Father Paul Weinberger, Pastor
St. William the Confessor Catholic Church
Greenville, Texas
26th Sunday in Ordinary Time
October 1, 2006
At that time John said to Jesus, "Teacher, we saw someone driving out demons in Your Name and we tried to prevent him because he does not follow us. Jesus replied, "Do not prevent him. There is no one who performs a mighty deed in My Name who can at the same time speak ill of Me. For whoever is not against us is for us."
In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
That is a tremendous combination! In the first reading, Moses sharing the Spirit with those 70 elders. Obviously, it was God's desire to make Himself known to more than just Moses. In the second reading in the Epistle of St. James,
"Come now you rich, weep and wail over your impending miseries. Your wealth has rotted away and your clothes have become moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have corroded, and that corrosion will be a testimony against you. It will devour your flesh like a fire. You have stored up treasure for the last days. Behold the wages you withheld from the workers who harvested your fields are crying aloud."
It is amazing the tremendous graces we have been given and how poorly we have managed them. I mentioned last week that I have added many communion services to the weekly schedule and since that time I have seen many come forward and receive Our Lord in Holy Communion after having listened His Word, and all of it done in the course
of fifteen minutes with absolutely no rushing and with a concentration as if something important is going on because something extremely important is occurring.
I have a sting of conscience how after seventeen years of being a priest and up until this moment I had prevented this from having happened over the years. It is kind of like the apostles telling Jesus and trying to prevent that man from casting out demons just because he is not in their company. How often that can be said about me and you when we prefer to do something other than manage our affairs well.
The services over the Monday thru Friday and then the Mass that is said everyday proved a great spiritual benefit to many in our parish and many beyond our parish because as you can note in the bulletin on page 6, there is a list to help is pray for the special needs when we receive Holy Communion. The fact is we have been given a great treasure and we squander that which is given to us when we don't apply these graces to the so many needy in the world, in our family, on our block, in our church and to perfect strangers. And should we grow complacent which is easy to do we have to be awakened time to time.
There were three things that recommended a drastic change in the schedule such as those Communion services, 7 times Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday; 5 times on Thursday and 2 times on Monday along with the daily Holy Mass. I have no choice but to offer this.
This is not some directive being handed down to me by some official in some darkened office and by some bureaucratic. No, this is a directive being handed down to me by CHRIST and I am very grateful. Perhaps He will help me not to squander my affairs as I have in
the past.
The first instance that I will mention is from a book I brought back from Lisieux. The book is called Therese and it is a beautiful book. In this book, St. Therese continually refers to Christ as the Divine Prisoner. There is a picture on page 119 of Christ knocking at the door. It was a picture that hung on the wall in her room at the convent in Lisieux. It is very similar to the one here in front of the pulpit of the Divine Mercy but in this instance Christ is knocking on at the door and below it are the words,
Isn't that interesting, because usually we think that in reverse.The Divine Prisoner of the tabernacle awaits the visits and gratitude of His creatures yet how many abandon Him. He knocks at the door of our heart to make our heart a tabernacle where He can rest.
The Lord is my shepherd there is nothing I shall want. In verdant pastures He gives me repose.
He gives me rest. You mean that I have to give Him rest? This image of Jesus as the Divine Prisoner locked away in the tabernacle was very moving to me
because you can't, if you wish, just give yourself Holy Communion. So in this way I was preventing so many from sharing in this tremendous grace that comes from Our Lord and giving Him a chance to leave His prison of the tabernacle to rest in your soul. Oh I do not
mean like letting a genie out of the bottle; that is fiction. I mean the real spiritual fact that Christ desires to rest in my heart and yours; to share His Spirit with me and you and everyone else in the world. He will not rest until we have attempted that. So this was
reason number one, the reference to the Divine Prisoner.
Then there were two gospels I had in mind when revising the schedule. In a humbling experience, Gospel number one showed up on day one of the new schedule. And as Aristotle said,
On day number two Gospel number two showed up. Now I wish I could say that I planned it this way. If I were a married man my wife would have pointed it out to me by reminding me of how I had been talking about those gospels and that how she had looked ahead in the readings and then she would have told me to start the new schedule on Monday to coincide with the readings. Men, your wives makes you look so good. Here honey, sign right here, your mother's birthday is next week. Here is the gift you are sending her. Thank you.SHAZAM!
I wish I could say that I planned ahead but I didn't. And so I read the gospel on Monday and then on Tuesday and it was like I was hit by a "two-by-four" across the front of my head. Two "two-by-fours" sacrificed their lives to be slammed against my head and to break. Something got in! St. Luke's Gospel, chapter 8, verse 16-21 can be read at home and you will see the two Gospels I am referring to. Monday's Gospel was,
Jesus said, "No one lights a lamp and places it under a bushel basket."
And the conclusion of that gospel is this.
To anyone who has much more will be given and to the one who has little even what little he appears to have will be taken away.
The statue over there is a perfect example of that Gospel. That is the statue of St. Therese and today is her feast day. She had so much and she managed her affairs so well and God kept giving her more.
On Tuesday the Gospel was,
The mother of Jesus and His brothers came to Him but were unable to join Him because of the crowd.
Again, forget what you have read in the DaVinci Code. I guess you could forget it if I would stop bringing it up. Everybody talks about the brothers and sisters of Jesus. Brothers and sisters here in St. Luke's Gospel is a reference to His cousins, His extended family.
So He was told, "Your mother and Your brothers are standing outside and they wish to see You. Jesus said to them in reply, "My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and act on it."
So a Communion service is composed of hearing the word of God and, if I don't act contrary to what I hear, I am a brother of Christ. You could be a brother or a sister of Christ. What an exalted title! And if I have the possibility of receiving Our Lord, His Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity in Holy Communion and for any frivolous reason I choose not to do so, such as personal laziness or inattention then I am not managing my
affairs well.
There is a passage in the canonization process of St. Therese from the book St. Therese of Lisieux by Those Who Knew Her, by Father Christopher O. Mahoney. Whenever someone is canonized they speak to everyone who knew them. They want to get the good and the bad. I am sure that moments after I am dead they will be contacting you and it will be the shortest investigation ever in the history of the Church. They will just say, "Why bother?" and then they will move on to the second person. There is no canonization process here!
In the book by Father O'Malley, St. Therese, who is suffering in the infirmary of the convent is speaking with her sister, Sr. Marie of the Sacred Heart, who is both a blood sister and also a Carmelite sister. Sr. Marie says,
I often spent my recreations in the infirmary sitting by Therese on her bed of pain. One day I told her that with another sick person I would have found it difficult to be deprived of my recreation time but that with her it was a great comfort to me. Immediately she, St. Therese, responded, "I, on the
other hand, would have been very happy to do so since we are on earth to suffer and the more we suffer the happy we are. We practice charity better with a person who is less congenial. Unfortunately we manage our affairs here on earth rather
badly."
This is a doctor of the Church speaking! I will continue reading because you can see all the roses surrounding the statue of St. Therese. She is always connected with roses.
Sr. Marie was reading one day in the refectory a passage from the life of St. Aloysius Gonzaga, which told how a certain sick man saw a shower of roses fall on his bed as a sign that his prayer for a cure would be answered. Later at recreation time Therese said to Marie of the Sacred Heart, "I too will let fall a shower of roses after my death."
You can see that on the front cover of the bulletin. That picture of St. Therese. Think of the person in the New Testament who most mismanaged their affairs and, one of the top is the prodigal son. Let's imagine this with a twist. Suppose he has already received his inheritance and has gone off to a far away place to squander it in a desolute manner and now he is caring for the pigs of some farmer. Now he is covered from head to toe with mud and everything else that is in there. All you can see are his eyes and he is barely distinguishable from the pigs, except he is getting thinner we hear. For a Jew to be anywhere near swine is to place himself in the position of becoming unclean according to the Law and here the prodigal son is up to his ears in swine.
Now let's pretend that they are making a documentary on swine and this farmer is the poster boy for swine production. So they roll the cameras in there for the evening news and since they need a filler they call the young man and asked him if he would like to say hi to his mom and dad into the camera. He looks terrible but he says,
"Hi mom, hi dad."
Later that evening his parents turn on the evening news and say that they didn't raise him this way.
If we manage our affairs in a similar way which actually mismanaging our affairs we can't say when we go before God, with only two clean areas where our eyes are, and we are like the second reading being covered in corruption, being motheaten and our weath rotted away, we can't say,
"I know I look terrible but You didn't send me enough grace."
How can we look God in the face and say,
"You did send me Your Son, Who is the Source of every grace and That wasn't enough."
It is not possible to receive these graces and not have it have an effect unless we are an obstacle, a stumbling block to God's grace the way I have mentioned about myself. Seventeen years as a priest and then finally the alarm went off at 4:50 am. I don't like getting up early but I have no choice because I know that God wants His Son to be shared with the whole world and if I don't do my part I am managing my affairs badly.
The book by Raymond Arroya about Mother Angelica is about a woman who managed her affairs well. I would start reading the last 100 pages of the book if I were you. You see their communications empire that was started out of her garage now reaches around the world. There is a cable network, twenty-four hour programming, short wave in English and Spanish and they are going into other languages.
Both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI have proclaimed Mother Angelica, as being a true evangelizer and a true gift to the Church and I don't care what anyone else thinks.
The next time you turn on EWTN think of St. Therese because Mother Angelica without St. Therese probably would not have been Mother Angelica.
If you know about Mother Angelica you know that she came from a broken home and her father didn't see her most of her life. A little before he died he looked her up in the convent and spoke to her once. God is good. She barely didn't make it out of highschool.
She had a medical condition. She and her mother are living with her mothers folks. She has no brothers and sisters. The good news is she graduated from high school and the bad news is you have a medical condition. Just before she is going to burst onto the world and get her first job and, we can all relate to this when our parents finally kicked us out at 28 years old and said that we had to get to work, and she was diagnosed with petosis of the stomack aka dropped stomach. The condition pinched the entry way of the organ like a kinked water hose. The doctors made a corset out of leather for her to wear just like every eighteen year old wants. As if that were not bad enough, the Japanese then attacked Pearl Harbor and our country goes into World War II. She gets her first job at a ball bearing plant in Canton, Ohio.
This is from her book written by Raymond Arroyo and starting on page 26,
She is feeling terrible. Her family life isn't great. She is no longer in highschool and she can't work because of this medical condition. She was examined and the doctors said that the medical belt needed to be enlarged and suggested that she sleep with her legs raised 8 inches to keep the stomach suspended. The corset wasn't to be removed except if she wasOne day in April of 1942, Rita, her name before becoming Mother Angelica, retired to the
ladies lounge at the plant. She laid down elevating her feet on the arms of the sofa, trying to impede the stomach spasms she could feel were coming on. Within moments a stabbing pain ran through her abdomen. Even the medical medical belt could not control her undulating stomach.
in bed with her feet up. She returned to work but the corset began to cut into her hips causing blisters which would rupture from continually wearing the corset. She stayed at home in bed to allow the blisters to heal. She couldn't go to work.
One day she got out of bed without her corset to see if she was ready to go back to work.
She was terrified. What young woman in her place wouldn't be terrified.A nauseating pain swiftly rolled through her stomach, she glanced down and was terrified at what she saw. The whole area was marked with a bruise. The skin was now a bluish tint and more alarming, protruding from the left side of her abdomen was a lump the size of a lemon.
The doctor then said those comforting words we all like to here,Her mother didn't know what to do so she took her to a woman that was very spiritual and very wise and her name was Rhoda Wise in Canton. They spoke to Mrs. Wise and just before they left, Mrs. Wise gave Rita prayers to the Little Flower, that is another name for Saint Therese and told Rita to make some sort of sacrifice and to promise to spread devotion to St. Therese if she was cured. Well, she, her mother and her grandmother began praying for nine days with an intensity that they have never prayed before and on
the ninth day she experienced a terrible pain but it was a pain different than the others. She was cured and she was broadcasting it to everyone. She went to see the doctor and the doctor said it was obviously just a nervous condition. All she knew is that she was
gaining weight.
"That will be a $100!" (Laughter)
Mother Angelica tells Raymond Arroyo in the book,(Rita) said that she could have cared less. For her the healing was a transforming experience, a milestone that would entirely reorient her life. Life would never be the same after this.
Now the next time you look at Mother Angelica or anything to do with EWTN think of the Little Flower and how she managed her affairs. So much so that she is still managing her affairs very well. And the secret to this success that she said very early on was that she didn't want this big mountain or grand canyon full of grace waiting for her in heaven from all the sufferings and sacrifices she made while on earth. She wanted to spend them right a way on people far and wide similar to the intentions mentioned in the bulletin. She wanted to use the graces for the sick, the suffering, the missionaries, the pope, family members, prisoners. Everybody benefited from her spending spree of tremendous graces.The Lord came in and healed me through the Little Flower. I had a whole new attitude. I knew there was a God. I knew that God knew me and loved me and was interested in me. I didn't know that
before. All I wanted to do after my healing was give myself to Jesus.
St. Therese should be renamed St. Teflon because when God put a grace in her hand it never stuck. No grace was ever there but for a nanosecond. She gave away every grace very unlike that second reading,
Your wealth has rotted away, your clothes have become moth-eaten, your gold and silver have corroded, and that corrosion will be a
testimony against you; it will devour your flesh like a fire. You have stored up treasure for the last days. Behold, the wages you withheld from the workers who harvested your fields are crying aloud.
In other words graces put in her hands were managed very well and still are. Typical of St. Therese and St. Pio, she said that before she died that she was not going to enter Heaven and rest for all eternity until all of her spiritual children entered before her. What a mother. What a spiritual mother. And the basis for all of her spending sprees was that she was the youngest daughter of a large family. Her mother died when she was about 3 1/2 and so she really clung to her father for the rest of her life. She loved him so dearly, which was great preparation for the love she would have for God the Father.
And of course being the youngest, she was the most spoiled. St. Therese knew that her father would refuse her nothing good for her soul for her well being.. This prepared her for the way she would approach God the Father. She wanted no grace to go into her
"account" in Heaven. She wanted it all spent on these many people in need. Probably the only person in Heaven with a better record of outspending St. Therese is Our Lady. And Our Lady helped St. Therese early on in her life. St. Therese said that she wanted to go before God as a small child with empty hands and if I am not ready to appear before Him that in an instance He can make me ready. What confidence!
If we only managed our affairs as well. So what I am attempting to show in these readings and with this change in the schedule is that we have the opportunity to share in the Spirit of God. But when we choose to be otherwise occupied and turn our back on those in real need we are storing up all of that for ourselves and it will be used against
us. I am not talking money but spiritual favors after blessings after blessings that have been lavished upon us and we go before God and look like the prodigal son after a day tending the swine. No, it is sad but we manage our affairs rather poorly.
Jesus, however, wishes to have our participation. He does not want us to prevent anyone from participating in His Work. So parents have to employ their children in this great work. And we can see those in need and turn our backs and think that there will not be any consequence.
At that time, John said to Jesus, "Teacher, we saw someone driving out demons in Your Name, and we tried to prevent him because he does not follow us." Jesus replied, "Do not prevent him. There is no one who performs a mighty deed in My Name who can at the same time speak ill of me. For whoever is not against us is for us. Anyone who gives you a cup of water to drink because you belong to Christ, amen, I say to you, will surely not lose his reward."
From that small task on up, our reward will be dependent upon our response to so many graces offered to us and if we cooperate and direct those graces it will be to our credit in Heaven.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.