was dedicated to the Third Commandment? We are to keep holy the Lord’s Day. Well, what is this business about lights. On the first day God created light so evidently turning lights on and off is work for someone who wants to keep holy the Lord’s Day. Observant Jews prepare to observe the Sabbath and rest in the Lord and get back at it the next day. The Christian Sabbath is Sunday, which was made holy by the Lord’s Resurrection and we are to keep it holy in recognition of the Lord having worked six days and on the seventh He rested.

So, Michael Medved left the airport and wasn’t even considering the possibility that he would catch a plane in time. As I was driving in for my great radio debut that never happened, although I got to sit in the studio, I got a phone call from someone in the Catholic Pro Life Committee saying we had a ten-minute window to get Michael Medved on a plane. I hung up and called the Missionaries of Charity. I’d just mentioned them in my homily that morning.

When Mother Teresa’s sisters pray for something in earnest, this is what they do. They get together and pray the Memorare nine times, not one each day for nine days but nine times in a row at the same time for the favor they are asking God for. When they finish number nine they pray one more in thanksgiving that God has granted their petition. How do they know that God has granted their petition? These sisters have nothing materially except the habit that they are wearing and one to wash. The sisters in Dallas live in the most blighted neighborhood in Dallas. They have no air-conditioning and they live a very austere life.

St. Francis of Assisi is an example of someone who lived like the sisters do today. The sisters never complain, I do. I have been going over there for years and I complain and tell the sisters that we need to go down to the shelter for women because it is June and it is hot and I sweat. So I tell them we are going to the shelter and I will give the talk there because there is air-conditioning there. The sisters have none and there are guns going off at night in the wretched neighborhood and I have never heard them complain. They always have a smile on their faces and they are very plugged into what goes on around them. It is not as if they are clueless.

Getting back to the phone call to the sisters, I asked them to please help me. They were just sitting down for lunch but they all got up and went into the chapel and they said their prayers. These missionaries of charity work so hard and they probably came back to lunch and the food was cold. Guess who was to blame? There has to be a special place in hell for someone who would call the sisters away from their table. Anyway, may God have mercy on my soul. After I hung up with the sisters I said the Memorares in petition and in thanksgiving and then just left things alone. I knew all this would be taken care of. I knew that Michael Medved would either show up and it would be a miraculous story or he wouldn’t and God would have designs either way. But, I didn’t worry about it. I have been listening to a series of St. John of the Cross and so I was very certain that God wants us to live in faith and not worrying about things like this. He wants us to show Him our faith and He wants us to grown in faith.

So the lady from the Pro Life Committee got Michael Medved on the phone and got him back to the airport. Later on that evening I had dinner with several people at the hotel along with Michael Medved and he told us that he went back into the airport thinking that just because he went, things weren’t going to change. He went through security this time kind of like Moses parting the Red Sea. He travels a lot and never has he gone through and able to board a plane so easily.

When he got to Dallas someone was there to pick him up and going from DFW to the Anatole…TRAFFIC! Just imagine that…traffic in Dallas. Michael Medved is thinking he is not going to make it to the hotel before sundown. If sundown came and he was in a car he would have to tell the driver to pull over so he could walk the rest of the way. I am sure he would allow the driver to go ahead and give his bags a ride to the hotel. Like I said, he is an observant Jew and he said he had not broken the Sabbath in thirty years. So, they made it through the traffic smoothly to his surprise. He was able to get up to his room before sundown and then he walked eight flights down to dinner because he could not use the elevator.

The fact that there were over fifteen hundred people excited that he was coming and was going to address this Pro Life group of people committed to life, God blessed the whole endeavor in many ways. Look back at all of the setbacks. The engine of a plane caught on fire but it didn’t blow up or crash while landing and no one was killed. He could have easily gotten on a plane, flown down and had a simple transfer in all aspects but instead many things that happened in the course of that day give us pause to increase our faith and praise God in thanksgiving for the many ways He has intervened on our behalf. This is something that we do not do enough.

For example, last Sunday it rained and rained and rained, right? More than one time I heard people complain that it was too much as if now they are more expert on weather situations than what’s his name. Through all the flooding and rain only one person died…may she rest in peace. She drove her car into a creek in Dallas and was swept away. Just a week or two before that something similar happened up in the St. Louis and Nebraska area. There were tornados and lots of severe weather. There weren’t any tornados here, just rain and a lot of it. It was the kind that will get you wet and it will also fill up the lakes from which we receive our drinking water, water to bathe and cook with as well as water the lawn although I am sure no sprinklers were going off during the rain storm last week.

Sure, there were people who were flooded and God bless them, but it was not wide spread or universal and the levee in Dallas didn’t break and flood everything. It was all in a manageable area. Look at all the blessings that came from that and yet I often heard grumbling and complaining about how much we had. That is whining because in a time of drought God sent us a generous rain. The people in the Texas Panhandle just experienced wild fires that were intensified because of the strong winds. Cattle were dying out in the pastures and then the rains came. Of course if you saw the weather map you probably have never seen anything like it before. The jet stream jumps out of Canada into the Pacific Ocean and comes around the Baja Peninsula up through El Paso, up to Minnesota and back into Canada and then this trailer comes off around El Paso and comes over here and dumps all this rain on us. For the weather men the specific title for this was “Huh..Uh” He called it a weather phenomenon. No one had ever seen this before and now our drought has been turned upside down.

“Well, we haven’t received all the rain.”

Gosh, we are such children. The lakes are filling and all this happened in one day with so little loss of life. Of course we have all been experiencing now the days and days of prayer and thanksgiving going up…uh…

Anyway, the fact is that God has given us these Forty Days to do something about our spiritual lives and to turn to Him in faith. He is going to catch us and He knows what we are experiencing, such as difficulties and illnesses as well as death itself. He knows what is happening to us and He is just asking us to trust Him and have faith. If this is happening to you, understand that God will give you the grace to handle it.

During the season of Lent God gives us a limited time offer; Forty Days with a tremendous spiritual interest rate to grow in faith, hope and love through prayer, fasting and helping our neighbor in need. These are ways in which God is extending to us this offer to grown in faith when we are confronted with difficulties, sorrow and death; that we have faith in Him so our hearts can grow.

Last week I went to Quinlan to see my Aunt Jo and as we were driving to the highway she was pointing out water tanks telling me which ones were full and how much rain she got, which was about seven inches. My cousin’s tank dried up. He had about four hundred dollars worth of fish in it. He would catch fish that were too small so he would throw them in the tank to grow. We have had a drought for a long time and it was an opportunity for some people to just say,

“Well, there goes my tank!”

Then they would make arrangements for someone to come in and dig out the tank and make it deeper so that when the rains did come the tank would be able to hold more. Think of a glass of water filled so high that not one more drop could go into it. Think of a swimming pool where one drop more would make it overflow into the drain. Both the glass and pool are filled but one contains a lot more than the other.

If we make it to Heaven, and some believe we are ALL going to Heaven…right, sure! This is not supported in Catholic teaching or the Bible but some believe it anyway. If we do have the grace that God sent to help us to Heaven and we make it there, the place where we are in Heaven is dependent on how much love is contained in our souls. If God fills our soul enough to only fill the glass, we will have a place in Heaven but inferior to the place of the soul so full of God’s love that we can compare it to the swimming pool.

We have to use quantity to talk about spiritual matters otherwise we get nowhere. St. John of the Cross says that our faith has to be exercised otherwise we will not grow. If what we want or hoping for is in our hands or before our eyes it is not faith because we already have it…like the glass of water up here right now.

If you look on your bulletin you will find on the front the Seven Sorrows of Our Lady.

“Oh, well she had it so easy.”

The flowers behind me are from yesterday’s Solemnity of the Annunciation, which was the first moment of the first minute of the first hour of the first day of the life of Jesus on this earth in the womb of His Mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary. Yesterday was exactly three months after Christmas and exactly nine months before Christmas. How many women already have their Christmas shopping done? You have it all done? Don’t tell us, we don’t want to know and we will never talk to you again. But look at that kind of focus, the focus and dedication to see something far off and get ready for it right now. We can do it, we can do things such as that. People get ready for the basketball game and plan to leave at a certain time so they can get there. People at March Madness have a basketball game that ends and then they clear the place out and have another basketball game, and on and on. The parking lot is always filled so you can see that we do have the dedication to do this stuff but we just fritter that dedication away on stuff that “ain’t gonna” help us get to Heaven and our team is probably going to lose anyway!

Looking at yesterday’s Feast Day, the Archangel Gabriel told the Blessed Mother that she was to be the mother of the Messiah. She asked how this could be since she did not know man. The angel told her that it would occur through the power of the Holy Spirit and then he ended by saying that with God all things are possible. The Mary said,

Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it done unto me according to Thy word.

And of course from that moment she never stubbed her toe, she never had an ache or pain and she never had a worry or concern or even bad breath; no difficulties whatsoever. Oh really? Look at the Seven Sorrows of Our Lady and these are just seven of her sorrows. Being the Blessed Virgin Mary wasn’t a bird nest on the ground, it was a life of sorrow. Anyone here that is a parent knows exactly what I am talking about. The sorrows accompanied her life but through it all she maintained her faith. On the backside of the bulletin are the Readings from the Gospel to accompany each sorrow of Our Lady. This is something we can meditate on today because we are allobservant Catholics…pause for clearing the throat. We all should be observant Catholics.

We can meditate on our Lady and her sorrow and recognize that through it all she had faith and kept her eyes on God. If she’d lost everything she would still have the Creator of everything. At the very end where the Blessed Virgin witnesses the burial of Jesus on Good Friday, she still had faith through Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday.

When Moses lifted up that serpent in the desert it took a lot of faith to on the part of the people to look at it and believe that it would be what would actually cure them. For us to look at the Crucifix we have to see that,

God has not sent His Son into the world so that He can torture us like a bug under the shoe or a worm on the hook, but that He so loved the world that He gave His only Son so that everyone who believes in Him might not perish but might have Eternal Life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world but that the world might be saved through Him.

Jesus says again and again that when the Son of Man comes will He find any faith in the World

In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit

Amen