Palm Sunday 2007

[Fr.Paul Weinberger]

Homily by:
Father Paul Weinberger
Saint William the Confessor Catholic Church
Greenville, Texas
Palm Sunday
April 1, 2007

As they led Him out they took hold of a certain Simon, a Cyrenean who was coming in from the country, and after laying the cross on him they made him carry it behind Jesus

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

Amen

Today begins our entrance to Holy Week; it is the door to Easter. There is no other way; when you compare what we just heard about the triumphal entrance into Jerusalem, as we portrayed at the entrance of the church, and now this.

If you look on the front of the bulletin you will see a difference. You see Jesus with one of the palms but they are mocking Him and He has been crowned with thorns and scourged and yet He has His piece of palm right there tucked in His right arm. What a difference a few days make.

To view the image click HERE

About a week and a half ago, on a Wednesday we hosted Radix, who put on the Passion. I will never hear the line, My God, My God, why have You abandoned Me?, without thinking of the Radix presentation. It was very graphic and the words were yelled; I didn’t yell into the microphone but he yelled here in the Church and it was gripping.

Pictures of the presentation by Radix can be viewed HERE


The following Sunday we started the Mission of Our Lady of Lourdes; the Radix and the Lourdes Mission helped in so many ways to help me to do something I rarely do and that is to “think”. The hardest thing to do is to think about something so common as what we have just heard here; to go over familiar material and to think anew is very difficult, but having the two presentations, Radix and the Lourdes Mission makes one think.

For example; I am forty-seven and I have prayed the Way of the Cross many times throughout my life, but the priest from Lourdes, Pere Regis Marie, who led us in the Stations of the Cross had written the meditations. It wasn’t something that he promoted and I had to pull it out of him. For example, the 4th Station, Jesus is meeting His afflicted Mother. If you will notice they are both looking into each other’s eyes. In the Stations of the Cross meditations written by Pere Regis, he said that when Mary saw Jesus she said a prayer. Of course being a skeptic I thought to myself,

”How do you know? How do you know she said a prayer”

Well, the Blessed Mother always acted appropriately in the presence of her Son, who is God. What is more appropriate when you are in the presence of God than saying a prayer? We are in the presence of God; there He is in the Tabernacle and in His Word proclaimed He will be coming to this Altar in moments. Prayer in this building is very appropriate while in the presence of God.

Pere Regis’ mentioning that Mary saw Jesus at the 4th Station and said a prayer got me to thinking. Then he followed it up with the 5th Station and the 6th Station. He said that in the 5th Station that Simon helps to carry the Cross of Jesus.

As they led Him out they took hold of a certain Simon, a Cyrenean who was coming in from the country, and after laying the cross on him they made him carry it behind Jesus

In the 4th Station Our Lady says a prayer and in the 5th Station her prayer is answered. What would she pray for?

Could someone please help my Son to carry this cross?

That is a very practical prayer and a very mystical prayer as well, and it was answered. And though Pere Regis didn’t mention it, I am sure he was thinking the same thing at the 6th Station. The Holy Face of Jesus with blood dripping down from His crown of thorns and sweat coming down mixing with the blood and falling into the sand, would make it hard to discern that this was a man under all of that blood, sweat and dirt. St. Veronica came up and wiped the Face of Jesus. Wasn’t that an answer to a prayer? How many times in life does a mother wipe the face of her children? To prove a point, my mother did it again today, to me. Mothers are constantly concerned that their children are presentable. It was an answer to Our Lady’s prayer wasn’t it? I have been praying these Stations for a long time and I never saw it that way before.

With the gift of grace and perseverance during Lent, God will help us to see things that have always been there but we see it in a different light. Perhaps you have lived in the same home for a very long time and this morning you got up to get a cup of coffee and you are walking down the hall and you see a large room off the hallway that you had never noticed before. Of course you ask your wife about it and she says it has always been there. [Laughter] You never noticed it, right? The things that we will see during Holy Week if only we focus!

Look at the First Reading from the Prophet Isaiah; here is real focus. Look at the last sentence.

The Lord God is my help therefore I am not disgraced; I have set my face like flint knowing that I shall not be put to shame.

You have seen those faces carved out of stone in Mt. Rushmore. Have you ever seen one of those faces grimace and look away? If you did you probably had to go to the doctor because they don’t do that. Centuries before Jesus, the Prophet Isaiah is foretelling the way Jesus would approach Jerusalem. In the Gospels it says that Jesus set His face link flint toward Jerusalem and He wasn’t going to be detoured or distracted but focused. He knew what was waiting at the other end. If we focus like this it is amazing the kinds of things we can see.

As I already mentioned we had the parish Lourdes Mission and on Sunday night when it started it was great. After the mission that night I got to bed really late and then Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday it seemed like all kinds of different things were coming at me like rapid fire such as appointments with people I haven’t heard from in a long time; these seemed to be falling out of the sky. I kept asking myself what was going on here and why is it happening, and of course these questions after frowning and growling just a little.

Look, we have a parish mission going on, DON’T YOU KNOW I AM ALREADY BUSY????”

I thought about it and my thoughts were something like this.

“Wait a minute, we are having a mission here named for Our Lady of Lourdes.”

I went to a young man and I asked him this question.

“If your dad is gone for a day or so and he comes back, what is the first thing your mother gives him?”

He waited and then he said,

“A list!”

Exactly! It is a honey-do list, right? Honey, do this and that! Husbands are familiar with this and wives are too. If this had gotten done the first time it wouldn’t be on the list, right? That is when I realized that I had part of the list of Our Lady of Lourdes and these are things that she wanted. Now, how can we prove that? I can prove it for sure because the appointments came at me like rapid fire and one came and ended and the next one came and they didn’t conflict or overlap and there were no problems. When I schedule things there are, right? But, these had the sign of another hand and I thought,

“Okay, I have certain items on this list to complete in honor of Our Lady of Lourdes; it seems fitting. Our mission is named for her, it is not just a name, it is a reality.”

Pictures and description of the Lourdes Mission can be viewed HERE


The mission ended on Wednesday night and on Thursday I went into Dallas to see the Missionaries of Charity, went by a hospital and then came back home. It was raining Thursday night and what a cross that was for me; I had to drive the speed limit. Since I had to drive slow and in a safe manner I got home late and wet. I got ready for bed and just as I got ready for bed the telephone rang and someone at the hospital in Greenville was dying. Of course I know when the phone rings that late and the lady has been in the hospital a long time what will be requested of me. Then you can hear this growl and it isn’t my stomach but my mouth, right?

“Why didn’t you call ten minutes ago or yesterday when I was already at the hospital?”

These are the thought that were going through my mind. That is the way life is, right? Parents understand that and do this all the time with their children. You are sunk in a chair after a long day at work and you plan on not moving until the next morning and then one of the kids calls your name and you find yourself moving across the room. You didn’t have an ounce of strength left in you…you get the idea.

I got dressed and went to the hospital thinking that this is something that Our Lady was asking of me and I was going to approach it this way. Our Lady wanted this taken care of. The woman I went to see was very old and her name was Anna Garcia. I’d never seen her before and this was probably because her family wouldn’t take her to Mass or she was too sick to make it in. There were about fifteen people present and they are all from around here but I had never seen them. They were probably all Christians but not Catholic Christians. You could tell they were good people.

When we all went into the room Anna was surrounded by machines to which she was hooked up and before I began to say the prayers I told the others that they could all have chosen to be somewhere else; it was late. They could have had many legitimate excuses not to be there but they were there with Anna. I told them that during Anna’s life she probably prayed for all of them at some time in their lives and they all shook their heads in agreement. I told them that they were here now to pray for Anna in the last moments of her life when they could be somewhere else. So, we got down to the serious business of praying. Anna was asleep or in a coma and maybe she heard us and maybe she didn’t; there was no way that we knew one way or the other.

I anointed Anna, pinned a Miraculous Medal on her and began the prayers for the dying. So, here we are in this room on Thursday night and then…uh oh…there was something in the corner of the room I hadn’t noticed before. There was a TV and it was on. You want to talk about growling? These people don’t know me but you do and you know how I feel about TVs. The TV was muted but it was on. Now, at this hospital in order to turn off a TV you have to find the control. Anna was covered up and the control was in there somewhere…maybe. Even when you have the control you have to flip through two or three hundred channels until you get to the end and then the TV goes off. So I am trying to weigh this in my mind. I was wondering if we should just interrupt the pray or just go on. Was the TV really bothering anyone? It is not reverent to have the TV on during prayer.

I made the decision to stop and I asked that someone please turn off the television. Just as I said “television”, and I kid you not, this great bolt of lightening hit somewhere around the hospital and all the power in the hospital goes off and comes back on. All the machines around Anna came back on except for one…the TV. So I said to these people,

“We all know who turned off the TV, and when you leave here in just a few minutes and go back into the waiting room you will probably find a bible in one of the drawers. You can pray the Psalms or say some prayers for Anna, but you are not going to be watching TV. ”

They all agreed!

We have to be able to focus and whatever we do during the other weeks of the year, we have to put aside TV, radio, music, and some other things we like to do. Set them aside; this is Holy Week and our door, the entrance to Holy Week. This is HIS week and if we treat it as we would any other week we are not going to reap the bounty or the spiritual insights that are awaiting us.

There is the parable of the man who had a vineyard and he went out to find workers, He went out again and again and at the end of the day there were some men milling around and he told them to go to his vineyard to work and that he would pay them a full day’s wages. When he paid everyone he started with the last guys who had worked a short time and ended with the guys who had worked a whole day. Everyone got the same pay, a full day’s wages. Maybe it will be that ways for you; if you have been bone idle spiritually for Lent but you focus like Jesus, the Suffering Servant in the Prophet Isaiah, who set His face like flint, if you carve it in stone this week you will see insights that before have escaped you. God will show you, He will lead you and guide you.

At the beginning of Lent a young man who works here, Antonio Cruz, who many of you know and is one of ten children, lost his grandfather at the beginning of Lent. He and his brother made a lightening trip to Mexico. Antonio was telling me about the funeral. Antonio’s parents are retired and they live in Mexico and they take care of their parents. When Antonio started telling me about the funeral I got really mad when I heard what had happened. Antonio’s grandfather was a very holy man and he’d arranged his funeral before hand, which is good but also bad because there was no way to change things after he passed away. Antonio said that the priest had the funeral for his grandfather and along with his he had the funeral for two others.

In the area there is a problem with gangs and one man was killed in a gang and then that gang retaliated and killed someone in the other gang. So, there were these two gang members along with Antonio’s grandfather at the funeral Mass at the same time. I told Antonio that the priest was wrong to do this but actually the priest was right. After I thought about it for a little while I took a different position and told Antonio that his last name is Cruz, which means cross, crucifix. Having a name like Cruz is a great privilege and honor but it comes at a cost. I told him that there was someone who died and with him there were two criminals, one on His right and one on His left. It seemed very fitting that Antonio’s grandfather would die and be buried in that manner.

We have to be able to consider everything in light of the Passion of Christ in order to make sense out of it. If you look at the Old Testament in Exodus, Moses leads the Israelites out of Egypt into the desert to Mt. Horeb, which is Mt. Sinai. Moses tells the Israelites to focus and to get ready because in three days they were going to speak to God. He tells them to wash their clothes and not to touch a woman. They all got ready and washed their clothes and went out to meet God. Moses went up to the mountain and he was speaking with God but all the Israelites heard was thunder. They were afraid.

Why did they hear only rumbling of thunder? They were given the instructions to wash their clothes, get ready and don’t touch a woman. It is not that women are bad. But what is the saying? Their focus could not be mixed; it had to be on God. This is for the men and the women. So what did they all do? They all got read and they all washed their clothes but that other requirement wasn’t obeyed and all they heard was thunder. Of course, well, that is the only time in the bible……

No, if you go forward into the New Testament when Saul is riding into Damascus and is knocked off his horse and Jesus appears to Saul, who we know as St. Paul, Saul hears the words,

Saul, Saul, why do your persecute me?

Saul’s friends are with him. What do they hear? Thunder! Static! The same kind of focus was required of them and they chose not to focus. You and I can choose not to focus and we will not be able to reap the spiritual insights that God is ready to lavish upon us. I will give you one quick pop quiz or a “reality check”, as they say. Here it is.

It would be hard to find a day more beautiful than yesterday concerning the weather. California, eat your heart out! We all know that California is jealous of Texas anyway. [Laughter] But yesterday was a most perfect day; the sky was incredible and the Blue Bonnets were blooming. Isn’t there a law in Texas that says you must sweat even in the winter?

Yesterday that was not the case; it was cool and beautiful. Just hours before this, I saw this big monster on the television on a weather map. There was this large storm or a wave of storms that was coming right at Dallas and the surrounding areas to the north. Someone has gotten extremely sadistic and they have these weather maps that show you where the storm is and the areas that are in RED are incredibly severe. It is kind of like saying that no human being can exist where the RED is. The WHOLE MAP IS RED! It is a good thing there was no bull around. It seemed like all of the Dallas area was red. Then it was curving around to the left and almost coming full circle and if it had it would just keep going and going. (Tornado) Again, some saddest came up with these little icons on the map that appear to be innocently turning around and around but these are rotating winds, which you and I know as TORNADOS, right?

Greenville was outside the area but there was one little finger of the storm kind of left hanging out there and of course it was RED. It comes right over Greenville and dumps a lot of rain. You and I know that we could have had the roof of the Church or our homes torn off. We know that tornados could have killed people that night but, think of a light switch…off/on. That was Friday night and we all wake up the next day and pull off the mask and now here we are in this Eden.

“The birds are chirping; what storm? You probably had just a little too much to drink.”

No, I saw it on the news and it was in the paper! Yesterday were there people walking around shaking after the storms? No not at all. It was as if it never happened. Look how we come so near to our death and the death of our loved ones and it doesn’t affect us. So, what can we do?

This is what I recommend that you do this week. Take out the Bible and go to the Old Testament to the Book of Isaiah and look at the last half of this book. It is all about the Suffering Servant of God and centuries before Christ came everything there predicts how Chris was mistreated. So, this is a good place to start in the Old Testament.

In the New Testament Isaiah is quoted most often from the lips of Jesus Himself. That tells you something. The second book most quoted by Jesus is the Book of Psalms; Psalm 21 and particularly Psalm 22, like the one we have just heard here in the Mass;

My God, my God, why have your forsaken Me.

Jesus said that from the cross.

These are ways we can get ready and narrow our focus and concentrate. Then after we get through Easter we can decide what we are going to do. This week we must set our faces like flint otherwise all that will go on is thunder and static. If you turn the TV on, let it be turned to the services in Rome. Apart from that, treat it very different; this is Holy Ground and if we treat it like we do every other week we are not going to reap anything. There is a temptation for you and for me to not focus. I guarantee that if you do focus you will somehow find that the Blessed Mother is leading you to carry the cross in some way, just a little bit of it for her Son, like wiping His face in caring for someone else. You will see things that you have never seen before if you focus.

As they led Him out they took hold of a certain Simon, a Cyrenean who was coming in from the country, and after laying the cross on him they made him carry it behind Jesus

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

Amen