Homily by:
Father Paul Weinberger
Saint William the Confessor Catholic Church
Greenville, Texas
November 23, 2008
Jesus said to His Disciples, “When the Son of Man comes in His glory and all the angels with Him, He will sit upon His glorious Throne and all the nations will be assembled before Him and He will separate them, one from another, as a shepherds separates the sheep from the goats.”
In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit
Amen
Today is the Feast of Christ the King and the image on the cover of the bulletin is taken from the Church in Rome known as St. Paul’s Outside the Walls.
This year is a Jubilee Year started by the Holy Father at the end of June in honor of the 2000 Anniversary of the Apostle, St. Paul. This picture is taken from the Church of St. Paul. You can see St. Luke and St. Paul, then Christ is seated as Christ the King, and then we have St. Peter and St. Andrew. St. Andrew’s feast is next Sunday. I believe it was the year 64, on this day, that St. Peter was martyred upside down. He was crucified and had asked to be crucified upside down on this day. I will come back to Sts. Peter and Paul later because they factor very much into this Feast of Christ the King.
The Feast of Christ the King goes back to Pope Pius XI in 1925. Not even one hundred years have passed since this Feast of Christ the King was introduced. At the time it was introduced there were Catholics, who were being killed in Russia, Germany, Mexico, and other places such as Spain. So many, especially in Mexico were killed by the government of Mexico because they were Catholic. This was not even one hundred years ago and many Catholics do not realize the significance of such a war against the Catholic Church on the North American continent. Mexico is part of North America.
Today, in 1927, a Catholic priest named Blessed Miguel Augustine Pro, was shot by a firing squad in Mexico City. The government filmed the whole thing. The reason he was shot is because he was a Catholic priest. Today would be Blessed Pro’s feast day if it were not the Feast of Christ the King. But how significant, because his last words to that firing and squad and to us as he raised his arms in the form of the cross and said, “Long live Christ the King.” Then they executed him.
In this country, in South Carolina in the same year, the most racist university that I have ever heard of was started…Bob Jones University. In his arrogance, he named the university after himself. His son took over when he could no longer serve and now the grandson of Bob Jones is running the university. To my amazement just last week, on the official website of the university, they actually can show some progress in being Christian. Bob Jones University is a fundamentalist Christian university, which however, for the last eighty-one years has been incredibly racist. What is on their official site was in the Dallas Morning News yesterday so I am not looking around in some obscure place. This was on page 9-A of the Dallas Morning News.
The university itself said that its rules on race were shaped by culture instead of the bible. The university says,
It only took them eighty-one years to figure it out but thanks be to God they did, and you mark progress where progress is seen. They were shaped by culture instead of by the Bible.We failed to accurately represent the Lord and to fulfill the Commandment to love others as ourselves.
It is interesting because in just a few days we are all going to sit down to dinner and we are going to remember just over thirty fundamentalist Christians, who came to this country from Holland and before that, from England. They were the pilgrims and were from that part of England made famous by Robin Hood…Sherwood Forest? But they left England because under Henry VIII and Elizabeth, his daughter, you were forced to go to the Anglican services on Sunday. Well, the pilgrims didn’t want anything to do with the Anglicans or the Catholics, so being very good bible Christians they went to Holland to seek religious liberty. They found it in Amsterdam and later in Leyden, Holland. They tended to be very liberal places; kind of like living in Las Vegas. Personally, I have never been to Las Vegas. In Holland at that time as well as today, anything goes.
They met up with some Christians who’d gone to Holland before they had and they noticed that their children, who were just a bit older, had been influenced more by the culture of the Dutch instead of the Bible. The pilgrims started looking around and discovered the New World, deciding to go to Virginia. Of course the northern part of Virginia they settled in is called Massachusetts. They were heading for Virginia and landed in Massachusetts.
Just over thirty of these fundamentalist Christians, who didn’t want to let their children be influenced by the culture, risked everything. In fact, that first winter was so bad that most of the wives perished due to the harsh elements and to disease, but by the time spring came their children were very strong and healthy. That sounds just like a very good mother or father, to protect their children.
The pilgrims had their very first thanksgiving because they saw that God brought them to this new world and they saw God’s Hand in everything. In my opinion the pilgrims would not recognize what this country has become in 2008. Last week, in the same part of the world, in New England and more specifically in New York, the United Nations announced that they want to make it an international law, which everyone is allowed, if they choose, to have an abortion. This is progress? The pilgrims would not even recognize it. Instead they would recognize the sinfulness of Amsterdam or Leyden.
Today being the Feast of Christ the King, we see so many people who have gone against the culture and followed Christ, such as Blessed Miguel Augustine Pro and many others, that it should call our attention to the omnipresence of the influence of culture. I know that I could go anywhere on the property here and I could take a rock and throw it in the air and know it would fall to the ground because gravity is everywhere. In the same why I say that about what passes for culture in the USA in the year 2008. If you look at the back page of the bulletin you will see that what Jesus said in the Gospel is still not understood.
In 1992, a woman named Eluana Englaro had a car accident and she was put into the care of some Italian nuns, these Mercy sisters. Guess what? The Mercy sisters are showing Eluana mercy, God’s mercy…Christ’s mercy. Some of the government and even some in her family want the Mercy sisters to withhold food and water. “When did we see You hungry and give You food? When did we see You thirsty and give You drink?” Here ya go! You see that what has happened in less than a hundred years is still happening and the culture is quickly turning away from Christ and toward other ends.
This is a great time and the last Sunday before we begin four Sundays before Christmas, to take stock and kind of look back over our shoulder the way people do at the end of December for the New Year. As Catholics we understand that the New Year starts next Sunday and I have to say for my part, that looking back over the last twelve months or even the last forty-two years, I am forty-nine, I have not put the Will of Christ as my King in front of every decision or thought or action. I have not put Him first but myself first. So many times over the last twelve months or the last forty-two years Christ has been ill served by this servant of Christ the King. If he is the King he should have subjects, and how unwilling I am to subject myself to Christ.
I am in good company though; look at St. Paul. Do you remember the words of Christ to St. Paul on the road to Tarsus as he was going to turn in some more Christians? “Saul. Saul, why do you persecute Me?” He was persecuting Christ and persecuting the Christians. St. Peter had sworn to Christ that he would never deny Him and yet, not even twenty-four hours had gone by when he denied Christ three times. He swore and cursed and said he didn’t even know Jesus. So I am in good Company with those two. Knowing that Christ is King and that I should be subject to Him, the only thing standing in my way of following Christ and serving Him is me. I fall back on the excuse that I am influenced by the culture instead of by Christ and His Church, not just the bible but the way they interpret the bible, the tradition of the Church ands the teaching Magisterium or the teaching office of the Church. It is a good time right now, when everyone is kind of resting up this week to do exactly this, to see Christ as Our King and to see having served Him so poorly.
Having such a poor track record should encourage us to turn with more zeal, like the pilgrims that turned away from the comfort of England and Holland to come to this very difficult place, giving up friends and neighbors and risking everything to follow Christ just so their children would not be unduly influenced by the culture. If you see the pilgrims in a different way it made them onto a caricature. These are those historical persons and even though they weren’t Catholic Christians they were Christians searching for the truth. The pilgrims did put Christ over every thought, word, and deed.
Many Christians today think that the minute that they die they are going right into the arms of Jesus. Have they never read this Gospel of Jesus separating the sheep from the goats? The sheep will go on to eternal paradise and the goats to everlasting flames. Do these Christians not read the bible? Probably not, having been so influenced on a daily basis with the onslaught of the culture.
Jesus said to His Disciples, “When the Son of Man comes in His glory and all the angels with Him, He will sit upon His glorious Throne and all the nations will be assembled before Him and He will separate them, one from another, as a shepherds separates the sheep from the goats.”
I saw this up close and personal. Last Monday I had to go to jury duty in Dallas. I got there very early and we were released at 6:15 pm in the evening. I wasn’t chosen but I sat there across from a woman who was tried last week for the homicide of a child. It is ok to kill a child before he is born but once a child is born in this country and you kill the child you can go to jail for life. The woman was being tried for the homicide of a child under the age of four, which carried a life sentence. Throughout the day the woman cried and cried.
I hate going to the county courthouse because so many of the men and women who serve there are nothing but bureaucrats. I will give you an example of a bureaucrat. Bureaucrats and bureaucracy crucified Jesus. They couldn’t really find anything against Him but He must die.
At the end of the long day at the courthouse when they’d released everyone I stayed behind. I asked the judge in the presence of that lady and her lawyers if I could speak him for a minute. In order for him to speak to me he would have to go back through his chambers and go all the way around and come to where I was. I knew that by the time he did that the lady charged with the homicide would be gone. He told me he would be with me in a minute. They started to leave with the lady and I asked the judge if I could speak to the lady for a moment. There was a woman close to me and she said, “NO! No you can’t!” I told the judge that since I could not talk to her I just wanted to let her know that I am praying for her. I have to follow the law since I can’t talk to her, right? I don’t know that lady and from what I could tell by her demeanor and some of the things they already told us about the case, yes, she was involved in the homicide of a child under the age of four. But, here she is in prison and this bureaucrat won’t even allow someone to speak a word. The judge said, “Well, seems like she heard you.” The lady thanked me.
These words of Christ are not mere platitudes, they are direct orders for anyone listening and whose King is Christ and who have made themselves subject to Christ. There are no ifs, ands, or buts. But, so many in our country bow down on a daily basis before the culture and spend more time with this culture than with the King of the universe. I mean TV, and there will be a reckoning.
Jesus said to His Disciples, “When the Son of Man comes in His glory and all the angels with Him, He will sit upon His glorious Throne and all the nations will be assembled before Him and He will separate them, one from another, as a shepherds separates the sheep from the goats.”
In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit
Amen