Ascension of Our Lord 2006

[Fr.Paul Weinberger]

Homily by:
Father Paul Weinberger, Pastor
St. William the Confessor Catholic Church
Greenville, Texas
Ascension of Our Lord
May 28, 2006

And He gave some as Apostles, others as Prophets, others as Evangelists, others as pastors and teachers, to equip the holy ones for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ until we all attain the unity of faith and knowledge of the Son of God, to mature to manhood to the extent of the full stature of Christ.

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

Amen

An article appeared in the Religion section of yesterday’s Dallas Morning News. The article featured some women in our Diocese working as administrators along with pastors in different parishes. They seem to be of genuine help. I don’t like the article for different reasons although the women seem to be very pleasant and true Christians.

The reason I don’t like the article is because it gives the novice the impression that only women, who are employed by the Church are the “true followers of Christ.” This is extenuated with the University of Dallas offering a kind of degree. Through the University there is a pastoral type degree that one can pursue. That coupled with the idea that women who work in the Church are novel. This bothers me a lot. I know the article is highlighting good people who are trying to do good things in the Church so the article is not a total waste of time. But, one has to be very careful because many people can reach these conclusions today and think that the goal of Christian life is to be employed by the Church. If that is true then why are there so few priests? [Laughter] This is ridiculous.

Yesterday I went to Irving to give the Commencement Address at Faustina Academy. It was their first graduation. I mentioned to the graduates that yesterday was the 100th Anniversary of those 16 Carmelites you see mentioned again in the bulletin. We have resumed the talks on the Carmelite martyrs of the French Revolution since the beginning of Lent. Yesterday was the Centennial of their Beatification by Pope St. Pius X.

These sisters were very content to work in the Church behind the confines of the cloister walls. See how that automatically goes against the article in yesterday’s paper? St. Therese’ never left the cloister but she helped the missionary in Vietnam and the missionary in the Belgian Congo. St. Therese’ is a Doctor of the Church as was the reformer of the Carmelite Order, St. Teresa of Avila but they don’t fit the model in yesterday’s article.

The missionary work of the 16 Carmelite sisters can’t be under estimated, yet they were martyred. There were 19 but only 16 were martyred; the other three, by God’s providence were allowed to live so they could recount much of this story that otherwise we would never know about. These 16 martyrs of the French Revolution and their missionary work in France and beyond can’t be over estimated.

I also mentioned to the graduates the great missionary, St. Anthony of Padua, whose Feast is coming up on June 13th. San Antonio, Texas is named for St. Anthony of Padua. He is a favorite of many people and not just those of us who lose things. He is also reviled by heretics and bears the title “Hammer of Heretics.” St. Anthony would preach everywhere in his brief life and he was very effective. Once when he was preaching the heretics would not listen. The saint had no choice but to preach because the last words of Christ before He ascended into heaven were to go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to “every creature.” Christ said that whoever believes and is Baptized will be saved and whoever does not believe will be condemned.

St. Anthony didn’t want to preach to these heretics but he knew he had no choice; he was painted into a corner. The heretics would pay no attention to the saint. They were near the river so St. Anthony turned and started preaching to the fish in the river. The story says that the small fish came up close, the medium size fish stayed in the deeper water and the big fish stayed further out. They all stuck their heads out and listened as the saint preached to them. This is kind of like St. Francis preaching to the birds. Of course St. Francis preaching to the birds makes a much nice statue in the garden than St. Anthony preaching to the fish. Right?

”Oh look, a statue of St. Anthony preaching to fish; we have to get one for the pool.”

[Laughter]

Since the heretics wouldn’t listen to St. Anthony he preached to the fish. He knew he was to preach to and proclaim the Gospel to every creature. In preaching to the fish and the fish responding, St. Anthony was hoping that the heretics would see the miracle before them and lend him an ear.

What was interesting is, after the graduation ceremony one of the parents had been to a convention in Las Vegas, which I don’t recommend although many conventions are held there. Instead of going to the “shows” so to speak, he decided to just walk around down town and preserve his marriage vows. [Laughter] He walked into a bookstore and thee he found a book of saints, bought it, and gave it to me. I guess if any bookstore needs to be stocked with the Lives of the Saints, they are the stores in Vegas and New York. He bought the book for me after opening it and seeing the picture that we had on the cover of the bulletin at Easter, the Adoration of the Mystical Lamb, the picture of Heaven according to St. John’s revelation and the Book of Revelation The Lamb that was slain but now lives, is standing on the Altar and from His side blood flows into a Chalice, never ending. The blood flows out and then all of the men and the few women who are there…. that is van Eyck portraying a few women, are all coming toward the Altar in heaven. It is a beautiful picture and he bought the book for me just for that one picture.

When I received the book I started to flip through it. I have seen a lot of religious pictures but never the one that took me by surprise. There was the picture of St. Anthony preaching to the fish. The fish in the picture looked like and shark and he looked hungry. He was a little too close but I guess that is better than preaching to the alligators in Florida.

The last words of Christ somehow go unnoticed. We feel as if there is an expiration date on these words and our lord tells us that this isn’t true. In fact, Pope John Paul II spoke often about the need to spread the Gospel. He said that from the Resurrection and Ascension to the year 1000, the Church spread to different parts around the Mediterranean and even to India through St. Thomas. From the year 1000 to 2000, Europe was Christianized and they crossed over to the Americas. This is the year, the 500th Anniversary of the birth of Christopher Columbus. So much of the world has been Christianized.

Two or three days ago there was an earthquake in Indonesia and we have committed to send food, water, tents, and medical supplies along with bags of money to them. One thing you can be guaranteed that will not be sent to Indonesia are Christian missionaries. Much of Indonesia is Muslim and even if they weren’t we would send missionaries because we don’t do that thing anymore. The reason we don’t do that thing anymore is because we don’t feel impelled to do it anymore, which is reckless in the extreme. If we are actually going to take out Lord’s words to heart, and as Christians why wouldn’t we take His words to heart, we must spread the Gospel. Pope John Paul II said that the work of the Church in the 3rd Millennium is Asia. But what does he know, right? The Holy Father understood that just as the sun apparently moves from East to West, because the earth moves and we chart it from East to West, the Gospel has not been preached to every creature.

”Oh but what is a billion and two people in China?”

Right? Well, a billion and two people! The Lord tells us that we are to do what we can where we are to promote this Gospel and to every creature.

Yesterday I mentioned those Carmelite sisters and their missionary work. In 1789 on Bastille Day they heard the rumblings and terror that was about to be unleashed. No longer would France have to bow down to the Church but to the state. That’s progress! There were thousands who were fed into the machine that had been recently invented called the guillotine, which severed their heads from their bodies. This was terrible.

The 16 Carmelite sisters were very restrained as Carmelites are supposed to be. They are supposed to concentrate on prayer and on Christ, praying for everyone else outside the walls as well. How selfish of them! These sisters stayed in their convent as long as they could until the French Revolutionaries knocked on the door, threw it open, and told them they were free and they could leave. Of course they wanted to stay; some had been there over fifty years. These were very strong women that some seem to think don’t count because they were inside the walls of a cloister. The French Revolution eventually pushed them out of their convent. It is interesting to know why they wanted the sisters out of the convent; they wanted the building and the land.

The French Revolution made it against the law very quickly for the Carmelites to dress in their habits. It was against the law to wear any religious or clerical garb, and also to live in the convent. The French revolutionaries sold all of the Church property and subsidized the terror during the French Revolution for ten years with proceeds from the Church property. So the reason was clear as to why they wanted the sisters out of there.

The sisters were forced to find shelter in apartments and they had to wear secular garb. They found four apartment and tried their best to live in the world as though they were still in the confines of the convent until the revolutionaries arrested them, threw them in jail and made the wait for a hearing. The sisters spent quite a bit of time in jail and were wearing the secular clothes they had, The couldn’t wear the habit but there was no law that said they couldn’t carry the habit folded neatly, so that is what the sisters did. One day the Mother Superior finally got the ear of the jailer and asked permission to wash their secular clothes that they had been wearing for weeks. The jailer gave them permission to wash the secular clothes.

They had no washing machines but used basins and tubs. They had to repeatedly soak and scrub. While the clothes were being soaked and scrubbed the Carmelites put on their habits. Well, you could go to jail for wearing your habit but they were in jail so…it wasn’t a big deal. Who would see them except the jailer? While they were in their habits, the jailer was notified from someone in Paris that the sisters were going to be fed to Revolutionary Court very soon be and sentenced to death. He very hurriedly loaded them on to carts and sends them to Paris.

When the jailer walked in to get the sisters they were all dressed in their habits just like the one we see St. Therese’ wearing here. He was so mad and told them to put on the secular clothing. The sisters pointed to the wet clothing in the basins and told him it was impossible. Instead of delaying the order he had been give and taking the chance of getting his head taken off, which seemed to be a frequent happening, he loaded them up and sent them on their way to Paris where they arrived the next day and were taken to jail. People in Paris were seeing women in a Religious Habit for the first time in many years.

The sister were sentenced on the 28th day of the French Revolutionary’s new month called Messidor, which was the tenth month. They made up a totally different calendar to turn the week from being God-centered to revolution-centered. Instead of a seven-day week there was a ten-day week. There were three ten-day weeks in a month. Fouquier-Tinville, the fiend and wretch sentenced them and said the sisters would die because they were fanatics.

One of the sisters, as I said last week, feigned ignorance of the term and because she was going to die because she was a fanatic she asked for a definition of the word. Tinville was very frustrated because bureaucrats really hate it when someone disrupts them from their work. Of course we know that is impossible. Tinville told the sister that a fanatic is one who takes his religion seriously. So from the very lips of the court we understand that the sisters actually took the words of Christ seriously. All the sisters rejoiced when the sentence was handed down. This was very different because the court had never seen anyone respond to the death sentence in that manner before.

You see, the 28th day of the month of Messidor would coincide with the 16th day of July, which is the Feast of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, the patroness of all Carmelites. This was cause for rejoicing among the sisters. The following day they were loaded on carts and sent to the guillotine. The crowds normally resembled the audience on Jerry Springer, laughing, throwing things, and being totally rebellious. This time the crowd was silent because they heard the sister chanting psalms in Latin or singing beautiful Gregorian chant all the way to their death.

These sisters had applied a principal to their lives, which carried them through the last couple years of their lives. They saw things getting worse in France and they wished to do something about the problems, reach out and help bring an end to the terror and bring peace to the Church. Everyday the sisters made a voluntary Consecration to follow the Lamb wherever He led them. The prayer they got together to say everyday is right out of the Book of Revelation, the Mystical Lamb. These sister followed the Lamb out of the convent, into an apartment, then to jail, from there to court in Paris, from their to jail again and from there to the guillotine. They were tremendous witnesses for Christ. They preached to the very end with their dynamic religion that they took seriously.

One hundred years ago yesterday, Pope St. Pius X beatified the sisters. Let us just pause for a minute and consider that the Church sees these 16 women as Blesseds. They were martyred by having their heads severed from their bodies and it got them as far as Blessed. How about us? This feast today is about equipping the saints. These sisters were able to do this because they were fully equipped. I recall the movie, “Blackhawk Down”, where our men in Somalia lost connection with the others in their company and they went through a very tough time. This is an appropriate film to remember this Memorial Day weekend; the weekend set aside every year to bbq. That is about how much we remember our Veterans. The Ascension is all about equipping the saints because there is work to be done. The work is to go into the world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature.

Look at the picture on your bulletin today. You see Christ in glory and above Him is God the Father. Below Christ is the Holy Spirit. Notice Christ doesn’t have a shirt on and there is a reason for that. As we sang in the opening hymn, “Behold His feet, His hands, His side…those are the wounds of the Resurrection He is exposing. You can see the Blessed mother as well as St. John the Baptist.

To view the art Fr. Paul is referring to click the link below
http://www.saintbarnabasarden.org/image ... aphael.jpg

You can see the church in heaven and next week you will see the extended picture. This is just a detail of the central section. In the picture Christ is seated in Glory and then you see Christ below in the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar and there the Church is arranged on either side. The connection to Christ in Heaven and Christ in His Church below is obvious and this is what this Feast is about, the Headship of Christ and capital Grace. Think of a column; a column supports something and holds it up. There is a base and above that is the shaft and above that is the capital and above that is whatever is being supported or held up. What keeps the whole thing together is the shaft of the column. The capital is at the top surmounting the whole thing. Capital comes from the Latin word Caput. The head of the column is there and the base is there; Christ is the Head of the church and we are the members of the Church and from Christ every good gift descends. Well, you may be thinking that it is obvious that every good and gracious gift comes from above, but not everyone understands this. Everyday this is transgressed.

Remember just a few weeks ago when, just north of Allen three people were killed. There were three tornados that came through and tore up many homes and property. They interview some guy, and I just know he is Catholic because he said they were ‘lucky”. What does it take to get this guy’s attention? He is so unaware that he is equipped by God to survive that tornado. Not just one but three! We don’t think of the graces that Christ gives us; we take the graces for granted.

Mothers and fathers see this a lot…think of Saturday morning.

’Every Saturday morning mommy fixes me pancakes.”

Then one Saturday morning mommy is sick but the kids still go right to the trough, err, I mean the kitchen table and want to know where their mommy is. They want to know if she called in sick and if she did, did she get a replacement? Kids want their pancakes right now, or whatever it is they eat on Saturday morning. Like the kids expect breakfast to be on the table, we just expect God to send His grace down upon us. It is kind of like automatic room service and we just want the graces to come on in. Every grace that God wants to bestow on us as it says in the Second Reading today is to equip the holy ones, the saints, for the work of ministry and for building up the body of Christ until we all attain that unity of faith and knowledge of the Son of God.

Christ is in Heaven but He is also on earth in His members and He is on earth in His Sacraments. All this is made possible through the Ascension. Christ ascended into Heaven and is seated at the Right Hand of the Father and according to the Jews this is the place of honor at a banquet. The right hand of the king is a place of honor. So Christ is seated at the Right Hand of the Father and from Him God the Father gives us every good thing. In fact, next Sunday will be Pentecost, when God the Father and God the Son send down the Holy Spirit upon the Church to lavish grace upon grace on us. What connects heaven to earth is Christ. Just as on Easter Sunday we heard that Christ is the Priest, the Altar and the Lamb of Sacrifice, so too is He the column, base and the capital. He connects Heaven to earth and it is not merely a mental construct. This is a reality because Christ is seated at the Father’s Right Hand in His humanity and divinity and He is truly present in heaven in His Glorified and Risen Body. He is also present in His life-giving Body, which gives grace to the members. It is the head giving grace to the members.

We are members of Christ and grace is flowing into us the way a vine allows sap to go into the branches. Christ tells us that He is the vine and we are the branches. He wants us to produce fruit. As the Holy Father pointed out, Asia is the work of the third Millennium and if you aren’t compelled to go there, you have two knees and two hands and we have time and orders to proclaim the Gospel to every creature.

Those 16 Carmelite sisters did bring an end to the terror because they’d followed the Lamb all the way from Carmel in Compiegne to Paris to the guillotine. In fact, they followed the Lamb all the way to heaven and that is exactly how we are to discern the way God wants us to follow the Lamb. It is not obvious to us how He wants us to follow the Lamb and we have to pray everyday that He will send us graces and lavish them upon us so can do whatever He is calling us to do. If He is calling us to work in a parish, fine! But if He is calling us to work at home, in a lab or the office and in fields, He will give us the grace that we need to complete our mission. There is an expectation; Christ wasn’t offering a suggestion when He spoke those last words before He Ascended into heaven. To deny this is to deny that we have been equipped and are connected to the source of every good grace and blessing.

To give ourselves permission to do absolutely nothing is reckless. Well, where is Pope Benedict right now? He is in the process of re-evangelizing Europe…post Christian Europe. I say post Christian because the people’s faith is dead there. This Pope, who doesn’t like to travel, is out traveling to do what he can to spread the Gospel to every creature. For our part, we are living in a post-Christian country. If it isn’t post-Christian, it is on the verge of being that way.

Several weeks ago someone told me that on CSPAN they saw someone give an interview. They were up in the northeast and there was a crowd assembled, or an audience if you will. The two men were talking and one said to the other,

”You know…there are people in this country who still believe in the Resurrection?”

Then the man laughed and everyone in the audience laughed with him. Welcome to post-Christian America. We have to do something about it and Our Lord will give us every grace we need to do it, but there is the expectation.


And He gave some as Apostles, others as Prophets, others as Evangelists, others as pastors and teachers, to equip the holy ones for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ until we all attain the unity of faith and knowledge of the Son of God, to mature to manhood to the extent of the full stature of Christ.

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

Amen