Father Paul Weinberger
Saint William the Confessor Catholic Church
Greenville, Texas
20th Sunday in Ordinary Time
August 19, 2007
Jesus said to His disciples, "I have come to set the earth on fire and how I wish that it were already blazing."
In the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
A few years ago, around Christmas time there was a great tsunami on the Pacific Rim. So many people saw the ocean recede, go out, very quickly and then a huge wave washed across so many islands and resorts where so many tourists were vacationing. There was a crying out. Why wasn't there some kind of a warning system? Why weren't there sirens to protect us tourists? Why weren't there warnings that would warn us tourists about this danger? Again, if we tourists are going to visit these countries, since we are important we need these warnings. The word went out and huge amounts of money were collected so that the tourists would be protected on their vacations and by extension the locals would also be protected. If it had not been for the human cry of tourists to go out there never would have been anything like that installed.
Hurricane Dean is in the Caribbean and from space the astronauts can see this hurricane; it is a Category 4 hurricane. It has at least 150 mile an hour winds. The trajectory has been plotted and they are telling people in the path of Dean to get out and move away temporarily to safety. Yesterday the Dallas ISD sent busses down to San Antonio to help people get away from the nursing homes. I don't know how they are going to get the beds
from the nursing homes in the busses. We are not going to let what happened with Katrina and Rita happen to us again. We want to know well in advance. We are well
prepared. We want to know the straight truth regarding the weather or tsunamis.
But the Truth is what Jesus is speaking of here. Consider the truth in the mouth of the Prophet Jeremiah.
...the princes said to the king: "Jeremiah ought to be put to death; he is demoralizing the soldiers who are left in this city, and all the people, by speaking such things to them; he is not interested in the welfare of our people, but in their
ruin."
Jeremiah is speaking the truth to them. Now look how weak King Zedekiah is.
"He is in your power," for the king could do nothing with them.
That is a lie. He could intercede for Jeremiah but he chose not to. So they took Jeremiah and led him down with ropes into a cistern where there was no food or water, only mud into which he sank. We all know that if you lower someone into a hole where there is no food or water and they die then it is not your fault.
Obviously Father Paul is being facetious here.
Then Ebed-melech, a court official, a Cushite, went to the king and spoke the truth.
My lord king, these men have been at fault in all they have done to the Prophet Jeremiah, casting him into the cistern. He will die of famine on the spot, for there is no more food in the city.
So the king ordered Ebed-melech, the Cushite, and three others to draw Jeremiah out of the mud in the same manner that Moses was drawn out of the Nile River by the order of the daughter of Pharaoh. This is such a tremendous thing to see how little it took to intervene to save the life of Jeremiah. His crime had been to speak the truth. If a prophet will not speak the truth of what use is he?
We see the same thing coming up in the Second Reading that St. Paul says,
For the sake of the joy that lay before Him He endured the Cross, despising its shame, and has taken His seat at the right of the throne of God. Consider how He (Jesus) endured such opposition from sinners, in order that you may not grow weary and lose heart. In your struggle against sin you have not resisted yet to the point of shedding blood.
That Jesus is our Master and no disciple is greater than the Master. If Jesus spoke the truth and for that truth He received the Cross, then you and I need to realize that we are not on some other standard, some gold standard of our own manufacture.
When Jesus was before Pontius Pilate there was an exchange. The Roman Governor, Pontius Pilate, was essentially king, the one in power and Jesus standing right beside him
So Pilate said to him, "Then you are a king?" Jesus answered, "You say I am a king. For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to
the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice." Pilate said to him, "What is truth?"
Those are the notorious words uttered by Pilate. And of course we know that Pilate handed Him over. Pilate was standing right next to Jesus and he managed to get it wrong. It is not, what is truth, it is Who is Truth? Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life. He identified Himself in this manner to us. He is the Fullness of God's Truth. God has not given us 97% of the Truth. He is the Fullness of Truth in His Incarnation. He is True God and True Man. He has been sent to this world to reveal to man the Truth about God and man. So far, so good! We all want the Truth. We all appreciate a warning. We all demand a warning. All of those Pacific Rim tourists deserve a place to go where it is safe. The same can be said of the Caribbean.
If we are in danger we want to know it or it is not fair. The Gospel today says,
I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!...Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.
Here comes that hokey song from the 1970s, "Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me..."which is all about me but not about the Truth of Who Jesus is.
Jesus has come to reveal to us the truth about what it is to be a human being from the perspective of God. So we cannot say that we did not know the truth. We can't crawfish and then deny it.
A couple of years ago a famous playwright died named Arthur Miller. Arthur Miller wrote many things that high school kids have to read. I had to read as a sophomore, Death of a Salesman. I had to read about Willy Loman, who was the central figure. He was a salesman. He died. Well, not exactly. Arthur Miller points out that Willy wanted to be well-liked. So we have a man is sales who wanted to be well-liked and his
numbers were probably on the skids and he couldn't handle not being well-liked. You can understand why they had us read this in our sophomore year. Back then high school kids underwent peer pressure unlike today. Now we just reserve that for kindergarten and primary grades.
The desire to be well-liked among teenagers is understandable but for that the motivating principle in an adult… that is immature. Peer pressure is something that we are supposed to grow out of but Willy had a couple of sons and a wife and he wanted to be well-liked. In the end Willy Loman takes his car and commits suicide by driving it into an obstacle. This is the death in Death of a Salesman.
The people who commented on the death of Arthur Miller a couple of years ago mentioned how he was such a famous playwright and how he seemed to present to us all of the important struggles of human life and how we are so much enriched for having such a tremendous human being like Arthur Miller.
The obituaries across the country were almost identical from East to West but when you go over to the L.A. Times it is interesting that the L.A. Times mentioned his wife and his three kids and his plays but they also mentioned his fourth kid. The other papers only mentioned his wife and his three children but he and his wife had four children. Only a handful of people knew about his fourth child. The child was welcomed with great joy on the day he was born. He was named Daniel Miller. In fact, the pictures we have today show him as the spitting image of his father, Arthur Miller. But the next day those handful that welcomed the baby were told essentially to keep quiet by Arthur. You see, the baby was born with Down's Syndrome. He wasn't a perfect child the way you and I are perfect individuals and so Arthur Miller made lots of money, lots and lots of money but somehow Arthur would not grant the wish of his wife to raise Daniel at home. Instead he had him immediately put into an institution as an infant and his wife would go there and visit for a couple of hours on Sundays.
I know that you, who are mothers, can know exactly what was going on in her mind and she was turning around and leaving Daniel absolutely every time. She was thinking about the next time she could be with her son Daniel. Anyway, millionaires couldn't bear to have
Daniel grow up in their home. It would have been possible. It is not the same situation that you and I might undergo. It was not a struggle for them financially. Artistically Arthur couldn't face this struggle so Daniel lived a life apart from his family. This noble writer of plays with noble sentiments does not meet the reality of his life. A man who would not admit to the world, his son.
In the latest National Catholic Register (and if you don't get this newspaper you should go online. It is excellent!) in the August 12-18th issue, there is a beautiful picture of a little girl, maybe 2 or 3 years old, from India. She is just beautiful. It says, "Killed for being a girl!" In India, female feticide reaches alarming levels. The little girl in this picture looks worried and she has every reason. Many children are selected before they are
born on the basis of their sex to be terminated, killed, aborted. She understands that just because she made it past the birth canal things don't look good for her in India. In fact, the article mentions UNICEF, United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund, or at
least I think that is what it stands for. UNICEF, you think that since it comes from the UN it has to be good. Uh uh. The UN is not exactly favorable to the unborn. Even UNICEF has acknowledged the gravity of the female feticide situation noting that 7000 fewer girls are born in India every day that the global average…7000 fewer every day.
The article focuses on a millionaire in India, in Bangledore, and his wife's name is Puja. She is a 32-year-old woman and she got the great news that she is expecting her first child. The family, his family and her family celebrated the news. They had a great party. The next day they discovered that she was carrying twins. They found out they were twin girls. Now this is a millionaire. She is 32 not 42 as if that makes a difference. She could have just gone ahead and had the twins and then tried for another child. Isn't that what is expected? Right? But no, her husband and his family divided against Puja and forced her to have an abortion. This was based on an analysis to determine the sex of the children. This is illegal in India. Abortion is legal but not based on sex determination. So his family forced her to have an abortion. Evidently there is some kind of religious principle here that a wife should produce a male so that he can preside over the father's funeral. All religions aren't equal, remember? This woman was subjected to an abortion that she did not want. A family divided against itself and then to make matters worse he wanted his wife to be intimate with his brothers so that they could produce a male child. Fortunately this woman had the presence of mind to walk to the nearest police station and report this terrible treatment. She did the right thing.
Oh, this is so terrible how could this happen? If only there were a way we could predict this kind of thing. If only somebody had the presence of mind to sound a warning shot. Well July 25th, 39 years ago Pope Paul VI published Humanae Vitae, On Human
Life and he said that artificial contraception of any kind, that is birth control, would usher in the domination and abuse of women and children and a general attack on life. Many people inside the Church, teaching at Catholic universities even mocked, insulted and sneered at the Pope. They wrote articles in newspapers against the Pope. One of those men has since transferred to Southern Methodist University. He is now teaching a SMU because he can no longer teach at Catholic universities. Only in America! Amazing! The Holy Father sounded a warning sign 39 years ago and Pope John Paul II , 20 years later published his famous encyclical on women Mulieres Dignitatem On the Dignity of Women, which affirmed that which Pope Paul VI said and talked about how women should be honored and not dominated. You see the fact that what Pope Paul VI wrote and what Pope John Paul II affirmed it is easy to see that there is a house divided, even within the Church there are those who openly counter what those two popes said and wrote even down to this day. This is the reason why the warning is not as strong as it should be. These are considered closed subjects that we don't really need to know the truth about, do we?
Yet we find out, like in this story from India, how real women and real children are being hurt and abused before they are even born. When we consider what Our Lord says in today's Gospel I have to think back to Friday. Friday I went into Dallas to North Oakcliff,
that was just two miles down the road from the church that I served at for 10 and a half years, Blessed Sacrament. I went to St. Cecilia's Church to attend the Funeral Mass for the mother of the pastor of St. Cecilia's. About 20 priests came. We filled the sanctuary.
The church was built several decades ago. It was built of stone and steel. It was so impressive unlike so many you see today in this country. The church was impressive for
many reasons but it was so stable, so solid. That was 10 am and by 10:19PM the Church was engulfed in flames. Perhaps it can be rebuilt, perhaps not. But what appeared to be so stable, so sturdy, is now at risk of just being scrapped and sent to the trash heap. How sad!
But the fire...Our Lord said,
I have come to set the earth on fire and how I wish it were already blazing!
He is not talking about setting churches on fire. Perhaps it was electrical or lightening that caused that fire at St. Cecilia's. The firemen always find out and they search for the truth about how the fire started.
Jesus is talking to you and me about His Desire set a fire blazing on the earth, and this fire is His Truth, His Love. The Love of Jesus is the same as the Truth of Jesus. He is the Way, the Truth and the Life. He is Love Itself. He is the Kingdom of God, the very Son of God. All of these things are correct. And He has come to show us how to be a human being serving God and our neighbor on this earth in the year 2007.
He has come to warn us of the slavery to sin and He has struggled even to the point of shedding His Blood. What He has done He expects of us. As it says in that Second
Reading,
In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood.
The Lord expects that His Fire, His Truth, His Love will be spread across the world by us, you and me. He is not kidding. This is what He wants, this is what He means when He says,
I have come to set the earth on fire and how I wish it were already blazing!
If it were mid-winter and you had a hot water heater that had no pilot light for a couple of days and you climbed into the shower you would jump right out wouldn't you? Cooooold water. You wouldn't jump in for that; you would either get it fixed or get a new one. What is this about us? If we do not spread This Fire, which is His Desire, far and wide, that it be spread all over the earth; not to ten cites or twenty, but to entire world. That is why we pray for the evangelization of China. You and I have to have to the courage of Ebed-
Melech when he was before King Zedekiah in the First Reading, to stand up for the truth. Look how easily his intervention saved the life of Prophet Jeremiah. It is an inspiration for us. Don't you know that Ebed-Melech thought that if he did this those princes were going to be mad at him. Don't you know that Ebed-Melech wanted to be well-liked centuries before Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman? He trembled inside a little bit but he knew it was the truth and the right thing to do. He stood in defense of Jeremiah.
What is needed is courage to speak to children and children need courage to speak to parents. This is our way of finding the truth in the current situation. That's why Our Lord says that there are real divisions that we can expect in this life even among family members. If you go all the way back to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and recall that, they were created by God without Original Sin. There is a tradition among rabbis that talks about the serpent appearing to Eve as a HUGE DRAGON. Now I know it is nothing that you and I have read but this is a tradition among rabbis. It uses the word for serpent that is the same word used in the Book of Revelation to describe this huge raging dragon. This serpent talked to Eve and convinced her to eat the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the garden. She was given the truth by God, but remember that the devil is called the father of lies. The devil convinced her to eat the fruit and perhaps scared her
into eating the fruit. These rabbis believe that Adam is the one at fault not Eve since Adam was probably somewhere hiding behind a tree cowering and afraid to defend Eve. This is sad because men are to defend women. How many times in the modern situation
in this country have women complained about Ephesians 5.
Wives be submissive to your husbands as if to the Lord.
Oh I hate St. Paul, oh that's a terrible thing to say!
They fail to scan down just a few more lines to where St. Paul says to husbands,
Husband's love your wives as Christ loved the church even to the point of shedding your blood for her.
It seems like chump change, what St. Paul says to wives; being submissive versus shedding blood. Adam, evidently in the tradition of some rabbis, did not defend Eve and so sin entered the world.
Christ has come to show us the truth. He has defeated the father of lies. Jesus is the Way the Truth and the Life. In the office of readings today, St John Chrysystom, commenting on St. Matthew's gospel,
You are the salt of the earth.,
You do not put salt on food that is rotten. You put salt on that which is good and healthy to preserve it. In the same way we are to be the salt of the earth and carry His Savor to the world. We are to bring the fire of the truth of Christ to the whole world.He is indicating that all mankind has lost its savor, its flavor and has been corrupted by sin. Therefore God requires of these men those virtues that are especially useful, even necessary, if they are to bear the burdens of many. For the man that is kindly, modest, merciful and just will not keep his good works to himself but will see to it that there admirable fountains, these virtues send out their streams for the good of others. Again the man who is clean of heart, a peacemaker, an ardent for truth (ardent means burning
for) will order his life as to contribute to common good. Do not think that you are destined for easy struggles or unimportant tasks. You are the Salt of the Earth.
The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary last Wednesday reminds us that at the end of her earthly life the Blessed Virgin Mary was assumed body and soul into Heaven. She did not get into Heaven because she is the Mother of Jesus. The scriptures make that very plain. And, she didn't make into the Presence of God trembling. She could have sinned. She wasn't God's little blue robot who could not commit a sin. No, she could have but chose not to sin. She never sinned, which means she never left the embrace of the truth in order to embrace a lie, even to a neighbor.
Oh I am sorry Mrs. Jones I can't today I have a headache. Close the door.
She never told even a small lie.. She never embraced the father of lies and so when she went before God she was not afraid; she was not trembling. The Blessed Virgin Mary had struggled bravely all of her life and her reward Truth, the Truth for all eternity. That is Heaven!
If you get a chance tonight look at the Book of Revelation at the very end of the Bible. Revelation chapter 21, is a beautiful piece about the Blessed Mother. It is often used. Revelation 21:1-8 is used often in Masses concerning the Blessed Mother because it
compares her to the new Jerusalem like a bride adorned to meet her husband. A beautiful image of the Blessed Mother. But watch out for verse 8 of chapter 21 because there is a list of those not destined for Heaven but who will spend eternity in Hell. There is a list and it says that these will experience the eternal fire and sulfur and that they will be pained for all eternity by the heat of hell. Now think of the first category of sinners. They
would be the worst, the woooorrrrssst to put at number one. I bet you are wrong. Here it is. First one at the head of the list in chapter 21 verse 8 is COWARDS. COWARDS. Yes cowards are number one on the train to hell.
Again if we know the truth and we fail to speak that truth to our friends and our family, even to perfect strangers, and we fail to stand up for the innocent like Ebed-Melech did for Jeremiah in the face of opposition then we are courting spiritual suicide like the way
Willy Loman committed suicide with his car in Death of a Salesman. Instead of struggling like Our Lord struggled in His Passion and Death and struggling with Him and following His example, then we run the risk of spending eternity in hell. All of this is following the example of Christ, following the example of the Blessed Mother who followed the Truth Who is Jesus Christ. If they struggled to spread the Truth how can I get a note that will exempt me from spreading the Truth. These things are very inconvenient they come up often. They will pop up at a time that you don't expect.
I had no idea that the morning that I was sitting in the sanctuary of St. Cecilia’s, it would be the last day that that church would be open for business. It comes on so fast. How can we plan for it? We can't. Our focus must be the TRUTH, the Love of God. We must speak the Truth to our families, our friends, our co-workers, and strangers because in speaking the truth we are speaking the love of Christ, which is His Mercy. We can't pretend to be Pontius Pilate and wash our hands and exempt ourselves because lives depend on it. Our eternal life depends on it, that we risk our lives to spread this Fire on Earth.
Jesus said, "I have come to set the earth on fire and how I wish it were already blazing!"
In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Amen