Father Paul Weinberger, Pastor
St. William the Confessor Catholic Church
Greenville, Texas
Pentecost Sunday
June 4, 2006
Brothers and sisters, live by this Spirit and you will certainly not gratify the desire of the flesh; for the flesh has desires against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh. These are opposed to each other so that you may not do what you want. But if you are guided by the Spirit you are not under the law.
In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit
Amen
Just as we see in the Book of Genesis the of creation of Adam and Eve, God created Adam and then after a while when He could find no help mate in all of creation, God cast a deep sleep upon Adam and from His side took a rib and from that rib He fashioned Eve and breathed life into her so that Adam would exclaim at last,
Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh!
Christ is the new Adam and when we hear in the Gospel today that He breathed on them and told them to receive the Holy Spirit, this is the new Adam breathing life into His Bride the church, the new Eve. In a wonderful way Our Lord is starting everything all over again, all creation, if only we have eyes to see and if we can discern. The fact is that the teaching of Christ contained here in the second reading is the same on the first day of Pentecost and on Pentecost 2006. It was true then and now; there is one teaching and there is one Church.
Last Sunday we had the Sunday of the Great Commission, we had Ascension Thursday/ Sunday. You will recall the last words of Christ to His Church before He ascended into Heaven.
Full authority has been given to Me both in heaven and on earth. Go therefore; make disciples of all the nations. Baptize them in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Teach them to observe everything that I have commanded you and know that I Am with you always until the end of time.
After these words Our Lord ascended into heaven, leaving this Great Commission to the Church, which the Church has pursued from the very beginning. We see this especially at Pentecost; we see this with the sending of the Holy Spirit. Absolutely everything that the Church would need to complete this Great Commission is given. Just as today we remember the sending of the Holy Spirit, we also must remember that there is one sin against the Holy Spirit, which is the unforgivable sin against the Holy Spirit, and that is to call good evil and evil good. In the same vein an unforgivable sin against the Holy Spirit would be to say,
” My sin is so great that it is greater than God’s ability to forgive.”
Either way it is saying that God has left something out or there is something I lack because God is not giving it enough gas, so to speak. Or we say we can’t fight against this temptation or that temptation. Or instead of saying it that way we just start to call evil good... call this vice a virtue. That is the unforgivable sin.
Yesterday was June 3rd, which is the Feast of twenty-two young men, who were canonized during the Second Vatican Council in 1964. All the bishops of the world went to Rome and were present for the Second Vatican Council. This Council emphasized two major themes; that there is a universal call to holiness and to live lives of holiness. The second major theme of Vatican II was the central role of the Great Commission in the Church for lay people to participate in spreading the Gospel to every part of the world, to go therefore and teach all nations. Ok? We are often distracted from this mission and since today is Pentecost I want to quote two priests that are exemplary in their teaching. “The Theology of Christian Perfection” by Fr. Antonio Marin and Fr. Jordan Amman. These two priests have written beautifully on the Holy Spirit. There is one paragraph here called, “Useless Thoughts.”
Our spirit (the human spirit) is frequently occupied by a multitude of useless thoughts, which cause us to waste time and divert our attention to that which is base or perishable with the result that we pay no heed to those things which are of great interest and value to the soul in it’s sanctification. We should not forget that the intellect cannot be occupied at the same time with two distinct thoughts. One of the two will always be considered to the prejudice of the other.
We’ve had that experience, right? You are going into the other room for a pair of scissors and while you are on the way you remember you need to get your car inspected. So you get to the other room and you are just blank and have no clue why you went in the room so you ask your wife. [Laughter] That is why you have wives, right? Too many wives have told me that they have to remind their husbands of these things. So, we can’t hold two distinct thoughts in the intellect because one of the two will be considered to the prejudice of the other.
The majority of the distractions which we lament during prayer and other exercises of piety proceed from the fact that we have previously wasted time in useless thoughts.
“But Father, when I pray I am so distracted and I think of so many useless things.”
The spirit cannot pass directly from one situation to another, which is completely distinct; it needs time to react and adapt itself to the new occupation. For that reason it is necessary to combat useless thoughts with great energy and to reject anything that may dissipate the intellect by distracting it or withdrawing it from the great task of one’s sanctification. It is necessary to renounce as much as possible the reading of useless books or indulging in frivolous conversations, which fill our souls with useless thoughts.
Notice the verb…COMBAT. He also says that the reading of magazines and newspapers should also be curtailed. They leave out television, of course.
All of this is inconvenient...
That is an understatement!
All of this is inconvenient but it is precisely because they do not wish to suffer these deprivations, that many who aspire to Christian perfection remain only half way on the road to holiness.
The Second Vatican Council promoted the Call of Christ, the Great Commission, which is a universal call to holiness, and not just for some people while others are left out. We covered that a couple of weeks ago remember? Not just to certain people and leaving out the Jews, but to all. The Holy Spirit gives the Church everything She needs to complete Her mission.
Yesterday was the Feast of these twenty-two martyrs of Uganda. Also, yesterday in our Diocese, I believe in San Antonio, and around this country there were many ordinations to the priesthood and I would bet a year’s salary, which ain’t a whole lot, that in all of the Diocese and during all of the ordinations, no one mentioned these twenty-two martyrs, whose canonization were the only one to take place during the Second Vatican Council.. They ranged in age from about thirteen to twenty-five. They include St. Charles Lwanga, St. Joseph Mkasa, St. Kizito and nineteen other Companions. These are the Martyrs of Uganda, who were martyred at the end of the 19th Century for their faith. They had been Catholics about…that long. The White Fathers are called that because their habits were white. They were Fathers of the Holy Ghost and left Europe to go to Africa for the Great Commission.
It is interesting that just at the time Germany, Italy and other countries in Europe were starting to nationalize they began to persecute the Church. Germany had never been a united country until the 19th Century; the same with Italy after the Roman Empire. It had been broken up into little states. But in the 19th Century these two formed great nations but began persecuting the Church as I mention already. At the time of this persecution many of these countries produced missionaries to go out in great numbers and work in the Great Commission, the Last Words of Christ before He ascended into heaven.
The White Fathers made it to the heart of Africa to Uganda and began to teach and to baptize. The king, who at first greeted them warmly expelled them from the country and when he died, the next king, King Mwanga called them back. The first king had expelled them because these White Fathers, the missionaries, opposed his unnatural desires toward some of the young men in his country. Of course the missionaries preached against this.
When King Mwanga invited the White Fathers back, they found that some of the men who had already been catechized had started the work of the Great Commission and were passing the faith on to other young men in Uganda so much so that the Church was beginning to flourish. It wasn’t long before this King, King Mwanga would expel the White Fathers for the same reason that the previous king expelled them the first time. This King Mwanga had unnatural desires for some of the young men in his court and when he approached one of these young men, who was a page in his court, the young man rejected his advances. He said “NO” to the King. I don’t care where a king is or in what era he lived, kings hate to hear the word “No”.
The king found the man responsible for having catechized this page so well that the page was able to say ‘no” to the king and ‘yes’ to Christ. He was called forward and when he approached the king, the king had a spear thrust through the man’s throat. Of course this man perished. Then the king called all his pages together and told them that everyone who identified themselves as Christians were to get over on one side and all the Christians filed over. Then he asked them how long they were going to practice their new Christian faith and they all said that they would practice Christianity until death. The king told them they would have it their way and sentenced these men to death, but not there.
Over several days he marched them thirty-seven miles away to be executed. That is more than half the distance between Greenville and Dallas. They were marched with no food or water and were tortured and persecuted along the way. Many of the men in the party that were guarding these prisoners were related to them. Some were even related to the king. At any time along the way these young men could have recanted and decide to go along with the king and live but all twenty-two remained united in their faith. These martyrs are the Flower of African Manhood.
When Pope Benedict was in Poland he was addressing some priests in Krakow on may 25th and this is what he said to them.
In reality we grow in affective maturity when our hearts adhere to God
Our emotions mature when our hearts are not distracted by useless thoughts and adhere to God.
Christ needs priests who are mature, virile, and capable of cultivating an authentic spiritual paternity. For this to happen, priests need to be honest with themselves, open with their spiritual director, and trusting in Divine Mercy.
The same thing can be said of each one of those twenty-two martyrs of Uganda and yet men in the Church have never used the example of these men and it is to the regret of many. For example, what was going on in this country in 1964 when they were canonized? It was the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement. When we talk about the Civil Rights Movement in this country our thoughts automatically go to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and not to these twenty-two men, who are the "Flower of African Masculine Christianity". Not at all! In fact, it is to the shame of men who make of the Church in this country that these men are not held up. I guarantee you that no one preached about these saints at ordinations around this country. If someone did I hope to be pleasantly surprised! They have been put on the shelf and forgotten and yet what these men experienced could have served us over the last forty years.
Think of the commitment of these men and how they chose to love God rather than pursue gratification of the flesh. I remember in the 1960s, those letters L- O -V -E. It is kind of like when someone takes a tire that should have thirty pounds of pressure in it and they put in fifty or sixty pounds of pressure. No one in the 60s could write L -O -V -E in common script; you had to make them over inflated and barely recognizable with the psychedelic colors. What a terrible time! What they were really talking about what NOT love. They were really talking about four other letters…L- U- S- T! So they redefined love so that lust was now defined as love and that meant that anyone was free to do as they wished. What terrible consequences came from that rotten decade! Did the Catholic bishops, priests, and laypeople following the Second Vatican Council pull out the example of these Ugandan martyrs? Not at all and it is to our shame and regret! These men are bright spots for our country today.
Yesterday I went on the Internet and went to the Drudge Report. This is a piece from the Associated Press by Terry Leonard dated yesterday as well. The title of the piece is “Aids Toll May Reach 100 Million in Africa.” Not in the world, in Africa. You know, we are just hours away from remembering D Day. The pope was in Auschwitz last weekend, remember? What was the number? Six million Jews and Christians were killed in the concentration camps and twenty-five million were killed during WWII.
( “Aids Toll May Reach 100 Million in Africa”) Since June 5, 1981, HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, has killed more than 25 million people, infected 40 million others and left a legacy of unspeakable loss, hardship, fear and despair.
Isn’t that an interesting word…UNSPEAKABLE! Yea, it use to be a sin that was UNSPOKEN! Twenty five million people killed and forty million more infected…100 million in Africa. In every nation on the continent of Africa the rate of infection and cases of aids continues to rise with the exception of one place where it has gone down so fast it forms only six percent of cases in all of Africa. I am speaking of Uganda, which is approaching this crisis with the help of the Catholic Church, which is stressing abstinence. I am not saying that the efforts of the Church in Uganda are perfect but one can contrast all the other countries in Africa with the one country in the heart of Africa, which is the patrimony of these twenty-two men. Abstinence and education is key in the decrease of numbers in Uganda and yet the Church is reviled.
A week or so ago, a dinosaur from when I was a kid, Sir Elton John, spoke to a crowd lamenting how forty to sixty of his friends had died over the last thirty or forty years. He laid the blame squarely at the feet of the Church! These were men who shared the “lifestyle” of Sir Elton and he is lamenting the fact that they died but if everyone of these men had followed the teachings of Christ through His Church they would have understood that the gift of sexual power comes from God and is given to a MAN and WOMAN in the Sacrament of Matrimony until death do they part while being open to life. As long as sexual pleasure is sought in that way, every one of those men might still be alive today but forty to sixty were cut down. It says in this article that most men do not make it past their fortieth birthday and that is not just in Africa but also throughout the world. This lifestyle, which promotes the spread of this disease, cuts down the flower of men at forty and we are supposed to be rejoicing in that lifestyle?
Today in Catholic Cathedrals across this country there will be something happening that you will read or hear about tonight or tomorrow. There is a movement called the “Rainbow Sash” movement, so identified because they wear material that looks like a rainbow across their bodies. They are targeting Catholic Cathedrals in the U.S. for yet another year. Their goal is to draw attention to a certain lifestyle that they would share with King Mwanga of Uganda. I am sorry I have to speak obliquely here but children are present of course and I refuse to go down to that level. Anyway, they are promoting the same lifestyle and are protesting the Catholic Church’s teaching, the Great Commission that Christ gave to His Church…His Bride, until He comes to judge the living and the dead.
Look at today’s second reading and you see a list of virtues and a list of vices. It is as if they wish us to say that this particular voce now gets moved over to the column of virtues; this is to call evil, good. Or look at it another way; those who suffer in this lifestyle are now to be given the “get out of jail free” pass saying,
”Well, the Holy Spirit helps everyone else but them to carry their cross. The Holy Spirit isn’t giving them the grace they need to carry this cross.”
That is a sin against the Holy Spirit in itself. There is the inability in the human mind to occupy the mind with two distinct thoughts at the same time. For Catholics to attempt to say that these twenty-two men, these martyrs of Uganda have our hearts and are honored having them on the Church Calendar but then hold up for immolation King Mwanga and his life style, is impossible because they are contrary and opposites. Yet, that is exactly what is being attempted now.
Take Canada for instance. Some say Canada is a country attached to the United States but sometimes you wonder if they are in the same universe. The laws that Canada has passed restrict what I am saying to you right now. If I said this in Canada I would be on my way to jail because of their new laws. This is nothing to joke about. Even telling the truth in a religious setting such as Church, I would be on my way to jail or a lawsuit. Canada is connected “geographically” to the United States.
What is at stake is the Great Commission. The missionaries understood that they had to go out and teach all nations, baptizing in the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. If we are praying for the gifts of the Holy Spirit and can identify any of these vices, not just the one I have been speaking of but any of them as part of our lives such as immorality, impurity, lust , idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, rivalry, outbursts of fury, jealousy, acts of selfishness, dissensions, factions, occasions of envy, drinking bouts, orgies, and the like, have acclaim to any aspect of my life then I cannot at the same time invoke the Holy Spirit to bless me, to guide me, and to lead me to Heaven.
These twenty-two Ugandan martyrs, men, were led thirty-seven miles from where they had been sentenced to death, wrapped and tied in mats of reed and stacked upon a huge pile of firewood, which took days to assemble and then the fire was lighted. These men, at any time, could have gone back on their faith but the Holy Spirit gave them the strength, the fortitude, and the courage to see it through to the end. These men are not forgotten but they have never been considered. But then again they are from Africa so why is that important to us? The discrimination these men have faced does not come from racial discrimination; in my opinion it comes from mere sloth or the desire not to have the Flower of Africa in these young men challenging us to live according to the Holy Spirit.
Brothers and sisters, live by this Spirit and you will certainly not gratify the desire of the flesh; for the flesh has desires against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh. These are opposed to each other so that you may not do what you want. But if you are guided by the Spirit you are not under the law.
In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit
Amen