Your Sunday Sermon Notes

Was there a good point in the sermon you heard for your Mass of Sunday obligation?

Let us know.

At this point I plan on talking about sins against Hope.  Will I moved to speak on something else?  Who knows?

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29 Comments

  1. PhilipNeri says:

    The most thing our Lord commands us to do: love one another.

    http://hancaquam.blogspot.com/2016/04/our-most-difficult-task.html

    Fr. Philip Neri, OP

  2. Chris Garton-Zavesky says:

    Father Neri,

    Did you leave out a word in the sentence you posted?

    Cheers,

    Chris

  3. Maltese says:

    A priest friend told me that the sin against the Holy Spirit is the sin in believing you can’t be forgiven. I still don’t know what that means?

  4. MWindsor says:

    We got a lecture on Amoris Laetitia from one of the deacons. We were told that it stressed Church teachings on mercy and not condemnation. In fact, the phrase, “mercy and not condemnation” was used six or seven times, and twice repeated immediately for emphasis. People in “irregular” situations were to be treated with mercy and not condemnation. (We’ve also had Karl Marx quoted from the pulpit a few years ago, and Christ’s kingship was denied by a visiting Jesuit on the Feast of Christ the King.)

    If I had the transportation to get to another parish, I would. But the nearest parish with a Latin Novus Ordo Mass is 90 minutes away. There’s an SSPX chapel and an FSSP parish, but they’re about the same distance. I just can’t get there.

  5. iPadre says:

    I celebrated in the Ordinary Form.

    There is hope for the future for us, the world and the Church. St. John tells us: “I see a new heaven and a new earth.” And Our Lord: “Behold, I make all things new.” Nothing is left out, he is making, ALL things new after the tragedy of Original and person sin. For the time being, “we must undergo many hardships” to be purified, so as “to enter the kingdom of God.” We have future full hope!

  6. Joseph-Mary says:

    Theme of love. Father loves us. His parents loved him. Can’t truly love if we harbor unforgiveness. We will be judged on how well we loved.

  7. benedetta says:

    On Sunday of the meeting of Christ with the Samaritan Woman, in the Ukrainian Catholic Rite, by our Father Deacon. The icons of the church constantly leave impressions on people, especially believers, regardless of heritage or tradition. In them, wordlessly, people discover the real stories of people who lived and died, and how their personal encounters with the Living Word changed their entire existence. The Samaritan woman was one such woman. An icon retelling this story reflects to us the attention with which the Lord looked at her and listened to her, and showed his love to her. Too, the utter shock of the disciples at this, and, we also notice, the presence and expression of Judas in his reaction, and we see the fullness of the story, in the people whose lives were saved because of her conversion and witness, and the transformation of a landscape from desert to deeply greened mountains. Up close, one sees the heavy jugs of water: the weight of five untrue husbands. The well is in the shape of a cross. He is the one who quenches our deepest thirsts.

    In Africa, where water is scarce and costly in many respects, often the songs of people are about water. In the U.S., as the outpouring of grief for another pop star lost to a drug epidemic shows, all our songs are about love. Love is sought, and it is very dear, it is idealized, it is sung about everywhere and always, yet as so much observable in our broken world shows, there is little of it shown.

    And I would personally add that in this Rite of the chanted prayers and readings of this day, in their entirety and each alone, are of incredible beauty. A blessed and happy Sunday to all.

  8. GrumpyYoungMan says:

    I am out of town, and traveling most of Sunday, so I fulfilled my obligation by hearing Mass Saturday evening in an unfamiliar parish.

    Father mentioned that in Confession, if we are contrite and sincerely wish to not sin again, that God forgives and is happy to do so. We should be equally willing to do that for our brothers and sisters.

  9. frjim4321 says:

    No love without sacrifice.

    Love is willing the good of the other … love comes at a cost and w/o guarantees.

    The irony of the gospel passage on “Glory” and “Love” being framed by the prediction of Judas’ betrayal and Peter’s denial … the Glory of Jesus consisted in his taking up the cross and making the ultimate sacrifice.

    The hardships entailed in the spreading of the gospel from the earliest days; the seeds of the Church are the blood of the martyrs.

    Our commitments (marriage, parenthood, religious life, holy orders, education, business, medicine, etc.) all entail some “bait-and-switch,” in that we really don’t end up with exactly what we expected; but these are the hardships and sacrifices we recommit ourselves to each morning when we get out of bed.

    As Paul and Barnabas were sent forth from and returned to community, it is in our weekly assembly, strengthened in this sharing the Perfect Sacrifice, that we find the strength to continue is spite of adversity.

  10. FloridaJoan says:

    We actually heard about the true meaning of love … as in God’s love for us when His only begotten Son died on the cross for our sins. Father also corrected society’s misconception of love ie. many young couples who present themselves to him to be married are already living together But love themselves and are not witnessing to true sacrificial love.
    I almost fell off my pew … there is hope.

  11. jameeka says:

    Thank you, Fathers for reporting some points of your homilies—good ones! Fr Z, maybe you can post a bit more too? [This is one of the reasons why I post this each week. Some people could benefit from GOOD points made in sermons.]

    EF: Father A spoke about knowledge, and Adam at his creation having full knowledge, but then he lost it.

    When Jesus is speaking with the Apostles at the last supper, ( Gospel John 16) He tells them that they will receive the Holy Spirit after He has left them. They cannot handle having all knowledge at once, but one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit will be knowledge and gradual revelation of the Truth. Fr acknowledged that we can be confused nowadays, but we should always consult the Catechism, either the current one, or the Baltimore catechism, or the catechism of Council of Trent for the Truth.
    Per Pope Benedict, these should all be in continuity with each other and not contradict in each other, as the knowledge in the Church develops.

    BTW: listened also just now while on long walk to Fr Z’s sermon in podcaZt 137, so prescient! (Of course, St Augustine’s was as well)

  12. torch621 says:

    Father Nichols chose today to preach about modesty, especially modesty in dress, addressing both men and women.

  13. Elizabeth D says:

    He had been reading Amoris Laetitia up to about chapter 4 and had a pretty good comment that we are not saved all by ourselves, we are not the center of the universe as if only our own salvation need matter to us and everyone else in our life is some kind of bit player in a drama that is fundamentally “mine”. I wasn’t sure where he was going with this but then his point was that he often asks penitents to pray for their accomplices in sin. Because the other person is also loved by God and their salvation matters just as much. We must desire to be in heaven with all our loved ones, as Jesus says in the Gospel “I give you a new commandment: love one another as I have loved you.”

    I thought this was a really good point to make in connection with Amoris Laetitia: if I and another person sin gravely together and then I go to confession and feel I’ve resolved the problem and am now on the path toward heaven, well it isn’t really resolved; I’ve contributed to the other person’s path to hell that they still haven’t gotten off of. There is a duty to at the very least pray for the person.

  14. rtrainque says:

    Going off of the “theme” of the Collect and Secret, Fr. spoke about how the crisis in the Church is a crisis of truth; the problem obviously lies not in the truths taught by the Church themselves, but rather in our refusal to accept and believe them. With dissent being so prevalent, what explanation can we find other than that people simply do not truly believe? Not surprisingly, he mentioned “lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi”; blaming the toxic culture on this lack of belief doesn’t cut it. If a culture militantly opposed to the Church could explain the crisis, then how did it ever survive active, violent persecution in the past?

  15. jfk03 says:

    Ukranian Greek Catholic liturgy. Gospel was the Samaritan Woman. The message of the homily was that the Lord called the woman to worship in spirit and truth. She had to empty herself of wrong religion (salvation is from the Jews) and of a sinful life. The Lord identified himself as Messiah. The proper temple was not the one on Mt Gerazim, nor the one in Jerusalem, which soon would be destroyed, but Christ’s own body –the temple of the Holy Spirit. The woman was saved by Christ’s healing grace. Behest would become a member of the Body of Christ, the holy temple.

  16. Mike says:

    When Our Lord’s Word becomes the source and the expression of our love, by this we are saved. The Holy Ghost ingrafts this Word into our souls.

  17. arga says:

    Father repeated, in slow translation, the beautiful Collect of the Extraordinary Form for today. Then he said he would speak on modesty, mainly for the benefit of the women. Modesty is a type of temperance. Modesty safeguards purity. No modesty, no purity, because modesty is the refusal to unveil what should be hidden.

  18. Adaquano says:

    Father spoke about how important Barnabas was in Paul’s formation and how he wasn’t afraid to love Paul despite his past. As such we shouldn’t be afraid to reach out and present Jesus to those in our family, office or parish that need to see the love of God.

  19. MikeToo says:

    Father compared the perfection of the new earth to come and the present earth. He did not talk about the Amoris Laetitia but Laudato Si. He quoted multiple translations of “keep and till” the earth. He mentioned our responsibility to care for creation and this how it is authoritatively taught by the magisterium. He also mentioned that without a creator we do not have an incentive to protection creation. An central point of the document teaches that the same attitude which promotes a throw away ecology of the environment promotes a throw away ecology of man – including trowing away the unborn, the elderly, the sick and the poor.

  20. GrumpyYoungMan says:

    I’ve never considered this, Elizabeth D. Thank you for sharing!

  21. Matilda P says:

    Father referred to an anecdote from Mencius (he, and most of the audience, is ethnically Chinese) about a sage king whose father committed murder and so he would’ve had to sentence his own father to death. What should the young king do, he asked? He did not really answer this question, but did mention that after the Saturday vigil, where the same homily was preached, someone came up to him and said, “Perhaps he should declare a Jubilee Year of Mercy.” Probably a joke, but it was a little unsettling. Here in Singapore there’s not been much talk about AL at all, not that that’s to be expected. In any case, Father reminded us that true mercy is impossible without justice. True love incorporates both, and in Christ, we find that God has done just that – perfectly incorporated mercy and justice. As for us, the first rule in all we do is love. I thought that distinction between mercy, justice, and love was very helpful.

  22. iamlucky13 says:

    “Love one another” is an easy commandment to follow when everything is going your way and people are nice to you. In real life, it’s much more difficult.

    Father added a story about a French town under German occupation in WWII. Supposedly, the pastor in the town would ask each week for food donations from the people for the soldiers, who despite fighting for an invading army, were each young men, far from home and also enduring many of the hardships of war. However, after a resistance attack in the area, many villagers were executed as a reprisal, destroying the prior sense of charity and even angering the people against the priest who had inspired.

    That week he preached on this Gospel. Then he went to his usual place in the town square and again asked for food for the soldiers. The people accepted the message of the Gospel and again donated food to the soldiers who had murdered their family members.

    I tried briefly and haven’t been able to find a source for the story, but of course, even if made up, it still makes the point that Christ’s commandment can be difficult. Father actually called it unnatural to love this way, and said it requires supernatural grace to do so.

  23. Farmer0831 says:

    Somewhat similar to Reverend Father Philip’s published homily, which was an enriching read. Christ, in a new commandment, calls us to love each other _as he has loved us_. He does this on the night before He is crucified for our sake. That’s a very different kind of self-sacrificing love than the sort of selfish (but good, still!) love that we might otherwise feel called to…the call (from Deuteronomy) to love others “as we love ourselves”. The kind of love Christ’s new commandment calls us to is far greater and greatly difficult.

    Father also delved a tiny teensy bit into the idea that two wrong types of “love” are accepting the sin of others due to “love” or a feeling that love is due based on the merit (sinlessness) of the other. There are many, many reasons (sins) why we don’t deserve the love of Christ, but still He willingly gives it to us, while at the same time noting and rejecting our sins.

    (This priest for the most part avoids outright modernism in his homilies, but he’s not in the habit of pounding out “This is the true and holy doctrine of the Holy Catholic Church and there is no other truth than it!” types of homilies…this was about as close as I’ve seen him get.) Novus Ordo.

  24. JonPatrick says:

    EF Low Mass at St. John Cantius, Chicago. Probably the most beautiful church I have ever been in. Would have loved to stay for the High Mass but our flight schedule back to Maine dictated otherwise.
    Father preached on the Gospel where Jesus tells his disciples before his Passion how it is necessary that he leave them in order that they may receive the Holy Spirit, which they will need to fulfill what he has in store for them. Like the disciples, we need to ask for “the grace to love what thou dost command and to desire what thou dost promise” as the Collect says.

  25. PhilipNeri says:

    Chris Garton-Zavesky, I did leave out a word!

    Correction: The most *difficult* thing our Lord commands us to do: love one another.

    http://hancaquam.blogspot.com/2016/04/our-most-difficult-task.html

    Thanks for spotting the error.

    Fr. Philip Neri, OP

  26. Gregg the Obscure says:

    OF. Monsignor spoke of a woman who lost her brother – a man named Matthew LaPorte – in the mass murder at Virginia Tech in 2007, who after long prayer forgave the murderer. Not long thereafter a young woman who had been injured in the shooting contacted her to let her know that Matthew had blocked the door with desks to prevent the shooter from entering the classroom they were in and by so doing had saved the lives of others in that classroom. After that one of the first responders got in touch with her to let her know that Matthew, despite being shot eight times, died with a smile on his face. A vividly heroic example of the love we are to have for one another, even if our circumstances are less dramatic than that.

  27. Sliwka says:

    OF: our good Father said two things that stuck in my memory wrangling a toddler.

    1) if he (Father) were to say “love another as my mother loved me” we could guess, but we don’t really know. We know how Christ loved us, and it is given to us by Him in and as the Blessed Sacrament.

    2) He turned the old exhortation to new priests to celebrate each Mass as if it were his first, last, and only. He said we should do the same each time we come forward to receive Hoky Communion. As if it were our first, our last, and only. (Because every time may very well be our last he slipped in at the end).

  28. cornelius74 says:

    The priest gave a sermon focusing on what does it mean to love, especially when one thinks about one’s enemies. He stressed that to love does not mean to smile at everybody all the time. It also means that sometimes one has to be quite tough on someone, in particular if that person is comitting a grave error or even a sin. He recalled one of his tutors, a priest who has already passed – once they spoke about things, also about one bishop. The younger priest said that the bishop was quite fine, he was always nice to people… The older priest sat upright in his bed and thundered “Nice?! What does that even mean that a priest is nice to people? Our Lord Jesus was not nice to people!” Thus reminding our priest then that Christ had also some harsh words – for those who deserved them. So, the sermon concluded, we do have to strive to walk the path of love, as Christ has commanded us, but that does not mean we could not judge and take sides when it is necessary.

  29. Imrahil says:

    It is quite understandable that one get’s ennerved at constant reminders to be nice. It is true that there is a time and place when one should have to thunder out some harsh words. (#1)

    Also, it is quite understandable to be enerved at constant reminders to be sober, and quite tenable that there are some occasions that you might legitimately or even adequately celebrate with drinking to the point of tipsiness (#2).

    Still, if we treat “being nice” as though it were something downrightly bad means to overstate #1 just as much as we would overstate #2 by saying we should get downright drunk every day.

    —-

    Well that was a reply. Sorry. Couldn’t resist.

    As for the sermon I heard on Sunday, it was a sermon for the OF 5th Sunday of Eastertide. “When Judas had gone out”, i. e. when the whole process of the Passion, torture, pain and so on had been started, that God was glorified in that very instant. About Christ as The Martyr, and everything he had to give to us. About God’s love that gives anything to get people back from paths where they would harm themselves. Here our preacher inserted that by this he was not by any means justifying the helicopter-love of some parents, physicians and priests that would not let people any freedom. And then he mentioned the commandment to Love One Another. (He did so only at the end of his sermon, as a sort of culminating point, which I thought was a refreshing deviation from how it is usually done.)

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