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In easternmost Lubec Maine for Columbus Day weekend, so no EF Mass (in this rural part of Maine you are lucky to find any kind of Mass yet alone the TLM), attended the OF Mass Saturday night at Sacred Heart Church, parish of St. Peter the Fisherman. The Deacon gave the homily. In life we are given graces but sometimes little things interfere with how we receive these graces. He used the example of a picnic, everything is perfect, the food , the weather, but then the mosquitoes show up and start to irritate us and eventually if we allow it they can ruin the whole experience. It is also that way in our spiritual life. We have to not allow the little things that happen to us during the day to divert us from doing God’s will. We worry too much about yesterday and tomorrow and should live as though each day was an entity unto itself, yesterday no longer exists and tomorrow may never come for us.
Please pray for Fr. Gene Gaffey who broke his ankle in a motorcycle accident (he uses his bike to get around his large and sparsely populated parish) and had to say Mass in a wheelchair, but is starting to recover.
The nine lepers weren’t bad people, nor were they bad Jews. They did exactly as they were told, exactly what was prescribed in Leviticus. The 10th leper was different be cause he, like Naaman, became passionate about the God who saved him. We are here this morning because we are good Catholics, we are observant Catholics. But are we passionate about our Catholic faith? Are we passionate about the God who saved us?
Distinguished between belief and faith; is possible to believe everything about the faith but to do none of it. Unless we are living our faith we cannot consider our selves people of faith.
(Elaborated, examples, application …)
Deacon gave the culture of life homily. Very strong and clearly worded about Church’s life issues – abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, drug and alcohol abuse, suicide, war, etc. distinguished between those that are always sinful and those that can be sinful but may not be (e.g. a just war). Very clear, concise, and with many good examples of what we can do to foster a culture of life. I liked it and hope it sunk in with all.
Pardon a slight off-topic: on Saturday, confessions ran 43 minutes long due to high demena. THey continued into the 5:30 Mass.
A very strong yet loving exhortation to pray the Rosary.
In these days of the left using the military as a politically correct social experiment, orthodox Catholics may have to choose not to serve.
There were 10 lepers healed, but only one remembered to thank the one who healed him. I was at the late show at the college seminary, packed house. I had a seat toward the back, in the folding chair zone, nevertheless kneeled when I’m supposed to. The people in my row followed my example.
The priest dwelled with the verse “your faith has cured you”, highlighting the two aspects – the man could not cure himself, but on the other hand, God, who did it, is not somewhere “out”, but in the man, through his faith. He then pointed to the analogy of Jesus-full man and full God and the Church-human and Divine. Conclusion: God is not somewhere alongside us, but within us, in our innermost self, if only we let Him. Therefore we are never alone, unless we want to.
Thanksgiving to God is not simply the act of saying ‘thank you’, but a way of life. Jesus Christ is the only one who can truly give thanks to the Father so in order to give thanks to Him we must enter into the Life of Christ.
@FrJim4321……………Good point you made about being passionate about the faith!
@Father Z………….I know you frown on us posting the bad points but please excuse me this time. Our sermon was about how pre-Vatican II, we were taught there was no salvation outside the Church. Now EVERYONE is considered to be within the church of God. It left me feeling, “why be Catholic?” No worry though, I know why I am Catholic but with sermons like this it would be hard to convince anyone that they might want to convert. It was left unsaid that we have the fullness of the faith. Sad! Thank God I did not experience this type of teaching until I was strong enough in my faith to see through it!! Thanks be to God!!!
Thank God….Continuously. Thanks should come more often than wants.
In a wonderful, quiet OF Mass Fr. said that when we pray, our prayer should be:
A – Adoration
C – Contrition
T – Thanksgiving
S – Supplication
We heard from our young priest about today’s lepers: homosexuals. He had met with a young man who struggles with SSA and started a ministry to help other Christians in that situation. Father said that oftentimes Christians with SSA feel that they need to live in shame, fear, and silence, similar to how lepers lived in Biblical times. He called on us to reach out to these people and not be afraid to engage them. I was very happy he spoke about this. It seems to me that many gay people feel so lonely and fearful in Church that even if they want to live faithful lives they have no one to go to so they end up going where they feel accepted and loved. Unfortunately those usually aren’t the best places.
“…however much we may be aware of our own sinfulness, however afflicted the Church may seem to be, however decadent and morally wicked humanity may look to us, the Lord cannot be unfaithful to his love and his work of rehabilitation without denying himself. He is always disposed to cure and to save. We may experience some humiliating failure; we may go through a long period of moral laxity. But it would be wrong for us to hesitate in our return to God out of some feeling of shame. He knows who and what we are, and he is untiring in his work of saving us.”
Another way is this:
R-repentance
A-adoration
P-petition
T-thanksgiving
Father’s sermon was on the heresy of iconcolasm, and how we being made in the image and likeness of God allows us to venerate icons. Also talked about how not all of the churches restored icons fully. It was the Sunday of the 7th Ecumenical Council.
EF Gospel here. The Lord forgave a large debt but the man could not forgive his debtor, so was condemned. Father explained that Christian forgiveness is not that sins are erased but rather was a break with the Old Testament, as recorded in the Paternoster (dimite debitas nostras). In the times of Moses it was an eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth. A bit was lost on translation because the earlier idea meant one tooth for one tooth, two for two and so on. For the Christian, forgiveness means not to pursue revenge from your offenders, let them be as they were.
I had never had this explained to me, but then this is a very, very Holy priest who was transfered by Cardinal Mahony for his love for the Traditional Mass.
It was a Sung Mass with a wonderful choir and afterwards we had Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament on account of the world being dedicated to the Sacred Heart of the Virgin Mary by Pope Francis. When the O Salutaria Hostia and Tantum Ergo were sung I almost cried of happiness. You see, I had never experienced such beauty before. But now I have. Deo Gratias, and Una Voce too.
To fully have a relationship with someone, and not just a superficial acquaintance, we have to talk to them, and learn about them, not just yammer on about ourselves and our needs. That in our prayer life, we tend to fall into the bad habit expressed in the bar joke, “So, that’s enough about me; what do you think about me?” We are eager to talk to Him when we are in need of something, but how often do we talk to Him just to thank Him or praise Him for His glory? We need to be like the one leper, who recognized and returned to thank Him.
At the end of Mass, someone came to speak to us of the upcoming Rachel’s Vineyard retreat, (Fr. is the chaplain for that ministry). Father said in his introduction, referencing Pope Francis’ recent statement about the Church being a field hospital, “If the Church is a field hospital, Rachel’s Vineyard is a trauma unit.” So true…