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Transcript of Homily
Something Michael rem– Michael Sullivan
reminded me of, it’s a year since we got that permission from the Holy
Father to the old mass... and kinda segways into an announcement I can
make now.
That this Wednesday we’re celebrating
the Feast of St. Lambert and the feast day itself. And we’re gonna celebrate
it with the traditional Latin mass, the Solmon High Mass..
And.. It’s... if you’ve never been
to one, it’s very interesting, and if you have been to one, enjoy it..
You’re welcome, it’ll be at 7:30...
a lot of people say, and I’ve read about
this in the bulletin, that well “I don’t understand Latin”.
Well..tell me that some of you understand
Picasso.
I mean.. Something can be beautiful....without...well,
that’s kind of our American revolutionary spirit.
If I don’t vote on it, it’s no good..
Well...like I’m always telling you...
God has this problem, He thinks He’s
God.
And... one, this is called the ( ? ? )
mass, the ordinary form of rite...
I call it the new Mass.
Cause I’m an old fellow..
But... this one is not better than the
other.
They emphasis different parts of
the mysteries.
The mystery of the sacrifice of the Mass
so, I would invite you to this Mass, this
Wednesday, at seven thirty, to celebrate our patrimonial feast, and of
course there will be cake and coffee... after the celebration.
So... also our choir, our parish choir
will be singing and the Latin ( ? ? )...
So it should really be beautiful.
It should be a beautiful Mass.
So you’re welcome to it.
Unto the feast..
Today is the feast of the Triumph of the
Cross!
And what we’re really celebrating is
a Roman victory in battle.
Around 300 A.D, I hope you brought notebooks,
because there will be dates..
And another thing before I get rolling..
I wish they will translate the bible in
English some day..
You know, this Seraph serpent.. what the
heck is a seraph serpent!
That’s a Hebrew word, it means firey,
a firey serpent
If you’ve ever had a serious snake bite,
you feel like you’re burning up.
It’s a seraph..
And the word seraphim, it means firey-angels,
that’s all it means.
So now you know s— if you don’t, if
you want, you can go to sleep now.
If you were up all night cleaning out your
basements, you can take a nap.
The rest of it is a lot of dates and Roman
history, alright?
Around 300 A.D, well... 324- sort of..
The Roman Constanty made Christianity legal
and began the process by which Christianity became the official religion
of the Romans.
The Roman empire.
And... his mother... Saint Elena went to
the Holy Land and identified the sights associated with the life of Jesus.
And her son, the emperor, built beautiful
churches over these different places.
Bethlehem, the church of the Nativity,
the church of the Holy ( ? ?? ), these were originally built by the emperor
Constanty.
And a legend sprang up, which may be quite
true, with how these old stories come about, who knows... but it was told
that Elena found, miraculously found the wood of the cross.
And that wood was kept in Jerusalem in
venerated ... now three hundred years later, that’s longer than the United
States have been around, the empire had been Christian for three hundred
years.
In 614, the Persians, who were not Christians,
most of them. They were ( ? ? ? ), followers of the prophet ( ? ? ) and
their modern decedents are the ( ? ? ), who are.. There very few left in
India.
These ( ? ? ) Persians invaded the Roman
empire.
And they captured Jerusalem and they took
these relics of the holy cross, that were so beloved throughout all of
Christianity.
And it shook the Christian world to it’s
foundation.
And the Roman emperor ( ? ? ?) Restructured
the army, and he invaded the Persian empire, and pushed back the Persians,
and it took a while, but by 630 A.D, a long time... that’s 16 years if
my math is right...
He recovered the relics of the true cross
and brought them back to Jerusalem.
And that’s what we’re celebrating.
The recovery of those relics.
Well...what’s such a big deal about that?
Well.. I think there was a symbolism in
that.
Because, you see, it was probably the Persians,
the ( ? ? ) who invented the cross.
It was apart of their theology.
( ? ? ) worshiped fire.
Still, to this day, ( ? ? ) have fire temples.
I think there’s one in Chicago.
They believed that fire was holy.
And to kill a criminal, or to dispose of
a dead body, polluted the fire.
They also believe the earth is sacred.
So to bury a dead body polluted the earth.
They believed the sky was sacred and that’s
one of the reasons that the flames and the smoke of a body going up polluted
the sky.
So they actually don’t bury their dead.
They just sort of put them into little
shelves and up above ground..
And the cross was a very symbolic torture
for people of this belief.
Because you see, it meant that the person
died hanging between Heaven and Earth.
And they’d leave the body on the cross
until the birds of the air had consumed all the flesh.
It was a very grizzly thing.
It was a horrible way to die... and it
was a grizzly reminder to the population “Do not cross the authorities”
it meant that Heaven had rejected you and
the earth had rejected you.
You died suspended between Heaven and Earth.
Now Jesus, according to Jewish Law, was
a blasphemer.
He had made Himself God.
And the punishment for blaspheming was
not crucifixion
It was to be stoned to death.
Now...
The Romans adopted this Persian practice
of crucifixion
and other governments before them had adopted
it..
And the authorities who wanted to crucify
Jesus broke the laws themselves, because they should have stoned Him to
death if He was guilty of what they had said.
But they remembered a verse in the book
of ( ? ? ? ?)
That says “Curses is He who dies hanging
on a tree”
So they realized that if they could get
Jesus realized, that is hung on a tree, it would prove that he wasn’t
the messiah.
It would prove he wasn’t the Messiah.
Why would God curse His own Messiah?
So.. They finagled and they did deals,
and they go tthe Romans to execute Jesus.
That way they didn’t have to.
And they thought it would end the issue.
Well it didn’t at all, obviously, we’re
here.
You know, Scott ( ? ? ?) said something
I had never thought of, when he was here a couple of weeks ago.
He said “We fail to see the crucifixion
as the disciples must have seen it. We think of it as the sacrifice of
calvary. For the disciples and for that matter, the authorities, and for
those who looked on... It was not a sacrifice... there was no temple. There
was no priest. There was no alter... it was an execution And... at best,
martyrdom But most certainly an execution.”
So, how did it become a sacrifice?
How did it become a sacrifice..
It became a sacrifice because of Love..
We look at the symbolism of it that Christ
was the victim... the priest and the alter of sacrifice.
That’s what we say.
That certainly those seeing it didn’t
think that.
It was love that made that horrible curse
into a sacrifice.
So... !
In 614 A.D as if the ( ? ? ?? ) came back
to take their cross home with them.
They saw it as a curse.
But it had become a blessing.
It had become a blessing cause it had become
a sacrifice.
And it had become a sacrifice because of
love.
That’s the meaning of today’s feast.
What the world looks at as a curse...
God’s holy spirit teaches us can become
a blessing.
If it is transformed by love.
Because love is always and only what we
give away.
To love is to die.
It is to offer our life.
This is at the heart of Catholic faith.
This is the heart of our faith.
We live in a world and in a culture in
which sacrifice has very little meaning.
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