23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time 2005

[Fr.Paul Weinberger]

Homily by:
Fr. Paul Weinberger
St. William’s Roman Catholic Parish
Greenville, Texas
9 / 4 / 2005 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time



”Again, Amen I say to you; if two of you agree on earth about anything for which they are to pray, it shall be granted to them by My Heavenly Father. For where two or three are gathered together in My Name, there Am I in the midst of them.

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

Amen

If you look at your bulletin for the schedule on Monday, Labor Day, it says at the top that from 9:30am to 10:am is the Office of Readings and Morning Prayer. These prayers are part of the Liturgy of the Hours, which is also known as the Divine Office. These prayers are centuries old and are prayed by the members of the Church around the world and are taken from the Bible, mainly the Book of Psalms as well as the Old and New Testament readings. Included in this prayer are writings and thoughts of the Saints.

Those Office of Readings and Morning Prayers are found in this book with the many ribbons streaming out, which is called Liturgy of the Hours or Breviary. A friend of mine said never to pick up a book with more than seven ribbons. I think he is right. This is one of four books and as I said it is called a Breviary or Divine Office or Liturgy of the Hours; different names but the same reality. Bishops, priests, deacons, men in monasteries, women in Convents and all religious are all to pray the Divine Office every day. Since Vatican II, lay people have been encouraged to pray the Divine Office also.

In praying the Divine Office, what happens is that in one point in the world the prayer begins and then when dawn hits the next part of the world they begin Morning Prayer and so on. So, the Church around the world is praying the same prayers and there are more than two or three joining their prayers together to pray according to what Our Lord says here. When you see Our Lord say, ”Amen I say to you”, He is taking an oath. He is saying under oath,

Again, Amen I say to you; if two of you agree on earth about anything for which they are to pray, it shall be granted to them by My Heavenly Father. For where two or three are gathered together in My Name, there Am I in the midst of them.

Our Father in Heaven hears prayer that is so joined.

Last Monday I picked up the Divine Office and began praying the Old Testament reading, which was from the Book of Jeremiah. In the Book of Jeremiah God tells him to get a dry pottery jar and go before the leaders of Jerusalem and take the jar and smash it on the ground. Of course it would break into pieces instantly. Then God tell him that this is exactly what is going to happen to the city and it is exactly what happened. That was MONDAY. (The day the hurricane hit)

On Wednesday I picked up the Breviary and it was still from the Old Testament Book of Jeremiah. The people who lived in Jerusalem had to flee because their city was destroyed. They went into exile and God told them,

“Ok, now I want you to all start planting gardens.”

What? Did God turn into Neal Sperry all of a sudden? He is worried about them having gardens? God is directing them and letting them know that they are going to stay in these places they are exiled to for a long time. God tells them,

“The state in which you are in is your new home for a very long time. The success of that state depends on your own success so work toward building up the state.

He tells the parents to find among them men in the state in which they live, husbands for their daughters because they were going to be there a while. Doesn’t that sound prophetic? I don’t believe that anyone has special binoculars to look into the heart of God and say with authority that what happened to New Orleans was God’s punishment. I don’t think anyone can say it with “authority”. Rather, we can see how this coincided with what was in the Divine Office. This has happened only one other time since I have been praying the Divine Office. The last time this happened was September 11, 2001. I think it was from the Prophet Ezekiel that time, and it talked about the destruction of Jerusalem also. Then…at that time, it spoke of how the bodies of the dead were going to defile the Temple and like wood they would be stacked from floor to ceiling. I know this is rather graphic terminology. Exactly one week later a similar reading showed up in the Divine Office and it was the one-week anniversary of 9/11. So, we are to listen to the Word of God and be prepared for anything. It is unusual that such readings would coincide with a national disaster of such magnitude.

Yesterday was the Feast of Pope St. Gregory the Great. Turn to your first reading and look at that first line. Now I will read the first line from yesterday’s readings in the Breviary, the Office of Readings. It is from a homily on the Prophet Ezekiel by St. Gregory the Great.

Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel.

Hum, it is the exact same line as in the first reading.

Note that a man whom the Lord sends forth as a preacher is called a watchman. A watchman always stands on a height so that he can see from a far what is coming. Anyone appointed to be a watchman for the people must stand on a height all his life to help them by his foresight.

This is exactly the kind of watchman Pope St. Gregory the Great was for the Church. He was an excellent administrator and at exactly the time the Church needed an excellent administrator. He was the guy in charge. So many people have been hurt or have died in the wake of the tragedy because people had no idea who was in charge. The local and state government officials were not in charge perhaps because they died in the onslaught or family members had died or were hurt, or maybe they weren’t even there. We have yet to figure this out but the one thing we can be certain of is that there was a power vacuum. Because it appeared that no one was in charge, things went undone. Other things happened and it seemed that no one could fight against them.

This was the state of affairs that we find the world, we find Rome in at the time of Pope St. Gregory the Great. The Roman Empire was no more. In fact the center of the world was not Rome…”all roads lead to Rome”…. but in this case it was Constantinople. So, all roads led to Constantinople, it just doesn’t roll off the tongue as well… but that is where the Emperor had his seat of power. Italian government, if we can use that term, was based NOT in Rome but up the backside of the boot of Italy, just before it curved around to Venice. Revina was the seat of the government and it was powerless. By the time Pope St. Gregory took over as Pope, the Western world was in turmoil. The once powerful empire had crumbled to its knees before the onslaught of the new barbaric kingdoms of Europe. These barbaric kingdoms were wrestling each other for the remains of the Roman Empire. The Lombards were ravaging Italy.

Last Sunday was the anniversary of St. Augustine and I mentioned that he took over as Bishop of Hippo. He was the co-adjutor Bishop and his Bishop was killed last Sunday, centuries ago, which made him the Bishop of Hippo, barbaric kingdoms. Vandals were breaking down walls and burning cities, stealing and raping in every possible city. That is how St. Augustine came to power as Bishop of Hippo in Northern Africa. Then about a hundred years later came Pope St. Gregory the Great in Rome.

Pope St. Gregory the Great came from a family full of virtuous people. In fact two of his family had already been Pope. When you consider that St. Gregory the Great was Pope in the year 590, that doesn’t leave a lot of time between 590 and the time of Christ. By this time two members of his family had already been Pope. Later on his mother would be canonized; not by St. Gregory but by another Pope. His father had two sisters who were later canonized as well. They were a very virtuous and powerful family in their own right. Before Pope St. Gregory became Pope and had inherited his land, he turned it over for the good of others.

He built seven monasteries and paid for them out of his own pocket. The last one was right next to the Cathedral of the Pope in Rome, St. John Lateran. It was the Monastery of St. Andrew. Before he entered that monastery as a monk, he has served as the Prefect of Rome. He administered Rome very well even though everything was falling down; he was the glue that held things together. St. Gregory felt the call to religious life so he entered the Monastery and became a monk. Eventually the other monks would call him to leave that Monastery and eventually he was chosen to be the Successor of St. Peter.

We all remember the most recent conclave. Remember the announcers? They all must have had the day off from announcing golf games and instead we heard in a quiet tone,

“And the Cardinals are going into the Sistine Chapel, they are walking in procession. There is the key and now they are being locked in. What do you think? Who will it be?”

That is how the Conclave went this year. Wait until you hear how Pope St. Gregory the Great was chosen in the year 590. The book I am holding up is Butler’s Lives of the Saints, a one volume on their lives. This is the year 590 and how Pope St. Gregory became Pope. Now, the Tiber River is to Rome what the Mississippi River is to New Orleans in Louisiana. The Tiber cuts right through the city of Rome and is huge.

“A terrible flood of the river Tiber River was followed by another terrible flood and then an exceptionally severe outbreak of the plague.”

Rome was decimated, was literally on its knees. There was no protection from attacking bands of barbarians or from the Tiber, which cut through the city. There was no protection from the plague. You can imagine that the tourist business must have really been slow, right? In January of the year 590, Pope Pelagius died of the plague. So, they had no Pope, they had no hope, their city was in ruins and their people were dying.

“The people unanimously chose Gregory as the new Pope.”

They went directly to him, electing him, they did not pass go or collect two hundred dollars, and they just went straight for him and said he was their man. His election was a unanimous decision. Fortunately everything that had happened to him had prepared him for this moment. He took the great land holdings that his family owned and he had administered so well. He placed them at the service of the Church. By his wise administration of the farmers who were "sharecroppers" on his land the farmers no longer "eked out a mere existence." Under St. Gregory's stewardship, the farmers were able to increase their production for the benefit of their families but they were able to produce a surplus.

He managed his farms so well that the surplus went toward building the first Catholic Charities. Whenever there was famine or a drought somewhere in the world and it got back to Pope St. Gregory, he would send grain and produce to help the afflicted areas. This was in the year 590 and those farms eventually grew into the Papal States. Why? Because other people saw how well managed they were and how prosperous people were in the Papal States and decided they wanted some of that too. And that is how the “evil” (tongue in cheek) Catholic Church came to possess the Papal States. Mwaahawhawhawhaw, right? I mean, we hear people talk about the Papal States and we are all supposed to just be so embarrassed that we had the Papal States. That is how Pope Gregory the Great began his life as Pope.

The first thing he did, even before he started the Papal States was to get Rome stabilized. People were dying of the plague. Rome is built, ringed by seven hills so he chose seven Churches and told the people to go to those seven Churches and stay there. Then together they would march from those seven Churches in prayer and singing hymns and would converge at a central point at the Church of Our Lady called St. Mary Major in Rome, the Basilica of Our Lady. It says here in Butler’s Lives of the Saints,

“The people unanimously chose Gregory as the new Pope and to obtain by penitence, the cessation of the plaque, he ordered a great processional Litany through the streets of Rome. From seven churches in the city proceeded seven columns of people who met at St. Mary Major.”

So yes, he was going to attend to the physical problems of the former Roman Empire and he wanted nothing more than to be left alone to his prayers. But God says that to those who are given much, much will be expected. This brilliant man put all of his knowledge to use for the service of his fellow man.

Pope St. Gregory’s Feast day was yesterday because on September 3rd in the year 590 he was consecrated the Successor of St. Peter. He used his wisdom to help the people and now such wisdom is needed today to address this national crisis in our own country.

Turn to the last page of the bulletin and compare the new emergency schedule for Monday with what would have been the regular schedule on page 4 where it states that the Church and Church office would be closed after the 10 am Mass. Well, you can see now that the Church will be open from 9am until 8pm on Labor Day. Now, I will just tell you bluntly that I do not like doing a lot on Mondays; I am tired on Mondays after a full weekend and I can do a few things but not a whole lot. Tomorrow though, I will be here throughout the day and don’t worry, I have an 800 number which is 1-800- Wa Wa Wa, and because I will be tired I will call them and give them a piece of my mind; of course they will put me on hold as they always do.

Why am I saying this? It is a national crisis! I would rather be with friends sitting around at the bbq or with family members having our Labor Day celebration, but it is a national crisis! So many people have sat in front of televisions like robots and they are now hypnotized by the carnage they have seen and they are no good to anyone because they are in shock. That is probably one reason it has taken so long to get people out of there. People have seen their friends, relatives, and perfect strangers dying and can do nothing about it. It has a debilitating effect on the survivors.

So tomorrow we are going to be here throughout the day praying. For as Our Lord says,

Color=red] Where two or three (or more) are gathered in My Name, there am I in their midst. If two of you agree on earth about anything for which to pray, it shall be granted to them by my Heavenly Father.[/color]

So we will be here tomorrow praying for the people of New Orleans, Mississippi, Alabama, and the entire Gulf Coast. Those people are being helped in other ways right now but I guarantee you that your prayers offered right now will arrive there today. I don’t care if it is a postal holiday, they will arrive there immediately. So many people are in need. I printed some of the needs on the back of the bulletin. Think of all the people who are there that have seen such shock and horror. They have lost schools and churches; if you complain about the price of gas, well they would love to have a car running so they can complain about the price of gas. Everything is under water and their homes are wiped away along with their belongings as well as their bank accounts. All of these things will take time; if ever they put it back together again it will take a lot of time. So these people have lost everything and could lose that which is most valuable, hope and faith in God.

“How could God let this happen?”

They could feel abandoned by God. These people are not the only ones that could lose faith and hope; they have friends and family outside those areas that are seeing what is happening to their friends and families devastated by the hurricane. We cannot lose that which is most precious, our hope in God. We have so many reasons to pray, so tomorrow we will be joining in prayer with those here and around the world for those who have died unexpectedly and with no preparation or deliberation because they died suddenly. We must also pray for the sick, wounded, and the dying. There was on bus leaving the other day and it turned over. A man died trying to escape that place. As I said, I have listed those we need to pray for on the back of the bulletin and that is a good start but there are so many more.

So many times these reason to pray won’t touch everyone so I am going to offer you a selfish reason to begin praying because when we do not follow what St. Paul says in the second reading,

“You shall love your neighbor as yourself”,

A lot of people love themselves so much that they might even start praying for these people because it could have an impact on them. When you see people on TV that have been living in and through waters that have been contaminated by the sewer system, which has backed up and fouled the waters, that means they are swimming around in human waste. If they should ingest this human waste into their system or have a cut on their body, they can be open to severe problems and infections. Anyone who has a child and you are nowhere near water, you know how hard it is to keep the hands of children clean.

“Oh look mom! She got into the cat litter again!”

Children are always putting their hands into their mouth, eyes, and nose; just think of the children that have gone through that water, they are contaminated and they touch their eyes and nose or mouth and risk many diseases. There is a certain incubation period for some of these things like dysentery, but typhus and cholera; we don’t see these things in this country because we have fresh water and soap. The people from New Orleans could battle so much of this if they had fresh water, which they don’t. Then they could wash the parts of their body that have been exposed to this water that has been contaminated, but they have been days and days without fresh water. Now they are getting on buses and are being taken away from the site of the catastrophe. If they should become infected with typhus or cholera it can be spread to others in the world’s population.

So for the people who are so selfish and won’t help unless it affects them, I have something for you. We all need to pray and do what we can for these people because they are our brothers and sisters in Christ. There is also a selfish motive; that the stronger our nation is, the stronger it is for our families and us. We all have an interest in this; it is not something remote.

“Well, I have never been to New Orleans!”

Ok, say that when you come down with typhus or cholera, right? I pray it doesn’t happen but these are illnesses, which may have been called the plague in the past, which could decimate a city such as Rome. This has been played out again and again so we turn to God in prayer and ask for help for those who have been afflicted and hurt.

I asked a lady from Louisiana if she’d heard about St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans and if it was still in tact. She said that from what she could see it was. She described the Sacred Heart of Jesus in front of the Cathedral with His hands outstretched; it was still there. The picture in front of me is of the Sacred Heart of Jesus under the title of Divine Mercy. On the bottom of the picture are the words,

Jesus I Trust in You

The Sacred Heart of Jesus revealed Himself to St. Faustina before WWII. The book I am holding up is the Biography of St. Faustina, who was a Polish Nun living in Poland before Hitler dotted Poland with death camps. She was given these private revelations from the Sacred Heart of Jesus in preparation for the onslaught of WWII. On Holy Thursday, St. Faustina, with the permission of the priest who guided her and was her confessor, made this total act of self-oblation to the Divine Mercy. I will read a little less than a paragraph.

Before Heaven and earth, before all the choirs of angels, before the Most Holy Virgin Mary, before all the Powers of Heaven, I declare to the One Triune God, that today in union with Jesus Christ, Redeemer of souls, I make a voluntary offering of myself for the conversion of sinners; especially those souls who have lost hope in God’s mercy.

So she is making a voluntary offering of herself for the conversion of sinners, especially the souls who have lost hope in God’s mercy.

“This offering of mine consists of my accepting with total submission to God’s will, all the sufferings, fears, and terrors with which sinners are filled.”

That is a great description of how it feels to be a sinner; we have sufferings, fears, and terrors. So, St. Faustina said she would take all of that, taking on suffering, fears, and terrors and in return she gives sinners all the consolations which her soul receives with her Communion with God, as she said in her book.

“In a word, I offer everything for them; Holy Masses, Holy Communions, penances, mortifications, and prayers.”

That is remarkable. She said her offering consisted of accepting with total submission, God’s will, all the sufferings, fears, and terrors with which sinners are filled. Remember the last guy who did that? Yea, Jesus! He took on Himself all the sufferings, fears and terror of all of us and in return He gave us His consolation. So in return St. Faustina offers them, sinners, all the consolation, which her soul would receive from her Communion with God, which are her Holy Masses, Holy Communions, penances, mortifications, and prayers.

Think of it, this seems very fitting right now because when you think of New Orleans everyone automatically thinks of Mardi Gras! Mardi Gras is preparation for Lent. Doesn’t this sound just like something out of a Lenten Penitential, like when we offer our Masses and sacrifices, penances and Holy Communions? Yes, it sounds just like Lent. We have to get specific otherwise we offer our prayers in a vague and gaseous manner; we are not really putting a lot of attention into it.

Everything is riding on this; people are losing hope in God and in His Mercy and our prayers and sacrifices offered for them can help them. Our Lord tells us very clearly,

”Again, Amen I say to you; if two of you agree on earth about anything for which they are to pray, it shall be granted to them by My Heavenly Father. For where two or three are gathered together in My Name, there Am I in the midst of them.

In just a moment we will sing a hymn, “Now Thank We All Our God”, which was written by a Dutch, Christian Minister, whose town had been decimated by the plague and after burying so many beloved members of his Church, his wife fell ill and died of the plague. He was now a widower in charge of all of these children. After he buried his much beloved wife he sat down at home with his children present and wrote the hymn. He wasn’t glad to see her go but it was his act of faith and hope in God, so we must be very considerate of how tenuous is the faith and hope of so many of our brothers and sisters in this crisis.

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

Amen