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	1st Reading
	Psalm
	2nd Reading
	Gospel
	Written Transcript of Homily
	Footnotes

Well, I’d imagine you are thinking Fr. Simon had finally taken leave of his senses.

Wearing black vestments, odd black vestments and... a little ( ? ? ) chant, a little lack and willow cave. (?)

Do we have to sit through ten minutes of...

Well!

C.S. Luis in his books the Screwtape letters, which I quote entirely too often said...

That it is almost always true that in a puritanical age, preachers will preach chastity.

And in a ( ? ? ) age preachers will preach tolerance.

The trick is to treat tolerance to puritance

and to teach chastity to those of those who do not know it.

The vestments I’m wearing are... look at your calender, if you got a Catholic calender at home, you can wear black, and this is the traditional vestment. It’s called a Roman ( ? ? ) or a fiddle back ( ? ? )

One of our older person said “you have no arms.”

I said, yes I do... they’re..

You see, in the old days, these were so heavy that the old ( ?? ) priests couldn’t get their arms up to pray, so they just cut them off.

That’s what that comes from

And since you didn’t see the back, you really didn’t notice.

Now that hymn we sang, the ( ? ? ), those of you that are old can remember it well because it was sung at every funeral. 

It’s the sequence for todays feast, but it was also sung at every funeral mass.

It was written by a very good friend of dear ST. Francis of Assisi

You know, the fellow that you have in your bird bath in the backyard.

You know the one that likes the birds and the animals and all that sort of thing.

It was a hymn inspired by the poor man of Assisi

We always think of him as some kind of nice saint.

Well, he was pretty grim in his own way.

He was always throwing himself naked into thorn bushes and cold rivers.

I don’t think th– that’s not what the sermon’s about.

But that hymn was written about 800 years ago and it’s been sung ever since until we decided to get happy in the 60's...

When we, you know, you go to a funeral mostly now, and you hear the hymn “Be not Afraid” well the ( ? ? ) is Be Afraid, be very Afraid...

So.. That’s an element I wanna talk about today.

And the reason why I’m doing this, that I’ve gone off my rocker on this, not too long ago... I had two funerals.

Not in this parish.

They were, you know, you’ve been at a lot of parishes and they keep calling you back because they know you so.

One was... this was a few months ago, one was in the city, and it was the funeral of a child.

It was a boy, of about 15 or 16, who was killed because of his involvement in gangs.

There was no doubt about it.

And the other was the funeral of a middle class older man... and he died after a full life...

The thing that struck me about both funerals is the people who attended the funerals.

The kids

You know

For the young man who was killed in a gang fight.

They were all his peers
Between 15 and 20 years old

All of whom were quite obviously involved in a gang...

But at the funeral of the prosperous ageded... well his accomplished children were there... and their children. From 40-on down...

But there was something that tied the two funerals together...

When I said things like “The Lord be with You”

the silence was definite.

You could hear the crickets chirp.

They barely knew the “Our Father”.

And it struck me that... in both cases, so different...

There was a common thread..

They had never heard The Gospel.

They have never heard the Gospel...

Why have they never heard the Gospel?

Both sets of parents were wonderful people..

One set of parents because of poverty had no option but to live in a bad neighborhood

The other set of parents, well

They lived in a very nice neighborhood.

But they were unable to preserve their children from the dishonesty of the world in which they live.

And ... I cannot tell you... how vasked, how upset I am about this.

As a priest.

Who has a job to do.

And I rack my brains...

I stay up at night thinking “WHAT happened, and what must I do?”

I think... part of the problem .... is that we have failed not to tell the truth, but to believe the truth.

For some reason...

Or reasons

We have failed to preach the truth of the gospel.

These things are true......

And they really happened.

They are not simply myths that we’ve composed

They are not simply suggestions for our life.
 

Christianity is a statement of the nature of reality.

And how therefore we are to live.
 

So, in that spirit, I want to read you from the Catechism of the Catholic Church

Paragraph 10-33:
“We cannot be united with God unless we freely choose to love Him; but we cannot love God if we sin gravely against Him. Against our neighbors and against ourselves. He who does not love remains in death.”

Paragraph 10-34:
“Jesus often speaks of Gehenna of the unquenchable fire. Reserved for those who at the end of their lives refuse to believe and be converted Where both Soul and Body can be lost.”

Paragraph 10-35:
“The teaching of the Church affirms the existence of Hell and it’s eternity.”

Paragraph: 10-36: 
“The affirmations of sacred scripture and the teachings of the Church on the subject of Hell are on a called of responsibility. ( ? ? ?) Upon man to make use of his freedom on view of eternal destiny.”

His eternal destiny..

Paragraph 10-37:
“God predestined no one to go to Hell, for this a willful turning from God , a mortal sin is necessary. And pretistance in it until the end.”

Paragraph 10-38:
“The resurrection of the dead of both the just and the unjust proceeds the last judgement.”

Paragraph 10-39:
“In the presence of Christ which is true itself, the truth of each man relationship with God will be laid bare. The last judgement will reveal even to it’s furthest consequences, the good each person has done, or failed to do during his life.”

Before this.. The Church also talks about, in paragraph 10-30:
“All who die in God’s grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified are indeed assured of their eternal salvation. But after death they undergo purification so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of Heaven.” 

Those few paragraphs in the Catecism are offensive to our generation.

They’re offensive!

Because we do not want to believe.

That God who is all good... and all loving.. could possibly send anyone to Hell.

And the truth of the mater is He does not send anyone to Hell

We manage to do that all on our own.

On the contrary, He has done everything possible to bring us to Heaven.

You know

Again, I apologize...

I’ve been with you for more than 2 years, and you’ve heard all my sermons.

So, if you’ve been to a funeral that I’ve offered, you’ve heard most of this sermon.

But there are a few details that I leave out.

In the... in the funeral sermons.

In my line of work as a priest

I get to meet a lot of people who died and lived to tell about it.

You know, the beyond and back of the tunnel.

That sort of thing

And I will never forget the first time that I heard one of those stories

I’ve read a book about a fellow named John Moody called “Life after Life”

And it was a wonderful book

It was not religion, theology, philosophy

It was case histories about people who had been revived and had one of those near death experiences.

You know, the tunnel and the light, you see them all the time on television or maybe that happened..

Everytime I preach to someone, someone will come up and go “you know, that happened to me, that happened to someone I know.”

You know, the tunnel the light.

Well, this fellow came up to me – well I read this book and having reading this book I was an expert.

And, so I ... I had a talk to give to a women’s group in the morning

and I blended together what I Thought these experiences of life after death meant in the view of our faith as Christians

in life after death

So...

I gave the talk and the gentleman came up to me and he was about this tall and is wife was about this short

and he put out his hand, a very firm hand shake, he said “Father, I wanna thank you for everything you said. Because it’s true, I know, because I died!” 

I took a step back

and his wife looked up at me and said “Father, he’s not crazy. He dropped dead because of a heart attack at home and we didn’t get him revived until we got his body at the hospital.”

He told me this wonderful story...

He’s floating on the ceiling, looking at his body on the floor, his wife is hysterical..

I remember thinking how old he was

He was about 52.

But now I’m significantly older than that..

But

Well...
He was a young man, 52.

His body is on the floor, his wife is hysterical, his kids are calling the emergency number..

And he’s above, floating on the ceiling, looking at this, thinking “I feel fine. What’s everybody upset about?”

I always think.. If I had been floating on a ceiling, I would have some questions... but!

He was good with it

Well

He said he was drawn to this dark tunnel..

But it wasn’t frightening, it reminded him of this psalm we just sung

Though I walked through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil.

He was a believer, he knew the Lord, he was in good shape

He felt perfectly shape.

And he came up on this place of light, he said it was a city of light, but it wasn’t a city but it wasn’t light.

And there was Jesus, standing right in front of it, a person of perfect light and love.

And he said something that touched me so deeply

He said, “Not only when we go to Heaven, not only do our prayers rise to Heaven, and form one prayer before God” he that when we pray from our heart our very spirits stand before God.

And form one spirit..

And he said, “In the midst of all the beauty, he heard one prayer, that bothered him.”

It was his wife.

Saying “God, you gotta send him back.”

He didn’t give up that easily.

And so the lord looked at him and said, “The work in the world isn’t done. You have to go back.”

And with great suffering, he turned and passed back through that tunnel, and entered his body.

And I’ve heard a number of people say this

That it doesn’t hurt to die

It hurts to come back to life

And he said

That when he got back, he was laying on the table, in the emergency room, and when he got enough air in his lungs, he shouted, “WHY DIDN’T YOU LEAVE ME THERE!?”

And he wouldn’t talk to his wife for 3 days , he was so mad.

This was a powerful woman who can pray you back from the dead, believe me.

Talk about the little woman..

Well, after three days, he got around to living again, and...

Beautiful story

I’ve told that story at least a thousand times and so often some of them will come up..

Now these are the stories I don’t tell at funerals.

A very dear friend who was, well he was a brother of a very dear friend, and I guess he was a dear friend too.

He had a heart of gold and brains of tin.

He was involved in the mexican import trade, and the used car business.

You catch my drift...

Drugs and stolen cars.

He was killed in a gang fight.

And they managed to sow his liver back together

And I remember he was talking to two of his little nephews

And I remember he said something “oh, all that stuff about the light and tunnel, that’s all nonsense” – nonsense... he didn’t say nonsense... “it’s all nonsense’‘ he said.
“I was dead. There was nothing.”

And he came up to me afterwards, he never called me Father, he said, “Simon, that’s not true. I was in Hell...”

And then a number of people...

Who said that...

I remember one kid, also a drug dealer, he was just 17 when I was in Humblepark... and he was just, he died under very suspicious circumstances

and they got him revived at St. Mary’s hospital

And he said that he could, he had this experience that he felt himself sinking into darkness..

And he could see Jesus in the distance in a light, and he said “Give me another chance” his family was all devote, he was just the one lost.

Well, he found himself, he woke up in the emergency room in St. Mary’s, and he said after that he became pretty devout.

Everybody wants to hear the nice stories

And I got thousands of them

and don’t worry, I”m almost done

Well, I don’t know if I’m almost done.

Everybody wants to hear the nice stories

Not the not nice stories

Because that’s the insult

How could a God that’s good and loving do this?

Remember I mentioned a guy who said that well the first guy, he said that there was a judgement...

The thing that bothered him about it was he knew the answers before he was asked the questions

And I wondered if that’s what it means to experience timelessness

There comes a moment in our life when time stops

And we can say as God said to Moses, that we are who we are.

You know, babies

This is another thing that bothers people about Catholicism

Original sin?

I mean, how can a sweet, kind, loving, beautiful little baby... be guilty of original sin?

Have you never been a parent?

My earliest memory is I was going to torment my cousins, I was tw years old and I was mad, and I was going to make them pay and throw a tantrum.

That’s my earliest memory.

Babies are complete narcists, aren’t they?

They’re complete egotists

You may have to get up at four in the morning, five in the morning...

Doesn’t matter!

That baby wants something at three, the whole house is awake

The cry of a baby is a cry that can penetrate brick.

“Waaah”!

You know...

If a baby has a bottle in his mouth... a change of clothes.. And mommy holds him

He’s fine.

A baby lives in a world of one.

Well, I know people who are 50 or 60 year old, who have a bottle in their mouth, a change of clothes, and mommy holds them, they are fine.

We are born into this world in a state of absolute isolation.

We are the gods of our own universe.

And if when we die...

That’s who we are...

That’s who will be forever..

God sends no one to Hell....

We manage to do that ourselves....

By living in absolute egostim....

And self-centeredness....

God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son..

That those who believe in Him might have eternal life.

God wants to transform me, and you, from the original sinner that I am.

Into a person who knows what love is.

I will live forever

Either in isolation in my own self-centeredness, and do not forget that Jesus did not so much speak of hell fire as the outter darkness and weeping and nashing of teeth

or I will live forever.

In a wedding banquet of love...

God gave His only begotten son

That we might be transformed.. From who we are

into who we are suppose to be.

These things are real.

And Jesus the son of Mary, the son of God...

Offered his life on the cross

that we might be freed from the prison of our own selfishness.

And it seems that all my generation has done

is to teach the next generation how to be selfish.

Instead of teaching them the truth of love, we have allowed them to grow up with every comfort and convenience.

Never asking them as the catechism says, to live in a responsible way, that they might be with God forever.

These things are true.

And this place....

Exists for the salvation of souls

and if we are not about the salvation of souls, we have no right to exist.

As an institution...

We are not a social club.

We are a hospital for sinners among who I am among the greatest.

Let us think....

About these things, on this day.

On which we remember those whom we love have gone before us.

And let us remember our responsibility, not only to pray for those who have gone before, but to make sure that those who come, those that are young, those who will outlive us, that they hear the gospel clearly, that we may be with them forever!

And join their company...

In the banquet of love, that Christ has previered.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.