Your Sunday Sermon Notes and Passion Sunday POLL: veils on images

Was there a good point made during the sermon you heard for your Mass of obligation this  5th Sunday of Lent (Novus Ordo).

From this Sunday, traditionally called 1st Sunday of the Passion, it is customary to veil images in churches.  In the Gospel in traditional Form of the Roman Rite we hear:

Tulérunt ergo lápides, ut iácerent in eum: Iesus autem abscóndit se, et exívit de templo.  … They therefore took up stones to cast at Him; but Jesus hid Himself, and went out from the temple.

What is going on where you are?

This is a fine old tradition.  It has to do with deprivation of the senses and the liturgical dying of the Church in preparation for the Lord’s tomb and resurrection.  We do this to sense something of the humiliation of the Lord as he enters His Passion, something of His interior suffering.

We are also being pruned during Lent.  From Septuagesima onward we lose things bit by bit in the Church’s sacred liturgy until, at the Vigil, we are even deprived of light itself.  The Church is liturgically dying.

We are our rites.

Choose your best answer.  Anyone can vote, but only registered and approved users can comment.   Let us know what you saw!

At my Latin Rite church, for this 1st Passion Sunday (5th of Lent) - 2018 - I saw:

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12 Comments

  1. Adaquano says:

    This is our first Lent at our new NO parish. All images and statues were veiled. My 3 y.o. asked immediately where Jesus was, which was a good chance to talk about Passion Tide. Fr. took a moment to explain this in his homily too, while reviewing the covenants we have read this Lent. He then explained the importance of dying to self and challenged us to receive reconciliation, go to Adoration, attend Holy Week liturgies and focus on our prayer life to prepare for the Passion.

  2. maternalView says:

    I was just explaining to my daughter that I remember as a child seeing the statues covered. Then it was stopped. I was told that it was because it made the church too scary.

    Our homily today was an excellent treatise on the Catholic theology of Jesus’ human and divine nature. Also covered how God keeps his covenant with us but we don’t with God.

  3. Prayerful says:

    Every image or statue that could be covered, was covered, and this absence or sensory deprivation, this humbling was used to provide a setting for Fr’s remarks on evil as both absence and choice. Evil is the absence of good, but is also a choice. An angel, which the devil is, chose the inferior course of evil, so too do those who engage in evil. The diocesan Solemn High Mass always has a short, pointed homily, a far better thing to remember and absorb. Homilies ranging widely over the evils of society, aren’t as effective, in my very humble opinion. Adult and youth catechesis afterwards in a parish hall, can and those be used to make up for gaps in, or even the absence of, religious education. Homilies aren’t always the best vehicle for that.

  4. mikeinmo says:

    Father made reference to the film “Darkest Hour” and to the old saying “It is darkest before the dawn”. In the “Darkest Hour” there was great uncertainty as to whether or not there would be a dawn. In the darkest hours of Lent, we KNOW there will be a dawn.

    We were reminded of the extended hours for Confession this coming Thursday morning and Thursday evening. The Kyrie, the Sanctus, and the Agnus Dei were sung in Latin. Our parish (St. Joseph) will celebrate the related feast day tomorrow morning. However, the congregation participated in the Litany of St. Joseph today. An excerpt of the Litany refers to God’s “ineffable providence” in choosing St. Joseph as the spouse of Mary.

    Sound liturgy and homily is the norm.

  5. Sconnius says:

    The nature of my work takes me to different towns on weekends from time to time. The parish where i was didnt have anything veiled, even though Father made many references to seeing or looking for Jesus. The parish where I am from my boys and I helped Father veil the statuary on Saturday morning.

  6. jaykay says:

    Images not yet veiled, but will be next Sunday. The veiling was dropped for a few years (it having always been on first Passion Sunday before that, as long as I could remember – back to the early 60s) but thankfully reinstated about 7 years ago, albeit now from Palm Sunday.

    The sermon was on the human and divine nature of Jesus, and on how Mary is truly Mother of God.

  7. APX says:

    Our statues were veiled after Mass.

  8. frjim4321 says:

    Started homily by reciting the 27 words of Amendment II, which is in the news particularly due to the support of the Parkland survivors demonstrated this past Thursday morning by tens of thousands of students through the county. Demonstrated that there are various tools used in the consideration of those 27 words, which parallel the tools we use to access the truths of scripture, with examples from Jeremiah, Romans and John of Historical Criticism, Redaction Criticism and Textual Criticism; but while contrasting the passion with which the first is often embraced with the lack passion with which the second is often demonstrated. Identified the notion of passion with the ministry of prophet, eg., Jeremiah’s forceful proclamation of a new expression of the covenant (in the relational term, “I will be your God, you will be my people”), and even John’s Jesus’ dramatic embrace of his mission as the seed which falls to the ground and dies in order to give life; the ministry of prophecy being characterized by the kind of passion that is single-mindedly dedicated to a cause without regard to the cost, even to the point of sacrificing one’s life. To a degree we are all called to a prophetic, passionate expression of the Faith, giving witness to our awareness of God’s saving plan for us in the here and now. The passion that we have seen, and will continue to see, on the part of modern day prophets like Emma Gonzales, David Hogg, Jensen Clark, Sam Schneider and their companions with respect to their cause challenges us all to evaluate the degree of passion with which we embrace and share the Good News of Jesus Christ. There are 27 words in the Second Amendment. There are 27 books in the New Testament. It’s time for Catholic Christians to bring the same degree of energy and enthusiasm to our promotion of the latter as we have recently and dramatically witnessed with respect to the former.

  9. pcharbel says:

    All statues and images were covered except St. Joseph.

    But don’t get too comfortable, Joe — after we celebrate your feast tomorrow, it’ll be time for a little nap.

  10. JonPatrick says:

    All of our statues, images, and crosses were covered, even the little crosses on the flagpoles.

    After Jesus says in effect “I AM is my name” that is calling himself God, he withdraws to prepare himself and his disciples for the coming passion. There is a corresponding withdrawal, a restraint in the liturgy so that we will now focus more on the meaning. We are encouraged to an interior participation in Jesus death and resurrection so that people will see him in us.

    [Crosses on the flagpoles… nice touch.]

  11. Hans says:

    We will be veiling statues in my parish for the first time in anyone’s memory, though the veils are still being made.

  12. JesusFreak84 says:

    The Shrine of Christ the King, Sovereign Priest, recently had to relocate its Masses to the social hall, so the only statue in the newly-dubbed St. Joseph Crypt Chapel is the huge statue of the Infant King. There’s been pictures of Mary and St. Joseph on their respective sides of the altar, but those were simply taken down.

    I wish I could remember more of Canon Talarico’s sermon, but Asperger’s has rendered my memory for verbal instruction virtually useless -.-;;; I do remember liking it, and that he said that the statue being veiled was “fasting for the eyes” and how we would unveil the Crucifix bit by bit on Good Friday. I believe during the pre-Lenten season, one of the Canons had observed that the lack of the organ was meant to be “fasting for the ears,” so this has been a “theme,” I suppose.

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