Fulton Sheen - Wasting Your Life

this little boy came home from sunday school or catechism class and his father said to him what did you learn today oh he said i learned how moses defeated the egyptians how did he do it well the egyptians were chasing the israelites and moses called the airfield and the airfield flew in some engineers and they built some pontoon bridges over the sea and the jews crossed over the pontoon bridges then another fleet of planes came and they bombed the pontoon bridges as the israelites i mean the egyptians were on them and they were all killed father said is that what they told you no he said it isn't but if i told you what they really said you wouldn't believe it and for those that are 39 i must tell them a story too i was once talking on prosperity and adversity and i used the example of flowers i said some flowers prosper only in sunshine while others seem to thrive only in the shade like fuchsias and afterwards some woman came to me and she said that was a wonderful sermon first time in my life i ever knew what was wrong with my fuchsias now i'm going to talk to you today about working harder studying harder living harder being more wasteful of energy being more thoughtful of others and i'm going to begin by telling you that i was once a victim of a roast you probably have seen some roasts on television in which someone is made almost the sacrificial lamb and everyone berates him well i was roasted by the friars club and these actors put on us a drama on the stage and in this drama i had just gone to the diocese of rochester and the vicar general was in the room my secretary and several priests who had responsible posts in the diocese and the holy father walks in and he looked exactly like the holy father the one who was playing that part and he went over and he talked to the vicar general whispered to the chancellor whispered to the other priests never spoke to me once and then he left and i said to them i said what did he say he says work hard well that's what i'm going to tell you to work hard because really most of us live below the energy the level of our energy and in order to be happy we have to do more now we can do more spiritually in every other way than we are doing as is proven by hypnotism there were some men hypnotized and told that their strength was greater than it was before and you know that they lifted weights 40 percent more than they'd ever lifted before they were hypnotized they just got a new idea in their minds and then another group of men were hypnotized and and told that they are no the same group and they were told that they were not as strong as they usually are and the weights they lifted were 40 pounds less 40 percent less so you see how important it is to have in the mind an idea to do all that you can to work to the limit of your your ability our world is really suffering from indifference indifference is apathy not caring i wonder maybe if our lord does not suffer more from our indifference than he did from the crucifixion there was a point of world war one by the name of studdard kennedy who gave us a poem in which he compared our lord coming to calvary and coming to the modern city of birmingham in england and this is what he wrote and when jesus came to golgotha they nailed him on a tree they crowned him with a crown of thorns red were his wounds and deep for those were crude and cruel days and human flesh was cheap when jesus came to birmingham they only passed him by they would not hurt a hair of him they only let him die for men had grown more tender they would not give him pain they only just passed down the street and left him in the rain and so it rained the winter rain that drenched him through and through and when all the crowds had left the street then jesus crossed against a wall and sighed for calvary in other words he found the cruelty of calvary more acceptable than our indifference i'm going to plead with you therefore not to be bored in life the reason we're bored is because we don't love anything when you girls get older you're engaged the man that you're engaged to will do anything for you why because he loves you there was a chicago florist that advertised as your husband still send you flowers and they had to stop the husbands protested well there was a reason for not sending flowers after they were married that's very obvious but when you're in love you'll do anything and you'll find that the young man will do anything for you because he loves and so will you you wear the kind of clothes he wants if he likes pink you'll wear pink and you won't find it a bit boring but in order to drive home this lesson i'm going to take stories out of the bible and the first story is to induce you to learn to waste yourself give yourself to others we go back to king david he lived a thousand years before christ and king david was in the battle against the philistines always the enemies of the jews the philistines and the battlefront took him to his own home village of bethlehem now when we get older we sometimes have yearnings for tastes and visions and experiences when we were young and so when david saw the town of bethlehem he said to the soldiers oh he said if i could only taste again the waters from the well at the gate of bethlehem and the soldier said all right we will get you the water we will drive through the lines and they came back with water and david held up the vessel of water and poured it out under the ground he said i am not worthy to drink the water that was purchased at such a sacrifice he wasted it wasted it in the sense that if he drank it he would not now be remembered and i would not be telling you that story when we save certain things for ourselves we spoil them when we for example save our flesh use it only for our own pleasure then it becomes lust we save money it becomes avarice we save knowledge not use it to train others it turns into pride and so david poured out the water as a lesson that sometimes we have to waste the things of life in order to be remembered now another story with the same oral and here we come to the time of our blessed lord he was invited into the house of simon the pharisee the pharisees were very self-righteous people and while he was at dinner with the apostles a woman comes in the door now you must remember that in those days it was very easy to come into a banquet room anyone could walk into an adjoining house stand along the wall you would not eat but you could listen to the conversation it was therefore not very unusual that a woman should come in to overhear the conversation but she brought a blush to simon's cheek he would not have minded it if anyone else had been there but the lord what would he think of it the woman was a sinner and simon kept saying within himself if he only knew what kind of a woman she is i wonder how he knew and the woman comes closely to the feet of our lord my young people must remember that in those days people did not sit at a table they leaned at table as if we leaned here almost on the floor and you rested your head on your left hand and then you ate with your right hand from table that's a custom that sometimes i wish would come back so the woman comes to the feet of our lord and she has some perfume about her neck in those days precious perfume was generally carried around the neck and she stands above the feet of our lord and let's fall upon those sandals harbingers of peace a few tears like the first warm drops of a summer rain and then she was a shame that she had wet his feet with tears and she wiped them away with her hair in those days all women of shame had the hair down and so it was easy for her with her long hair down at the side to wipe the feet of our blessed lord then she took from about her neck this small vessel of perfume it was accustomed to among the jews when they went to a funeral to break this perfume bottle over the corpse and then even to drop the broken bottle into the coffin now as she stands above our lord's feet she does not do what you and i would do you and i would pour it out gently drop by drop as if to indicate by the slowness of our giving the generosity of our gift not those who really love she just broke the vessel gave everything and the house was filled with perfume says the gospel so remember my dear people this was no smell number five and judas was there judas knew the price of everything in the value of nothing and he said why wasn't this saved and given to the poor but our blessed lord spoke in favor of the woman he said this woman has done this for my burial because this incident took place ten days before our lord was crucified and the gospel writers have kept this story in the gospel in the gospel yes in order that we might again learn to waste give break surrender as our lord put it in another occasion he says walk the second mile what did he mean by that walk the second mile well because very often in those days was made when mail was delivered suppose they did it here when mail was delivered the postman would say i listen i've got a heavy load today here you take half these letters and he had the authority to make you walk the extra mile to deliver mail and that's what our lord meant if anyone if the postman forces you to walk one mile walk another and imagine he also said if anyone takes your coat give him your cloak too unlimited giving we would put this in the language of being generous that bell rings very often doesn't it i have a dim feeling that i'm warned up here so when anyone asks you to do things be prepared to do more why for example do we get tired well we think we are we are tired because we have a certain limit of energy like we have certain amount of money in the bank and as that money is spent or as that energy is used then we have no more we're exhausted no that's not it always energy is renewed if we love as sanctity and holiness declines energy declines can you imagine for example mother teresa ever being tired here this woman weighs about 90 pounds who has dragged 25 000 bodies off the streets of calcutta and converted 15 000 of them she never seems to be tired because she gets new strength because she's broken the vessel poured out her life as david poured out the water i hope therefore that i can impress you not to be selfish but always to please neighbor even when they seemingly demand too much we might even sometimes do the foolish things and this is the last story that i will tell you about doing foolish things and you might learn from this that if your faith is very strong you can do wonders the scene i'm to describe was on the lake of galilee our blessed lord had just multiplied the loaves and the fishes and the people were excited about it and they thought oh here's a great political king he can feed the hungry and they tried to make him a king and our blessed lord fed into the mountains alone well his disciples were caught up in this enthusiasm they liked it and our lord did not want them to be burnt with the idea that his kingdom was political so he said get into the boat go over to the other side of the lake get away from these people this is not the nature of my kingdom so here's our lord on a mountaintop the apostles rowing past midnight in the lake a storm comes up they are frightened our lord is praying for them and watching them during the storm we sometimes think in our trials and difficulties economic physical moral that the lord has no concern that's what they thought too that he was watching for the opportune moment and as the apostles were about to despair our lord is seen walking on the water toward them they were frightened they said it's a ghost now lord said be not afraid it is i whenever i use that verse i am always reminded of a story that was told pope leo the 13th someone asked to paint his portrait and it was not very well done but it was brought to pope leo and he had to sign it but he signed it in latin noly noliti mary egosum do not fear it is i our lord therefore is telling his apostles now do not fear it is i here we come to a great act of faith peter loves our lord and i'm telling you that if you love you will go on doing things not stop and peter loved our lord he wanted to be with him he couldn't wait until he came to the boat and he said bid me come on the waters to you imagine that peter loved our lord so much that he thought i can walk on water now can you imagine what must have happened in that boat at the moment that peter lifts his foot about to step into the water what do you think happened his brother andrew must have said peter listen you're always an idiot thomas must have said what are you trying to do join a circus dude is it how much money are you getting for this and on and on they're ready go get back you idiot get back but he walked he walked on the waters and why did he walk was it foolish no our lord had said come come believe the impossible and you can do the incredible or believe the incredible and you can do the impossible believe the things that are almost impossible and if you've got faith they will come true our lord said come and peter walked on the water but then he began to sink why did he sink because peter knew how to swim someday when you learn the gospel better i will ask you the question how do you know peter could swim as i might ask you the question who could run faster in a race peter or john did you know that's in the gospel when you get it back to school and you're studying scripture i hope i hope i hope in your catechism find out who can run faster peter or john i'm not going to tell you but the answer is in the bible and so here our lord has said to peter come and he walked but now he sinks peter could swim because we know that on the sunday after easter peter swam 400 yards that's in the gospel too why did he sink if he could swim the gospel tells us the reason he took his eyes off the lord he began to take account of the winds he said all nature's against me or in our language today in our sociological world peter began to take account of sociological surveys and he sank he took his eyes off the lord and so the lord then took hold of his hand and said oh man of little faith why don't you believe and then peter was taken into the boat and our lord took them to shore so if you have faith the impossible things can be done i'll tell you a story about football that was told me by coach paterno of penn state those of you who don't like football close your ears and god have mercy on you coach paterno is the coach of penn state and a few years ago his team was playing the university of kansas now coach paterno has an old mother an italian mother full of faith knows absolutely nothing about football but she has two sons who coach football one coaching at penn state and the other coaching the merchant marine in connecticut the score of the football game 50 seconds before the end of the game was kansas 14 penn state seven the other son who coached in connecticut was with the mother and he said to his mother mom it's all finished joe was lost she said no i'll go in the bathroom and pray i don't know why she went into the bathroom to pray but at any rate that's the story she went into the bathroom she dog go in the bathroom and pray now this now picture this good good old lady going into the bathroom to pray to the good lord what happens now in the remaining seconds penn state threw a touchdown and the score boys what was the score now with the touchdown 14 to what no 13 right 14 to 13. to make it 14 what do they have to do pick a field goal would there be any other way of making extra points forward yes or run through the line yes there will be another way well they decided not to kick the field goal because that would mean on a tie 14 to 14. so they try to forward to get behind the goal line and that would count two points and make the score fifteen to fourteen they tried it and they missed but kansas was offside so they had to try it over again and the next time they made it well her son screamed and he shouted out mom they've won and she came on she's i told you i told you so you see you believe believe the incredible and you can do the impossible and it would seem as if coach joe paterno's wisdom had won the game but actually it was the mother now my time is up oh yes listen my good my good people it's always better for you to say i wished he had talked longer than to have you say he had three good chances to quit i hope now that you'll carry away from this talk two lessons first of all i hope the women will become interested in football that'll help won't it and secondly be generous with yourself just give give give and as we give we get this is the gospel lesson as we pour out ourselves god gives us strength now for example we know let me tell you when i came over here i was dead tired i didn't want to talk i didn't feel like it so i said to the good lord i'm tired now and i'm going to talk on using strength spend yourself give me strength do i look tired no thank you [Applause] all right now everybody be generous generous with self i know that when i go now that monsignor is going to talk about being generous in other ways but i mean being generous with yourself your energy your kindness to others your charity your helpfulness because then you will be real christians this friend of mine that i told you who was in the prison for 14 years when he got out of prison in romania he was walking along the street and found a boy and he said do you believe in christ and the boy said no why don't you little boy says you think christ is god don't you well now if christ is god if jesus is god he can do what god does god made flowers flowers made other flowers god made elephants elephants made other elephants and nobody's ever given me anything and if jesus is god then he ought to be able to make other jesuses but i've never found another jesus my father's an alcoholic my mother takes in washing to live nobody's ever given me a toy or a suit of clothes therefore i don't believe that jesus is god because he never made any other jesus [Music] and dr wormbrand said but isn't your pastor well no he said he's not he's not when this pastor was told he said oh that boy is silly he wasn't silly he was right so if jesus is god he ought to be able to make other jesuses that's what you are other jesus you ought to so manifest him in your lives that as you move among others they will say of you as the maidservants said of peter thou hast been with christ thank you and god love you

Channel: Caritas in Veritate

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Length: 32min 13sec (1933 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 01 2021