It’s the 12th Sunday after Pentecost or else the 21st Ordinary Sunday. Was there a good point made in the sermon you heard during the Holy Mass in fulfillment your of Sunday Obligation? Let us know.
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Given the storms and flooding in our city, I will make reference to last week’s Gospel, and encourage the faithful to keep their eyes and hearts on Jesus. That focus leads Peter to make his profession of faith, and will lead us too. It is also the source of charity and all the other virtues we will need in the days ahead. I will also ask that we remain united in prayer and offer our inconveniences and sacrifices over the next few weeks for those who have really suffered and who are suffering because of hurricane Harvey (my parish is in Houston).
All that the Church has endured over the centuries bears witness to Christ’s promise that not even Hell will prevail against her. And his promise endures not b/c the Church is somehow mystically protected from harm. There’s no magic at work here. Christ identifies both Peter and Peter’s faith as the Rock the Church is built upon. With the Holy Spirit’s guarantee to Peter against error and the living faith of the People of God, the Church navigates the world’s dangers and the world’s silliness to maintain a constant heading toward preaching the Good News and caring for souls.
https://hancaquam.blogspot.com/2017/08/tape-it-to-you-coffee-pot-or-steering.html
I was the Rent-a-Priest at the Other Dominican Parish for the vigil. No one told me that the deacon was preaching, so I didn’t get to preach this one! Oh well.
Fr. Philip Neri, OP
For the first time in a while, we were told to GO TO CONFESSION.
“…on this Rock I will build my Church.” Church, not churches. One Holy CATHOLIC Apostolic Church.
XII Sunday after Pentecost, when the Gospel periscope relates the parable of the good Samaritan, so the parish priest exhorted us to remember how everyone is made in the image of God.
Fr spoke about being a priest and that we need to remember that being in the Church hierarchy, from Pope down to religious, might indicate holiness, but we’re all still sinners. We need to support and pray for our priests (and others).
In the story that follows this gospel reading, Peter starts telling Jesus what to do, and Jesus rebukes him with ‘get behind me Satan’. So while Peter had a wonderful moment of in this reading, he was back to being just human in the next story.
I’m not doing justice to his homily, but it was really good. Visiting priest from the Cathedral and he had a 10 AM mass back there after our 9 AM. It was a quick mass, with a short homily, but it was interesting.
Mass at Our Lady of Lourdes. Doubling as memorial for friend who volunteered a lot whose volunteering was used as an example of the living church, not the chancery, not the church building but the members actions.
Thete was also a baptism and after Mass I met a different baby.
21st Sunday Ordinary Time—what’s in a name?
In this Gospel, which forms the center of Matthew’s organized Gospel, Jesus and Simon are each given new names.
Simon bar-Jonah calls Jesus the “Christ”, or in Aramaic, the “Messiah”, that is the Anointed One of God, whom the Jews were eagerly anticipating.
Jesus renames Simon Peter, or ‘kepha’ in Aramaic, which means Rock. Peter has a singular role amongst the Apostles after this.
Also, this particular Gospel passage is also one of the few times that “church” (“kehala’ or “assembly”) is mentioned.
Fr recalled St Peter’s Basilica, in which Peter is buried in a simple tomb under the main altar. Above, in mosaic letters, is “Petrus” in 7 foot tall letters. (“Tu es Petrus et super hanc petram aedificabo ecclesiam mean et tibi dabo claves regni caelorum”)
Peter, and, it is understood, his successors, are to be the rock upon which the Church—the assembly of believers—is established.
12th Sunday after Pentecost: highlighting Jewish vs. Samaritan conflict at time of the parable, Father said we had to forgive our enemies if we want to be forgiven by God; he said racism is a great sin, no matter who does it — black against white as well as white against black– again, playing off the Jew vs. Samaritan hatreds. Both sinned.
OF mass for 21st Ordinary Sunday. Father focused on our Lords words “who do you say that I am?”. And that Jesus is addressing us with this as well. He then challenged us to ask ourselves is our faith developed where we can confidently say with Peter “you are the Christ, the son of the living God” and really believe it or are we stuck with an infantile faith and just repeating back what we have been taught by CCD teachers or our parents.
The priest spoke about Fatima and devotion to the Immaculate Heart. He reminded us that this is the anniversary of St Maximilian Kolbe’s founding of the Militia Immaculatae.
If I burn down my neighbour’s house, and am then sorry for what I did, it is not enough to tell my neighbour “I’m so sorry”, and then go back to my comfortable house, while my neighbour huddles in the ruins of his house. Repentance includes reparation. Also a good son will console his mother if others have insulted her. So we make reparation for our own offenses against the Immaculate Heart, and for those of others.
The priest mentioned how one of his greatest regrets in life was being bored at Mass for many years, how he felt grief for all of that wasted time.
That comment struck me like a lightning bolt, because that is my current predicament. I stopped driving to traditional parishes because I deemed them to be too far away. Yet, by establishing distance as my key factor, I have experienced a drastic collapse in my prayer and faith life.
I have become a stoic bump on a log.
No homily for us today. All our Masses were cancelled because of the state of emergency here in Houston; everyone ordered to shelter in place.
We gathered our family around the kitchen table with the Magnificat, taking turns with the readings. Our children spotted the parallels between the Isaiah reading about Eliakim and the Gospel account of Peter receiving the keys. Then our 14 year old remembered something about the location in Caesarea Phillippi being important… Yes! The famous pagan worship center there carved out of rock – juxtaposed with the new “Rock” on which the true Church is built.
Our kids think being Catholic is “mind-blowing.”
EF Mass. It is hard to follow the example of the Good Samaritan, to love God with all our heart, mind, etc. and to truly love our neighbor; we need the grace of God. The Law shows us our sinfulness then we need God to set us right as we cannot do this with our own strength.
Father used the similar language about the importance of the keys to discuss links between the master of the palace in the first reading as a representative of the king when he is absent, basically the same role assigned to Peter that he would play after the Resurrection. He also talked about the promise to found the Church on a solid foundation, and the fact that the Catholic Church alone fits that’s description due to its history tracing back to Peter.
My husband and I stopped for Mass in Central Valley, Utah, on our way west. The (young) priest gave a powerhouse sermon about the truth of the Church’s teachings. He said that if he didn’t speak the truth, people’s salvation would be at risk. He told the congregation that speaking and living the truth was also our job. He spoke against abortion, homosexuality, immodesty. He also very pointedly and repeatedly said the Mass is not entertainment but is for the worship of God in the Eucharist. I wish we could clone him and spread him throughout the Church!
I went to two different Masses (doesn’t happen often).
First was a classical Good Samaritan Sermon which did include the thought that Christ is, as it were, himself the Good Samaritan who rescues us who have fallen amongst the robbers. I remember that when I was first at a TLM for the 12th Sunday, this was also mentioned and then an entirely new thought to me.
Second began with, like, “this was the Gospel on the Good Samaritan whom we all know very well, so I’d like to focus on one specific thing.” This one specific thing was the fact that Christ, who’s identification with the Good Samaritan was apparently treated as a matter of course, poured wine and oil into our woulds. St. Anthony of Padua, who was a very famous Saint etc. said that this means the wine of unvarnished truth and the oil of merciful goodness. And the preaching of St. Anthony himself was so successful, surely because his life was saintly, but also because of his style of preaching which was precisely that (here our preacher departed a bit into an excerpt from the life of St. Anthony with his successes, etc.). This means that though the wine when disinfecting the would may burn, it nevertheless must be applied, but the oil must not be missing. And if the oil is not missing, then the wine can be tolerated, e. g. (and he literally gave These two examples, and others I do not quite remember), if the preacher is teaching the holiness and preciousness of marital love, then the preacher must say and will be able to be understood that contraception is forbidden, and when the preacher is teaching about the eternal bliss in Heaven, then it is possible to also teach the unvarnished truth about Hell.
[I should say: I went to two different EF Masses, and that doesn’t happen often.]
The Gospel for today, Gregorian calendar UGCC, was Matthew 19:16-26, and the homily was pretty much the obvious. Don’t let the things you own own you, etc.