Homily by:
Father Paul Weinberger, Pastor
St. William the Confessor Catholic Church
Greenville, Texas
February 3, 2008
Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy
In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit
Amen
If you look to your right of the Altar there are flowers around Our Lady. If you look closely you will recognize those flowers, which were there last week. I left them there on purpose. We had them there last Saturday for a funeral; six days have passed. Now the flowers have gone by and this is not a bad image for how everything around us seems permanent, yet in just a few days we will hear the words, “Remember man that you are dust and unto dust you shall return.” We don’t think of these words as we should, but if we kept them before us everyday and lived everyday as if it were our last day, then when we got to the end of our days, which God determines, our lives would have been full of all the virtues, especially the virtue of mercy.
If you have the calendar at home, which so many of you purchased, it has a picture of Our Lady of Lourdes on the front, on the front it mentions that this year is dedicated to her Immaculate Conception. If you look at the month of February, there is not a picture of Our Lady of Lourdes but the Passion of Our Lord. In fact, just as January was dedicated to the Holy Name of Jesus, this one mentions that February is dedicated to the Passion of the Lord. There is an image of the crucified Christ and at the bottom are the words in Latin, Ecce Homo, which mean, “Behold the Man.” Pontius Pilate spoke these words as he was sending an innocent man, Jesus Christ, off to his death. On either side you can see the Stations of the Cross; what a beautiful calendar this is, and it is very helpful. It even mentions here at the top, before February 1st, to start your novena to Our Lady of Lourdes on February 2nd. If you forgot you can start it today because as you can see on the calendar, this blue block is the 150th Anniversary of Our Lady of Lourdes appearing to Bernadette Soubirous in the South of France.
St. Bernadette was only fourteen and her family had been very wealthy; her father owned the mill in town, but in his generosity had extended credit to so many, who didn’t repay him, that they went from being one of the top families in the town to being the lowest. The place they lived wasn’t leased to them, it wasn’t rented to them or sold to them, but they were allowed to live temporarily in the condemned jail’s basement in Lourdes. This is not a joke.
So at fourteen, St. Bernadette was having all the struggles of a fourteen year old along with this and Our Lady chose her. One of the things Our Lady said to St. Bernadette before she revealed her identity, “I am the Immaculate Conception”, was,
But somehow when you and I are disappointed, and people don’t act the way they are supposed to, somehow we are being cursed or plagued.I do not promise you happiness in this life but in the next.
These words that Our Lady said to St. Bernadette, she also says them to us. The message of Lourdes was given to St. Bernadette and that was to:I do not promise you happiness in this life but in the next.
This is the message of Lourdes and everyone who follows that advice prays for himself and for others. That was 150 years ago, February 11th.Pray, pray and do penance for the conversion of sinners.
Just after that in the north of France, St. Therese, who was fifteen, went into the Carmelite convent in Lisieux, with special permission. She went into the convent so young, and thanks be to God, she did; she would never see her 24th birthday. She would have much in common with St. Bernadette in her religious life; she would suffer much.
One of the first things St. Therese did, and we know about this because she wrote it all down after being ordered to and under obedience to her Superior, she wrote down her life story, which you can read about in “Story of a Soul”. Anyway, one of the first things St. Therese did when she entered the convent was to start having children. Yea! Uh huh! SPIRITUAL CHILDREN! She started having spiritual children and she was very specific. You and I are very specific when something is important to us. You don’t walk into a store when purchasing shoes and say,
“I am a size this or that; just bring me any old shoe.”
No, you want the color or kind you like and the proper size. St. Therese was just as finicky and just as specific when she was about to have her first spiritual child; she chose the most despicable character in France.
There was a hardened criminal who would not repent. Pranzini had murdered, and his case was all over the papers in France about how unrepentant he was. St. Therese informed God that Pranzini would be her first spiritual child. We are so ridiculous when we pray and ask God if he could help us here or there. St. Therese knew what was possible with God, and that was, all things are possible with God. She started praying and fasting and sacrificing for Pranzini. Again, St. Therese told God specifically that she desired some sign to know that Pranzini would not roast in Hell the rest of eternity. She got her sign.
In the newspaper it was reported that Pranzini, who before that time when a priest offered to hear his confession he would wave the priest away in a very rude manner unlike Catholics today, who just don’t go to Confession…Pranzini made his way through the crowd and there at the base of the platform amidst a crowd of jeering people that looked like the Jerry Springer Show, was a priest with a Crucifix. The priest offered the Crucified One to this unrepentant, hardened criminal, in hope that it would touch his hardened heart. Pranzini waved him aside just as before and went up the steps to the place of execution. Just before he was executed, he pivoted, went back to the priest that was holding the Crucifix, bent down in front of that large crowd and kissed the Crucifix.
That was just the first of the many children that St. Therese had in the convent. She was to keep on having child after child in the convent, spiritual children. You know…just like the Apostles in the work of the early Church. All the saints were looking to help others to convert.
On the Cross, Our Lord had a spiritual child there.
Jesus, remember me when You come into Your Kindgom.
This was a hardened criminal crucified next to Him.
Amen amen I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.
On the back of the bulletin is the Holy Father’s Message for Lent It is one page, front and back. You see that he, too, is calling for our help this Lent to actually listen to the Voice of Christ through His Church, and participate in our own conversion and in the conversion of others, to think about others.
I was talking to a group of kids recently about what was on the back of the bulletin last Sunday, when Fr. Hardon, Mother Teresa’s spiritual director was talking about the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. That is what the devotion to the Sacred Heart is all about; it is the practice of selfless love toward selfish people. It is giving ourselves to persons that do not give themselves to us. In all of our lives God has placed selfish people who may be physically close to us, but spiritually are strangers or even enemies. That is why God places unkind, unjust, and even cruel people into our lives. By loving them we show something of the kind of love God expects of His followers.
The kids I was talking to were 13, 14, and 15; and they have siblings who are just now beginning to speak. I told the kids that children are selfish. I know children do not like to hear that. But, as children mature that selfishness is peeled away layer by layer by the great efforts of the parents and grandparents, friends and neighbors, and by Our Lord’s great efforts. I asked the kids if they realized what I was saying, and I gave them an example and said,
“You brothers and sisters, who are younger than you are, what is the first word that you hear them exclaim again and again, non-stop for so long that it shows how selfish they are?”
In chorus they all said,
“MINE!”
Yes! Mine! Mine is probably only second to NO, because No comma Mine is what they say.
“NO! MINE!”
The children understood that their siblings behind them are selfish and they were selfish themselves, but not as selfish as they had been. You see children are afflicted the same way you and I are. I don’t love God enough…neither do you. You and I are in need of conversion, but God can’t help you or me if we don’t admit that first.
“I don’t love God enough; I don’t love God as I should.:
There are some people who believe since they live the Commandments that it is enough. Really?
Father turns and touches Jesus on the Crucifix
So why didn’t He get the message? He obeyed all the Commandments and that was enough for Him right? No! Jesus gives us the Beatitudes in the Gospel today showing us that yes, you and I have to live the Commandments, but we have to go beyond that into positive areas like loving people who are absolutely unlovable. They have been put on the planet to torture us. It has been made a little better since you don’t have to go and renew your license plate in a government office; you can do it in a grocery store. NEXT!!!!!!! What torture! But, we have people like that who are related to us or living across the street.
“That old man……., that old woman……….Those teenagers did it!”
Whatever, just fill in the blank. You see the war going on and nobody lifting a finger to pray for them. You’ve got someone that rubbed you the wrong way, it means you have a pulse. Our Lord tells us that we are to extend mercy; we are to be merciful to them, even to those who are selfish and to the Pranzinis of the world. I can think of at least ten or twelve people in Washington I wouldn’t walk across the street to say ‘hello’ to.
“Oh, but Father, they are important people!”
I wouldn’t shake their hand because I would spend the rest of the day washing it. But, I have got to pray for them as well as the Pranzinis of the day. Or, how about those wretches that dressed up two Down Syndrome women in Iraq and made them suicide bombers? There has to be a special place in Hell for these fiends. But the ones who did this, they have mothers.
The amount of love in the heart of a mother is amazing. Men are amazed that women have so much love in their hearts. A good mother’s love is flowing and there is just no limit. Our Blessed Mother is no different except that she excels in loving. When people in solitary isolation say,
“That is my sin, it doesn’t affect anyone.”
It affects that person’s mother and the Blessed Mother, right? And, she counts.
“What is the Blessed Mother doing sticking her nose into our business 150 years ago in Lourdes?”
She is asking us to pray for the conversion of sinners. Someone prays for me; I have to pray for people who are repugnant to me, or as Father Hardon points out so well, that this Lent can be a Lent which helps me to focus on God. Father Hardon points out again and again that what we should be doing everyday is bending our will according to the Will of God, and he says beautifully that the only way to do that is to bend the knee in prayer.
“But I am busy; I don’t have time.”
Just to show the lie on that statement…SUPER BOWL. Right! If only I loved others the way that I love me. You’ve heard the old line….
“I’m sorry, I am going on and on about myself; enough about me, what do you think about me?”
Right? It is our favorite topic.
“Do you mind if I interrupt about me?”
To get the focus off me and onto someone who is in such great need, the Pranzinis of this world need our prayers. If I could just stop focusing on my latest ache or pain or my latest want or desire and put it on those who are dying this moment.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy
In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit
Amen