24th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2005

[Fr.Paul Weinberger]

Homily by:
Fr. Paul Weinberger
St. William’s Roman Catholic Parish
Greenville, Texas
9 /11 / 2005 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time

His master summoned him and said to him, “You wicked servant, I forgave your entire debt because you begged me too. Should you not have had pity on your fellow servant as I had pity on you?” Then in anger his master handed him over to the torturers until he should pay back the whole debt. So will My Father do to you unless each of your forgives your brother from your heart.

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

Amen

If you look at page four of your bulletin where it says September 14th, you will notice that this day is the Feast of the Triumph of the Cross. The next day, September 15th is the Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows. In the stained glass over here you can see our Lady of Sorrows at the side of the Cross and she is wearing blue. How fitting that she would be next to the Cross and next to it’s Triumph on the calendar.

There is a beautiful statue at Blessed Sacrament, the parish I was assigned before I came here. On one side is a statue of Our Lady of Sorrows and on the other is of St. John the Apostle and of course the Crucifix is in the middle. The artist even painted in the tears of Our Lady as she stands by the Cross. It is a beautiful image of the scene before us here.

I remember my first day at Blessed Sacrament, which was June 15, 1993. I’d just gotten back from Mexico and was assigned to Blessed Sacrament. My brother was helping me unload the truck there with all my belongings in it. I remember the worried look on his face and I couldn’t figure out why he was worried. I was helping! [Laughter] I was a lot younger then. Anyway, he was worried and I figured out later why he was worried. Part of his worry came from the condition of the buildings.

Just to give you an example, there was a canvas awning that was about seven feet above the pavement going into the side of the church. Perhaps you have seen one of those car washes that are very popular today, not the kind with the brushes but the brush less car wash. Somehow they go against the car and get it clean but I don’t know how they do it. This canvas awning had been in place at one time but now there were two or three large holes in it and as you walked into the side of Blessed Sacrament it was like walking through one of those brush less car washes. Your face had never been so clean! [Laughter]

“WELCOME”

The roof had just been put on but not before much damage was done to the walls, which were about three times the height of the walls here at St. William’s. All the damage was up high and so with great difficulty you could get to the damage. The stained glass windows were from Italy and were just beautiful but they had not been repaired in over fifty years. Many of them were boarded up. The parking lot was asphalt and there were big holes in it. It looked like the Finger Lakes when it rained. Oh, and speaking of rain, there was always a swimming pool in the basement when it rained and had only been doing this for about forty two years.

Beside all of this, there was a debt of about five hundred thousand dollars on the parish, which is across I-35 from the zoo. I started there on a Wednesday and on the first Saturday and Sunday I mentioned at all the Masses that it was 1993 and that by the year 2001, our Centennial, we would be ready to celebrate. I’d said that all I have described previously would be taken care of, including the debt. I went on and on about how important it was to celebrate our Centennial. Well, I am sure that some of the people at those Masses that weekend thought that I’d stopped off at Centennial. [Laughter] ( Centennial is a liquor store in Dallas ) How do you know about Centennial? Yea! The debt, especially with a collection of two to three thousand dollars on a Sunday, we could pay our basic bills but not our assessment, causality insurance, or the debt.

About a month into my assignment there I went to see the Vicar General, Father Duffy. As many of you know, Fr. Duffy likes to joke…well…I was serious. I told him I thought that the debt should be forgiven and he told me not to worry. Well, telling someone not to worry is like telling you about someone else having an operation. They say not to worry because it is a minor operation. Well, if the operation is going to be on me, then by definition it cannot be a minor operation. If it is on someone else then it can be a minor operation. When he told me not to worry it was easy for him to say because it wasn’t his worry; it was my concern. He said that everyone knew that I couldn’t pay it off. I asked him then if they would allow us to change the name of the parish and this sounded like I was changing the subject. I said that I wanted to change the name from Blessed Sacrament to Blessed Turnip because everyone knows you can’t get blood out of a turnip! Well, He didn’t laugh. It wasn’t his joke. [Laughter]

We are told not to worry but if you have lived under debt then you know what it is like. Every month in the mail I got something on a piece of paper that looked like they scraped it off a pyramid in Egypt. The accountant’s hieroglyphics would appear and right next to that would be this big number. I didn’t know exactly what it meant but I took a wild guess that it meant,

“PAY BACK WHAT YOU OWE!”

This comes from our Gospel today. I’d never been in debt in my life but I guess I got a taste of it in the year 2003 when I purchased the home I grew up in, after my father passed away. Unless your family is wealthy you don’t usually pay cash for a home, so going into debt is necessary sometimes. I just recently started buying the house; the bank and I own it.

To live under such a big debt was a brand new experience for me. I guess I was thirty-three or thirty-four when I started at Blessed Sacrament. The debt kept going up and up. Beginning in 1993 we began to repair those things we could and sure enough we were able to check off all the things on the list I’d mentioned the first weekend I was there. I told them that all of these repairs would be accomplished through Divine Providence, through Our Lady’s help, the help of St. Joseph, and all the people and their prayers. I said it would be done on or before our Centennial in 2001.

September 14, 1999 that debt was resolved. I’d sent many a resolution proposal down to the office that handles such proposals and they would either die from not being considered or they would be rejected. After having done that a few times, in 1999 I sent a proposal down and it was confirmed. I mentioned in the bulletin then and also a month later when Bishop Grahmann came for Confirmation, in front of the people, that our debt resolution would not have been possible if Bishop Grahmann had not put his signature on the piece of paper accepting the proposal to resolve the debt for so many cents on the dollar. It was a good proposal but would not have gone through without the Bishop’s signature. I remember how grateful I was then and still am today.

When you have lived under an onerous debt, after it is resolved you wonder how you ever existed walking around bent over in such a difficult position. The debt seemed to skyrocket. I remember when it was resolved, the monthly hieroglyphics from the accounting office said that we were fifty-four thousand dollars away from a one million dollar debt. Someone coughed and Fr. Paul chimed in with.

“Yea, that’s what I say!”

It was resolved fifteen months before our Centennial and we could begin celebrating. We had an Ordination a year before and one during our Centennial. Along with those Ordinations we had this debt to celebrate and we did. The Triumph of the Cross was the day on which the papers were signed, which resolved that debt. Now, I’ve told you before that I think the most beautiful words in the New Testament concerning Jesus were when He was at the tomb of Lazarus consoling his two sisters, Martha and Mary. Those beautiful words show the mercy and compassion of Jesus.

Jesus wept

This is probably the shortest sentence in the New Testament. I have since reconsidered that and in my opinion the most beautiful words ever spoken were the words from Jesus spoken from the Cross just before He gave up His Spirit. Jesus said,

Father forgive them; they do not know what they do.

How many times have parents said this about their children? Jesus said this to His Father and He meant it. He was referring to everyone, all who would ever live and those alive at that time. Those words are balm to me; they are an ointment, like the kind poured on the wound of the man by the Good Samaritan.

The Triumph of the Cross, which is celebrated this week, is a triumph of grace over sin and death. The Divine Mercy is stronger than sin and death. We have to recall this every day, we have to call to mind the Triumph of the Cross every day. As you know, especially you who are married, every day you have to put into practice what Jesus said to St. Peter in today’s Gospel. Peter asked,

How often must I forgive my brothers? Seven times?

The Gospel says not seven times but seventy-seven times. The Spanish says seven times seventy times, which would be four hundred and ninety times. I know there is a big difference between seventy-seven and four hundred and ninety and I don’t know why there is a discrepancy there between the Spanish and English but for the Hebrews, seven was good enough. Seven didn’t mean one less than eight and one more than six; seven meant an infinite number. So, seventy-seven times seven meant and infinite number times an infinite number. Right? Anyone that is married knows that the default position is forgive, forgive, forgive; forgive, forgive, forgive and then you got to bed, wake up the next morning and you forgive, forgive, forgive. It has to be the default position in marriage. For example,

”He left his socks right where he took them off, argh!”

Forgive, forgive, and forgive…

”Honey, the next time the car runs out of oil, tell me before you drive another THOUSAND miles.”

Now, those are not equal examples, right. Forgive, forgive, forgive…and we have to have a heart that keeps us forgiving each other. It is especially necessary in marriage. A lady was telling me a story once about a couple of newlyweds. They had a custom where they would go over to her in-laws every Sunday and from there they would all four drive to Mass. You could tell there were newly weds in the car. The in-laws were in the front seat and the newly married couple was in the back seat. They had not yet switched off, where the two guys were in the front and the two ladies in the back.

So this lady told me that she loved going to the in-laws but as they would drive to Church every Sunday morning and return home, the in-laws would take the Lord’s Name in vain about one hundred times at least.

“ Well, look at that blankety blank car over there! Look at the blankety blank sign! Watch that blankety blank hole in the road! Did you hear that blankety blank priest today?”

Yea! Just throwing God’s Holy Name around on the way to and from Church! People use God’s Name in vain with such recklessness. People driving on I-30 will say when someone cuts in front of them,

“Look at that blankety blank woman who just pulled in front of me talking on her cell phone!”

Well, you know what you are doing when you say this? You are calling down God’s wrath on someone, asking God to do thus and so to her or to him.

“Oh no, that isn’t what I mean; it is just a habit!”

Well, words mean things and when someone takes God’s Name in vain and invokes God’s wrath to come down on a person to do thus and so……

“Oh…yea…”

St. James and St. John were going ahead of Jesus to prepare the next town for His coming and one town said that they didn’t want Him to come into their town. So James and John ran back to Jesus and asked if they could call down thunder from Heaven on the town. You know, they wanted to zap it! Jesus probably just looked at them and told them to go anyway. They probably would like to have seen a town zapped but felt fortunate that Jesus didn’t do what they asked. Jesus started calling them the “Sons of Thunder”, because they wanted to call down thunder from Heaven on that town.

In this stained glass window above the Altar, the Crucifixion, you see one of the Sons of Thunder, St. John with Our Lady of Sorrows. One of the other twelve Apostles hanged himself after he sold Jesus for thirty pieces of silver and the other ten were at a safe distance, which is code for being cowardly and didn’t get anywhere near Jesus; they saw Him from a distance. I am sure that James and John, after the Crucifixion, thought differently about calling down God’s wrath on these people who rejected Jesus.

I just mentioned using God’s Name in vain. How many times will people say they need to stop doing it or they remember a time when they did it because everyone was doing it, but they don’t do it anymore? Any time we review the 10 Commandments, we think about our sins. It is like what is said in the first reading today, the last lines on that Book of Sirach.

Remember your last days.

This doesn’t mean the past few days leading up to today but your last days on earth.


Remember your last days. Set enmity aside, remember death and decay and cease from sin. Think of the Commandments, hate not your neighbor, remember the Most High’s covenant, and overlook faults.

It says that the vengeful will suffer God’s vengeance; the Lord remembers their sins in detail. If you forgive the debt that others owe you, erase the board so to speak, and then He will not remember your sins in detail as it says in the Book of Sirach.

After I graduated from High School I started working in a grocery store and had a business on the side; I started cutting yards. I was probably eighteen or nineteen. There was one lady whose yard I cut that was a widow. She and her mother and brother had moved down here from Chicago. The mother had passed away. I remember talking to the widow once when I was there to cut her yard and she mentioned her brother, Marv. She mentioned how they had moved here and I asked her if she saw her brother often. She told me she didn’t so I asked when the last time was that she saw him and she told me it had been fifteen years ago. I asked her why; I had a lot of questions. My parents were probably hoping that I wouldn’t ask all those personal questions. Anyway, I asked her why she wouldn’t talk to him and she said they had a fight. When I asked what the fight was about she couldn’t remember. But they had not spoken in fifteen years!

When I went into the seminary in the early 80s, it was still the same; she had not spoken to her brother. I received a phone call in the latter part of the 80s telling me that she had passed away. I bet she passed away without talking to Marv. And it was because of that important fight.

“You know how important that fight was and…. I can’t remember what it was about, but it was important, I remember that!”

Our Lord reminds us that we have been forgiven so much and we can’t forgive our brothers and sisters?

This past week I was reading an article in the newspaper and the columnist must have been from Mars. He was talking about the devastation from the hurricane and how people were being welcomed and how beautifully they were being treated; as if this were news he said,

“This is tremendous. Most of the people who are helping are from churches.”

Wow…wow! I bet he doesn’t go to Church. That is the only way it can be news to they guy, right? Catholics and other Christians believe that the Sacrament not only takes away our sin and forgives our debt but also makes us brothers and sisters of Christ, which means that we have lots of brothers and sisters all over the word, these are the baptized. So that makes us adopted sons and daughters of God the Father. The fact that we are brothers and sisters in Christ means that we have to be concerned for and care for our brothers and sisters. The parable of the Good Samaritan tells us that we even have to be concerned for the stranger. In that parable, that Samaritan was the enemy of the man who was found dying in the road but he cared for him and actually paid for his recovery.

This columnist was talking about the way churches were helping in the relief effort in a valiant way and I just couldn’t get over how this man was surprised. You see, every father can look at his children and see a family resemblance and we have a Father in Heaven Who looks down on His adopted children. He wants to see a family resemblance as it says in the Responsorial Psalm. That Psalm is important; it is not flyover territory.

The Lord is kind and merciful, slow to anger and rich in compassion.

He wants to see us being merciful with our brothers and sisters. Most parents can probably tell you a story about the first time they saw each one of their children doing something merciful for their brothers or sisters. For example, a brother may be sick and even though it is not the turn of the other brother, he will go and take all the trash from the house and take it to the curb without seeking a monetary reimbursement. Parents see this and they are amazed at the selfless act of mercy done by one child for another. Or the daughter will clear the table and put the dishes away even though it is not her turn because she knows her sister has to finish the big report due the next day. So, parents can describe when they saw selfless acts of mercy done by their children and when they developed this beautiful characteristic of being merciful.

There is a mechanism in the Church to keep our hearts supple and beating; if you heart turns to stone then the only thing that can circulate it in your body is gravel and that doesn’t do any good. To keep the blood circulating the heart has to be supple and the way to keep our hearts forgiving and compassionate is the mechanism that the Church has called Confession. Confession helps us in so many ways but we see it in only in one dimension, that it takes away our sins. Yes, it does. Sins committed after Baptism will be taken away by Confession but it does something else.

I try to go to Confession at least once a month if I can pin down Fr. Vogel. Every time I leave the Confessional it is like a great debt has just been forgiven. I go forth having to do the same toward others. You’ve had that feeling coming out of Confession! It is not just a feeling but also a reality; a reality of the Sacrament, a mechanism that can keep us forgiving. Pope John Paul II went to Confession once a week and Mother Teresa went every day and you know what a sinful life she led, right? Hacha, hacha! Right? Why in the world would Mother Teresa go to Confession everyday? Can you imagine that every time she went to the gutter to pick people up and take them back to clean, feed, and help them die with dignity, she was thinking;

“You know, they have family that could be doing this. How could parents let their children out of the house like this?”

Yea! Inside, Mother Teresa was probably saying, “Grrr, grrr, grrr,” because of the injustice of the situation. But she went to Confession every day and was able to help so many people because every day her debt was forgiven. The default of forgiveness has to be in our lives as Christians; if not, look at the last line of the Gospel today.

So will my Heavenly Father do to you unless each of you forgives your brother from your heart.

Wow! This is a very direct statement! The next time you are tempted to stop talking to your brother, sister, neighbor or co-worker, and the next time you are thinking “pay me what you owe”, think about that last line; you might just break the ice and it won’t kill you. Think about your last days as the first reading says. Here we are at 9/11. Remember 9/11/2001? All of those people went to work in those big towers and thought it was going to be just another day in the week and very many never lived to see the next day. So forgiveness is something we have to do today and not put it off for next week, next month, or next year.

Like the story I began with; if someone forgives in a big way, you just can’t forget it. I will never see September 14 the same again and let it pass me by. He it is years later and I can still recall September 14, 1999 with great appreciation for all who made it possible.


His master summoned him and said to him, “You wicked servant, I forgave your entire debt because you begged me too. Should you not have had pity on your fellow servant as I had pity on you?” Then in anger his master handed him over to the torturers until he should pay back the whole debt. So will My Father do to you unless each of your forgives your brother from your heart.

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

Amen