Fifth Sunday of Lent 2006

[Fr.Paul Weinberger]

Homily by:
Father Paul Weinberger, Pastor
St. William Roman Catholic Church
Greenville, Texas
April 2, 2006
Fifth Sunday of Lent

Jesus answered them, “Amen, amen I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies it produces much fruit.

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

Amen

Of course we remember these words in relation to the first anniversary of the passing of Pope John Paul II on this day last year. Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground it remains just a single grain of wheat but it dies it produces much fruit and so this can be said about his life. He was someone who continually contemplated the Face of Christ.

In Pope John Paul II’s beautiful encyclical at the end of the Jubilee Year 2000, again and again he encouraged the Church to contemplate the Face of Christ and that is what we are about, especially in these last two weeks of Lent as we contemplate the Face of the Suffering Christ.

The Gospels are so encouraging to us, especially recalling the parable where Jesus tells about the owner of a vineyard, who, at harvest time went into town to hire workers to bring in the harvest. He sent a group of men out to his vineyard and after and hour or so he went back to town and found more men who were unemployed and sent them out there as late as an hour before the end of the day. When he paid the workers, he paid in reverse order and gave each a full days wages. Those who had worked through the heat of the day complained and he asked them if he could not be generous with his own money.

Our Lord rewards even those who come late but then there are other parables that advise against coming late, like the five foolish virgins coming late to the banquet and were locked out. It is not something that we can universally use to predict everything but Our Lord will indeed reward us if on the 5th Sunday of Lent we begin in earnest to prepare for Holy Week.

Later on today perhaps you will get a chance to read page 7 in the bulletin, which talks about arriving at Mass after the Gospel on Sunday. Do you have to attend another Mass? I draw attention to this because Sunday is the Lord’s Day and coming late to Mass on His Day is not a problem because the whole day is His Day so if you come late, you can just leave and come back to a later Mass. It is the Lord’s Day but we have lost the sense of that which is the Lord’s. In fact, Sunday is the day on which Our Lord is often forgotten.

What happens with Sunday is also what can happen with Holy Week. Holy Week is just one week out of the year and is called Holy Week because of Our Lord’s suffering and death. How interesting that on Psalm Sunday Jesus is welcomed into Jerusalem and by Friday He has really gone down in the polls, right? How sad; how fickle is the human heart to welcome Him with such pomp and celebration on Psalm Sunday only to crucify Him on Good Friday. It is something that we have to meditate upon, in fact, by mentioning this right now, instead of waiting until next Sunday; we still have a run to Psalm Sunday and Holy Week. We still have a chance to get ready for Holy Week starting today.

It is such a joy to see Sister Veronica, who is sitting here in the front pew. Sister Veronica was the principal at St. Phillip’s and before that, at St. Augustine. She has been in many places in the Diocese of Dallas. When I was a seminarian, she was the principal at St. Phillip’s and a cherished friend. To see Sister Veronica before this Mass after so many years was quite a treat. She belongs to the order that tried teaching me the first eight years of my schooling. Those first eight years in the first grade, I will never forget. [Laughter] Anyway, I thought the sisters were so mean in grade school. I am surprised I never got hit with the ruler but the sisters there didn’t do that. Maybe they just thought they would wear out their arms hitting me with a ruler. Why start…you will never finish the job. [Laughter]

I thought the sisters were mean because they had a rule. It wasn’t written down anywhere but they knew where we lived and if you lived close to the Church, you were expected to be at daily Mass at 7:30 in the morning when school started at 8:00am. Well, I was looking for the 1-800 number for the Geneva Convention. [Laughter] I mean this was terrible! My brother and I could have used those extra thirty minutes in the morning to finish watching the Three Stooges on TV but instead these sisters told us that they expected us to be at Mass before school and after we made our First Communion, they expected us to serve Mass and help out in other ways.

I remember as we left the Church to go to the school I would look to my left and see many of the kids who lived further a field and they were just getting there in time for school. As I kid I thought they were so lucky because they only had to get there by 8 am. We had to be there in time for Daily Mass. Now Daily Mass and the reception of Holy Communion, Our Lord’s Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity, as I kid I would have traded that for thirty more minutes in front of the TV. You hear me rail against the television again and again and this is part of the reason why. To think as a kid, I could be given that choice. If you gave your kids a choice between eating hamburgers or pizzas everyday other than nutritious meals, of course they would choose the pizza or hamburger. But, the sisters made sure that all of us who lived near the school were there for Daily Mass and if we weren't we had to have a very good excuse, one which they would verify in triplicate. Thanks be to God for this training!

It is easy to be free and available for Daily Mass and not attend. It happens all the time and not just here but throughout the world. Maybe you have a day off during the week or you are retired and don’t have a doctor’s appointment and you look at the daily schedule of Masses and notice that there is a Mass you can attend but instead you do something you could easily do some other time. We have to watch this because Our Lord gives us these opportunities to strengthen us. This is why the Lord’s Day is so important; He knows that after six days we are not going to be able to withstand the onslaught of the week ahead unless we rest in the Lord. He wants to fortify, strengthen us, and love us and give us His tremendous graces but He is not going to hunt us down like some animal to kill us. He asks that we rest in the Lord on Sunday and whenever possible to do so during the week. Perhaps over the next two weeks, Daily Mass, which may be foreign to you as a concept, may be the way you begin using these last two weeks to focus on Our Lord and contemplate His suffering and death.

I was talking to Bob Marr after the last Mass and he said he’d experienced the same kind of thing when he attended Catholic school. He had to attend Mass everyday during the week and he said he really felt cheated when a Holy Day fell on a Saturday because he had to go to Mass on that day as well, and then return on Sunday. Now I know it has been a long time since people have had to attend Mass on a Saturday if it was a Holy Day. These days you can’t figure them out…sometimes yes and sometimes no. We have a lot of work ahead of us these two weeks.

When I was in the third of forth grade we moved just a few blocks from the school so we could walk to Church and school. In order to get from our neighborhood to the school I had to walk up the sister’s driveway and down the sidewalk into the school. This was about thirty-five years ago and I remember there were five or six sisters and they were living in a two, maybe three bedroom convent. This was very small but the sisters never complained, although there should have been a lot of complaining. If there had been six priests living in a house that small, you’d have heard hammer and nails because they would add on to the place.

Anyway, back then there wasn’t air-condition like we have today and the sisters would have the windows up and as I walked up their driveway and down the sidewalk all I heard was silence. The sisters were there because you could hear the pots and pans clinking but they were observing Holy Week in a very focused and dedicated way, especially on Good Friday. There was no radio playing or TV on, and this was so in order to make Holy Week special, especially Good Friday. It was difficult, especially being that close to the others in the congregation, but they did it and it had an impact on me. That is really something, especially getting through this hard head of mine. It is memorable even to this day.

The sisters aren’t teaching here at St. William’s and in most places the schools aren’t fortunate enough to have the sisters anymore but we do have to recognize our obligation to observe Lent in such a way that our children, grandchildren, neighbors, and even our non Catholic friends recognize that there is something different. They may wonder why the radio or TV isn’t on when it normally is. We have an obligation to pass on to the next generation of Catholics what we already understand. Are they going to get it from the drinking water supply? Are they going to get it from the air? No, they are going to get it from us observing Lent and observing us during Lent, loving God. These last two weeks have to be really focused.

We began in the Office of the Readings today, reading the Letter to the Hebrews. The Letter to the Hebrews was the Second Reading today as well during Mass. In the second chapter, there is a line here that says,

In view of this we must attend all the more to what we have heard lest we drift away.

This was a passage about Jesus Christ and how He was sent to us from God to save us. We can drift away to the point that we are making stuff up. A friend of mine called me from Indiana. They were living here and attending St. Augustine’s and decided to move back to Indiana. Bob and Peg live in the shadow of Notre Dame University. Peg called and was catching me up on what was going on and said that there was a lady who walks with her every evening and on one of these walks she was telling Peg about her plans. The lady was going on a cruise and there is nothing wrong with taking a cruise but this lady said something I never heard in 46 years of life and 16 years as a priest. When someone can “stump the priest”, it is amazing. I have never heard this one before. It is amazing.

So, peg and the lady are walking and the lady was talking about the cruise and tells Peg she is going to Mass every Saturday morning and again in the evening. Well, this is good but Peg asked her to explain. She told Peg that she was “banking her Masses”. Kind of like E.F. Hutton, when he talks people listen. She is BANKING HER MASSES! English is my first language but I cannot figure that one out. She went on to explain to Peg that when she goes on the cruise that there won’t be a Mass so she is “saving Masses up”, kind of like squirrels tuck away pecans for the winter. God bless the lady but that kind of thinking was made up! You don’t bank Masses like you have coupons; Sunday Mass coupons and Holy Day coupons? We don’t have those! So many Catholics would just pay the freight and forget about it. [Laughter]

This lady found out that she could actually make it to Daily Mass when she wanted to. She has to arrange her schedule a bit differently, but look what she gets in return; the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ during the week. The reason why most people don’t attend Daily Mass is because they have jobs or school, but whenever there is an opening in one’s schedule and it allows one to attend Daily Mass, one would be crazy not to attend, or at least that is what one would think.

We have so much to do during the remainder of Lent. What if God wants to help us with that spiritual breakthrough that we have worked on so long? God wants to take us to that next level of loving him and loving our neighbor. These next two weeks of Lent are the two weeks that He has scheduled for such an insight or understanding. We have to realize that these two weeks ahead of us are going to go by so fast. Holy Week is called Holy Week because it should be made holy by shelving everything that we would normally do in order to focus on Him.

For example, today is the Lord’s Day; take out the Gospel of Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John and read about the last moments in the life of Christ in one of these Gospels. Over the next two of weeks arrange to pray as a couple or family. Pray the rosary or some kind of a way of observing these two weeks and not just letting them fall through our fingers. As the Letter to the Hebrews says,

In view of this we must attend all the more to what we have heard lest we drift away.

It would be so easy for us to drift away; so much so that when Easter arrives it is just another day instead of a time of great grace and joy.

On the back on your bulletin is a schedule and you will see that we have forty hours of confessions scheduled so it is not impossible for you and your family to make it to Confession during Holy Week with so many convenient times offered. Now, if everyone waits until Saturday, that is a different matter. On Ash Wednesday Christ tells us that when we pray to go to our rooms and close the door, praying to Our Father in private. He is talking about the inner room of our souls. We just had the first day of Spring recently, how about some Spring cleaning; spiritual Spring cleaning of the inner room of our souls.

There are so many graces that God is wanting to bestow on us but He is not the UPS man and He is not going to knock on your door with a delivery. He wants us to open the door to our inner room during these days of Lent. Contemplating the Sorrowful Face of Christ at home is one way but the Church is open everyday at 7am and closes somewhere between 5pm and 7:30 pm. Maybe you could make it by the Church to say some prayers or just sit in the Presence of Our Lord in the Tabernacle. Maybe you never do this but it would be a way of doing something out of the ordinary to prepare for Easter. If you are out and about traveling, you can stop in at another Catholic Church and do the same. People find it easier to pray outside the home many times because it may be noisy at home. Sometimes people find it easier to focus on God in Church.

Over he next two weeks we have to be very intent on helping the children do this as well because their tendency is to just drift along. They want to be taught the way the sisters that came half way around the world taught us at St. Phillip’s. They left their families behind to teach us and for our part, we have to pass this along to our children and grandchildren. Teach them that voluntarily suffering, participating in the sufferings of Christ is not a futile thing. The sacrifices we make to God and our neighbor are very important to God. These are sacrifices He is expecting of us. If we are His people and He is our God, He wants to see us mirroring the sufferings of His Son, especially these last two weeks of Lent.

As the Gospel says so beautifully,

Jesus answered them, “Amen, amen I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies it produces much fruit.


We have to focus on that these last two weeks of Lent. Jesus is that grain of wheat that has produced so much fruit. Who can forget the example of Pope John Paul II, leaving his beloved Poland in order to serve over twenty-five years in Rome, giving us all an example to follow. We must imitate that example.

Next week I won’t be able to say all of this because it is the long Gospel.

“Oh no, the long Gospel!”

See how generous we are with God on the Lord’s Day?

“I hate going to Church on Psalm Sunday.”

That’s right! This year Psalm Sunday is on a Sunday. [Laughter] We are so fortunate to hear the entire Passion read and yet it is a time for complaining because it is long. I won’t get to say this next week because of the lengthy Gospel but what a beautiful thing it is to hear all at once, the Passion of Christ. If you have the video, Jesus of Nazareth, pull it out and watch it as a family; the same with the Passion of the Christ by Mel Gibson. You can use these materials to help your family prepare for these last two weeks. Do it and help your children form your grandchildren. Maybe they aren’t able to do it due to work but you can step in as a grandparent and help them out.


Jesus answered them, “Amen, amen I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies it produces much fruit.

Don’t allow these to be just two weeks on your calendar. If we die with Christ we have the hope of rising with Him.

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

Amen