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Father talked of the Synod and asked us all to read John Allen’s column in this weekends Boston Globe.
On a Parental Catechismal note: my boys were fighting over a quarter I gave the seven year old to put in the collection basket and was upset when it passed by. In the car I reviewed the gospel: “A king threw a part and invited lots of people. One guy showed up in ripped jeans and not in his party clothes so the king thew him out and he missed the party. You’re a Scout, what’s the Scout’s motto?” “Be Prepared,” was his answer. “You were goofing off and weren’t prepared like the guy at the party. What’ s the lesson?” “Don’t goof off and Be Prepared.” “There ya go. Save the quarter for next week.”
The priest in my parish was kind enough to hear my confession, unscheduled, after Mass. He made my day.
NO: Our Lord’s ardor for souls does not diminish even though we receive his invitation coldly. Father’s homily ended with an invocation (unattributed) to the Sacred Heart: Heart of Jesus, burning with love of us, / Inflame our hearts with love of You!
This morning’s sermon was all about ‘Extra ecclesiam nulla salus’. Very pleased.
Today at Missa Cantata, the Gospel was the healing of the paralytic. We can get caught in the external signs instead of focusing on the realities they represent; the important part of the story was the forgiveness of sins, not the healing which merely demonstrated He had the power to forgive sins. In the same way, we can get caught up in miracles and prophecies which come with the various Marian apparitions, and forget the message of those apparitions- do penance and acts of reparation while you are alive. Thus we were exhorted, do penances and acts of reparation.
Despite not feeling the best during Mass, there was one point that caught my attention. Father said “our churches must inspire” in the worship of God.
Fantastic, but short sermon on how too many of us get caught up with what is “urgent” instead of what is “essential”. What is essential is following Christ, prayer, being Christians in the world. The urgent we always have with us, said the priest, a Canon of St. Augustine at St. John’s Co-Cathedral.
I heard in the homily today at an Ordinary Form Mass in Henderson, NV that the Bishops of the United States have requested that anyone who approaches the priest or any other minister of Holy Communion desiring to receive Holy Communion on the tongue be refused i.e. we must receive in the hand due to concerns over Ebola. I heard the same thing yesterday at Saturday morning Mass, but in that announcement it seemed like it was only the Bishop of Las Vegas who had made this decision and that it applied only in this diocese. I can find nothing on the USCCB website though or the Diocese of Las Vegas website. Has anyone else heard anything about this in any other diocese?
On the one hand Father just repeated and summarized the First Reading and the Gospel, but on the other hand that was all he did.
I had the opportunity to attend a TLM today and Father spoke of the importance of receiving Holy Communion with a pure heart and thus the importance of frequent confession. Another priest was hearing confessions before and until the middle of Mass. How often do most of the faithful hear of the importance of frequent confession and a pure heart for the Lord?
In traveling and being able to attend Holy Mass daily–in some beautiful but sparsely attended churches–I thought of how those churches were built to accommodate the reverence and beauty of the TLM. And then just think of what most of the modern churches–for the Novus Ordo–look like. Big difference. I pray for the spread of the TLM and faithful preaching of the truths of our holy faith.
Our priest spent the sermon telling us how the door to the banquet is open to us… Are we ready to receive? How it is a testament to human nature that some are killed bringing the message, some are forgotten, and yet the message is still there. Are our hearts open to it?
It’s always hard to find parking the day of the ravioli dinner. (Wait, what’s that you say? That was just part of the announcements? Nevermind, I remember the homily too…)
Fr. brought home the gravity of paralysis, to have arms and legs and a whole body but be unable to use it, by pointing out that even in recent history people in severe paralysis have been misdiagnosed as being, to gloss over the finer points of neuroscience, effectively brain-dead, when in fact they simply can’t move even to communicate. As he discussed this I thought to myself, “There’s probably a symbolic sense, too, about how the forgiveness of sins is an even more important form of healing.” No sooner had I thought it than Fr. said something to the effect of, “That’s paralysis of the body. What about paralysis of the soul?” After listing examples of the ways sin enslaves the will and darkens the intellect, Fr. went on to talk about how the paralytic’s friends helped him get to Jesus, and related that to how we have to help each other live out our Faith and reach out to people who don’t know it.
Father talked about to be prepared when God calls us for His Banquet, and also about how we dress when we go to Mass (good point).
Our Deacon reflected on the harshness of the NO Gospel reading. “Then the king said to his attendants, ‘Bind his hands and feet, and cast him into the darkness outside, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.’ Many are invited but few are chosen.”
He even went down the path of our choosing heaven or hell and what is it that we really wanted in his sermon. It was a good wakeup call and I’m thankful for his sermon.
The whole sermon was a good point. Father quite eloquently told everyone to go to confession.
OF Mass…
We are those who came to the celebration while (with a nod towards the empty pews) some were invited and did not come.
We must come dressed for the event or we will be kicked out by the bouncer–St. Peter, who mans the pearly gates. (Father is from a different country. I don’t think he meant that the celebration was a nightclub!)
We are fortunate because if we happen to spill something our good clothing we have the sacrament of reconciliation to make them clean again.
I’ve over simplified. Father usually speaks for 15 to 20 minutes.
The main point of the homily was “Go to Confession! “
Priam: What??? It’s EBOLA, not the Bird Flu! You are far more likely to get MANY other communicable diseases than Ebola by that means, and yet the communicable disease rate in America does not go up after every Mass. That’s just crazy. Almost everyone at my (small) Mass received on the tongue today, no word to that effect here…
EF, sermon was on three types of confession, devotional confession, general confession, normal confession. Father went over when we should do each type of confession, it was a rather instructional sermon.
NO Mass: Our pastor is a good homilist, but this is one of the better ones he’s done for awhile. Part of what he discussed was the cultural meaning of the wedding garment and the apparent irony in the fact that the one guy who showed up was thrown into the darkness because he wasn’t wearing it. He linked this to the arrogance of our presumption that, just because we’ve got our invitation in hand, we’ll get in the front door just because we show up.
This was the Sunday commemorating the Fathers of the 7th Ecumenical Council, so we got a history lesson, catechesis {sp?} about the holy icons, and Father’s yearly longing to see more icons and fewer Twilight posters when he blesses homes.
Father (the curate) spoke of how during the apostasy of the past decades little emphasis has been placed on sin. Bishops have said little on it. He wondered how they will account for this when they are questioned in the hereafter. He concluded by describing St John Vianney (his statue right behind the pulpit) heroic hearing of confessions (quite handily, this church has confessions that run before and part of the way through the Mass). This was a Tridentine Mass which possibly accounted for a sermon that spoke about sin in a concrete way. Sadly too, it contrasted with most NO sermons I hear which tend to be vague and lack a clear theme. This sermon was long, but I didn’t feel the length as Father spoke with clarity and force.
One good point was that it was very short. Can I say that? How about succinct?
Father Robert McTeigue, S.J., delivered another stellar homily. He masterfully led us to see that God does provide the grace if we will only follow Him – and he also managed to show that this same lesson applies to the synod fathers. Truly an amazing homily that would be good reading for every synod father. http://avemarialiving.com/2014/10/16/mcteigue-what-happens-when-we-lack-proper-priorities/#more-21723
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Today’s readings have a great deal to teach us about proper priorities and what happens when you lack them. Here’s a hint of what I have in mind: When you don’t have proper priorities, you end up telling newly-ordained priests to sit in silence at the feet of the world’s religions.
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Let’s hear those words again: ““…the witness to the Christ has been made so firm in you that you lack no grace…”. Any preacher of the gospel worthy of the name would aspire to have that be true of his preaching and of those to whom he preached. That is a high standard worthy of the highest aspirations and the mightiest efforts. Sadly, it is also a standard that I suspect that it is rarely aspired to and even more rarely achieved.
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Picture it. The paralyzed man says to his friends, “Please take me to Jesus. He can heal me of my handicap.” And they reply: “Oh, no! You’re not handicapped — you’re handi-capable! You don’t need Jesus to heal you.” The poor man pleads. “Please! I want Jesus to heal me of my disability!” And they insist: “No, no, no! You’re not disabled! You’re just differently-abled! You don’t need Jesus to heal you. And besides, we are a welcoming, diverse, vibrant, inclusive community! We accept you just the way you are! There’s no need to bring you to Jesus!” The poor man… The delusional disciples of our day would keep him from meeting Jesus the healer who would see that broken man’s need and set him free. How different from the words of Saint Paul: “…the witness to the Christ has been made so firm in you that you lack no grace…”. To lack no grace. That is the standard Saint Paul set. But if we cannot admit our need for grace, we will not receive the grace we need.
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So much for generalities. Let’s get specific. We all know Catholics who consistently experience same-sex attraction. We all know Catholics who are divorced. We all know Catholics who are divorced and remarried. We all know Catholics who contracept. We all know Catholics who use pornography. What is our obligation to such Catholics? After all, these are our brothers and sisters in Christ. Shall we try to become, as some have suggested, a more “welcoming” Church? Or shall we try to live up to the standard of Saint Paul, so it might be said of these Catholics finding themselves in difficulties: “…the witness to the Christ has been made so firm in you that you lack no grace…”.
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But for reasons I can’t quite understand, some disciples seemed resolute in their project to square the circle, that is, formally maintaining Catholic sexual morality while letting people off the hook of having to try, with the help of grace, to live it… You see, some have observed that most institutions would rather die than admit that anyone ever made a mistake. If, in the Year of Our Lord, 2014, every member of the Church spoke with one voice regarding the universal call to chastity found within the human body, the empirical sciences, the moral law and the Revealed Word of God — then someone would surely ask, “So…where have you guys been since 1968?” And that seems to be a conversation that some people do not want to have. Why not?
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