Father Paul Weinberger
Saint William the Confessor Catholic Church
Greenville, Texas
31st Sunday in Ordinary Time
November 5, 2006
Before beginning the homily, Father Paul took time to clarify the Eucharistic Fast. In order to receive Holy Communion one must fast for one hour prior to receiving Holy Communion and not one hour before the beginning of Mass. If you are ill and have a cough you are not breaking the fast by using a cough drop because it is medicine; however, prior to receiving Holy Communion you must remove the cough drop from your mouth. You must not come up to receive Holy Communion with chewing gum in your mouth.
And when Jesus saw that he answered with understanding He said to him, "You are not far from the kingdom of God."
In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
On September 12, 2006, Pope Benedict XVI gave a lecture at a university in Germany. He is from Germany. He had worked at that university years ago and that talk stirred up a lot of emotion, a lot of passions, a lot of feelings. It did not stir up a lot of REASON; which is exactly what you would expect to find in a talk at a university given by a professor who is now pope. What he said essentially can be boiled down to this, subtracting all of the lawyer language or the high glossy church language; if two people or more sit down to talk about anything and it is going to be a dialogue or a conversation what has to be present is REASON. If you have one person approaching a subject from the point of view of REASON, and the other from FEELINGS, (Oprah Winfrey, call your office!), you cannot have a dialogue. You can't have a conversation and of course, immediately, his point was proved. "How dare he say that! Somebody kill him, will you?" That is the message that some who did not like his message began to say publicly, openly.
A poor nun in Somalia, who had given her life to serving the poor in Somalia; she wasn't from Somalia but she was serving there; she was gunned down and killed. Sure go after her a hard target. I think a priest was killed as well. But what it did was stir up a lot of emotion, a lot of feeling, a lot of sentiment, which is exactly the Pope's point.
Over there on the Altar are envelopes containing the sheets that you have filled out and turned in, the names of your dearly departed. We call these the All Souls Envelopes because November is the month of All Souls as you can read on the back of the bulletin. It is the time we pray for the dearly departed. But even using the term SOUL, it brings up the discipline of REASON, which we call PHILOSOPHY, which is a combination of two Greek words, which mean “love of wisdom.” You need to be taking notes because there will be a test following Mass today! I know it's a lot at 6p.m. but philosophy is how the
Church down through the ages has talked about the most important things. Those things that matter most like the soul. Reason is used in philosophy to guide a discourse on a soul. The Holy Souls have died so that means that their body is no longer animated.
ANIMA is a Latin word that means soul. No soul no animation. You always see it in the movies that when someone dies and they pick up the dead man's arm it flops down. Once the soul has left the body the body is lifeless. Now if we look at the other end of when the body is lifeless we need to study the biological matter, (sperm and ovum), until a soul is given to that biological matter it is lifeless. It can't move towards a new human life without a soul. Now only One Being is in charge of handing those out and That One is God.
The classic definition from the old catechism is that God made us to love and serve Him in this life and our neighbor so that we can be with Him in the next life. We come from God; we live in the world with the hope of returning to God. It involves love of God and love of neighbor just as this Gospel says today. A soul enters the biological matter, DNA, if you wish, and what begins is life. No soul no life. That's as basic as it gets. The fact is that when we discuss biology now you are in the realm of reason and reason is what guides a biologist, not emotion, not passion, not feelings; but REASON. So when St. Bernard of Clairvaux back in the 12th century talked about the Holy Souls, he said,
This crucifix is an image of the Dead Body of Christ. The Sacred Heart statue over there is an image of the Risen, Glorified Body of Christ. When we receive Holy Communion we are not receiving the Dead Body of Christ we are receiving His Risen Glorified Body. St. Bernard said that the body and soul are joined in heaven because the body has served the soul in life in so many ways. If the body has been helpful in getting the soul to Heaven the soul is not going to leave it at the side of the road, so to speak. But there is a reunion when the glorified, risen body is joined to the purified soul. And anyone who is"The souls that enter Heaven are reunited with their body but it is not the body like
this.
going to Heaven but is not there yet the Church refers to in the doctrine on Purgatory.
There is an anniversary coming up next week. It is the day after the elections. I made a mistake in the bulletin. The anniversary takes place on November the 8th. November 8, 1519 is probably the most important date in the history of North, South and Central America. It is the day that Hernan Cortez met Montezuma in what is now known as Mexico City. It is the day when the Culture of Life met the Culture of Death.
At the time the Aztecs numbered nearly twenty million in their empire. They had a highly organized empire. Cortez was no altar boy but he does represent the culture of life. He was a Christian and yes, he came at the behest of the king and queen of Spain to conquer the land; to take back a lot of silver and gold; but also to spread the faith in Christ.
There was no complaint that these people living in the Americas were pagans because everyone is a pagan until the Gospel has been heard by them. So they (the Spaniards) came bringing the Catholic Faith in Christ along with their designs on the land and the natural resources. This cannot be overstated but in the history of the Americas the Gospel coming to the Americas, even under the auspices of Cortez; it was the Gospel of Life meeting the Culture of Death represented by Montezuma.
Now we have historical notes from the expedition about what they saw when they came over the side or the hip of the volcano. Yes, Mexico City is ringed by mountains. Today around ten million people live in Mexico City. The city is ringed by mountains and some of them are volcanoes spewing ash, lava from time to time and in the middle there was a city that in 1519 was the center of the Aztec Empire. Now think about it if there are mountains surrounding Mexico City and it rains, where does all that rain go? Well, it can't run off. The guy who decided to build a city there probably later on was over in California and decided to put San Francisco where it is today.
“Let's build a big city here because the earth moves.”
Anyway, when the Spaniards came over the side of the volcano they saw a fantastically beautiful city displayed before them. In the center was a series of lakes. It appeared to be something like Hilton's Shangri-La. A place where in literature people would go but never die. The city was built on a series of lakes, kind of like a North American Venice, if you will. Beautiful beyond imagination!
Cortez mentions things like the engineering capabilities of the Aztecs. He mentions riding horses on a bridge into the city. A man with all of his armor on a horse is a pretty wide figure. Now eight men with their armor and horses could ride side by side on the bridge that the Aztecs had constructed going into their city. They even had it built that they could withdraw the bridge, a drawbridge, to allow the currents in the lakes to flow and also for protection.
The Spaniards also noticed that the people were incredibly handsome and so numerous dotting every building and coming up in canoes. Beautiful, handsome people just everywhere. Their houses gleamed in the sunlight like jewels; perfectly maintained and in dazzling colors. And there was absolutely no litter. At the center of this city was the first zoo in North America. Yes, the Aztecs had maintained a zoo for generations.
The Spaniards were housed after meeting Montezuma, in a palace. It was one of many palaces dotting the city. A look at the details of the palace and it was constructed of fine stones and marble inlayed with gold and silver and precious metals. Inside they found secret passages with rooms filled floor to ceiling with similar treasures. It was just a super abundance of riches in the capital of the Aztec Empire.
Cortez and his men numbered just under a thousand. One thousand against, let's say, twenty million or so. After a few days, Cortez asked to be shown part of the city and most of his men went with him. They went to the market and again, no litter anywhere. The plaza where the market was kept of a greater size that the Plaza Mayor of Salamanca in Spain. It was huge, tremendous. There was even to one side a theater, kind of like what you would see constructed by the Greeks or the Romans; built in terraces on the side of a hill. Then flanking it were seventy large trees; towering trees. But instead of limbs they were constructed with something unusual. They had to inspect it to see what it was.
The trunks went towering into the air and the limbs reached out. And upon closer inspection these seventy trees were covered with SKULLS AND MORTAR; HUMAN SKULLS and cement. What an odd sight! Upon further closer inspection the seats of the theater, the walkways and everything about the theater were also so configured with skulls and mortar. An engineer was along, (there is always an engineer), and he estimated there were four hundred thousand skulls to create all of this. This is just one aspect of the city.[/quote]
Yes, the Aztecs practiced human sacrifice. They raised human beings so that they could be used, cannibalized, and destroyed. We don't hold it against them. They were pagan. They had never heard the Gospel. And part of the conquest of Mexico was to indeed teach them about the faith. I have here a little prayer book that contains basic prayers. The book is called Catholic Book of Prayers. It contains prayers that Catholics learn or should learn. I am so grateful that years ago some nun turned her hair white by trying to drill into this skull of cement of mine these basic prayers. She probably had me
write them out a million times. But I remember the Acts of Faith, Hope and Charity because they are basic prayers. An Act of Faith is very brief but it packs a lot:
O My God, I firmly believe that You are One God in Three Divine Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. I believe that Your Divine Son became Man and died for our sins and that He will come to judge the living and the dead. I believe these and all the truths, which the Roman Catholic Church teaches because You have revealed them Who can neither deceive nor be deceived. Amen
That last part is what I want to focus on. It has guided me since my youth. You see I am spoiled and so are many of you in that we have parents and grandparents and great grandparents who were Catholic-Christians or Christians. So we have family members, who for generations have lived under the Gospel and it has come down to us with a tremendous spiritual momentum. My ancestors came over to Texas in the eighteenth century from Germany. They were Catholic-Christians coming over to Texas. This is a great spiritual blessing for me.
So when I hear,
I believe these and all the truths, which the Holy Catholic Church teaches because You (God) have revealed them Who can neither deceive nor be deceived;
I have always believed that every time I have come upon an issue or an item that I didn't understand I knew that if I was at odds with this teaching it wasn't the Church's fault, it was my fault! What am I missing here? I wonder what I don't understand! I wonder how I have gotten it wrong. And I would look into it and the reason behind it would become evident. It would unfold before my eyes because the Church doesn't teach anything that she doesn't give us reason and explanation for.
I will never forget how this was challenged recently since I became a priest. I am a priest now but back in 1981 a friend of mine was nearly killed. You have probably heard of him. His name was Pope John Paul II. May 13, 1981, he was in St. Peter's Plaza, he had just returned a little baby to his parents after blessing the baby. A cowardly assassin, a professional named Mohammed Ali Ajca, a citizen of Turkey seems fitting, fired two shots at pointblank range and hit the pope in the abdomen. We all remember the
photographs, and the film of the Holy Father falling back nearly dead. Talk about a death and resurrection! The pope was nearly lost only after a few years after having assumed the Chair of St. Peter.
I will never forget how Mohammed Ali Agca went on trial before the Italian government and I remember the day that he was executed! I will never forget that day, oh wait a minute, he wasn't executed. I got that one wrong. In fact, he is now living back in Turkey supposedly in prison. He spoke out when he heard that Pope Benedict was going to visit Turkey. He uttered death threats against him. Same song, different verse! Right? You come here to Turkey and you will be killed. Reasonable, right? Full of reason? Full of logic? No, nothing of the sort! Only feelings...passions.... dislodged and disconnected from reason. This is sad.
I remember about eight or nine years ago Pope John Paul II came out and explained that teaching on Capital Punishment. He said, that in any society where it is possible to incarcerate criminals who have shown themselves to be threats to society, that anywhere it is possible, that the DEATH PENALTY should not be used. Then the Holy Father said that he was teaching this in a very strong manner but he could not bind you to this.
I thought to myself that I was glad he (the pope) said that because I liked Capital Punishment and I am glad there was Capital Punishment. You do the crime then the sentence must be carried out. I say this because I got to thinking about what the pope had said and my passionate response; my emotions were ruling my response. So I looked into what the pope was teaching on Capital Punishment and I did something that I don't do very often. I CHANGED MY MIND! I know what you are thinking! ONE
Father holds up one finger indicating how many times he has changed his mind on anything.
Listen I am man and we change our minds so infrequently. Yes, yes, I am just trying to make up with the women because of that remark about how famous paintings have noted that not many women are getting into Heaven. So I am groveling at the women. No, just think about it; it is a woman's prerogative to change her mind and men and women are different. And for men,
NOPE MY MIND IN MADE UP!
And then women work at changing his mind. But I changed my mind about six or eight years ago. I had thought that Father Paul Weinberger knows more than Pope John Paul II. Wait, hold it a second! The pope had two bullets taken out of him and I know more? I changed my mind and no one made me do it. It is reasonable what the pope said and taught. And yes, I believe that his life was shortened because of that cowardly assassination attempt. But the pope and the Catholic Church teaches us what Christ teaches.
What Christ is teaching today in this Gospel about loving God with all my heart, with all my soul, all my mind, with all my strength and to love my neighbor as myself; it applies today to me. Who is my neighbor? Jesus was asked on occasion, "Who is my neighbor?" And Jesus always went back to the fact that your neighbor is always the weakest among you. Remember the Good Samaritan and how people couldn't be bothered.I believe these and all the truths which the Holy Catholic Church teaches because You have revealed them Who can neither deceive nor be deceived!
"Well, he's dead! I don't even see him moving. Do you?"
Different people for different reasons said to leave him alone and don't bother with him; however, the Good Samaritan did. Our Lord Himself memorializes this man in the parable.
So today we have to live these commandments the way Christ teaches us through His Church.
Next week on Tuesday our country faces national elections. There is a referendum or an amendment on the ballot in Missouri. Missouri is the state when in the 19th century had the Compromise, it was called the Missouri Compromise, and it had this great plan. As new states come into the union, one is free and the next one is slave. This way we can keep the balance between free and slave states and we won't go to war. Thankfully we had the Missouri Compromise and we avoided the Civil War. You know that a war could have divided this country apart. Wait, I think I got that wrong.
There was a War. The Missouri Compromise was a useless compromise. And anyone who looks at these two commandments and attempts to compromise will be knocking on Heaven's door but will never get in! The Missouri amendment next week appears to be a referendum on embryonic stem cell research but what it does is make cloning of human beings a state right. Any individual in the State of Missouri will have the right to clone human beings.
Now when I hear embryonic stem cell research and cloning mentioned on the news my eyes just roll back and click. What it means is that we would be raising human beings as if they were cattle. We raise cows for milk and we raise chickens for eggs and then later we take the cows and make hamburgers and we take the chickens and make chicken salad. This is after we have had our milk and eggs we then turn them into other food for our table. This is fine for the lower animals. This is unacceptable for a human being.
In a month from now we are going to have a Holy Day of Obligation that appears every year on December 8th. This country is under the patronage of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. That is the name of the shrine in Washington, D.C. It traces the very first moment in the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary to that moment when her mother and father, St. Ann and St. Joachim, contributed the biological material and God gave her a soul. It is called the Immaculate Conception. It is the first moment in the first minute in the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
We do the same thing on March 25th, the Annunciation. The Annunciation is when the
Archangel Gabriel announced that Jesus was to be the Messiah. The Blessed Virgin
Mary conceived at that moment in her virginal womb, Jesus Christ. Nine months later He
was born at Bethlehem.
You see with Jesus and the Blessed Mother that we trace their lives all the way back to the first moment in their lives. That means that God gave to that biological material a soul and that material began movement.
Now cloning and stem cell research appear to be okay because it is so microscopic. The same with in vitro fertilization. Do you know how much good can be done with all of this stuff? NONE! We are Christians, we follow Christ, and we consider in a reasonable way what Christ teaches through His Church, cloning, embryonic stem cell research, in vitro fertilization, euthanasia, abortion, and contraception. Yes, you know that in the last forty years contraception has been used widely around the world. Contraception means no conception and that way you don't conceive. A husband and wife using contraception consider that no conception is possible because half the time with half of the pills on the market conception does occur. The biological material receives life and that material passes through the body of the woman and where it would normally implant, but because of the pill that territory, the womb, is inhospitable, and that newly conceived person is expelled through gravity. There was conception!
There was an ABORTION as well!
Why am I going into all of this? Well, it is because we are Christian. If we start out Christian as we have and we end up Aztec, if we start out Christian and live in this world in a pagan way and we go before God, there is no KINGDOM for me or for you. It is kind of like the warning that our parents or grandparents would give to us when we were small. I remember being told not to make terrible faces like that to my sister because my face could freeze and stay that way. And look what happened! Look! (laughter) Don't do it…take the warning… think about that in advance.
Think about your life and the last breath that you draw here on earth, and then you go before God. After that last breath NO CHANGES ARE POSSIBLE!, it is locked in. So if you go before God with something incredibly contrary to His Teaching like what is in this Gospel there will be no opportunity to change your mind. We can only change our mind while we are alive and for men it is really difficult, really difficult. You talk to people about this who are proponents of Planned Parenthood or National Organization of Women and they will get all over you in a very emotional way. They will be talking about a woman's right over her body. The reasonable way of talking about this is that the weakest among us deserve our protection.
Our neighbor is to be loved as our very self.
You shall love the Lord Your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.
Now if would please take out a pencil and paper and I am going to tell you who to vote for. (Laughter) I mean that is what you are expecting right? I am not going to let you off the hook so easily. With what you have learned and what you know you can figure out who to vote for. If I did tell you who to vote for the next sound you would hear would be the holy 5 0 1 C 3 tax status going whooooosh right out the door. I cannot tell you who to vote for. We cannot see another in need and merely walk by. We are at a crossroads just like every generation. And we must be considerate of the weakest among us. The cruelty
that we can display a neighbor is obvious.
Yesterday in the Office of Readings, St.Catherine of Sienna in a dialogue with God on Divine Providence has God say this about us,
Yeah, we can understand the Aztecs. They had no idea of the gospel. Natural law would have taught them better. But giving them the tremendous pass we have to admit that you and I have the benefit of the gospel. You and I have the benefit of having Christians in our family and at our work.In his ignorance man treats himself very cruelly.
I have a bone to pick with a company that employs many of our parishioners. You see, they are treating my parishioners as if they were only bodies. Every other week they have to go in Friday, Saturday, and Sunday from 7am until 7pm. That means 26 Sundays out of the year they are not in Church. Now I know this company and I am sure that they are shaking in their boots thinking that I am going to yell at them. You bet I will. But before I yell at them I am going to reason with them and then yell at them. This company wants good employees, they want them to show up on time and they want them to be thoughtful. They want them to be courteous, they want them to be people of integrity, and they want them to be honest. These are all Christian virtues. They just don't want them going to Church. What are we supposed to have Mass at 5 am on Sundays for these people or at 8 pm? It is not going to happen. But this is another example of how in our day people treat other people as if they were merely bodies.
Look at our whole sexual revolution and you will see people looking at other people merely as objects. Our Lord doesn't expect that of you and me. Remember you shall love your neighbor as yourself. All of these implications are brought to bear on us if we can't understand these two simple commandments and live them everyday and we are going to have a lot of explaining to do to the One Who created our soul. He is not going to read it off a print off. He is going to read the soul. If we are in any way cultivating or
growing human beings merely to use them and destroy them, then we will have to answer for this cruelty.
Then Jesus saw that He answered with understanding and He said to him,
"You are not far from the kingdom of God."
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.