It was a complicated Sunday! Any good points from the Mass? From the homily?
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We didn’t have a sermon.
Straight from the long gospel to the creed and petitions.
I missed mass today. Not my fault but I still miss it.
The Byzantine Gospel reading at the Divine Liturgy was Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. For all the Sundays of Great Lent, our priest has been talking about the Mysteries(Sacraments) and tying the Gospel reading to that. Today, Father spoke about how being bound up in sin is just like Lazarus laying in the tomb and that we are dead in our soul until we seek forgiveness and Jesus calls us out of the tomb. The timing was perfect as we had four priests available after Liturgy for the parish to make a good confession for Pascha.
“Palm Sunday Homily”
“All the love poetry that has ever existed, every recorded and remembered act of heroic love ever, even combined, is not as powerful a love story as today’s gospel, that is, the passion.”
“That final cry Jesus gave was no cry of despair or agony, but that final breath gives us life, just as the spirit as a wind over the waters gave the world life in Genesis.”
and most importantly, “Christ gave us his very being so that we may live. That host you will receive today, either on hand or tongue, is the key to salvation. That’s it. NO other way.”
Complicated Sunday – happily many visitors, unhappily some behavior of some of the same that, at times, my thoughts went from confiscating, crossing the aisle, toy trucks and cars with my finger over my mouth, to being blind, to being deaf, to being – not there – then to being a hermit more thna forgiving and patient – but, mostly in the state of mind of the portrayal shown in the daily offering at the right. Kids ruling. Fathers – absent. Mothers out to lunch. Men remaining seated looking around but not at the collection basket, then hopping up for Communion. Palm shreddings littering with whole palms.
Substitute Priest of good humor. At the Procession of palm blessing by Holy Water, he warned that some might get a burning sensation or sizzling bacon smell and that would mean having to return to church.
His message was: if we could imagine being of the crowd as Jesus entered Jerusalem singing Hosanna to Him, then could we imagine how our sin joins us with the crowd shouting ‘Crucify Him’ at His trial. Life of Hosanna or life of Crucify?
After, a blessing with a glove of Padre Pio.
No sermon, but very long and beautiful Mass with boys choir. In France, palms are not used, but local shrubs, such as bamboo leaves and privet.
No homily either – High Mass took 1h 45 minutes without it, and 2 hours after the start the next Mass was scheduled to start, so Father was pushing it already.
I talked about the many people in the Passion Gospel. All of them had to make choices in their lives, choices that would effect their lives and their eternity. We also have choices to make. Will we choose Christ, or evil and sin? May we be like the woman with the alabaster jar of perfume and do what we know to be right, true and holy, despite those around who intimidate us with fear and rejection.
Very short homily pointing out the veiled statues (new this year), why we veil statues (and why churches sillilly stopped veiling), and why bringing back our symbols and traditions (read “identity”) is important to our acting like Catholics in everyday life.
@pberginjr
Good to hear father preached about that. I heard from relatives that in their parish, when one of the children was asked why the statutes were veiled, the answer was ‘so they won’t gather dust for Easter’. (granted, at a certain age you’re liable to get all sorts of answers out of a kid except the correct one, but still….)
+John preached about St. Mark’s emphasize on Christ’s loneliness in His Passion and death. Except for the woman, who anointed Christ’s feet and got dissed by everyone because of the expense, Jesus was very alone in His Passion and death. This loneliness, he said, shows how God has entered into every kind of human suffering. He also said Christ rode on a donkey, as did Solomon, to show that He was the true heir of King David.
Card. George celebrated, but our cathedral rector gave the homily. He’s a good speaker, but more often than not his homilies sound more like a sales pitch than a sermon. His homily was structured around the idea that Palm Sunday “sets the table” for Holy Week and then he went on to delineate the schedule for Holy Week. Information someone could have just picked up from the bulletin. On the bright side, however, he did make a point of encouraging people to go to confession and said that over the course of the week confession will be available for a total of 23 hours.
Father explained how the proclamation of the Gospel for the Lord’s Passion is participated in by all (Latin Rite, NO) in order to highlight the fact that we all played a part through our fault – through the sin of all humanity…that we are responsible. He said that’s the bad news. He said the good news is that through Christ’s sacrifice, the price has been paid, the sin is done away with, and that we are not merely covered but are clean.
He then went on to highlight the unique details in Mark’s account compared to the others.
At the blessing of the palms outside in front of the church Father urged us to sing strongly and hold our palms aloft as witness to the people in the cars passing by of the hope we feel because of what is coming at the end of this Holy Week. After the reading of the long Gospel he again mentioned the palms, asking us to display them prominently in our homes so that when we are discouraged, sick, troubled, or apathetic we can look at the palm as a sign of the hope Jesus gives us in His Resurrection.
At the parish in East Haven, Connecticut where I attended Mass yesterday morning, I was pleased to get a very good homily from a deacon. (For some reason, I have found deacons’ homilies to be somewhat flat, which should not be the case as one might expect them to have lots of real-life experience that priests lack.) He stressed that Jesus was fully human and fully divine and was fully suffering the way a fully human person would suffer, but in His divinity was able to save us from our sins. We, like Thomas Aquinas, will never fully probe the depths of just what being fully human and fully divine means.
Nice homily on why Jesus rode a donkey colt into Jerusalem. (Ancient sign of peace, the OT prophecy tie-in, etc.) Donkey was compared to how God chose to let us participate in His plan of salvation, instead of just leaving us totally out of it. It was a fairly long homily with a lot of meat.
That was the only long homily the entire weekend, as far as I can tell. Slipped out to go to the bathroom another time, and couldn’t get back until the middle of the petitions!
We had no sermon either, disappointingly. Father Z, I had understood that a sermon on a Sunday or Holy day was obligatory unless there was sufficient serious reason not to give one- is this correct?