Dare You To Read This

[jrndveritatis]

[quote]Homily of October 1, 2000.
By Fr. Richard Cash.
 

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... At that time, John said to Jesus, "Teacher, we saw someone driving out demons in your name, and we tried to prevent him because he does not follow us." Jesus replied, "Do not prevent him. There is no one who performs a mighty deed in my name who can at the same time speak ill of me. For whoever is not against us is for us. Anyone who gives you a cup of water to drink because you belong to Christ, amen, I say to you, will surely not lose his reward.
"Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were put around his neck and he were thrown into the sea. If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter into life maimed than with two hands to go into Gehenna, into the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter into life crippled than with two feet to be thrown into Gehenna. And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. Better for you to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into Gehenna, where 'their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.'"

~Mark 9:38-43, 45, 47-48


Praised be Jesus Christ!

Our Lord has strong words in the Holy Gospel today as He speaks to us of Gehenna. Now, in any culture there's a memory, a cultural memory in any society. In any family there's a certain memory. In my family we have a little custom; on Christmas Eve we try to beat everybody else being the first to say, "Christmas Eve Gift". So there was this mad dash every time we answered the phone - "Christmas Eve Gift!", and the person who wins gets to open the first gift. And still if you call the Cash home on Christmas Eve you'll have your ear "adjusted" as someone screams into your ear, "Christmas Eve Gift!". This is part of our cultural memory; of our family. There are good cultural memories and bad cultural memories. If you're German and I speak to you names like Dachau and Auschwitz, immediately a kind of a feeling of shame comes over you. If you grew up in the South and you hear words like Appomattox Courthouse and The High Water Mark at Gettysburg, certain feelings come over you. Names like Benedict Arnold... you know? Now among the family of God, unfortunately we suffer from a degree of "Cultural Alzheimers". We don't know our history real well; the Word of God. And the word "Gehenna" has a very long history to it. So, if you'll fasten your scriptural seat belts I'm going to take you on a little scriptural ride.

This goes back to, in the line of King David, the worst king in the history of the Davidic line:  King Manasseh. He is introduced as "The One Who Did The Worst As Ever Was" King Manasseh. Now Manasseh lived in a time when the kingdom of Judah was in a great economic boom. "It's the economy, stupid...", you know, I mean it was "boom-city" and they were riding high economically. On the fat of the land; the people of Israel, the family of God. And what oftentimes happens is we look over the four thousand year history of the family of God we see that when it's "boom-city" we sometimes lose sight of the Living God and the True God and the Holy God and we turn aside to other gods. King Manasseh's heart was pulled away from the Lord. And Manasseh began to focus on false gods. In the city of Jerusalem there are two great valleys like two arms and on the top of the great mountain there's this large part called Mount Zion where the old city of Jerusalem was built. Then around this section was two large valleys. The valley Kidron and the valley Gehan. The valley of Kidron - remember Jesus after the last supper, he walked down the valley of Kidron and goes to the Mount of Olives and there, you know, sweats blood. Well on the other side, if he would have gone in the other direction he would have gone to the valley Gehan. Gehenna in Greek. Gehan in Hebrew. Well it was in this section of the city that King Manasseh set up an altar to the god Molek, one of the Baal's. One of the false gods. They worshipped these false gods through several ways. First, through prostitution worship. If you like hot liturgy and a lot spicier church services than what we have here, well let me tell you... the Molek church had a lot hotter liturgy than we did. And so they would engage in prostitution worship hoping that these acts of fornication would bring down blessings, cause fertility of the ground, and bring great wealth and pleasure, etc., etc., etc.. Also, King Manasseh offered to these false gods, to the god Molek, child sacrifice. Little children of Israel in the holy city of Jerusalem were sacrificed to a false god. The blood of the little children ran in this valley.

And so when you mention "Gehenna" to any Jew they normally feel a sort of shame... "our forefathers did this...". Now for forty years God had sent prophet after prophet after prophet after prophet after prophet. "Repent!" "I'll take you back." All these prophets: "Come back and repent!" They all went in the opposite direction. When King Manasseh started child sacrifice in Jerusalem, God, through the great prophets, said, "No More. Jerusalem, you have received your death sentence. You will be destroyed for your sins."

A few years after King Manasseh died, his grandson Josiah took the throne. Josiah knew of this curse on the city of Jerusalem. He was a man whose heart was with God and he thought, "you know, if Nineveh could repent, well maybe Jerusalem could repent and God would stay his hand." So Josiah went full for it. He destroyed all the false temples. He destroyed all the little mountaintop shrines of the Baals. He enforced the law of the Lord God. Zealous for the law of the Lord God. He did everything in his power to be holy and to bring the people to holiness. He called for a great spiritual revival of the people. So the people thought, "well, you know, maybe the words of the prophet, like the words of the prophecy, maybe God will have mercy on us." One day, now King Josiah had been doing real good, you know, he'd had a lot of military victories, his "stock" had been going up among the people... well Pharaoh Neco had his armies kind of close-by and was pestering the side areas of Israel. So Josiah decided, "well I'm going to go out and show old Pharaoh Neco and thrash him pretty good." Now the prophet comes to the King and says, "Don't do it. Stay in Jerusalem."
"I'm the military genius here. Don't tell me what to do." So Josiah went riding off in his chariot with his army. He ran into Pharaoh Neco where? Do you remember your bible history? Let me take you to the book of Revelation. Where is the great battle scene in the book of Revelation? Armageddon. The battle of Armageddon in the great plain of Megiddo. It was there where King Josiah was struck with an arrow through his breastplate and was killed. Now when the Jews hear of Armaggedon it is not some great military victory. It's more like "Our hope is ceased. We have no hope." So they came back to the city of Jerusalem and buried King Josiah. The valley of Gehan (Gehenna) - it was declared that no one would ever live there. It would be a place considered cursed by God and by the people. From now on it would be used as a city dump. If you go to Jerusalem today, the valley of Gehenna is still a city dump and no one lives there. When the Jews would go on a pilgrimage to the temple in later generations they'd have to travel through this valley with all the maggots and all the human waste. Now Jerusalem was a big city and it's public waste area with the rats and the burning and the fires. People would hold their mouths to keep from gagging as they ran through. So it was here that Jesus says to us, at the valley of Gehan, if you do not repent from sin, if you sin against one of these little ones, better for a millstone to be wrapped around your neck and thrown into the ocean. Remember, Manasseh had sacrificed little children. Better for your hand to be cut off, for your eye to be plucked out, for if you do not you'll be thrown into Gehenna.

Now some of you are saying, "God is a merciful God. This don't sound like it jives." Let's say you went to Los Angeles, and you walked down the street and, laying in the street you see this young gentleman lying in his own vomit, starving to death. You know, a street person. And you think, "Poor fellow, what can I do to help you?". And you find out that this fellow is a Rockefeller. With one little phone call they could come out with a jet, pick him up, and fly him back to one of the family mansions. Billions of dollars but he chose to live like this. But with one word he could be restored. Would you have much compassion for him after that? No. We, as members of the family of God... when Jesus took on our human nature He raised the stakes. God always is offering mercy, repentance, and forgiveness in this life. Always. Remove the sin.

You know we talk about, "Joe's my right hand man". Well, if my right hand man is causing me to sin I need to cut my right hand man off. We say, "George is my eyes and my ears in this organization". Well, if George is causing me to sin I need to pluck him out. This is radical, but everlasting life is worth the sacrifice. The Lord's mercy lasts from generation to generation. Look at the area of your life, your sin problem, we all have one. I've got one, too. Our sin problem. What do we need to do to remove ourselves from the occasions of sin? To cut out the sin in my life and be faithful to the Lord? Now one area that we need to be very attentive to particularly, the call in the Gospel of the little ones.

In our country we don't worship Molek by name but we are sacrificing millions of little babies every year in this country to the god of wealth, the god of power, the god of prestige. We, the family of God of this generation. We have our own Gehenna and our own Manasseh. And it's highly incumbent upon us to do something about it. We live in a democracy. We have votes. We have ability to influence. And it's our fault... There are sixty million Catholics in this country. Many do not vote, or do not vote in a moral fashion. Discerning God's will, "what does God want me to do?". It's highly incumbent on us to pray.

I want you all, before you go to the voting box in this next election this November, to go buy yourselves a little bitty copy of a millstone and put it around your neck. And think about all the millions of children that depend on the way you vote. It's a very serious vote. Very serious. You must pray. And if we just try to wash our hands and do nothing and put our focus on the economy... did you hear what St. James said about the rich and the wealthy and the powerful and all that stuff. What's going to happen to them. If you forgot, look it up before you leave (James 5:1-6). It's in the Missalette.

So we must be very attentive. Pope Pius XII, vicar of Christ, Successor of St. Peter (Jesus said those who hear you hear Me)... Pius XII taught and bound us. He has the Keys to the Kingdom. He said that it is a grave matter when it comes to voting for the good of society and moral good. It's a grave matter not to vote morally and to really study the issues about what is God's will in this situation. What does "grave matter" mean? It means if we sin in an area of grave matter it is mortally sinful. Mortally sinful. Some of you in the Church today may have had abortions in your earlier days. Maybe some of you have procured for your girlfriend, for your wife, or for your daughter, or for someone else, an abortion. A serious sin that cries out to God. But you know, God is a Merciful Father and He will forgive you. He will embrace you and restore your heart. Isaiah says that the lion will lay down with the lamb in the kingdom. If you've killed your child God will forgive you and reconcile you with your child in Heaven. What an incredible promise. It is so important for us to reach out to those that we know who have this dark hole in their heart... in their soul. To reach out to them with the mercy and forgiveness of Christ. We must reach out to our country and call them back lest we have a millstone around our neck, lest we be cast into everlasting darkness... where the worm dieth not. These are the words of Jesus. So let us pray. Prepare your heart well.

I'm not telling you how to vote. You have to respond to God... and remember. Do you love your children? If I tried to kill one of your children right now wouldn't that upset you? Wouldn't you try to defend your child? And when you stand before the judgment seat of God on your day of judgment what are you going to say? When you walk into the voting booth and you make decisions politically for the good of our commonwealth you must pray and think about judgment for you will face Christ... and He loves his little babies.

He died on the cross for his little babies.

And we are responsible. This is our Dachau. This is our Auschwitz. This is our Gehenna. We kill a lot more babies than the Nazis ever could think. So let us pray for repentance.

The Holy Father has asked us to pray this week up to the feast of the Holy Rosary next Sunday. To make this a great jubilee week of fasting and prayer. He has asked us to dedicate in a very special way and to entrust to Our Lady who was so open to God... in Genesis it says she will crush the serpent's head. In the book of Revelation she, there with her son, will break the nations with a rod of iron. So in a very special way, entrust this into her hands. About five hundred years ago Western Europe, western civilization, our Christian civiliation, was at the point of extinction. The Turks were at Vienna with a huge army and Vienna was about to fall. They had a huge fleet and were planning to invade Italy and it looked like all of Europe would be overwhelmed by the Turks. Christian civilization would disappear. So the Holy Father asked throughout Europe that there be great Rosaries and Rosary processions and to pray and beg God's mercy through the intercession of Mary and through her Divine Son. To pray, "Please save our country. Please save our people." In the great Battle of Lepanto, outnumbered five to one, the Christian fleet had an incredible victory. The Holy Father, having a vision that moment, knowing the victory before he was told, immediately established a great feast to Our Lady of Victory, Our Lady of the Holy Rosary. So the Holy Father has asked us this week to pray for we face an enemy much more serious than the Turks of old.

We face a civilization of death. If you don't know this civilization, turn on MTV tonight. Watch it for a while. Watch how it looks at women... at children... how black and evil it is. This is our enemy and only with the grace of God can we overcome this enemy with the grace of life. Jesus says some demons are cast out only by prayer and fasting so the Holy Father asks you this week to spend some time in fasting and in prayer. For every Mass this week we'll have a holy hour of reparation and prayer so the Lord will have mercy on us, change our hearts, and bring us back to Him.

Amen. [/quote]

[thicke]

This wouldn't happen to be Fr. Rich Cash (you gotta love the name) from Kentucky would it? He is awesome!

[jrndveritatis]

It is!

I just found his homilies online.

Do you know anything about him? Do you know where he is at now. He used to be at this parish called St. Henrys until last year.

[thicke]

I am not sure. I haven't seen him in almost two years. We met at the Saint John Bosco conference in Stubenville year before last. He was a cool guy and a good priest. I'll ask around, I know some folk that keep tabs on him.