Fr. Paul Weinberger
St. William’s Roman Catholic Parish
Greenville, Texas
10 / 30 / 2005 31st Sunday in Ordinary Time
Jesus spoke to the crowds and to His disciples saying, “The scribes and the Pharisees have taken their seat on the Chair of Moses, therefore do and observe all things whatsoever they tell you but do not follow their example; for they preach but they do not practice.
In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit
Amen
If you open your bulletin and turn it to Monday, October 31st, which is the Vigil of All Saints, you will see that this is the first Mass of five being offered for the Holy Day of Obligation, All Saints Day. The Vigil is also known as All Hallows Eve; you can see where Halloween came from. All Saints Day is All Hallows meaning All Saints.
If you look at Tuesday you will see Solemnity of All Saints on November 1st, which is a Holy Day of Obligation. This is Mass number two and then on the next page you will see Mass number three and number four. Mass number four is in Quinlan at the Mission and then the last Mass at St. Williams.
Note that on Wednesday, October 2nd is the Feast of All Souls. It also reminds us that the month of November is the month to pray for the souls of the faithful departed, which await entrance into Heaven. November 2nd is not a Holy Day of Obligation but many people attend Mass on this day for their deceased friends and relatives. Sure, I could skate by with one Mass on All Souls day but everyone here has dearly departed and we want to remember them with the greatest prayer that we can so I am offering Mass in the early morning, one late morning, and one in the early evening.
The next time you have a hundred dollars and you want to spend it easily, you can go to any baseball park and buy a couple of seats in the nosebleed section. As you go into the ballpark there is someone there offering programs because you can’t know the players without the programs. These days you can’t know the Holy Days without the programs. This is a real problem in the Church. Holy Day of Obligation? Well, that is about as popular as a skunk at a wedding. Right?
”Holy Day of Obligation, yeah!”
No, that is not the attitude that Catholics have over the past thirty or forty years. There has been a great loss of appreciation for Holy Days. When a child announces at the dinner table that they will not eat the broccoli or peas, but come to the breakfast table for pancakes and can’t wait to dig in, how many parents tell them that they cannot have any because they first have to eat the broccoli and peas from the night before first and then they can dig in to the pancakes. Of course the child is going to say that it isn’t fair, but WELCOME TO LIFE, right? Many parents have done that to kids because they do not want their kids dying of colon cancer; they want them to eat their vegetables.
Today many Catholics think the same way and have actually influenced the people in charge of Holy Days of Obligation and you hear this sawing sound; you can hear this chainsaw rev up and Holy Day after Holy Day after Holy Day just seems to be cut away by some Liturgical chainsaw. Somehow the Catholics are happy.
”Yeah, good! Another one of those Holy Days is gone!”
What this really is, is ignorance. I am going to explain what a Holy Day is and if you have a Catechism of the Catholic Church at home look these paragraphs up if you would. Look up # 2041 and # 2042. Jot those numbers down on your bulletin. If you don’t have a CCC at home you can access it online at the Vatican website or EWTN. Don’t be afraid of the CCC because it is there to help us. While you have your pencil out, make a note to read # 1030, # 1031, and # 1032 because I will refer to those as well. They are the paragraphs on Purgatory. So, # 2041 and # 2042 are the Precepts of the Church, which include Holy Days of Obligation and then # 1030-32 on Purgatory.
November is the month to pray for the Poor Souls and we pull out the greatest prayers that we have to help those who cannot help themselves. We have to grow in our understanding of the great mystery, which we are here to celebrate tonight. The greatest prayer every seven days, the greatest prayer we can offer to God for ourselves and others or for those who have died and gone before us is the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Look on the bottom of your bulletin. It says,
There is a whole list there. At the end of the Eucharistic Prayer tonight, after the bells have been rung once, twice and then three times after the Chalice has been elevated with the Precious Blood of Christ, shortly after that there is a pause. I have been a priest sixteen years and I regret that I have not always paused at that time, as I should have. The pause is so that we can remember those who have gone before us marked with the sign of faith, which include the list of people I spoke of a few minutes ago. When we come to the pause tonight, even if you have to pick up your bulletin and look at it, name off the ones who are most dear to you. This Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is the greatest prayer that we can offer to God the Father because it is the Perfect Prayer of Jesus Christ offered on the Day of His Resurrection.Remember the dearly departed, those who have died, especially parents, children, grandparents, veterans, friends, co-workers, neighbors, aunts, uncles, and cousins.
In the Catechism, paragraph # 2041, under the Precepts of the Church, it talks about how these Precepts of the Church are tied to the Mass, the Liturgical Life. The moral life is supported by the Liturgical Life, the celebration of the Mass. I know this sounds very technical. Remember twenty or twenty-five years ago there was a columnist that was very popular and people read her all the time. People would write in and ask,
”Dear Abby, how far can I go before……..?”
Dear Abby would then give out the lascivious details. Sad, but so many people were interested in such minimalism. Usually it meant,
“Dear Abby, how far can I go before I am impure with my date?”
How sad that her column became so notoriously appreciated by so many! Today she is held up as if she were “AUNT BEA” from Mayberry. I never heard Aunt Bea talk about that! Anyway…
Paragraph #2041 says that the Pope along with the Bishops have given us the Precepts of the Church, kind of like bullet points. These are the basic things that we as Catholic Christians must do to fulfill our lives as Catholic Christians. The First Precept says,
Sunday!("You shall attend Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation.") Requires the faithful to participate in the Eucharistic celebration when the Christian community gathers together on the day commemorating the Resurrection of the Lord.[82]
So the greatest prayer that anyone can offer in a seven-day period is the Mass on the day that Jesus rose from the dead because the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is the Perfect Prayer of Jesus Christ; the Sacrifice at Calvary on Good Friday, 2000 years ago, re-presented here but in an unbloody manner. This is not “make believe”, this is not “pretend”, and this is not “symbolism” but a Sacramental Reality. This IS Our Faith! There is NO prayer that exceeds this prayer. There are fifty-two Sundays in a year and wouldn’t it be neat if we had more of them? I mean, this is my favorite Sunday of the year; can I get a few more Sundays where I get an extra hour of sleep?
We are so easy, right? Last Sunday I woke up with a headache that I had all day. The next day I didn’t have the headache and you would think that the previous day I was dying because of the headache. Of course I am a man and having a headache…well, you know how we men are! We can’t take pain like women can. Anyway, look how easy we are swayed by our feelings or even an extra hour of sleep. Wouldn’t it be great to have extra Sundays in the year? Well, we do! We have five extra ones and they are called Holy Days of Obligation and if we understood the value of a Sunday and really appreciated Sundays, we would really appreciate the value of a Holy Day.
When we see a Holy Day of Obligation, we don’t really focus on Holy Day but go right to the “Obligation” part and we translate that into,
“I gotta go to Church!”
It is kind of the same attitude when you think,
“I gotta clean out the garage and I gotta go to the dentist. I gotta have an operation.”
These are not things we look forward to.
“I gotta go to Church, it is a Holy Day.”
We are foolish in our ignorance because it is another Sunday and you know what? There will be another Sunday that will arrive for you and me and then we won’t have another Sunday. If you are wise you will cry that you don’t have the opportunity for another Sunday to offer to God the most Perfect Prayer.
I was talking to the young ladies at the Sodality meeting Friday and I pulled out my Rosary and asked them a question.
“What if, after the Mass, the most perfect and greatest prayer we can offer to God is to meditate on the Life, Death and Resurrection of Christ?”
They might wonder what that has to do with the Rosary and if you are wondering what it has to do with it, SEE ME AFTER MASS! I’m sorry, I got carried away! [Laughter] There is a prayer at the end of the Rosary that says we are meditating on the Life, Death and Resurrection of Christ. That is exactly what praying this Rosary is doing. So I asked the young ladies in the Sodality,
“What if you could pray a perfect Rosary and every prayer and mystery was meditated to the fullest extent without distractions, how long would it take you to pray the Rosary?”
One young lady said it would only take twenty minutes. Remember when you were young and you could do everything in twenty minutes? I mean, it is hard to pray the Rosary; if you pray by yourself you can fall asleep. This is why it is great to pray the Rosary while walking because if you fall asleep you fall down and it wakes you up right away. Right? Yesterday the people who were here before the 4pm Mass were praying the Rosary and just booming it out together and it was tremendous. Getting back to the question about how long it would take to pray the Rosary, another young lady said it would take an hour. I think that is more reasonable; if we could pray the Rosary all the way through without distractions it would likely take an hour. That would be a great prayer.
Now, what if you were able to pray one million perfect Rosaries? Considering that there is just less than two hundred hours in a week it would take about one hundred fourteen years to pray a million Rosaries. If you will take out your Rosaries we will begin right now. [Laughter] Pretend that you will be doing nothing else 24/7 but praying perfect Rosaries, one right after the other and live to be 114. Or suppose that you could put the grace of one million Rosaries on a scale. Put the grace of that many Rosaries on the left side of the scale and put the grace of one Sunday Mass and having received Holy Communion at that Mass on the right side and tell me which one would weigh more in the eyes of God the Father? No competition! The Mass that is offered every Sunday is an opportunity of great eternal value, which we can offer for ourselves along with those who have died.
Fr. Denis O’Brien, who passed away several years ago said that the last thing you ought to do every night just before you go to bed is to say a prayer for the dearly departed because by morning you might have joined them. You may die! Everyone who dies and doesn’t go to Heaven or Hell goes to Purgatory. Anyone who is in Purgatory is guaranteed Heaven. Now I know this has probably never happened to you but how many times have you known of someone trying to get ready to leave the house and they are juggling four or five things while somehow talking on the cell phone if that is possible and when they get out to the car they realize that they forgot their keys, which are in the house and the house is locked so you call Fr. Paul, right? No, don’t call me. Keys are important but we sometimes forget them.
How many times have people left the Confessional after making a good Confession, make a good Act of Contrition and receive their Penance and they run into someone they know they haven’t seen in a while or they come out and their kids are playing. Its those kids from Dallas….. And you forget to say your Penance; you never say your Penance although it was only five Hail Marys. A Penance was given and agreed upon, you die…well…Jesus said nothing with stain or wrinkle will enter Heaven and so the debt has to be paid either in this life or the next. The Church recommends that we offer our Masses and our prayers for the Poor Souls. The Church sets aside the month of November to pray for the Poor Souls. The Church also asks that we do things like make sacrifices for the Poor Souls. The Church recommends that we give alms to help the poor in order to help the dearly departed on their way. These are the traditional Catholic teachings on Purgatory and how to help those who are being cleansed there.
To let you know, the minute the soul leaves Purgatory they do not pass go, they go straight to Heaven and they are worshipping around the Altar of God and are praying for those in the Church Militant, the ones still here on Earth that helped them to get to Heaven. That is tremendous and cannot be overestimated. How awesome is it to have all those people praying for you and me?
Do you remember a couple of weeks ago I was talking about the Miracle of the Sun in Fatima on October 13, 1917? When Our Lady first appeared to the three children in Fatima, Portugal, she asked them to come on the 13th of every month. On October 13th the Miracle of the Sun took place. But on May 13, 1917 she appeared to three children ten years old and younger, Francisco, Jacinta and Lucia. There were two girls and a boy; Jacinta and Francisco were siblings and Lucia was their cousin. Our Lady was speaking to the children, especially to Lucia. Francisco and Jacinta died shortly after the apparitions, while they were very young children. Francisco was ten and Jacinta was nine. Sr. Lucy (Lucia) passed away this year on Feb. 13th at the age of 97.
So, Our Lady spoke to these three children and told them not to be afraid because she would do them no harm. Lucia asked her where she was from and the Lady told her she was from Heaven. Lucia asked the Lady what she wanted of her and the Lady said,
So Lucia pipes up and asks the lady if she will go to Heaven when she dies. Might as well get the important questions out of the way, right? The Lady told her that she would go to Heaven. Lucia then asked her if Jacinta would go to Heaven and Our Lady told Lucia that Jacinta would go also. Lucia then asks about Francisco and Our Lady said,I have come to ask you to come here for six month in succession, on the 13th at this same hour. Later on I will tell you who I am and what I want. Afterwards I will return here yet a seventh time.
Father chuckles and says,He will go there too but he must say many Rosaries.
The only boy is the one who gets pegged with the Rosaries, right? It is harder to raise boy, just talk to my mother. On second thought, don’t talk to my mother. Anyway, Lucia asked Our Lady about two friends of hers who died. Well, she was on a roll, right?
So Lucia asks the Blessed Mother if Maria, who was about 16, was in Heaven and Our Lady told her that she was. The other friend that had died at about twenty was named Amelia and Lucia asked Our Lady about her. The Blessed Mother told Lucia that Amelia would be in Purgatory until the end of the world. Of course what does Our Lady of Fatima know about Heaven, right? I know what you are thinking! You see, Our Lady of Fatima came to ask prayers for the conversion of sinners and the souls in Purgatory. In fact, the Lady asked that a prayer be added to the Rosary which says,Then I remembered to ask about two girls who had died recently. They were friends of mine and used to come to my home to learn weaving with my eldest sister
O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell; lead all souls to Heaven, especially those who have most need of Thy Mercy.
Amelia was around eighteen to twenty years old and probably living on a farm and she is going to have to wait until the end of the world to get out of Purgatory? Well you know, every time Lucia and Jacinta went to visit Amelia she always had the cable on. Oh, wait a minute! TV hadn’t been invented yet! We are really in trouble aren’t we, with the trash that is coming into our homes? Amelia is going to have to wait till the end of the world to get out of Purgatory and it sounds terrible but you notice the Blessed Mother didn’t prohibit Jacinta, Lucia and Francisco from praying for Amelia, giving alms or making sacrifices for her part to help her get out of Purgatory? The whole reason behind Our Lady’s appearance at Fatima was to get us away from what we are always concentrating on, me, myself, and I; to think about people who are really in need and are sinners and could die under the pain of sin or people who are in Purgatory waiting to enter Heaven. She is a mother and she is worried about all of us.
I was telling the young ladies in the Sodality about when I was in the second grade and there was a little girl named Beverly, who was very pretty. Of course they wanted to know if Beverly was my girlfriend. NO! She wasn’t my girlfriend but another girl was and I wasn’t talking. Anyway, Beverly was cute. One day I noticed that she wasn’t at school. Her parents had taken her to have surgery; you see, her ears stuck out just a little. Thank You Lord that I never made fun of Beverly’s ears. Beverly died…probably the anesthesia on a girl so young. Next time one of your kids say they hate their nose or ears just tell them to go wash dishes or clean out the garage. When they are older and out of the house they can do as they please; but don’t you know that Beverly’s parents carry that with them to this very day? I mean, it is not like I have a note on my calendar everyday reminding me to think about second grade. But, I will never forget Beverly dying; there was no need for that, no need at all. I am sure Beverly went straight…again… what did Our Lady of Fatima say?
We have before us a whole month dedicated to praying for the Poor Souls and we have to start realizing that Holy Days of Obligation, such as All Saints Day on November 1st and All Souls Day on November 2nd are not the same they even though they both begin with the word “ALL”. I am not a saint and I would guess that none of you are either so, lets just mix them together? I want to be a saint and I want to be around the Altar of the Lord for all eternity but I know the people who have gone before me need my prayers.
All Saints Day, November 1st was the birthday of my mother’s only sister. My Aunt Mary died in 2001. At every Mass I remember, along with all my parishioners who died, my father, my Aunt Mary and friends and relatives. We have to see that the saints understood the faith so much better than you or I do. At the side of me you will notice a stack of books on different saints and their lives. I keep bringing this one up on St. Therese’, which is a great book and there is even something in here for boys. In this book it shows a picture of a dog sitting down and I asked the kids in the CCD yesterday if anyone knew the name of St. Therese’ dog. A lady raised her hand and said she knew his name was Tom.
At the top of this page is a picture of a notebook that St. Therese’ received on May 8, 1884, the day she made her First Communion. The first entry she made in it was the fact that Tom arrived. She got a dog and his name was Tom. This book was kind of like little girls have that they call diaries and they love to write about little things in it so that later on their brothers can find it and read it, right? That is usually what happens. At the end of this notebook, St. Therese’ wrote about all the dates on which she was permitted to receive Holy Communion. The entries are from May 8, 1884 to the following August of 1885. She was allowed to receive Communion twenty-two times. Shortly after her death in 1897 Pope St. Pius X changed it so we could go to Communion more often.
St. Therese’ understood Holy Communion; Pope Benedict XVI and many of the Bishops finished a three week meeting last Sunday in Rome on the Eucharist because they understand that we are losing our appreciation for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Many people go up to receive Communion as though they are going up to get their parking validated. People go up as though they are going to receive a token instead of actually seeing what is going on and Who is coming to us in Holy Communion.
There is another part in this book where mention is made of what happened the day St. Therese’ made her First Communion. We know that her mother died when she was 4 ½ so a few years later when she made her First Communion, St. Therese’ went back to her bench and knelt down. The people around her started noticing that she was crying. They thought she was sad because her mother was not there but listen to what the saint wrote.
When we receive Holy Communion we have Heaven inside of us for about fifteen or twenty minutes. We don’t act it or show others around that we acknowledge there is a piece of Heaven on Earth in us for that length of time I am sad to say. Listen to how St. Therese’ understood First Communion.Oh no! Mama’s absence caused me no pain the day of my First Communion. Wasn’t Heaven in my soul and hadn’t Mama taken her place there long before (in heaven)? Thus in receiving this visit from Jesus (Holy Communion) I was receiving a visit from my dear mother.
Her going to Communion was Jesus reaching down and kissing her. This is why when we go to Holy Communion we NEVER go to Communion with mortal sin on our soul. If we have mortal sin on our soul we are like Judas. Remember Judas betrayed Jesus with a kiss? St. Therese’ saw her First Holy Communion as a kiss from Jesus and so should we.Therese’ confided (speaking of Jesus) that her First Communion was a kiss of love. I felt myself loved and I replied to Jesus, “I love You and I give myself to You forever.
We have so much that we can offer to God for the dearly departed and you will be hearing more about this through the month of November. The saints are unlike the scribes and the Pharisees because they listened to what Jesus preached and they put it into practice. I am not a saint and I wish I put everything Jesus said into practice so I have to listen to the saints and I have to watch what they did and what they said when they preached. If I do this then I will be able to one day join them in Heaven.
Jesus spoke to the crowds and to His disciples saying, “The scribes and the Pharisees have taken their seat on the Chair of Moses, therefore do and observe all things whatsoever they tell you but do not follow their example; for they preach but they do not practice.
In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit
Amen