Homily by:
Father Paul Weinberger, Pastor
St. William Roman Catholic Church
Greenville, Texas
6 / 26 / 2005 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time
”Whoever finds his life will lose it and whoever loses his life for My sake will find it, and whoever gives a cup of cold water to one of these little ones to drink because the little one is a disciple, amen I say to you surely he will not lose his reward.”
In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit
Amen
Referring to your bulletin, at the top of the page with the schedule for Saturday and Sunday, there is a paragraph that says, “Three Years Ago” and then there are numbered paragraphs below it. Look at paragraph number one. Pope John Paul II said:
“I wrote in my Apostolic Letter, Novo Millennio Ineunte..”
The next child you have, that would make a good name. I am pointing this out so that if you have a computer and you are on the internet, you can type that into google.com or some other search engine and come up with Pope John Paul II’s Apostolic Letter published at the end of the Jubilee Year, which is called, “On the Beginning of the New Millennium” and check out paragraph 27, 28, and 29. When you can narrow it down to three paragraphs you are doing very well.
The Holy Father writes beautifully in those three paragraphs. Not only is the Apostolic Letter a reflection on the Jubilee Year 2000, but it is also homework for the next thousand years because that I show many years in a millennium. He says in paragraph 27 of Novo Millennio Inuente that we need to look to the saints to understand the terrible world in which we live. He says;
“The saints offer us precious insights, which enable us to understand more easily the intuition of faith thanks to the special enlightenment that some of the saints have received from the Holy Spirit or even through their personal experience of those terrible states of trial, which the mystical tradition describes as the “Dark Night of the Soul.”
That of course is a reference to St. John of the Cross, who wrote about his dark night of the soul. The Holy Father is recommending the saints to us and of the saints that he mentions there, in paragraph 28 and 29, he points out St. Peter and what’s his name….oh yea, St. Paul. The Solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul is on Wednesday and the following day is the Feast of the first martyrs of the Church of Rome. These are all listed on the weekly schedule.
In paragraph 29 of Novo Millennio Ineunte the Holy Father holds St. Peter up as a model for us. After St. Peter received the Holy Spirit along with our Lady and the other Apostles on Pentecost, he asks the question we all ask everyday. In Acts 2, verse 37 St. Peter says,
“What must we do?”
It is like he is saying,
“Ok, I have received the Holy Spirit, now what?”
In paragraph 28, Pope John Paul II says,
“It is the Risen Christ to Whom the Church looks now. The Church does so in the footsteps of Peter, who wept for his denial. The Church does so in the company of Paul, who encountered the Lord on the road to Damascus and was overwhelmed.”
Yes! Look who John Paul II is holding up for our investigation and meditation; St. Peter, who said,
“I will go with You to die with You.”
Jesus said,
“Oh really? By tomorrow morning you will have denied Me three times.”
And Peter didn’t just say he didn’t know the guy, he swore and cursed while saying he didn’t know Jesus. Saul, who became St. Paul was turning over Christians to be tried and put to death. He was present at the stoning of St. Stephen, the first martyr. Remember what the words were of Jesus to Saul on the road to Damascus?
“Saul, Saul why do you persecute me?”
Well, he wasn’t persecuting Jesus he was persecuting the Church. Jesus said,
“Why are you persecuting ME?”
…the identification of Christ with his individual members,
“Saul, Saul, why do you persecute ME?”
Of course it was forever in the back of St. Paul’s mind about how he persecuted the Church and so he went on to do greater things. Pope John Paul II in, “Novo Millennio Ineunte” holds up both Sts. Peter and Paul for our instruction and gain.
Speaking of Sts. Peter and Paul, Rome is the only city on the face of the earth where the blood of two apostles was shed. The only city of greater importance for us is Jerusalem, where our Lord’s own death occurred. But, Rome is so important, that is where both Sts. Peter and Paul ended up.
There is the legend of St. Peter called the “Domine Quo Vadis”, “Lord where are you going?” The story says that new things were getting warm in Rome and St. Peter knew that he was probably going to be harmed or killed so he was getting out of there while he could. As he had the City of Rome in his rear view mirror so to speak, he saw a familiar figure walking into Rome on the same road. This figure was Our Lord Himself. St. Peter said to Him;
“Domine Quo Vadis”, “Lord where are you going?”
And the Lord said to St. Peter,
“I am going to Rome to be crucified.”
St. Peter said to Him,
Lord, are you going to be crucified again?”
The Lord said to him,
“Yes Peter, I am being crucified again.”
So Peter came to his senses and having watched our Lord ascend into Heaven he returned to Rome rejoicing and glorifying the Lord. For He had said,
“I AM being crucified.”
This is exactly what was waiting for St. Peter in Rome, crucifixion and death. He mandated that he not be allowed to be crucified in the same fashion as our Lord, so he asked that his cross be turned upside down.
These two saints and all the saints show us what the Holy Father points out so beautifully in these paragraphs. He makes a mention and says that he is not talking about any kind of magic formula for these dark and terrible times and not talking about a new program but a Person. I love that line. That person of course is Jesus Christ. Paragraphs 27, 28, and 29 can help us in our homework these next thousand years.
Recently I was recalling the Dark Night of the Church, which has occurred in the last twenty years or so. Twenty years ago there was a priest who addressed the bishops in Washington D.C. and he warned the bishops saying,
“Listen, if you don’t do something and do it quickly, the sexual abuse scandal is going to erupt and it is going to cost one billion dollars.”
There was an archbishop present and I am glad I don’t know his name; it would be interesting to find out if he is still an archbishop, but he remarked to those who heard the priests comments,
“No one will sue the Church.”
Yea, I bet he is still leading a diocese somewhere! So far in this country alone, one point one billion dollars have been paid out in settlements to victims. And…God bless the victims, hopefully they got some of that money. Their lives were torn apart and forever marred by these leadership members of the Church, who were abusing them and then there were the other leaders, who kept transferring them around so that they could abuse again and again. The Archdiocese of Boston, I think has paid out an eighty million dollar settlement. They had much in reserve in the way of property. They had some properties that they developed and actually had businesses on these properties. Well, you know they had to sell those properties and the businesses too? Isn’t that just what I want, Church in business? It is like government accountability; it just doesn’t go together!
So, they had to sell off these pieces of real estate and they had money socked away for a rainy day and came up with eighty million dollars. It is terrible that they had eighty million dollars just lying around and not put to use. You see, in the last twenty years many a child has been denied a Catholic school education in Boston because the tuition was too high. Let me see, eight million spread around to all those schools…eighty million spread around between eighty Catholic schools would amount to almost a million dollars a school, even according to the new math. That could really help bring down tuition. If there weren’t enough Catholic kids to be educated then find some poor non-catholic kids who need a better education than they could find in the public school system. If they ran out of all kids who could be educated, they could go on to families below the poverty level that were in need.
You see where I am going with this; instead they kept this money back and the money was taken.
”Whoever finds his life will lose it and whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.”
Maybe they just never came across this statement in their Bibles up there. It is interesting now that they had all these plans and money socked away and real estate set aside, not only was that taken away, now the Archbishop of Boston is having to sell parishes and schools. People are protesting and sitting in their Churches not wanting them to be sold or bulldozed. The Archbishop says that these have to be sold to help pay those judgments.
On the other side of the continent is the Diocese of Spokane; I think it is an archdiocese. They are taking a different approach. They paid out millions also but are filing bankruptcy. You know, you can always tell the Catholics who are reading the newspapers, they always do this; Father holds the paper as though he is trying not to read it, with his eyes closed and at arms length. They do this because there is always something else in there about the Catholic Church. So, the Diocese of Spokane is filing bankruptcy and the lawyers there are asking if they are going to sell the parishes and schools like Boston. Oh no no! All of the money and assets belong to the parishes. Well, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see that sooner or later the lawyers are going to pit one against the other and ask the question,
‘Which is it? Do all the parishes own these things or does the Diocese?”
And, if the Diocese does as the Archbishop of Boston says then we can scoop these up. If not, as Spokane says, then we can’t touch them. You can see that the bishops themselves are not even agreeing on this and we are going to lose more and more.
”Whoever finds his life will lose it and whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.”
That money could have been used but instead it was wasted. I don’t mean wasted in the sense of helping the victims of abuse, but it was wasted and could have been used over the years to help people in need. They say that when the lawsuits come in from California that it will be another billion dollars, which will be added on top of it. Amazing, two point one billion dollars. It is real easy for me to sit in Greenville and throw rocks at the Archbishop of Boston because he doesn’t have any impact on me; but he is having an impact on the Catholic Church and is part of this “Dark Night” that we are having to pass through concerning this sexual abuse scandal and it’s crisis.
As St. Peter said at Pentecost,
“What must we do? What are we supposed to be doing?”
This all has something very much to do with today’s Gospel.
”Whoever finds his life will lose it and whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.”
About four weeks ago on a Wednesday, I got the phone call that there was a lady in a nursing home here in Greenville, dying. The caller told me that she couldn’t swallow the Consecrated Host. If you come up for Communion today, being in the state of grace and having been regularly attending Church, you are fortunately able to swallow Holy Communion. The patient's name was Julia. She was only thirty-five and dying. I saw no evidence in the nursing home of any family or friends dropping by. I took her Holy Communion, the Precious Blood in an eyedropper so she could receive Holy Communion. In extraordinary circumstances this is possible. I hate going to nursing homes, I really do. An you know what? Here is a news flash, I know that you hate going to them as well because when I go to nursing homes, I never see anyone there. We all hate going to nursing homes! They should not be called nursing homes; they should be called “homes of the abandoned.”
You see, most of the people in there are no longer cute, they have lost hair, they are stooped over and can’t care for themselves and are falling apart. So, we all stay away because there is a “great need.” Whenever there is a great need, stay away. Anyway, I went into the nursing home and saw her that day and some of the residents who were able to get into a wheel chair, wheeled themselves down to the main nurse’s desk. The nurses are surly characters because they don’t want to be there because the job doesn’t pay well. We can talk about conditions in these homes and about how they should be run so that one can eat off the floor, which is not something I would recommend to anyone, eating off the floor! But if all nursing homes were arranged to our standards, only the Kennedy’s would be able to afford them; only the incredibly wealthy. Anyway, the many times the employees of these homes are surly because they have fifteen or twenty charges under them, who keep getting away or falling and calling out, if not getting into trouble with someone else. They have too much work with too little pay and don’t like being there either.
I gave Julia Holy Communion that Wednesday and the next day. On Friday I asked a family to go along with me; they have six or seven kids. So when we went there I thought,
“You know, Julia understands what is going on and she knows her prayers; she just can’t catch a breath to say her prayers because she is dying. This way the children will brighten up the room and will be someone different to look at besides ME!”
So we went over to see Julia, said prayers and gave her Holy Communion. Julia was so glad to see the kids. She died about an hour later. I have no idea what happened to her; she is one of the nameless in these homes for the abandoned, which are all over the place, not just here but throughout this country. As I said, I don’t like going to visit nursing homes either. I saw a lady of about 60 years old recently; she never married, can’t walk, and is in a nursing home. Her wall did have pictures of her family but I have never seen them there, never crossed their path going to visit her. I knew I could get in and out of there in about three minutes and hurry away.
“Oh, gotta go!”
I made myself stay for thirty minutes. There is another lady in the room with her and they get along well. The lady I was visiting cannot get out of bed without the help of an aid, so she stays in bed all the time. She has a very bright disposition to be living in such squalor. I remember the last time I saw her she was eating dinner.
When you visit a nursing home the next time, you should really take your children with you. Then the next time your children complain about something you prepare for them just say,
“I tell you what, I think we can ask Mr. Johnson at the nursing home tomorrow to share his food with you!”
All of a sudden you get no complaints. As big as I am, I can afford to push away, but I wouldn’t touch the food but that lady was sitting there eating it as though she’d just sat down to a tremendous meal.
Visiting these people is a charge that we must undertake. The Lord Himself said,
“When I was sick you visited Me, when I was in prison you visited Me, when I was naked you clothed Me and when I was hungry you fed Me. As often as you do it to one of these little ones, you do it to Me.”
The rich man in the Gospel, who had Lazarus at his door, was not sent to hell because he was rich, he was sent to hell because he didn’t even notice Lazarus, just as you and I drive past these homes of the abandoned, these nursing homes. We don’t even see Lazarus.
“Oh, I am so glad they have them inside, I don’t have to look at them.”
We keep them inside so it makes us feel better and those employees, well; they need jobs and what else can be done? A lot can be done. In just a minute I am going to ask the ushers to pass out pencils and papers and you can sign up… No, of course I am not going to do that, I would never do that! That is a “program’ and it is the wrong approach! What is NOT needed is a magic formula or a new program, what is needed is a person and that Person is Jesus Christ and seeing Him in His disciples. Jesus says,
“Whoever gives a cup of cold water to one of these little ones to drink because the little one is a disciple, amen I say to you surely he will not lose his reward.”
I was talking to a lady about this the other day and I said,
“You can’t just show up at a nursing home and say you want to start visiting your people; you don’t know any but you just want to start visiting.”
I would say that most nursing homes wouldn’t let you do it, but I don’t want to say that because most nursing home allow everything! Instead, look around for someone in your family, among friends, or someone living in your neighborhood to help out or visit.
“Oh, yea, someone I know is in the hospital at Parkland.”
Talk about the “abandoned” and so many people there are! These are the very poor and are left to themselves. I told this lady to go and visit her friend and that I bet she was going to start seeing some lady across the hall that never has visitors and needs one. She could visit these people also. Women want women to visit them and men want men to visit them. Right? Men, you just thought I was talking to your wives, huh? Pause for coughing.
Women just need to go into a woman’s room and introduce themselves. It seems that the first thing a woman will do when she goes to visit another woman is pick up a brush and start brushing their hair. I guess it’s “Barbie Time” again. And women can pull things out from, I don’t know where! They find lotion and put it on the patient’s hands. You know, the same thing men would do if they were going in to see another man, right? [Laughter] The visitor tells the patient that they smell so good after rubbing on the lotion. It is just another way of saying that the place stinks but now it smells good. The patient brightens up and you have brought beauty into this person’s life for just a little while. You don’t have to take them to raise but you visit them! Same thing with men; men going into a man’s room;
“What are you watching? Arg!”
“Sports! Arg!”
Two men grunting at each other, right?
“I hate that team.”
‘Yea, me too.”
And then they start feeling better because they hate the same people on the team. [Laughter] Then they start talking about T.V. shows. Anyway, it is a difficult thing but it is something we need to start doing on a one by one basis. There is such a need for this and it is not going to be taken care of by the government or the Church, it is going to be taken care of by the Disciples of Christ and all the more grateful you will be for not being in a place like that. Those employees that see you come in will be glad to have a bit of relief. You don’t even have to go to a nursing home; maybe someone on your block has care of someone who is not going to get better. Offer to sit with the patient for a couple of hours while the caretaker runs to do errands or something like that. I guarantee that the answer to the offer will always be a big thank you. It is amazing how just helping in a small way is so fruitful. You are saying you will help every day but that you will help when you are able.
As I said, it is so easy for me to throw rocks at the Archbishop of Boston because millions and millions or billions and billions of hours are wasted in this country through…Father makes the hand sign for T V. All those hours sitting right in front of the T.V. or taking care of animals, right?
“Oh, I can’t go to the nursing home, I have to take the dog to the vet and the cat over here.”
I love pets too but again, if we had an animal shelter we could get people to visit the shelter. We can’t get people to visit the place of the abandoned and this is not something that is going to go away. We need to do what we can because there is such a great need. Instead, millions of hours are wasted every day, every week in this country and we don’t talk about it because none of us wants to go to a nursing home because you stay in one place your feet stick to the floor because it is so clean! Right?
My mother tells me and everyone else the stories about changing diapers and how mothers have to learn very quickly that if you are going to change a diaper you are going to have to lean way back so that you don’t get hit. My mother didn’t like changing diapers but thank God she did it anyway. When people grow up, grow old, and they are abandoned, they need such care as well. Fortunately at nursing homes they have staff to do these kinds of things but the staff sure could use some extra hands and a little more beauty in the place. It is amazing how much of a need there is and how little attention if given to the residents of nursing homes.
We sock away our time just for a rainy day and speaking of a rainy day, we need to be praying for one of those because we need some rain. We sock away money and time for a rainy day when it needs to be put to good use right now. We can use our time actually helping someone care for someone who is not getting better. At this time of the year three years ago, my dad went into the emergency room and for the next six months were spent going to the hospital or caring for him at the rectory and even one of the hospital nursing care places that was very good. I will never forget all the people who helped me care for my dad at the rectory.
I am going to give you one last option. Maybe you are one of these people who can never step foot in a nursing home or a hospital because you would just lose it then you don’t have to do anything. WHAT ARE YOU, ASLEEP? I would never give you that advice. YOU have to spend an hour a day praying for the people who do go, or for the employees who work there, that they will maintain patience and keep their temper while caring for the terminally ill.
“Oh, I couldn’t go…I can’t…I’d be nauseous.”
Ok, fine, Then you pray a hour a day for those who live is squalor or for those people who care for them.
On Friday we had the reading of the Gospel of St. Luke, who was a physician. I didn’t get to read the whole Gospel. I read almost to chapter twelve and at twelve noon I had to stop. These are the last two verses that I read.
Now it came to pass that Jesus was saying these things; that a certain woman from the crowd lifted up her voice and said to Jesus, “Blessed is the womb that bore You and the breast that nursed You.” But Jesus said, “Rather blessed are those who hear the Word of God and put it into practice.”
St. Peter said,
“What must we do?”
Our Lord says,
”Whoever finds his life will lose it and whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.”
What is requested of us is so little, so little; just a cup of water to the little ones to drink because the little one is a disciple.
“Amen I say to you, he will surely not lose his reward.”
In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit
Amen
13th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2005
Moderators: Denise, Fr.Paul Weinberger