Father Paul Weinberger
Saint William the Confessor Catholic Church
Greenville, Texas
Feast of Christ the King
November 25, 2007
For in Him were created all things in Heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether Thrones or Dominions or Principalities or Powers; all things were created through Him and for Him.
In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit
Amen
On the cover of the bulletin last Sunday was the figure of a man with his arms lifted and outstretched in the form of a cross. He is Blessed Miguel Augustine Pro, who was martyred in 1927 and his Feast Day was on Friday, November 23rd, the day after Thanksgiving. Just after having pardoned all of the men about to execute him, his last words were, “Viva Cristo Rey”, which translates in English to, “Long live Christ the King”. In his right hand he held his rosary and his cross of religious profession in his left hand. Father Pro was a Jesuit.
Last week, I saw a very touching reminder on the street just across from where he was executed, which is a testimony to the tremendous love that the Catholics in Mexico have for Fr. Pro. It was a plaque on the wall about this size or perhaps a bit smaller.
Father Paul holds his hands up and uses them to show the size of the plaque, which is not even an 8X10
To add insult to injury, from the bottom of the wall there was an electrical wire that ran up and bisected the plaque, as if it was so inconsequential they just wouldn’t run the wire around the perimeter. No, they just ran it right through; kind of like they did Fr. Pro, they ran him through as well. This is all just ancient past and we are so different from things like churches all being closed in Mexico; that would never happen today because we are modern. Of course, in 1927 they thought they were modern.
Last Sunday, in Mexico City, in the largest Cathedral in the Americas, something happened, which evidentially was not covered by the Dallas Morning News. I found out about it on Tuesday through the Internet, and then, watched it on Spanish television from Mexico. Over a hundred protestors broke into the Cathedral last Sunday, past the police, who had been stationed there, and desecrated the Cathedral. This happened while Mass was being offered, and they injured some of the people in the Cathedral. The priests took cover in the Sacristy. These people disrupted the entire Mass on that day, and after the disruption, the Cathedral doors were closed. The last time those doors were closed was in 1926, but then again, who is counting. I looked Monday-Friday and maybe I missed it, but I didn’t see anything in the paper about this.
Fortunately, Cardinal Rivera is very wise; he didn’t re-open the doors later on that day, but waited until today to do so. He spoke to leaders of Mexico City as well as Church leaders and the doors were re-opened today, probably after having deconsecrating that which had been desecrated and no doubt getting the attention of more people than they could ever imagine, these protestors were wishing to insert politics into religion when religion can never enter into politics. It is a double standard of course!
Read: Message of Forgiveness
Auxiliary Bishop Antonio Ortega of Mexico City
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=11097
This is something I treasure; it is part of Fr. Pro’s coffin.
Fr. Paul holds up a cross (reliquary) with a 2nd class relic enclosed
When they placed a new coffin around his body they took splinters and made them into relics, so this is something I treasure, a relic of Fr. Pro.
On the morning he was executed, Fr. Pro got up and jumped out of bed. This is something, which should be noted. He always did this, and as I said last week, he always had a very positive outlook on life and was incredibly creative, being a man of a thousand disguises. Lon Chaney used to go to him when he needed a new disguise.
Fr. Pro was in jail when he jumped out of bed; why would one be excited to jump out of bed while in jail? He knew he was innocent and that there was no case against him. The government had no grounds for holding him and he knew he would be released soon. Then a guard came in and begged pardon for what he was about to do to Fr. Pro, and that was to execute him. Suddenly, what was about to happen to Fr. Pro sunk in, and fortunately for him, he always lived in the service of the King, Christ the King. His last words were, “Long live Christ the King”, or “Viva Cristo Rey”. Padre Pro was granted a last request, and he knelt in front of the firing squad and prayed in silence, and then forgave them for what they were about to do. It is the same thing Our Lord did when they crucified Him. Like Christ, he raised his arms and was executed.
The cover of the bulletin this week has a very unusual image; it is of God the Father as Divine Architect out of a French Bible from the 1200s. In Pope Benedict’s book, Spirit of the Liturgy, which I refer to often, he points out again and again how the early Church Fathers, like St. Justin Martyr, who was martyred in the year 165 AD and was a philosopher, reading Plato, the pagan philosopher, saw even in Plato references to Christ. Plato mentioned things like the movement of planets or the constellations, the stars. The Pope makes the point that even in celestial bodies the earliest saints could see the Divine Architect at work. For example, the Southern Cross in the sky has the imprint of God the Father pointing to His Son, Jesus Christ, or the way planets appear to the ancients to move and then to bisect in the form of a Cross. Everything in the heavens… even heavenly constellations point to Christ and if you will, everything on the spiritual, down to the smallest molecule. Our spiritual DNA should also point to our service in the court of the King because the Divine Architect has order it and has beautifully arranged it so we can marvel at such order and creation.
The fact is everything between these two ears and in my mind, everything that comes out of my mouth and enters my eyes and ears as well as my actions has to be in the service of the King and it is the same for you too. This is the Feast of Christ the King and recalling last Sunday’s topic, Fr. Pro shows how to live every day in the service of the King. If we are not in the service of the King we are not in good company and we are not serving God the Father.
In the Divine Office today, Origen, who is often quoted by Pope Benedict, wrote that,
That last line is so beautiful.Kingdom of God cannot exist along side the reign of sin. Therefore if we wish God to reign in us in no way should sin reign in our mortal bodies; rather, we should mortify our members, which are upon the earth and bear fruit in the spirit. There should be in us a kind of spiritual paradise where God may walk and our sole ruler with His Christ.
Just do a quick examination of conscience going back over the last seven days, including Thanksgiving and recall every aspect such as every television program, commercial, click of the mouse, click of the clicker…………All of those were in the service of…yeah right!
It is harkening back to the first parents before the Original Sin, how God loved to walk in the cool of the evening in the garden with Adam and Eve; such freedom and intimacy, which is marred by the Original Sin and subsequent personal sins and reestablished by the only One Who could…Christ the King! Yet, we behold our King here on this ignominious instrument of torture and death, which is the Cross. You see Christ here as True God, as we will proclaim shortly, and True Man. The transcendent that Christ is indeed eternal and enters into time. You can see the two beams of the cross intersecting and it is a perfect image of Christ whose grace from the Cross reaches all the way back to our first parents, and fortunately reaches us in this present moment and extends to the future to the last person who will ever live. The beauty of the Cross is part of His Kingdom, and you cannot think of Christ and His Kingdom without the Cross.There should be in us a kind of spiritual paradise where God may walk and our sole ruler with His Christ.
We read about the good thief in the Gospel today, which is rare to have a reading from the Passion when it isn’t Holy Week. It is not a First Friday or the Mass of the Sacred Heart of Jesus; how rare it is to have an account of the Passion which is chosen specifically for the Solemnity of the Feast of Christ the King of the Universe. The good thief steals Heaven. After the good thief asks Jesus to remember him when He came into His Kingdom, Jesus replied,
Amen I solemnly assure you today you will be with Me in Paradise.
Wherever Jesus is, that is Paradise. It is not the cool of the evening that Adam and Eve used to experience with God, but the suffering of the Cross. Wherever Christ is, there is Paradise and wherever Christ is, there is Heaven even in the crosses that fill our lives daily. Yet somehow if we could just get rid of these crosses we could make ample room for our Savior. The good thief stole Heaven, but it didn’t mean that the rest of the afternoon was a cakewalk; he had to suffer the rest of that afternoon. Remember that they came and broke the legs of the two thieves? He had to endure that, and then his subsequent death
And so it is with us. Fr. Pro had the right conception of being in the service of the King. This led to him being so spontaneous, always at the service of the King, at the King’s command. He could always go here and there and be intent on the needs of the King because he was not focusing on his own wants and desires, which meant that he had a spiritual paradise where he walked with the sole ruler of his soul, Who is Christ, and so it can be for me and for you.
For in Him were created all things in Heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether Thrones or Dominions or Principalities or Powers; all things were created through Him and for Him.
In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit
Amen