Father Paul Weinberger
Saint William the Confessor Catholic Church
Greenville, Texas
24th Sunday in Ordinary Time
September 17, 2006
And Jesus asked them, "But who do you say that I Am? Peter said to Him in reply, "You are the Christ!"
In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In St. Matthew's gospel, St. Peter replies that,
"You are the Christ the Son of the Living God."
It doesn't mean that St. Mark has it wrong. It seems to admit that St. Matthew has it complete.
You are the Christ the Son of the Living God.
That Christ was the Son of the Living God and last week in the First Reading at the opening of the Mass we heard from the Prophet Isaiah how we would be able to identify the Messiah. He would cure the deaf, restore sight to the blind, would heal the mute, cure the lame. The blessings of the Messiah would identify Him. Last week in the Gospel we had Jesus curing the deaf mute. The Messiah is the Christ and in the Gospel today Jesus is beginning to lay the stones, the living stones, for His Church. And He begins with St. Peter.
In George Weigel's tremendous biography of Pope John Paul II, Witness to Hope, the description of the coronation of the Pope, the Consecration of Karol Wotyla as the Successor of St. Peter is worth going back to. If you don't have the book you can pick it up very cheaply and the great thing about such a work is that you can open it anywhere and begin reading and always be rewarded. He mentions on page 260 and 261 the events of that day when John Paul II was consecrated.
Papal coronations once began with the new pontiff enthroned on the Sedia Gestatoria carried upon throngs of Romans and pilgrims. The first thing the pope would do is he would sit in a chair. The chair would be raised on a platform above the shoulders of men carrying the Sedia Gestatoria and that is how the ceremony would begin. Weigel points out that the solemn inauguration of the papal ministry of Pope John Paul II, the 264th Bishop of Rome, began October 22, 1978, with the new pope kneeling in prayer at tomb of the Apostle beneath the Dome of St. Peter's Basilica. They discovered during WWII, the escavations, the scavi as they say in italian, the scavi identified the tomb of St. Peter there, exactly where they said it was, beneath the High Altar Bernini has fashioned above in Saint Peter's dome. Below it is the tomb of St. Peter. So that is where Pope John Paul II began his ministry as pope, kneeling at the tomb of the Apostle St. Peter.
Around the interior of the dome of St. Peter's Basilica in letters six feet high is the Latin Inscription,
"Tu es Petrus et super hanc petram aedificabo ecclesiam mean et tibi dabo claves regni caelorum,"
which in English,
"You are Peter and upon this Rock I shall build my Church and I shall give you the keys of the
Kingdom of Heaven."
It's amazing to see those letters six feet high, and up there in the dome they look so small, like letters on the page of the bulletin. It's such an immense structure, St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. Dr. Warren Carroll, the founder of Christendom College in Front Royal, Va., an excellent Catholic college, has written so many works of catholic history. On of his
books,The Glory of Christendom, he writes about St. Peter's Basilica.
A mighty dome would soar over Peter's grave. His grave was originally no more than poor hollow scratched out of the earth by persecuted christians digging by night in a pagan cemetary.
You can look at St. Peter's today and it is hard to imagine that the early Christians had to go there by night because St. Peter was not crucified and put to death, for a parking violation. He was put to death because he was a christian, being crucified upside-down by his request because he did not want to be crucified as our Lord was. This mighty dome at St. Peter's is over this humble grave. Dr. Carroll mentions the man who laid the cornerstone of St. Peter's, Pope Julius II.
Pope Julius II laid the cornerstone of the new St. Peter's on April 18, 1506.
The year 1506 is five hundred years ago this year. Five hundred years ago this year, Pope Julius II placed the first stone, replacing the old basilica which Contantine, the Emperor, had placed above the tomb of St. Peter. So the basilica built five hundred years ago is called the new St. Peter's. Welcome to Europe. Going back to Dr. Carroll,
It was not entirely finished for more than 150 years and many then and since have complained of its great cost. But man does not live by thought or even doctrine alone. For full appreciation of the Glory man worships he must see it shown forth as much as man's limited abilities permit. The Catholic Church has never been found only or primarily in books. The Catholic Church sanctifies and sacrilizes places adored by the
best that human hands and human brains can produce in honor of the Creator and the Savior. The heart and center of Christendom could never in the long run settle for less than the greatest Church in the world.
Dr. Carroll mentions,
That what is there is for the greater Glory of God and it's over the tomb of a humble fisherman, the one chosen for leadership of the Apostles.
I looked at the Drudge Report today and so many radical muslims and muslim leaders are inciting so many to kill Pope Benedict XVI. This is a pope of great knowledge and here he is nearing his eightieth birthday and he is just going to pull of the mask and show himself to be the bigot against muslims that he really is? All this time he has waited, nearly 80 years, to show us his true self? Where do these people live that believe that this pope is for war? In fact, when he chose the name Benedict, I was doing back flips. He didn't call and ask me my opinion but sometimes it is difficult to get a phone call placed in Greenville so I am sure that is the reason. The reason he chose Benedict is not because St. Benedict who along with St. Martin of Tours founded monasteries in Europe but because of Pope Benedict XV who was pope during WWI. They called it the Great War. He was a pope who distinguished himself for wanting peace and end to war. Our current Pope Benedict stated that when he chose the name Benedict that that was why. Oh but then again these are merely the words of the pope.
The Pope Julius that I just mentioned, who five hundred years ago laid the first stone for St. Peter's in Rome, it was very common for him to put on armor and ride into battle. Pope Benedict, however, is very different; different time, different place, different circumstances altogether. It's amazing. So Pope Benedict has to begin all over again in a sense with his outreach to people around the world, especially to muslims. It is sad to say and I don't know if you have heard, but there was an italian nun who has worked all of her life in Somalia and she was gunned down while she was working at the hospital. A 70 year old nun gunned down by some men who ran in and shot up the place. She was walking from one part of the hospital to the other, serving the poor of Mogadishu and she was shot. Again she was shot by men who said that the pope had defiled the "prophet Mohammed" in some way. It is sad.
So the pope has to start all over again. In a sense everytime we get a new pope the Church renews herself. The Church is starting over while continuing on. This is the aspect of the living stones. I remember back in 1978 when Pope John Paul II was consecrated. I had just graduated from high school. I had seen two popes buried in a matter of months. I was thinking,
What is wrong with the water over there in Rome.
Of course Pope Paul VI was aged and ill for quite a while and then there was the death of Pope John Paul I, just over a month after he had been consecrated, who died due to a heart condition which he had not shared with anyone and he had not been taking his medication. He had left them in the office of his old archdiocese. The illness caught up with him real fast.
And so we had a funeral and a funeral.
And then here was this young vibrant intellectual chosen for pope. Pope John Paul II had been a professor for many years in Poland. A man familiar with the classroom. What a day it was when he was beginning. The Church renewing herself. And these words from St. Matthew's gospel,
You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God!
These are the words that Pope John Paul II used to begin his life as the 264th pope of the Roman
Catholic Church, the successor of St. Peter.
So Weigel points out,
He began with an Act of Faith in the words of the man at whom's tomb he had prayed a little more than an hour before.
Wait a minute! You mean that they had just read the Gospel and the pope was just starting his homily and over an hour had passed? You think Mass is long here. (Father laughs..) Pope John Paul II began his homily in this way,
You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God!
Pope John Paul II said,
Anyone assuming the office of Peter in the Church had to begin this way.
Peter's successor could only begin his service on this day and in this place with these same words.
You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God!
It was very riveting the way in which those words were delivered that day. The pope went on to explain the history of salvation.
Salvation history was human history read in its true depth against the horizon of its true destiny. Since the Church was immersed in history as a witness to that truth it was important to understand that Peter's confession of faith was not just about Peter and Jesus. It was the starting point of the Church and in Peter's act of faith the history of salvation took on a new ecclesial dimension.
This is something that needs to really sink in like that gentle rain outside. What the pope is saying there is,
Look it's not just Peter and Jesus. It's not just me and Jesus.
No, it is much more. And we hear many Christians remarking ,
"Oh it's just me and Jesus."
And whatare the rest of us, just chickens? Right? Me and Jesus? No, He didn't start a me and Jesus group. He started a Church. That's the ecclesial dimension.
Pope John Paul II in his homily stated,
Christ had brought humanity close to the mystery of the Living God. No one else could do this but God's own Son, and He had done it in a way that we could recognize as One like us, Christ the Son of the Living God had not only told us about His Father. He had told us the ultimate and definite Truth
about ourselves. Jesus Christ is the Truth about the human condition.
How beautifully stated in Weigel's "Witness to Hope," page 261. The fact that we could recognize the Messiah is obvious because Isaiah prophesied centuries before,
"This is how you will identify him."
Jesus reveals to us the Father but He also reveals to us ourselves, if...we allow Him to reveal the truth about humanity.
St. Peter's was started five hundred years ago. That pope, Pope Julius II, a couple of years later met a sculptor and said that he wanted him to leave the sculpting aside and wanted him to paint the ceiling of his church which will be next to the new basilica, the Sistine Chapel. The sculptor as we know was Michaelangelo.
What a pope at the time of the Renaissance. The Renaissance was going big in Europe. The Renaissance was a time when one reflected on what humanity could do. "Look what humans can do" was the watchword. It was a very very tempting time. That was exactly the kind of thought that erected the Tower of Babel. The Renaissance was in a sense hijacked by some because look what we can do as human beings. Who needs God?
Well that wasn't just a tempting little bit of thought of five hundred years ago. The communists right around the time of Pope Benedict XV and WWI said the same thing. And everytime that is tried the same results are produced. Someone is going to get hurt and somebody is going to get killed. Communism has so far to its tally victims over one-hundred- seventy million; one-hundred- seventy million here and one-hundred- seventy million there and after awhile it really begins to add up. But that is really not the number because think of all the forced abortions in China, for example, and in the former Soviet Union think of how so many are dying through embryonic stem cell research in communist countries, and even in this country.
Every time human thought and human power is subtracted and disconnected from God it is always going to lead to the gas chamber. That is why this profession of faith by St. Peter is so important because we see so much of St. Peter and we love him because he was chosen by God but he also one of us. He is a man, weak. The question has been posed.
Who do you say that I AM?
And St. Peter quickly answers,
You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God!,
as it is written in St. Matthew's Gospel. Jesus points out, in a sense, affirming the selection that has been made that God the Father has chosen to reveal this to St. Peter. And Jesus has asked the question and St. Peter has given the answer and has shown himself to be the one chosen from above to be the first living stone placed in the Church. But after this tidal wave of success St. Peter isn't finished doing the Snoopy Dance in the endzone when the harshest words come to St. Peter. Words I tremble ever hearing from Christ. Jesus turns after St. Peter tells him that we will have none of this suffering business; being killed by the leaders. Jesus says,
Get thee behind me Satan. You are not thinking as God thinks but as man thinks.
Anytime that we disconnect ourselves from God the same thing is going to happen. And the same thing is said by God to us.
What in the world are you doing?
You know that I glory in the fact that I have been baptized. I was baptized months after being born. And since then the Holy Spirit has come to live in my soul. This is tremendous. I am a brother of Jesus. I am an adopted son of God the Father just as everyone else who is baptized is. How is it that I can go off and disconnect; pull the plug on all of that. People do it everyday. They get into the car and turn into animals. Just look at that guy cutting me off in traffic. Later they get to work and are really jazzed. I'll just have a
coffee this morning. Some people then chew their secretary's head off or whoever gets in their way. It is like this throughout the day. It's a jungle out there. Yes, but we do not happen to be lower animals. We are brothers and sisters of Christ. Adopted sons and daughters of God the Father. Do we just unplug that during the day?
The fact is that this kind of attitude is just so tempting and so common. If you look at the front of the bulletin. That is a mosaic of Our Lady of La Salette.
Click on the link below to see a picture of Our Lady of La Salette
http://www.ourladyofgoodhelp.org/Images/Lasalette.gif
It is an image that I really don't like being near. I am a man and men naturally run from a woman's tears. Women know this. It is hardwired for men to run from a woman's tears and it is hardwired in women to shed them. "Come back you are making me cry." That is the hardwiring.
Look on page 8 of the bulletin for Pope John Paul II's commentary that he wrote ten years ago on the 150th Anniversary of Our Lady of La Salette. This Tuesday is the 160th anniversary. This is really an apparition of Our Lady made for Texans. At Fatima, Our Lady appeared to three children as they were tending sheep. Our Lady appeared in Lourdes to St. Bernadette collecting firewood. This however is made for Texans. These two young people, Maximin, 11, and Melanie, 14, were herding cattle. This is just right for the heart of any Texan. They were out there with the cows and the Blessed Mother was discovered by the children as she was shedding tears sitting near by a dried up spring.
I will leave the rest of the first two paragraphs where Our Lady is commenting about how she is shedding tears because people are not using the Lord's Day as the Lord intended. They are doing unnecessary work. People are taking the Lord's name in vain. She is crying
because people are using her Son's name, God's name as a curse word.
You might also notice that she, the Blessed Virgin, speaks as Moses speaks to the israelites in the Person of God. She is not making herself out to be God when she says,
I gave you six days to work I kept the seventh for Myself and they will not give it to Me.
She is not putting herself in there as God she is reminding us of the Third Commandment.
In the third paragraph she says to the children,
Do you say your prayers well, my children?
Now sometimes when children get a little older they turn into little lawyers and say it depends on how you ask the question. However, Our Lady is a mother and mothers are very smart and so she asks if they say their prayers well! It is like if you ask your children if they cleaned the kitchen and they answered "yes." But if you asked them if they did a good job cleaning the kitchen you would need to take a pause for coughing...
When Our Lady asks the children,
"Do you say your prayers well, my children?",
the children are very honest and answer that they hardly ever do. Then the Blessed Virgin said to them,
Ah my children, you must say them. Say them well at night and in the morning. If you were only to say an Our Father and a Hail Mary when you can do no better. When you can do better say
more.
I just marvel at how a mother's heart knows exactly how to get what she wants out of children. You have seen mothers with a sick child and they are so patient. That is why men are often not nearby when the kids are sick. The mother is great at getting the sick child to eat just a little bite of food. After the first spoonful is eaten the mother fills it up again. I remember my mom telling me to try to eat this little piece of watermelon and within twenty minutes I had eaten the whole watermelon. Not really! It is hard to imagine my mother having this problem with me.
But the Blessed Mother is saying to these children to pray a little bit, do the best you can even if it is only an Our Father and a Hail Mary and then do more when it is possible. These words of Our Lady are very helpful to you and to me because so often when we pray we don't pray well. Many times when I am at prayer distractions enter my mind. I can be praying the Liturgy of the Hours at my chair and my mind could be a thousand miles away. I could be at the Altar offering the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and be thinking of some mundane thing that I have to accomplish. That is not praying well and God can read my heart. We must see Our Lady's words to these children as a help for me and you to pray. Prayer is recognizing that Christ is the Son of the Living God.
Yesterday in CCD in church a lot of kids came. The 1st-4th grade students just began this year's instructions.
Father personally teaches Faith Formation to all of the children of the parish. A parent/guardian must be present at all times during the instruction given by Father. In this way, both the youth and their parents are on the same page and both learn the Faith directly from their parish priest.
It is really fun to teach young children to pray. Some of them and even their parents are learning how to pray for the first time.
Last week I took my mom to dinner and she told me about when she attended the Cathedral School in Dallas. The sister was teaching the students how to pray. The sister stopped and told them that these prayers would need to be memorized but emphasized that prayer was nothing less than CONVERSATION WITH GOD.
How beautifully that fits in with this! To begin again a new year. Kids are back in school. Some are back in college. So many things are starting over at this time. It is a time for me and you to consider starting over in the prayer department. How do we pray? Are we praying well? If we pray we are recognizing the ability to get a direct line to Our Father's Heart. If we don't pray it like saying, "Why bother, He's nothing!" If we pray we are connecting with God. If we don't, we are on our own human abilities. If we go through a period of the day or the whole day without connecting to God, I guarantee you that people around us are going to suffer. They are going to be hurt and worse in some cases.
How many people in making monumental, life-changing decisions fail to turn in prayer to God. These people then go on to carry this cross for the rest of their lives. Just last week a message was sent out that a little boy from Greenville was found at the bottom of a pool and they rushed him to Dallas and they offered up prayers, prayers, prayers, and they got
them. The little boy was released within 24 hours from the hospital. No residual effects.
"Wasn't he lucky,?"
many catholics would say. Don't ever mention that word to me because I will not be responsible for my actions. You know, you pray for something and then you get it and then you say,
"Weren't we lucky?"
God is not just some gibbering fool in some back office in Heaven. How insulting to God!!! We pray, our prayers are answered and then the results are attributed to luck, forture and fate. That little boy is restored and I know why. We recognize the Messiah because he cures the sick, restores sight to the blind, restores hearing to the deaf, enables the mute to speak and that little boy here in Greenville knows why he is ok.
We run from prayer because it is such a waste of time. One perfect example is the pope's life has now been put in danger. There are calls for the pope to be killed. Radical muslims around the world are inciting people to do what they can to kill Pope Benedict. That is so urgent and important and how many Catholics today, the Lord's Day, which Our Lady of La Salette points out is so abused, are going to stop and offer a rosary for the pope. Some think that prayer doesn't really do any good. Look at the heresy there. Look at the blasphemy.
Jesus shows us the Father. The Father shows us His Heart in Jesus and we can pray and be heard in a direct connection and we don't. If we begin and end our day with prayer, the odds are by listening intently in prayer and asking His Help we will avoid all of those human failings. We will not become perfect but it is going to perfect us each day and help us grow as we should in this life to be with Him in the next.
And Jesus asked them, "But who do you say that I AM?" Peter said to Him in reply, "You are the Christ"
......and so do we everytime we fold our hands to pray.
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.