Pentecost Sunday

You Are So Small...Putting Things In Perspective

IN MEMORY OF A FALLEN HERO - Memorial Day 2019

A Guide to Heaven

Second reading
Apocalypse 21:10-14,22-23 ©

He showed me the holy city coming down out of heaven

In the spirit, the angel took me to the top of an enormous high mountain and showed me Jerusalem, the holy city, coming down from God out of heaven. It had all the radiant glory of God and glittered like some precious jewel of crystal-clear diamond. The walls of it were of a great height, and had twelve gates; at each of the twelve gates there was an angel, and over the gates were written the names of the twelve tribes of Israel; on the east there were three gates, on the north three gates, on the south three gates, and on the west three gates. The city walls stood on twelve foundation stones, each one of which bore the name of one of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.

  I saw that there was no temple in the city since the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb were themselves the temple, and the city did not need the sun or the moon for light since it was lit by the radiant glory of God and the Lamb was a lighted torch for it.

Where is heaven?

This is a good question.  My answer is simple, I don't know.  Is heaven a "place" in the classical sense in that it occupies space somewhere "out there?"  Well, you can answer that in two ways.  First of all, it is the abode of souls, a multitude of millions of them. Souls, of course, have no physical substance to them.  They, therefore, would require no physical world to house them.  A soul is the inner essence of a person and we are told that we will recognize each other in heaven and that it will be a place of perfect happiness and joy.  On the other hand, heaven is also the home of the Risen Jesus and His Mother, Mary who both have bodies that have been glorified by God. You might make a case that they are exceptions because of their special place in salvation history.  But then you are faced with Elijah who, while still a holy man and a prophet, went to heaven in a fiery chariot.  While he is an important prophet, his importance does not reach as high as that of Jesus and Mary.  So, he too is in heaven with a physical body if we are to believe the scripture. I believe that our heaven, the home God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, is a real place where you can either have a physical body or be a spirit.  The location of this place is beyond our understanding. I believe it is outside of our universe, inaccessible to us because we live in the universe where time moves forward at a constant speed and the citizens of heaven dwell outside of time.  While in our universe it is forever expanding and is subject to the passing of time. 

How do you get into heaven? 

Our residency in heaven is assured and is a free gift because Jesus died for our sins.  To enter heaven one just needs to be owned by Jesus.  We must bear his mark on our soul.  This begins with the Sacrament of Baptism.  This Sacrament wipes away original sin and brings us into the household of God.  We are then to live our lives as servants to one another.  We are to love others as Jesus loved us.  He loved us to death, His death upon a Roman cross. We are to become whole people, that is, holy. 

So, Everyone goes to heaven then? 

No, unfortunately, that is not the case.  After Baptism has wiped away original sin and you become old enough to understand good from evil, it is possible for you to squander your inheritance and declare God as your enemy by living a life that places your will and your rules above God's.  God loves you so much that He will allow you to do your will over His.  He will, of course, try to win you back.  You have to come back of your own volition, He will do nothing to force you.  Some of the evil you do will cause consequences in this life but they are because of the natural world we live in.  For example, if you murder someone, you may get the death penalty which is a consequence of your actions.  People who consistently follow their own will and desire God to be out of their life will have their wish granted to them and after death will make hell their abode. 

Also, not every "good" Christian goes directly to heaven.  We may have some minor sins that we did not confess and did not make amends for.  Or, we may have some attitudes that would cause discord in heaven. For example: 

I found out in first grade that you stole my pencil when I was not looking. I loved that pencil, it had a red lead on one side and a black lead on the other.  My grandma gave it to me and I always thought about her when I used it.  You stole it.  When you were on your deathbed and I came to visit and comfort you, you confessed to what you had done.  I became very, very, angry at you even though I did not say anything.  Shortly after this, you died.  I lived a few more years and then I said good-bye to this world and passed away.  Let us assume I arrived in heaven and saw you.  Immediately, anger boiled up inside of my soul and discord and hate arrived for the first time in heaven.  This cannot be.  Heaven is a place of eternal happiness and peace.  With the hate, I was carrying around for you because of what you had done to me on earth, I was not fit for heaven.  Yet, it was a small matter and I was not damned to hell for it.  What would become of me?  I would choose to go to purgatory, a place that God has provided for us to get rid of those things that keep us from heaven. 

Purgatory? Didn't the death of Jesus remit all sin?

Why, yes it did. Guilt for the sin was is not the point of purgatory. Purgatory is there to purge the underlying cause of the sin.  In the case of me and stolen pencil, I would be in purgatory to purge the hate from my soul so that when I got to heaven I would be a whole person or a holy one.  Purgatory also is the place where you satisfy the demands of justice for the sins you committed.  For example, you stole, well, you would either make amends on earth while you were alive or in purgatory.  Evil and God do not mix.  Heaven will admit no sinful person. But God is a God of mercy and He will do what is best for His children, applying discipline as needed as a good father will but His discipline will be applied and be tempered with mercy. 

Imagine, if you will, that you were getting married in the afternoon.  In the morning of your wedding, you go and play a game of football with your friends.  The field is wet and muddy and you are tackled several times and are quite dirty.  Would you go to your wedding before you had a chance to take a shower and just perhaps put on some clean clothes?  Well, purgatory is just that sort of a place.  You are readying yourself to see God as He is.  You do not want to do it in dirty attire. 

What about those in hell, can they repent? 

St Teresa once said, "Hell could be emptied with one tear of sorrow."  This means that the people in hell want to be there, they want to be away from God, they do not have any desire to share eternity with Him.  To repent from the evil of their lives would be abhorrent to them.  They curse God and blame Him for all of their woes.  Every corrupt thing, every curse, every evil ever committed are memorialized on the walls of hell.  Each person is known by their own particular sin and the punishment they receive is appropriate to the crime.  Some say that they would choose hell because that is where all of their friends are.  Well, there is no friendship in hell, only hate, bitterness, regret, and thoughts of revenge against God and His followers.  Your "friends" will be too busy hating and lusting after violence to be talking over old times with you.  The fact is, they will despise you and do what they can to make you more miserable.  There are no friends in hell. 

The Dangers Of Christian Political Correctness

Gospel	John 15:18-21 ©

The world hated me before it hated you

Jesus said to his disciples:

‘If the world hates you,

remember that it hated me before you.

If you belonged to the world,

the world would love you as its own;

but because you do not belong to the world,

because my choice withdrew you from the world,

therefore the world hates you.

Remember the words I said to you: A servant is not greater than his master.

If they persecuted me, they will persecute you too;

if they kept my word, they will keep yours as well.

But it will be on my account that they will do all this,

because they do not know the one who sent me.’

Where did we get the idea that to survive that we Christians have to be politically correct? I have to think that the idea came straight from the bowels of hell because remaining silent in the face of evil will, in fact, cause to allow us to have a very peaceful and serene life free from any anxiety and angst. While we are enjoying such peace and serenity, around us the world is burning. Our country moves farther and farther away from the principles that have made her great. We have evicted God from our way of life and have rushed headlong onto the path that leads to destruction. Abortion right up until the time of birth has been legalized in some places. These laws go on to the books without meaningful challenge from the Christian community, but there is peace.

Wake up, look around you. Evil was allowed its freedom between 1933 and 1945 and millions upon millions of people paid the price for the sloth that engulfed the world. But what are some things we can look work on? Get mad about these minor issues that confront us today:

1. Abortion - This act of human selfishness, where a baby is destroyed in its mother's womb is one of the greatest evils of all time.  It was recognized as evil by everyone up until late in the twentieth century.  Under the guise of women's health, it has killed more people than the Nazi's did in their industrialized killing centers. Get mad about this, refuse to be politically correct about it. 
2. Persecution of Christians around the world  - Yes, it is happening today.  While we sit in front of our televisions watching sitcoms, Christians in the ravaged middle eastern countries are being persecuted by radical Muslims and maybe even worse than that, they are being ignored and left to their own devices as humanitarian aid which reaches Muslim refugees does not make it to the Christian parts of the country. Get mad about this, refuse to be politically correct about it.
3. The bad behavior of the Cardinals and Bishops - Oh, I am so tired of these blue-ribbon commissions, conferences, synods and the like that do absolutely nothing to really address the sex scandal of the Church.  To put the investigation of these matters into the hands of the bishops and cardinals would be like staffing the parole board with convicted murderers and thieves.  Yes, I believe what they have done is just that bad.  Get mad about this, refuse to be politically correct about it.

The time to be silent is over.  The time for action is now.  We Catholics make up a large block of votes. We know that the principles we live by are the principles set down by Our Lord and that they represent the will of God. Our voices should be heard because we outnumber the opposition who has disguised themselves as those that possess the will of the people while actually being in the minority.   

Our choices are simple. Do we live our lives quietly and blending into the woodwork, causing no waves, rocking not the boat we ride on? Or do we, like Peter, leave the boat in response to the call of the Lord knowing full well that He will not allow us to sink beneath the waves as we do his work on earth. We can and should be people of peace but it is incumbent upon us that when we see evil we should address it. We address it not out of hate or a sense of superiority, but rather we address it out of love because we see that the path that our brothers and sisters are taking will move them outside of the Father's will and thus lead them to an eternity in hell without God. This is too great a price to pay for political correctness.

Why did our Bishops and Cardinals Start Behaving Badly?

First reading
Acts 1:15-17,20-26 ©

'Let someone else take his office'

One day Peter stood up to speak to the brothers – there were about a hundred and twenty persons in the congregation: ‘Brothers, the passage of scripture had to be fulfilled in which the Holy Spirit, speaking through David, foretells the fate of Judas, who offered himself as a guide to the men who arrested Jesus – after having been one of our number and actually sharing this ministry of ours. Now in the Book of Psalms, it says:

Let his camp be reduced to ruin,

Let there be no one to live in it.

And again:

Let someone else take his office.

‘We must, therefore, choose someone who has been with us the whole time that the Lord Jesus was traveling around with us, someone who was with us right from the time when John was baptizing until the day when he was taken up from us – and he can act with us as a witness to his resurrection.’

  Having nominated two candidates, Joseph known as Barsabbas, whose surname was Justus, and Matthias, they prayed, ‘Lord, you can read everyone’s heart; show us therefore which of these two you have chosen to take over this ministry and apostolate, which Judas abandoned to go to his proper place.’ They then drew lots for them, and as the lot fell to Matthias, he was listed as one of the twelve apostles.

There was a vacancy that needed to be filled.  Once there had been twelve apostles, twelve men specially selected by Jesus to be the bishops of His Church. One of them betrayed the Lord and committed suicide leaving the vacancy. 

It is interesting that this passage begins with us being informed that one day Peter stood up to speak to the brothers -120 people. Out of the crowd that was present, it was Peter that told the group that they needed to fill the office of the traitor Judas.  Peter was held in great esteem because all knew that he was the one that Jesus appointed as leader of the Church. 

The process that they used was interesting, they prayed and they drew lots.  I guess Mathias got the short straw and was enrolled as one of the Apostles.  They were relying on the Holy Spirit to show them the way. Today, we do not select our Church leaders by praying and drawing lots.  The process we use starts at the seminary or maybe even before. Back in my youth, I had the notion that I had a calling to be a religious brother, a Franciscan to be exact.  I wrote a letter to the vocation director who came to Chicago to visit me one Saturday morning and we had a long talk in the lobby of a downtown hotel.  I must have made it past this preliminary screening because he told me that I would be receiving some documents in the mail.  He was not lying.  There were lots of documents and a checklist of things that I had to provide before the Third Order Regular of St. Francis, Loretto PA would consent to allow me to try my vocation. There were tests to take, psychological panels to fill out and documents to obtain followed up by a one-hour screening at the office of a local head shrinker.  All of this was to assure them that my motives were pure and I was not an out of work ax murderer looking to open a branch office in Pennsylvania. Today, in light of the scandals that are plaguing the Church, I am sure that the process is even more rigorous than it was back in the '70s when I underwent it.   

So what happened to our hierarchy? They went through the process the same as I did plus they spent years discerning if celibacy and the priesthood were for them.   I think the vast majority of the hierarchy began to trust too much in the process and not enough in the Holy Spirit.  I am speaking here of the leaders that practiced trying to solve the predator priest problem by playing the Move 'em Out game where they transferred problem priests to other parishes.  Were they working for the good of the Church when they did this?  Why of course they were or at least they thought so.  We know now what they were doing was to spread the contamination and to give the predators a new virgin hunting ground.  They acted in what they considered charity by transferring these people, many of whom they had been to seminary with and had close relationships that spread over several decades.  It was, the long black line similar to the long blue line of the police.  What happens in the Church, stays in the Church (although we see that it doesn't) and we take care of our own.  In all of this, our Bishops displayed great trust in human nature and a lack of faith in the Holy Spirit. Each time a predator was moved, each time a violation of a person be they young or old, male or female, the bishop was making it harder and harder to reform the Church and was no longer doing his job.  His job is to lead people to heaven and not to protect the church from chastisement from outside forces. If he had stuck to the leading people to heaven, the perpetrators would have been thrown out, put in jail, and the Church itself would be in a better position today than it is right now. 

The College of Cardinals, the Bishop's Conferences around the world, and even local parish priests have lost credibility.  The public now looks with suspicion at these men who are supposed to be good examples whom we should emulate.  Every "solution" to this issue involves the bishops doing something, coming up with a rule, investigating this and that and yes, they are now coming down hard on predator priests.  Schools that were named after what appeared to be holy men are being renamed with any inspirational artwork being relegated to storage closets and or landfills. 

Our Holy Father, Francis, whom I respect as a good and holy man but as a terrible pope finally came out with a definitive what to do rule for those cardinals and bishops that still may be unsure.  While the rules apply to Vatican City, they are a model that should be adopted by all.   Here is the news story from May 5th courtesy of API. 

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis has issued sweeping new sex abuse legislation for the Vatican City State and Vatican diplomats that requires the immediate reporting of allegations to Vatican prosecutors, as he seeks to create a model policy for the Catholic Church.

The mandatory reporting provision, while limited in scope to Vatican officials, marks the first time the Holy See has put into law requirements for Catholic officials to report allegations of sex crimes to police or face fines and possible jail time.

Francis also issued child protection guidelines for Vatican City State and its youth seminary, acting after the global sex abuse scandal exploded anew last year and The Associated Press reported that the headquarters of the Catholic Church had no policy to protect children from predator priests.

While the new norms only cover Vatican City State, affiliated institutions and the Holy See’s diplomatic corps, they were still symbolically significant and were welcomed by a former seminarian whose case helped spark the reform.

“I see this as something positive,” Kamil Jarzembowski told the AP.

The law for the first time provides a Vatican definition for “vulnerable people” who are entitled to the same protections as minors under church law. The Vatican amended its canon law covering sex abuse to include “vulnerable adults” in 2010, but never defined it.

According to the new Vatican definition, a vulnerable person is anyone who is sick or suffering from a physical or psychiatric deficiency, isn’t able to exercise personal freedom and has a limited capacity to understand or resist the crime.

The issue of whether “vulnerable people” can include seminarians, religious sisters or other adults who are emotionally dependent on clergy has come to the fore in the wake of the scandal over ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, a once high-ranking American cleric who molested seminarians, and revelations of priests and bishops around the world sexually preying on nuns.

The new law covers all personnel who live in or work for the Vatican and any abuse that occurs in the Vatican, the 44-hectare (110-acre) city-state in the center of Rome and its other territories, as well as the Holy See’s vast diplomatic corps.

The Vatican’s own ambassadors have figured in some of the most scandalous cases of sex abuse in recent years, with papal representatives accused of groping, distributing child pornography and sexually abusing minors in their far-flung posts.

The provisions to punish them criminally are now contained in the city state’s criminal code and are separate from the canon law which also imposes canonical penalties, such as defrocking, for predator priests worldwide.

The law now requires any Vatican public official who learns of an allegation of abuse within the law’s jurisdiction to report it to Vatican prosecutors “without delay.” Failure to do so can result in a fine of up to 5,000 euros ($5,615) or, in the case of a Vatican gendarme, up to six months of prison.

Information obtained during confession is exempt from the reporting requirements, in keeping with Catholic doctrine.

“With this document, the Vatican wants to send a message that it takes these crimes seriously, wants to prosecute them, to avoid cover-up, and also to create an atmosphere that prevents these crimes from happening in the first place,” said Ulrich Rhode, a canon law professor at Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University.

Anne Barrett Doyle of BishopAccountability, an online database about clergy abuse, said any law that protects even a single child is to be applauded. But she faulted its limited scope as reinforcing the Vatican claim that it is only responsible for protecting children in the city-state.

“Let’s hope (Francis) finds the courage soon to enact new, sweeping laws in this larger jurisdiction,” she said.

Francesco Zanardi of the Italian survivor advocacy group Rete L’Abuso (Abuse Network) echoed her call, saying: “If minors have the luck of being abused in the Vatican City State, their rights will be protected. Outside, we can’t do anything.”

Many of the law’s provisions answer longstanding victim complaints about how they are treated by the church, while also ensuring that the accused are entitled to a defense and efforts to restore their reputations if the claims are not substantiated.

The legislation requires that victims be welcomed, listened to and provided with medical, psychological and legal assistance, and sets the statute of limitations at 20 years past the victim’s 18th birthday.

They must be kept apprised of the investigation, a significant point given that victims are usually kept in the dark about canonical sex abuse investigations.

Victims and their families are to be protected from any retaliation. Jarzembowski, who reported abuse at the Vatican youth seminary, was kicked out the following year.

Mimicking some provisions in place in the U.S. church, the guidelines require background checks for Vatican staff and volunteers working with minors and calls for safe environment training for all Vatican personnel.

The Vatican’s editorial director, Andrea Tornielli, acknowledged that very few children actually live in the Vatican City State. But he said Francis decided to make the legislation and accompanying guidelines a model.

Last year, the AP reported that Vatican City had no policy to protect children, even though the Holy See required such policies in Catholic dioceses around the globe and had told the U.N. in 2013 that such a policy was in the works.

The absence of clear-cut policy became evident following revelations that Jarzembowski, then a teenage seminarian in the Vatican’s youth seminary had, in 2012, accused one of the older boys of sexually molesting his roommate.

Nothing came of it. Vatican police, who have jurisdiction, weren’t called in to investigate. A series of bishops and cardinals said they investigated, but no one ever interviewed the alleged victim. The accused was eventually ordained a priest.

On Friday, Jarzembowski told the AP the law answered many of the loopholes into which his case fell, particularly its recognition that the youth seminary falls under Vatican jurisdiction.

“Before there was a situation where a group of kids were there, in the Vatican City State, but they were seemingly in a legal limbo,” he said.

Jesus as the Sheep Gate

Gospel	John 10:1-10 ©

I am the gate of the sheepfold

Jesus said:

  ‘I tell you most solemnly, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold through the gate, but gets in some other way is a thief and a brigand. The one who enters through the gate is the shepherd of the flock; the gatekeeper lets him in, the sheep hear his voice, one by one he calls his own sheep and leads them out. When he has brought out his flock, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow because they know his voice. They never follow a stranger but run away from him: they do not recognize the voice of strangers.’

  Jesus told them this parable but they failed to understand what he meant by telling it to them.

  So Jesus spoke to them again:

‘I tell you most solemnly,

I am the gate of the sheepfold.

All others who have come

are thieves and brigands;

but the sheep took no notice of them.

I am the gate.

Anyone who enters through me will be safe:

he will go freely in and out

and be sure of finding pasture.

The thief comes

only to steal and kill and destroy.

I have come

so that they may have life and have it to the full.’

Jesus uses a lot of different terms to describe Himself and His mission.  Some of these terms are pointing to Him as He really is, such as "I am the bread of life." which we find in John Chapter six.  In other places, such as our reading today, He is using language which the people of the time, well versed in the keeping and use of sheep, would have understood quite well. 

So, what was Jesus telling us here?  Jesus is the sheep gate.  A sheep gate is a gate in which sheep pass through (Duh.) But the sheep gate that Jesus is referring to is the gate near the pool at Bethesda in Jerusalem.  Yes, the very same pool where the sick and suffering waited to be healed and where Jesus would at some later time heal the paralytic.  But the pool itself was not some beautiful spa where the notables went to bathe and enjoy the healing properties of the waters. No, it was quite the opposite. Those of delicate sensibilities and those of delicate dress and temperament did not patronize pool.  This pool was near the sheep gate by the temple. The sheep would be taken through the sheep gate and washed in the pool at Bethesda to make them pure and ready for sacrifice. So, any lamb washed in these waters then went through the sheep gate and into the temple and would not come out again nor pass through the sheep gate, it was a one-way road for our wool-bearing friends.  

Should we be afraid of Jesus when he describes Himself as the sheep gate?  No, because Jesus Himself says that the sheep that enter through Him will be safe and will come and go through the gate multiple times always finding pasture.  We enter the fold through Him and He makes sure that we have all that we need and more than that, we will have life and have it to the full.