Was there a good point made in the sermon you heard for your Mass of Sunday obligation?
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Was there a good point made in the sermon you heard for your Mass of Sunday obligation?
Let us know!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
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Coat of Arms by D Burkart
St. John Eudes
- Prosper of Aquitaine (+c.455), De gratia Dei et libero arbitrio contra Collatorem 22.61
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“He [Satan] will set up a counter-Church which will be the ape of the Church because, he the devil, is the ape of God. It will have all the notes and characteristics of the Church, but in reverse and emptied of its divine content. It will be a mystical body of the anti-Christ that will in all externals resemble the mystical body of Christ. In desperate need for God, whom he nevertheless refuses to adore, modern man in his loneliness and frustration will hunger more and more for membership in a community that will give him enlargement of purpose, but at the cost of losing himself in some vague collectivity.”
“Who is going to save our Church? Not our bishops, not our priests and religious. It is up to you, the people. You have the minds, the eyes, and the ears to save the Church. Your mission is to see that your priests act like priests, your bishops act like bishops.”
- Fulton Sheen
Therefore, ACTIVATE YOUR CONFIRMATION and get to work!
- C.S. Lewis
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"But if, in any layman who is indeed imbued with literature, ignorance of the Latin language, which we can truly call the 'catholic' language, indicates a certain sluggishness in his love toward the Church, how much more fitting it is that each and every cleric should be adequately practiced and skilled in that language!" - Pius XI
"Let us realize that this remark of Cicero (Brutus 37, 140) can be in a certain way referred to [young lay people]: 'It is not so much a matter of distinction to know Latin as it is disgraceful not to know it.'" - St. John Paul II
Grant unto thy Church, we beseech Thee, O merciful God, that She, being gathered together by the Holy Ghost, may be in no wise troubled by attack from her foes. O God, who by sin art offended and by penance pacified, mercifully regard the prayers of Thy people making supplication unto Thee,and turn away the scourges of Thine anger which we deserve for our sins. Almighty and Everlasting God, in whose Hand are the power and the government of every realm: look down upon and help the Christian people that the heathen nations who trust in the fierceness of their own might may be crushed by the power of thine Arm. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. R. Amen.
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Father gave the last of four sermons on the Four Last Things. Today was Death. He stated among many other things that all He asks of us is that we return His love. His charity and mercy are unfathomable. All He asks is that we abandon sin. We can know we truly love Christ if we truly abandon sin. If we keep on sinning and make light of it, we do not truly love Christ.
Father mentioned only the gospel of St Luke has the exchange between Jesus and the two thieves. Just as St Gesmas asked for forgiveness and pardon (even though he was justly condemned) we too can ask for forgiveness and receive pardon through confession and be with Jesus in paradise too. For we know not the hour or day when we will die and receive our judgement.
Thankfully, Father today gave only announcements, with an exhortation about how participation in Holy Week is important and how it is through liturgy that our personal prayers reach God. Worth mentioning is that the subdeacon, after the procession, gave the traditional triple knock which was removed in the 1955 Holy Week, and that the Weeping Tone was used at the last part of the Passion account which I hear from various chant folks is rarely used anymore
I opted for a period of silence, as the OF Missal allows.
We had no sermon at all. I wondered whether that was a tradition for Palm Sunday, but possibly it was just to limit the length of the Mass, as the blessing of palms and procession plus reading of the Passion made it longer than usual?
Interestingly, I didn’t even notice the lack of a sermon at the time; it only occurred to me later in the day that there hadn’t been one!
We didn’t have a sermon, either. But the deacon who chanted the Gospel–except for Jesus’ parts, natch–did a fantastic job. We are very blessed. The entire Mass was so moving, as it always is.
Father James Dean (yes, James Dean), pastor at St. Joseph Parish In Prattville, AL, spoke about why our practice during the Easter season will be to pray Mass ad orientem!
He gave all the usual reasons. I literally cried tears of joy while pumping my fists.
After reading the Passion by himself in its entirety, Father offered a one sentence sermon: “Sometimes we don’t know that someone loves us, because we don’t stop and listen and watch.” He then went on to offer the Mass and certainly he had my attention fixed on what the Lord was then doing.
Sermon was about the highs and lows of Holy Week. High: Jesus entering Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. And then, within a few short days, the betrayal, arrest, crucifixion and death of Jesus. How many of the people in the crowd yelling “Crucify him!” had welcomed Him into Jerusalem just a few days before?
We are Blessed in that we had a Solemn High Mass. Fr Longua, our pastor, served as Deacon, and our Fr. Brodsky served as celebrant. The FSSP seminary sent us a 5 year Seminarian. (I missed his name) to serve as SubDeacon. We are all very excited for the Triduum this year. The choir is working hard and we have a total of almost 30 altar boys. They are divided into teams with each team having 3-4 experienced lads and 6-7 trainees. This should provide all of them with some time off as the liturgical season can be pretty tough and the boys.
Fr. Longua is a super homilist and again just “blew” us away with explaining what was happening in the Gospel and the “why” it was being sung now.
My wife and I have name Passion-tide and the Triduum, our season of “liturgical overload. Love it.
We had an excellent sermon. Father contrasted the two gospels. He asked us also to consider Peter’s behavior compared to the good thief’s and where are we with our behavior? Does our behavior actually put us with those who shouted “Crucify him!”? He exhorted us to make this a HOLY week and told us to go to confession.
At our Byzantine Rite Palm Sunday, Father reminded us that people sometimes go from the celebration of Jesus triumphal entry to the celebration of the resurrection without contemplating what is in between. We cannot have the resurrection without the cross.
Father pointed to the Crucifix hanging above the altar and reminded us that you can’t celebrate the Resurrection without the Cross – and that there HAS to be a body on the Cross. An empty cross just won’t do. The only way to Resurrection and Salvation is through Jesus and His Sacrifice – that He made for each and every single one of us. Are we willing to follow Him and His example?
No sermon.
I was brief. I encouraged everyone to give each other tbe gift of silence this week so we can reflect on Holy Week. I invited everyone to confession and to the Triduum, “the heart of the heart of our faith.”
Well, no, there was not a good point in the sermon, because there was no sermon.
However, we were truly blessed to celebrate, by permission of the Holy See, to celebrate the Palm Sunday liturgy in (almost) all its 1954 glory, missa sicca and all.
And having the longer form of the Passion (including the Last Supper etc.) and the general Old-Rite practice to stand to it as to the Gospel, not sit down like the Novus Ordo practice, and because – I say that not wishing to brag, but merely to explain – ever since my military service I try (somewhat) to do so in “at attention” posture (apart from the hands which are, of course, folded in front), I experienced a rather interesting lesson about the redemption which our Lord’s death on the Cross brought.
I was, finally, able to kneel down.
A big kudos, as our reverend host would say, to the wisdom inherent in the liturgy.