17th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2005

[Denise]

Homily by:
Father Paul Weinberger, Pastor
St. William Roman Catholic Church
Greenville, Texas
7 / 24 / 2005 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time

The Kingdom of Heaven is like a merchant searching for fine pearls. When he finds a pearl of great price he goes and sells all that he has and buys it.

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

Amen

In England, so many are named Margaret. Margaret is translated, “Pearl”. There was a particularly amazing wife and mother whose name was Margaret Middleton. Her married name was Clitherow. We know her as St. Margaret Clitherow, the Pearl of York because of her amazing life. St. Margaret was probably not educated, in fact she learned how to read while in prison, thinking that she would be able to teach her children how to read.

St. Margaret had three children and the fourth child was on the way when she was martyred for her faith at thirty years of age by the government in England that had been changed under King Henry VIII. He and his descendants are the spiritual leaders of the Church of England. St. Margaret was one of the casualties under the daughter of Henry VIII, Elizabeth of England. Margaret was martyred on Good Friday in 1586.

We see the wisdom in this pearl, the Pearl of York. She started out in the Church of England and it was only after she married her husband John, who was a very prosperous butcher in the town of York, a town that was always know for its consistent Catholicism even during the persecutions of Henry VIII, Elizabeth and others. St. Margaret was married for three years before she converted to the Roman Catholic faith; her husband didn’t convert with her.

St. Margaret made two chambers in her home where priests could be hidden when the government was persecuting priests. These priests had to conceal themselves and sneak to England during this time in order to administer the Sacraments.

St. Margaret Clitherow singled herself out in her brief stay on Earth as someone who understood the significance of the Mass. In fact, the English martyrs of this period all had a common trait, understanding that it is the Mass that matters. In fact, this line of thinking has currently been taken up by the Catholic Church in a study of the abuses that are going on in the Mass around the world; priests adding things to the Mass, priests taking things out, priests changing words, priests changing elements; the three-ring circus that the Mass can be in some places is actually being addressed in a Lineamenta, an outline which is being circulated by the Church at the present time. They have surveyed priests, bishops, deacons and lay men and women and compiled quite a list of areas that need work. But they all fall under the heading, “It is the Mass That Matters.”

This should prove to be very interesting because so many things that have happened in the last thirty or forty years have solidified into traditions and are somehow more sacrosanct than the traditions for thousands of years, which they have replaced. It will be interesting to see …

Getting back to St. Margaret…she was a wife and mother when she was discovered hiding priests in her home. She was arrested in March of 1586 and was thrown in jail then brought before two judges. The indictment was that she had harbored priests and had gone to Mass. St. Margaret was also given a chance to escape. One of the judges told her what would amount to this;

“Listen little lady, we can just forget all of this if you will just go home and promise never to do this again.”

To her credit, St. Margaret defied the judge and said,

“NO! If you release me I will continue to do the same thing; I will continue to hide priests, to conceal them so that they can do their work because it is the Mass that matters.”

The judges then sentenced her to a very cruel death, a death by pressing. When she heard the sentence knowing how difficult a death this was and what torture it would be, these are the words that came out of her mouth.

“God be thanked, I am not worthy of so good a death as this.”

You know…she just said the same thing you or I would say if the same sentence was handed down, right?

“God be thanked, I am not worthy of so good a death as this.”

That is indeed what she said! The terrible death of pressing was to have a person lay flat on the ground and placed on top of them was a heavy solid wooden door. It wasn’t one of these hollow core doors, but a solid door that was heavy. Before the person was placed on the ground a very sharp rock about the size of a man’s hand was placed at the small of the back. The door was placed on top pf the person and rocks were piled on top of the door; literally pressing the breath out of the person. The person couldn’t move because their arms were tied to two stakes that made them form the cruciform figure.

St. Margaret went to her death on Good Friday, 1586….Just as Father is telling this story an infant is wailing at the top of its lungs and in humor Fr. Paul makes this statement That’s the great thing about this Church, we have sound effects. [Laughter]

St. Margaret went to her death on a bridge and the bridge was probably chosen because everyone one along the bank of the river on both sides could see what was happening on the bridge. It was a cheap stadium I guess. From the accounts that have been handed down to us, she went barefoot to her death. York is in the South of England, right? Kind of like we go barefoot here in the South? That is not why she went barefoot! We actually know why St. Margaret went tranquilly and joyfully to her death, barefooted. It was because she had sent her hose and her shoes along to her daughter Anne, telling Anne that she should follow along in her footsteps. St. Margaret understood what the score was and what really mattered. She was not one who was learned by all measures of the world, but she was wise even beyond Solomon.

Her father bribed the executioner; he placed a rock at the base of her neck so that very quickly into the pressing her neck would be broken and she would not have to endure hours of torture. We have her last words on that Good Friday in 1586 when she was pressed to death. She said,

“Jesus, Jesus, Jesus have mercy on me.”

They executed her even though they knew she was probably with child and expecting her fourth child. This is the kind of witness this wife and mother gave to her children and to all those bystanders along the riverbank. This was her testimony and this woman was indeed a true pearl. In fact, she sold everything in order to possess the Creator of everything.

Jesus says in the Gospel today,

The Kingdom of Heaven is like a merchant searching for fine pearls. When he finds a pearl of great price he goes and sells all that he has and buys it.

Think of that mother looking into the eyes of her three beautiful children; beautiful but not as beautiful as God. Jesus says again and again in the New Testament,

He who loves mother and father, brother or sister, husband or wife more than Me is not worthy of Me.

St. Margaret didn’t flinch in what she had to do. She indeed is the Pearl of York. The trauma to a body that has been pressed in such a manner is extreme; literally the breath, the spirit is pressed right out of the person. It is kind of like our Lord when He gave up His Spirit on the Cross. St. Margaret’s body underwent much trauma and after she was executed they took her body and buried it next to a dung hill, an ignominious place of burial. Anyone normally placed in such a location would deteriorate very quickly. They went back six days later and found the body incorrupt. It had not decayed in the least and they took her elsewhere to give her a proper burial. The Pearl of York was still shining six days after her death and her example speaks to us today; it is the Mass that matters. St. Margaret said to those judges that she would continue to help priests hide from the government because it is from the priest that we are able to have Mass and receive Our Lord; It is the Mass that matters!

This woman had a wisdom like that of the wisdom of Solomon. Look at the first two lines in your readings.

The Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream at night. God said, “Ask something of Me and I will give it to you.”

Take these readings home and look up that translation in a decent Bible. Isn’t that a terrible translation? Father Paul now goes into a Romanian accent as he says,

“Ask something of Me and I will give it to you.”

Isn’t that a terrible translation? English is my first language; what a rotten translation! I'll get back on track in just a minute. [Laughter]

Solomon answered,

Therefore give your servant an understanding heart to judge Your people and to distinguish right from wrong.

If you will notice, the reading is from the First Book of Kings. If you go home and read the First Book of Kings, Solomon started out with a tremendous advantage; he was given wisdom like no one had ever been given before and yet when you look at the end of Solomon’s life, he squandered his wisdom. By the time he died he had a thousand wives and I am sure there are a thousand jokes to go along with someone who has a thousand wives. [Laughter] This was no joke…you see, he made many foreign alliances as King of Israel and he put Israel at great risk. He was not supposed to marry a foreigner and he married lots of them. He married them and when they demanded a sanctuary for their own god and goddesses, he accommodated them using the treasury to erect altars to these foreign gods, breaking the Commandments left, right, and center.

The person of Solomon is someone who squandered his lead, his wisdom, and ended his life in a very sad way, the very opposite of the Pearl of York, St. Margaret Clitherow. Some of those gods and goddesses demanded the sacrifice of children and King Solomon had altars in temples erected to them in Israel. What an abomination! You don’t have to be an expert in Hebrew to understand how wrong that was. The wisdom that Solomon had he acquired by asking God for the gift of an understanding heart.

If only you and I had that ability to ask God for whatever we wanted and that He would grand it to us…Oh, wait a minute! John 16:23 says it very specifically. Our Lord says,

Ask whatever you will of the Father in My Name and it will be given to you.

Again and again throughout the Gospels Jesus says it in many different ways.

Seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened to you. Ask whatever you will from the Father in my Name and it will be given to you.

If only we could ask in such a way we could receive the wisdom of Solomon in our own lives as well. This is possible for us if only we ask and continue asking. But, there is not a lot of wisdom today, not a lot of guidance toward wisdom today.

When you think of this new Pope, Pope Benedict and the challenges that he has as pope, we are very fortunate to have someone who understands the great cancer afflicting modern men and women; it is called Relativism. Relativism means that there really are no standards. One thing is just as good as another; there is no right, there is no wrong, it is all relative. This of course breeds a society of tremendously low standards and great indifference. Pope Benedict XVI was chosen in April and he has already come out and said that he is going to take on this great cancer, which afflicts and is at our elbow, so near to us that is always near our side. We hear about this in veiled ways from people on the radio, the television, people sitting across from us at Thanksgiving dinner or at Christmas; yea, even from our own family members we hear about relativism. We can hear about it from perfect strangers too. Pope Benedict has taken aim at his singling out Relativism for one of his main fights, kind of like Pope John Paul II helped to bring down the Berlin Wall and the USSR. Communism is still around but it is not as strong as it used to be. Pope Benedict is going to do to Relativism what Pope John Paul II did to Communism; he is going to deal them a deadly wound.

When you hear about Relativism today, people don’t get up and declare,

“NOW, I am going to speak on RELATIVISM!”

No, instead they beat around the bush, just like someone talking on Relativism. They don’t get right to it but it goes something like this when someone makes a comment on how someone is squandering their life or living in a way that is not appropriate. This is how someone who is infected with the great cancer of Indifference and Relativism respond. All of a sudden they become very tall and declare,

“You know, WHEN I get to Heaven God is not really going to be concerned about my “lifestyle of (fill in the blank) God is not going to be concerned about how I am living and with whom, instead He is going to be concerned as to whether I fed the hungry and clothed the naked.”

And then there is clapping from other people who suffer from Relativism and they pat themselves on the back and go on to the next talk that they are giving on Relativism. They are very eager to promote it.

Compare what is happening today and how they say it, and compare it to the time of our grandparents. Next Tuesday is the Feast of St. Joachim and St. Anne, the grandparents of Jesus. Let us just take the example of our grandparents about thirty or forty years ago. How would our grandparents react to hearing someone state the same thing. Instead of saying,

“When I get to Heaven God is not going to ask me about my lifestyle, but rather, if I’d fed the hungry and clothed the naked.”

Forty years ago someone would have said,

“You know, when I go before God to be judged…”

Then you come up with a very different conclusion to the whole premise.

“When I GO BEFORE GOD TO BE JUDGED!”

Maybe this is something that happens to you everyday; you get up in the morning and wipe the sleep from your eyes, go to the front porch, open the screen door and reach out for the newspaper. Every morning just like clock work as you are reaching down to get the paper, you only open the door a little bit and there is that darn cat squeezing between you and the door and gets out. Or the cat outside gets inside. OR, maybe the outside cat gets in and the inside cat gets out! I don’t know but I am sure this happens. People think that the same kind of stupid thing is going to happen in Heaven!

“When I get to Heaven, somehow God is going to be distracted and I am going to slip in behind him, slip between His legs and get in, meow, meow.”

Right? That is so ridiculous but this is the great premise of relativists and it is amazing! Well, of course we know there will be no judgment, right? What did last Sunday’s Gospel say? Jesus had the parable of the wheat and the weeds and that at the end of the world before the wheat was harvested, the weeds were collected and tied into a bundle and thrown into the fire…representing HELL. The wheat was gathered and brought into the barn…representing Heaven.

Look at today’s Gospel. In that next parable, Jesus says,

The Kingdom of Heaven is like a net thrown into the sea, which collects fish of every kind. When the net is full they haul it ashore and sit down to put what is good into buckets and what is bad, they throw away. Thus it will be at the end of the age. The angels will go out and separate the wicked from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.

Jesus talks about this winnowing process all the time, this judgment.

“When I go before God to be judged”, as our grandparents would have said…and today the relativists have run hard to the left and would instead say, “When I get to Heaven…” They presume they are already going to get to Heaven regardless of their morals. They may have the morals of the town dog, but somehow they are going to get into Heaven. They have none of the Commandments on their mind at any time but somehow they are going to pull a fast one on God.

The Lord tells us that we can ask Him for whatever we want, like Solomon was told. How is it said in that Romanian translation?

Ask something of Me and I give to you….

Oh what a bad translation! Jesus says in St. John’s Gospel, chapter 16, verse 23,

Whatever you ask the Father in My Name, it will be given to you.

Bishop Fulton Sheen, a tremendous American and preacher was once preaching to a bunch of seminarians, men going into the priesthood. He was talking about St. John’s Gospel, chapter 16, verses 7-11, which is just before,

Whatever you ask the Father in My Name, it will be given to you.

Verse 7-11 in chapter 16 of St. John says,

Jesus says, “I tell you the truth, it is better for you that I go, for if I do not go the Spirit will not come to you. If I go I will send Him to you.”.

Jesus has risen from the dead and is spending time with His Apostles and they want Him to stay! They don’t want Him to leave! Archbishop Sheen talks about how great it would be today if Jesus had not ascended to Heaven. You know, we could go and visit Jesus. Government leaders would be afraid of him. No, on second thought, they would still be as bold and reckless as they are today in their opposing Jesus. But we could go and bring our children to Jesus and have Him bless them. Wouldn’t it be great? Jesus said it different,


Jesus says, “I tell you the truth, it is better for you that I go, for if I do not go the Spirit will not come to you. If I go I will send Him to you.”.

You see, the example of the saints, saints like the Pearl of York, St. Margaret Clitherow, are not mere examples that we are to copy but rather these are lives, which have been lived to the fullest. Bishop Sheen said,

“If Our Lord had remained upon Earth He would have been just an example to be copied. But the Spirit of Christ in us, using us, a Life within us, is a Life waiting to be lived.”

We can ask the Father anything in the Name of Jesus and it will be given to us, asking for His Holy Spirit in our daily life. John 16, verses 7-11 says that the Holy Spirit will help you judge between right and wrong. People who are fans of relativism say there is no such thing as right and wrong. The only wrong thing you can do in their minds is hurt the environment; everything else is ok. Whatever you feel like doing is ok, just don’t hurt the environment. That is ridiculous!

How bout that Responsorial Psalm today?

Lord, I love your commands.

Really? Name a few! Feeding the hungry and clothing the naked. That is all Jesus said huh? He was a regular robot! Feed the hungry and clothe the naked, feed the hungry clothe the naked, that is all Jesus said, so say the relativists. Jesus has given us His very self and shares with us His Spirit to be a Life living within us, to help us clamor like champions, like the champion I mentioned from York in 1586, St. Margaret Clitherow, who gave up everything so that she could receive everything back in Heaven. The reason she walked so joyfully to her death was the hope that she would receive it all back in Heaven.

Again,

The Kingdom of Heaven is like a merchant searching for fine pearls. When he finds a pearl of great price he goes and sells all that he has and buys it.

That was St. Margaret. She had the Spirit of Christ welling up in her life to help her make those difficult choices. Pope Benedict has said that he is going to attack Relativism by stripping away everything that covers up Christ. Kind of like someone putting in wallpaper over natural wood walls; you strip away the wallpaper and get down to the beautiful wood. Pope Benedict says that he is going to look at the Mass and Sacraments and strip away everything that is not Christ. People have added stuff to the Mass and he is going to strip it away. He wants us to see the Mass as an encounter with Christ. He wants to see Confession as an encounter with Christ. He wants us to understand that daily prayer is an encounter with Christ. He wants us to see our service to those in need as an encounter with Christ. He wants us to see that our living the Commandments is an encounter with Christ. It is going to take a lot of stripping away.

When you can think of what people consider the Catholic Faith today, it is the tip of the iceberg; feeding the hungry and clothing the naked. That is the tip of the iceberg. YES, we are to do those but there is so much more that God wants to do with our lives, with His Spirit living inside our lives but He is not going to share the time with morals that are directly contrary. Think about our grandparents again. What if our grandparents or great grandparents sat with you one day, went through a whole day with you and watched the TV you watch, heard the things on the radio you hear, and see the way you dress….

‘What? You are going out of the house like that” What are you, crazy?”

“Oh grandpa! Oh grandma!”

Uh huh! Look at how morals have changed in merely one generation, in forty years. And…we have not gotten any wiser. There are people who do see through the errors of this age, people like Pope Benedict. And they are going to strip away everything that is not Christ, everything that has been covering Christ and His teachings are going to be stripped away so that we can indeed experience Christ in the Mass, Sacraments, daily prayer and sacrifices and care for those in need, and if we really want to be near Christ we have opportunities all over the place. If we are really following Christ we will be glad to follow Him all the way to Heaven even if it means standing up for our faith like St. Margaret Clitherow. She knew that following Christ was not throwing her life away but investing her life in a sure thing that paid great dividends.

The Kingdom of Heaven is like a merchant searching for fine pearls. When he finds a pearl of great price he goes and sells all that he has and buys it.

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

Amen