Was there a good point in the sermon you heard for this 1st Passion Sunday? The 5th Sunday of Lent?
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For some reason, the sermon for the Saturday Vigil, was all about, and for Parents. The priest spoke at length about how Parents are the first teachers of their children and that children will ask “Show me Jesus”, not literally, he thinks but in how parents live. He exhorted them to be good exaamples of Christ, so their children have a living example.
Our priest pointed out that although God has infinite patience when it comes to our sins, we still have to repent and go to confession. He mentioned the grace one gets from it, and that we all have to go at least once a year. He even spoke about his own experience with confession. We have an active, growing parish, for which I am very thankful, and it’s nice to see the less-fluffy stuff come out. In fact, Father has mentioned the need for confession several times this past few weeks.
Not part of the sermon, but I was happy to see that our associate pastor, who recently suffered a TIA, is recovering well. He had a late vocation and is very orthodox; I hope he can continue his ministry for a long time.
Psalm 42, today the Introit, provided the structure of how Christ reacted to the growing darkness of His time, and provides an example for us to deal with the growing darkness around us today.
Announcement was made that the Latin Mass will be celebrated this Wednesday night, 3/23 at 5:30 pm at St. Michael’s Catholic Church in Memphis. Please pray for a good turn out, pray for Father Clark. Brick by brick!!
The importance to embrace silence (Father has us “giving up” things for Lent Communally – http://adoroergosum.blogspot.com/2015/02/join-me-this-lent-in-sacrificing.html?m=1 – this week is entertainment). We also heard about the importance for the Mass to not devolve into a horizontal celebration of community, repleat with a quote from Romano Guardini wherein the theologian wonders if modern man is yet capable of performing a truly liturgical act.
At our TLM, Father chanted the Gospel in Latin, took off his maniple, climbed up into the pulpit, read the announcements, and then began his sermon. “From the dawn of time… men have made mistakes, and I just made one. I forgot to read the translation of the Scriptures.” He proceeded to read the Epistle and Gospel in English, and then began again: “As I said, from the dawn of time, mankind have made sacrifices….”
Okay, it wasn’t a profound point, but it was a nice mid-sentence save. :)
In an exhortation for the faithful to attend the Triduum, Canon encouraged us to immerse ourselves in the slowness of the liturgy, saying it was akin to having a touchpoint with eternity. Let the world and all its cares fade into the background. The liturgy is timeless and allows us a brief glimpse of timelessness. Not his exact words, but what I took away from it.
Father mentioned Ronald Knox’s observation that the gospel write John was not a good story teller. He begins today’s story talking about how some Greeks have come to see Jesus but Jesus responds with what seems completely off topic. Up to this point Jesus had mentioned multiple times that his time had not come. One well known example was at the wedding at Canaan. But now, he has changed this message. He is now entering into his passion. This is a transitional week as we approach Palm Sunday. Are we ready?
I had the honor of preaching this morning. I spoke about passion and it’s philological root meaning. My central point was this:
“Passionate love made Him stretch out His arms on the Cross and offer His life up for you and me, even though He was entirely innocent. Christ’s Passion binds suffering and love together in one act – and in offering Himself up, He purifies both love and suffering and gives them meaning.
Never again, because of His passion, can we who suffer say, “God does not understand.” Never again when our hearts ache with the loneliness and pain of love that is unreturned can we say, “I am so alone.” Christ is there with us. Christ has felt that pain. Christ has redeemed through His suffering.
I concluded with an exhortation to enter into Christ’s Passion with the Church over the next two weeks – to pray before a Crucifix (and to consider getting a Crucifix for the home if you don’t have one – or at least putting one on your phone or computer for the next two weeks as a reminder)
FSSP parish so the Gospel was Jesus in the Temple with Jews who ended turning against Him and He had to hide from them. This betrayal and hatred from those people He loved was just before the beginning of His Passion and hurt more than the physical pain He endured. We all betray and turn from Jesus through sin and need to understand the pain that this causes Him .
Also tied in Christ hiding from the Jews with covering the statues.
I don’t know if it was a “good” point, but it was “different”.
Speaking on martyrdom, our priest said that to show solidarity with the martyred Christians/Catholics we should wear orange and/or an orange jumpsuit would make the point even better.
I don’t know how that will go over in the “fashion world” but I did happen to be wearing an orange shrug at the time and a couple of people commented on it.
The main theme of today’s homily was obedience and how it brings about great grace.
We attended a Maronite liturgy for the 5th Sunday of great lent, the healing of the blind man. Much of this story of course relates to spiritual blindness. We do not always realize another person’s confusing behavior may be a sign they are looking for God’s love and attention and instead we just tell them to be quiet as the people did to Bartimaeus. As Bartimaeus threw aside his cloak we may need to throw aside things that keep us from God and open ourselves up to the Lord.
As an aside, I had never attended the Maronite liturgy before (one of my sons who is discerning the religious life wants to visit a Maronite monastery and wanted to experience their liturgy so he wouldn’t be clueless at the monastery) and found it an interesting mix with parts like our Roman Rite ordinary form and other parts very ancient, much chanting in Syriac, including the consecration part of the Anaphora. The people there were very friendly and helpful to us clueless Latins. This was St. Joseph’s Waterville ME.
9:00 AM Mass was for the Third Scrutiny for the RCIA members being received into the Church at the Easter Vigil. Father once again reminded the congregation (raised my eyebrows) that the Devil is real, he wants to separate us from God, that sin is real and we need to make use of the Sacrament of Confession.
And he also mentioned that ALL the miracles of Jesus that Jesus performed, including the raising Lazarus, were manifestations of his Divine power. In Lazarus’ case, he was “stone cold dead, not in a coma, not in a trance, completely, unmistakably dead, and Jesus brought him back to life.” I know what he was doing – he was dismissing the modern idea that somehow Jesus’ miracles can somehow be explained away. Father was most definitely quashing that idea – no, the miracles were all real and Jesus was totally responsible for them.
It was so good to hear.
To give the conclusion to what Rachel said:
Father’s point in the TLM was that all cultures have offered sacrifice,”since the dawn of time.”
Our sacrifice is the final sacrifice, the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the Eternal Sacrifice made present for us now.
“Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham was made, I am.” Father focused on God’s “I am” – ness, being outside of time as we know it and specifically why that those who tried to stone him were aware that Jesus was identifying himself as God with this statement (as it was spoken to Moses). Also talked about the significance of Jesus saying “I am” so frequently in the gospels.
Our priest talked about suffering and how it is redemptive when we unite our sufferings with the sufferings of Christ. Good to hear!
Wife and I were out of town and went to a mass in Virginia Beach (Diocese of Richmond, VA, which has gotten some bad press lately).
The Priest lead off the homily by talking about martyrs (starting with some early ones, going on to the recent 21 Copts) and then went into confession. His church is having 16 (sixteen!) priests available for confession at a Thursday night service. He said he was bribing them with a seafood dinner. Then went about making Confession less “scary” for those who hadn’t gone. Stuff like, “Can’t remember the Act of Contrition? We’ll say it with you.” and the like, really inviting to people go and making this service seem really special.
Best part? The Hosanna, Mystery of Faith, “Through him and with him…”, Lamb of God.., and the Concluding Rite were all done in Latin. After mass, when I thanked him for it and said it was great, Priest said he didn’t want to lose those traditions and was doing it for Lent and Advent. Maybe breaking the people into it? Mass was packed too.
A Franciscan from a nearby college celebrated this week at our parish. He made a nice point on exhorting the faithful, in these last days of Lent, to contemplative prayer. Specifically, he suggested they spend 5 to 10 minutes a day looking at the Crucifix and meditating on the Passion.
Great suggestion.
Tim Ferguson,
Was there a “talking points” union meeting near Albany last week?