11th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2005

[Fr.Paul Weinberger]

Homily by:
Father Paul Weinberger, Pastor
St. William Roman Catholic Church
Greenville, Texas
6 / 12 / 2005 11th Sunday in Ordinary Time

At the sight of the crowds Jesus’ heart was moved with pity for them because they were troubled and abandoned like sheep without a shepherd. Then He said to His disciples, “The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few so ask the Master of the harvest to send out laborers for His harvest.

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

Amen

The yellow sheet that has been provided for you in your bulletin is the Novena Prayer and Litany to St. Anthony of Padua. At the close of Mass we will sing two verses of the Recessional Hymn and for those who wish to stay in Church, we will pray the Novena to St. Anthony. You can pray the Litany at home as a family.

Over on the other side of the Altar is a statue of St. Anthony holding the baby Jesus and it is on loan to us at this time. Tomorrow is the Feast of St. Anthony. A baby starts to cry right at the time Fr. Paul is explaining the statue and Novena and he makes this remark. Evidently we have some people objecting to St. Anthony, but the saint is loved by most of us. [Laughter] Let the critiques say what they might. [Laughter]

St. Anthony died in the year 1231 and shortly after he died people began to flock to his tomb. The book I am holding is called “The 33 Doctors of the Church” and St. Anthony is a Doctor of the Church. Pope Pius XII made him Doctor of the Church in 1946, but that was such a long time ago and no one is alive today who was alive in 1946, Oh, wait a minute! That’s right, it has not been that long ago. Pope Pius named him Doctor just after WWII.

The candles that were brought to St. Anthony’s tomb were so large it took sixteen men to carry them. That is a big candle and reminds me of the Canonization Mass of St. Therese of Lisiuex. I spoke to a Carmelite priest who was told by a priest present for St. Therese's Canonization that some of the candles there were so large, they used a rope for the wick. Amazing! The author of ‘33 Doctors of the Church says that aside from St. Therese, there is no Doctor of the Church more prayed to than St.
Anthony.

I want to start at the end and I will work my way backwards. The burial of St. Anthony was a tremendous blow to the Church; he died at the age of thirty-six. And now as I am thirty-six years old, I think of how young St. Anthony was when he died. [Laughter] Well, I am thirty-six…plus another ten so it is just a technical problem. So he died in the year 1231 and in 1263 his body was transferred to a new Basilica. Already the process of canonization had sped forward.

Let me explain the term “Doctor of the Church”. This name is given to saints who have so excelled in promoting the Truth of the Church that Christ teaches us through His Church, that they are held above other saints, hence the name Doctor. St. Bonaventure who was also a Franciscan and Doctor of the Church like St. Anthony, was present when the remains of St. Anthony’s body were transferred to the new Basilica. When he saw the remains which consisted of the bones and the tongue still incorrupt, St. Bonaventure exclaimed;

“Oh blessed tongue, you have always praised the Lord and have led others to praise Him. Now we can clearly see how great indeed have been your merits before God.”

If you know anything about the way the body decomposes, the tongue being just cartilage, is the first to dissolve and disintegrate. So in the year 1263, all that was left were bones and his tongue found incorrupt and to this day it still is incorrupt. Amazing because as St. Bonaventure points out, he used his tongue to praise God and to lead others to praise Him. I mention this in the shadow of next week.

Next Sunday is Father’s Day. On the long sheets in your bulletin you will see under each day’s date and schedule the words, “Remember to pray one hour today for your fathers and grandfathers, those living and deceased.”

I can hear some now say,

“Oh my father is so important to me, I love him so much.”

Ok, so you won’t have a problem spending an hour a day in prayer?

“Oh, no! That is impossible, aweeeeeee gee.”

They say this as if writhing in terror and as if asked to drink poison or worse; read the New York Times. [Laughter] Same difference! We should consider the building up to Father’s Day next Sunday by praying an hour a day for someone who was and is so pivotal in our lives and formation. As I go on here, I have to apologize to the fathers because I did not choose this color for the Father’s Day Novena. Jose is responsible so you can punch him after Mass. [Laughter] Jose is the Head of the Altar boys and helps Fr. Paul print out materials for the bulletin. Without thinking he used pink paper for the Father’s Day Novena. Anyway the half sheet provided is the one that you send off to let people know that they have been included in the Masses for Father’s day. Maybe you can copy it at home on “white” paper and send it off.

It is interesting; for Mother’s Day there are all kinds of remembrances included in the Novena but on Father’s Day the intentions are always one fourth of the size. Why is that? We each have a mother and father so why is it we don’t honor our fathers with prayers for them and their intentions while they are alive and when they go to their eternal reward before us? Interesting! I can just hear,

“Oh I love my father but I just don’t pray for him every day.”

Do you see the contradiction and dissonance?

When you hear the Gospel today, why not flip over to the first reading.

”You shall be to Me a kingdom of priests, holy nation.”

Now flip over to the Gospel and look at the first lines.

At the sight of the crowds Jesus’ heart was moved with pity for them because they were troubled and abandoned like sheep without a shepherd. Then He said to His disciples, “The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few so ask the Master of the harvest to send out laborers for His harvest.”

It would be very easy for everyone to think that he was speaking specifically to priests and deacons here. NO! How about the other 99.99999999 % of the Church called the lay people? Fathers should recognize before God that they are responsible for their Domestic Church just as the Pastor of the Parish is responsible for the Parish. The father is the head of his Domestic Church. Fathers, you have as your job, to get your wife to Heaven and she of course has the more difficult job and that being to get you to Heaven. The two of you together, work to get your children to Heaven by God’s design. This is true and so fathers should realize their part in bringing in the harvest. It is amazing what just one person or a couple can do.

Recently I was driving into Dallas on I-30 and the wheat fields on the far side of 30 are ripe and there was one man at the threshing machine bringing in the wheat and another was driving the big truck into which the wheat is dumped and hauled away. Two men were bringing in that entire field. It is amazing what one man can do for his family in leading them to Heaven.

Here we are at the very beginning of the summer and if you turn to page five in your bulletin, it talks about just five steps to follow. We had CCD and grades one and two ended about the beginning November and from November to Christmas we had grades three and four. After Christmas we had grades five and six and after Easter we had grades seven and eight. Father Paul teaches the children himself and requires a parent present. The classes are seven consecutive weeks for each group. If your children attended all the classes except one, they are still in the game. If they missed more than one they do not pass go and do not collect two hundred dollars. In the fall they will begin again as was stressed along the way. So step one was for the parent and child/children to attend the classes.

Step two is to memorize the prayers and lesson for your child’s particular grade level. Grades one and two had certain prayers, three and four had more prayers, five and six had more prayers than they did and seven and eight grade had even more prayers to learn plus part of the Catechism as well. So, fathers be prepared for what your children say every summer:

“I’m bored and there is nothing to do.”

It is like a Thursday when you need to go to the grocery store on Friday or Saturday they walk into the kitchen and say,

“There is nothing to eat.”

Of course the maid hasn’t shown up yet and the pantry is full but it just means that they have run out of potato chips, Oreos and cold drinks. Yes, we have cameras and microphones in your homes. We know who you are. When your kids say they are bored just hand them the list that is in front of their prayer book and ask them how they are doing with their prayers. Then pause for clearing of throats. You see, the children are supposed to have been learning their prayers. After they learn them one or a few at a time, they recite the prayers in front of their parents in the Church office. After their prayers are learned and recited they move on to Confession; one, two, three, four, five, six, seven confessions and no more than a week separating these seven. I don’t want them going every day for seven days; they can go every week for seven weeks or even longer. I want them to have a time where they experience the Sacrament of Confession and then after that we can plan their First Communion. Some children have already made their First Communion and the only person holding you back is you.

So, when your children complain that they have nothing to do and of course this means spending hour upon hour in front of the television, tell them they have to be learning their prayers. Every child who has completed class and made First Communion by October, will be Confirmed; every child in the fourth grade and up will be Confirmed in October. If you wait until September and want an exception the answer is “NO!” No, No! Fathers, you say no to your children more often than you say yes.

This is all in keeping with tomorrow’s Feast Day. St. Anthony spoke about things of God and he prayed to God and was heard. He put his focus on teaching others about God. Fathers, and yes, mothers, you are to call upon this saint to help your children understand these Truths of the Catholic faith. Children don’t automatically understand, they have to be shown.

If you notice in your bulletin on the schedule for Monday, the Feast of St. Anthony …and if I don’t hear the papers rustle I slow down, so just rustle the papers, right?

“He’s catching on; I think he does have a microphone in our home.”

Under 10:00 am on Monday you see where we will have Holy hour with Exposition of the Most Blessed Sacrament in honor of the Feast of St. Anthony and down at the bottom of that it says that the Holy Hour will conclude with the Litany of St. Anthony, the Novena Prayer, followed by Benediction of the Most Blessed Sacrament. Benediction is when the Sacred Host is place in that beautiful receptacle called the Monstrance, which is then raised by the priest in blessing over the people. What an honor! Catholics and non-Catholics can receive that blessing and always with benefit. Benediction is always a blessing. If you look in the Adoremus Hymnal on page 700, that page and the next have the Rite of Benediction. If you have never attended Benediction you ought to start. If you notice in the bulletin, on Sunday at 2:20 pm we have Benediction at the end of the Holy Hour.

There was a young man and his parents that moved away from Blessed Sacrament two or three years ago to take a teaching job at a college in New Hampshire. I saw the young man recently, his name is Ben and he is six or seven years old now. Ben was at the Church all the time when we had Benediction. Maybe he thought there was a connection…Ben…Benediction. Right? Anyway, whatever, they are children. It made a great impression upon him. Up in New Hampshire just before Easter on Holy Thursday, they had Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament at Ben’s new parish. As the priest was raising the monstrance, which contains the Blessed Host, and was blessing the people, Ben recognized Benediction again. He leaned over to his father and said,

“How does this priest up here in New Hampshire know Father Paul?”

[Laughter] He was taught about Benediction by being present at Benediction.

There was a man in France who was a heretic. I know! So what’s new, right? [Laughter] His name was Bonello, which sounds like bologna but they just mixed up the letters…Bonello was riding around all over on his donkey preaching heresy, error and untruths about the faith so St. Anthony had him killed.
I’m sorry! St. Anthony converted him. I read the wrong line. [Laughter] St. Anthony was going to take this man and turn him around to believe in the Real Presence of Jesus in Holy Communion, so he appealed to the man.

St. Anthony: “That donkey eats a lot of hay every day, right?

Bonello: “He sure does, he eats all the time.”

The man knew that you couldn’t put hay in front of the donkey without the donkey lapping it up.

St. Anthony: “I'll make you a wager; lets do this. Lets take the donkey and not feed him anything for three days. At the end of three days you bring him to the Church and I will have a big pile of hay right here. You bring the donkey up close to the hay and I will come out with the Blessed Sacrament in the Monstrance. You watch, the donkey will kneel down in recognition of the True Presence of Christ in Holy Communion. If that happens, you will start believing in the True Presence.”

Well that was a bet. Bonello thought that this was going to be easy because the donkey was eating him out of house and home. The donkey went three days without eating and if that happened today someone would call and report you to the police so it is fortunate that we have St. Anthony doing this back in the 1200s. After three days Bonello brought the donkey up to the Church and there was a huge pile of hay there. St. Anthony came out of the Church carrying the Monstrance with the Sacred Host. The author says here that,

“Bonello brought the fasting donkey and behold the donkey knelt before the Blessed Sacrament being carried by St. Anthony rather than eat the hay presented to it.”

Bonello of course was converted. It takes a lot to teach your children the Truths of the Faith. As fathers, if you want Father’s Day celebrated, this is part of your responsibility as a father, teaching them the faith. Pope Pius XII holds up St. Anthony as a Doctor of the Church and the Pope after him, Pope John XXIII, who opened Vatican II said that St. Anthony was to be imitated and was a helpful example for living the Catholic faith. Pope John XXIII said,

“St. Anthony, by his pastoral work implemented the Decrees of the Fourth Lateran Council, is actual pastoral harmonized with decrees of that council.”

So Pope John XXIII recommended, as did Benedict XV in the 1920s. It is amazing to see how St. Anthony is held up by the Popes of the 20th Century but how many of your children, grandchildren, nieces or nephews could look over there at that statue of this saint and identify him as St. Anthony. Many of them would say,

“You mean that guy over there dressed in brown? The guy with the baby standing on the book?”

The baby is the Child Jesus. Pope Pius XII, in 1946 in his sermon elevating St. Anthony to Doctor of the Church said,

“Frequently while he stood alone in his quiet cell praying, St. Anthony with his eyes and mind sweetly fixed on heaven behold, the Infant Jesus suddenly in shining radiance embraces the neck of the young Franciscan with tender arms and smiling gently heaped childlike caresses on the saint. The he, St. Anthony, rapped from his senses, made from man into an angel, now feeds among the lilies with the angels and with the Lamb of God in Heaven.”

Men, think about that the next time you are clicking the channel changer and seeing things coming into your home. TV is a way of bringing adultery into our homes. The commercials are terrible so if you are watching something, the odds are that if it is a sporting event or something like that, the commercials are going to be terrible. I mean, who can forget the Super Bowl. Right?

Friday we had the Gospel where Jesus was speaking on the Commandments and He said,

”You have heard the Commandment, You Shall Not Commit Adultery. But I say to you, “Even if a man looks lustfully upon a woman he has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”

That is what Jesus said, JESUS! Isn’t that what TV does save Mother Angelica and a few other programs? Isn’t that what the TV does, brings adultery into our homes? Try to name the shows which don’t; they are in the minority. This is bringing in impurity to your home. Think about how close the Face of the Child Jesus is to that man of holiness and purity. If you want Christ to be that close to you then you must model yourself on St. Anthony.

Earlier I mentioned the children learning about and going to Confession. From St. Anthony you can teach your children the proper understanding of Confession. For many, confession is to be avoided. Listen to what St. Anthony says and see if you still have that same opinion.

“Truly it is the gate of Heaven, the gate of Paradise since it leads the penitent to god that he may kneel and kiss the foot of the All Merciful Lord then be lifted up to kiss the hand of our gracious God and finally be embraced by our loving Father in Heaven.”

What a beautiful understand of how the Sacrament of Confession is a gate of Heaven, like the prodigal son was embraced by his father and then his father covered his face with kisses. This is the model, the paradigm that St. Anthony uses in that Confession reconciles the sinner with God the Father. That is really not the way our children see Confession. Confession is a nuisance and bother. That is why I have added more hours of Confession to our schedule. Many people would say,

“You know, the summertime is slower so you could actually cut things out of the schedule.”

My principle is that during the time when people are wearing fewer clothes they are probably committing more sins, right? You don’t have to answer that because we know it is true. The way people walk around in malls and in public is amazing. The calendar suggests that Confession is available ten hours this week in the schedule.

There were twelve robbers who went to Confession to St. Anthony…TWELVE ROBBERS! One of them had such a conversion that he entered the Franciscan order. St. Anthony heard all their confessions and there is a proverb that says,

“As a dog returns to his vomit, so a fool returns to his folly.”

St. Anthony quoted that proverb to these twelve robbers as he heard their confessions one by one. One of the robbers revealed this later in a writing; it wasn’t St. Anthony because that would be revealing a Confession. He told them this,

“This maybe is your last chance. If you return to your vomit I foresee that a terrible punishment will overtake you. But if only you will strive to walk in the footsteps of our dear Lord, I promise you in His Name, the happiness of Heaven.”

Whatever you ask the Father in My Name John 16:23

If only they strive to walk in the footsteps of the Lord, Confession supplies the grace to do the rest. Remember the scene when Jesus was just about to give up His Spirit and the good thief turned to Him and said,

”Lord, remember me when you come into your Kingdom.” Jesus said, ”Today you will be with me in Paradise.”

This sounds exactly like what St. Anthony said to each one of these thieves. He is a model and paradigm to be used and someone who is quick to answer our prayers. If you think of St. Anthony and how quick he is to help you find something that is lost, how about the way he could help a lost soul back to God and the right way? So many people have turned to St. Anthony for help and have never been turned down.

Fathers especially should cultivate a love for St. Anthony because of the great burdens placed upon their shoulders.

“The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few so ask the Master of the harvest to send out laborers for His harvest.

Answer this one question fathers. If this doesn’t apply to you then why were you baptized? Why was baptism wasted on you if you are not going to roll up your sleeves and be a part of bringing in this great harvest. As Jesus says in the end of the Gospel,

”Without cost you have received, without cost you are to give.”


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

Amen