Your Sunday Sermon Notes

Was there a good point in the sermon you heard for this Sunday?

In the older, traditional form, today is Good Shepherd Sunday, by the way.

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37 Comments

  1. iPadre says:

    Jesus gave the Apostles and disciples experiences of Himself after the resurrection. He wants to give us the same. We find this experience when we enter fully into the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass / the “breaking of bread.” In silence and solitude before our Eucharistic Lord we can spiritually touch His hands, touch His side and be transformed.

  2. IPSB says:

    Not that I can remember in the sermon, [Which is sort of the point… o{]:¬) ] but when talking to His Reverence after Mass he said that there can be no resurrection or glorification without passion and death.

  3. Yorkmum says:

    EF Mass…
    If Jesus is the good shepherd that makes us the sheep. What do sheep do? They have to follow the shepherd or they get lost.

  4. SanSan says:

    Heading to Mass (at another local parish) in an hour that will be celebrated by Archbishop Cordileone. I’m sure that I will have many good points to share afterward. It’s such a blessing whenever we can see and hear our Archbishop in person. He travels from parish to parish on Sunday’s whenever he is in town. He even listens to confessions!

  5. Vincent says:

    Much the same as iPadre today (OF but Brompton Oratory)- we are called to ‘witness’, which is martyrdom. Father Francis Maple has a very similar one on his website today!

  6. knute says:

    Ordinary Form. We must suffer in this life in order to obtain glory in the next life.

  7. mysticalrose says:

    OF Mass. Father said that Christ called forth living witnesses, not texts or pictures to give testimony to him. That people are converted by the very life of those who have encountered Christ and that to be a living witness one must live for Jesus, suffer for Jesus, and die for Jesus.

    It was very stirring.

  8. Gregorius says:

    OF. Father had to take this Mass as the one scheduled did not show up, so he was kind of caught off-guard. Nevertheless, I took a guilty pleasure in hearing him rant against certain of his seminary formators who denied the Resurrection as a physical event. Other than that, he mentioned the intertwined signs of the Resurrection and the Eucharist as proof of God’s love for us.

  9. kat says:

    EF Father spoke on vocations: Youth must pray to know God’s will; older people must pray for the youth and more vocations. Also, the youth can’t hear the call with all the distractions in their lives (“noise”). Parents need to foster a home life that will foster vocations, and give children the skills, fortitude, and strength to follow a religious vocation when called.

  10. aquinas138 says:

    Byzantine Divine Liturgy:

    Today is the Sunday of the Myrrh-Bearing Women. Women do not need to be priests; they have their own unique role, and are indeed the backbone of most parishes. Priesthood does not automatically make you a better Christian – after all, where were the apostles on Easter morning? Afraid of being crucified themselves and not lending their muscle to roll away the stone from the tomb, whereas the women came to anoint the Lord’s body and to show themselves His disciples even in His death and at great personal risk.

  11. Grateful to be Catholic says:

    EF at Old St. Mary’s in DC, Good Shepherd Gospel. Father elaborated on a theme he said is common in the Ratzinger opus: a German word stellen**************. (I don’t know German and didn’t catch the rest of it; I guess I will have to learn German so I can read dear Ratzinger/Benedict in the original.) It means a “vicarious representative, ” one who acts on behalf of another. Christ acts in this way for us as our Shepherd and Redeemer, giving his all for us. Father then reminded young men, especially the older altar servers, to consider whether their next stop should be the seminary, as we need priests: without priests there is no Eucharist and without the Eucharist there is no Church.

    Father also urged us to pray and sacrifice for a shepherd who is under attack, Archbishop Cordileone in San Francisco. In fact, he said, we should pray and sacrifice for all our shepherds (as Fr. Z recently urged us to do). Don’t forget the priest who will someday bring you Viaticum, that he not get stuck in traffic and arrive too late.

  12. andia says:

    The priest talked about why the apostles did what they did and asked us to reflect on why we are at church and what we what from the Church and his parish.

  13. JimRB says:

    We chose not to go to mass this morning, in order to help a search party find a young autistic child that had been lost overnight in the woods (we live deep in the Poconos). He had only a t shirt on, and was non-verbal. After we arrived and helped search for an hour, someone suggested we stop and pray. The boy had been missing in the wilderness in near freezing overnight temps for well over 15 hours now. We finished our prayer as a group, and just then he literally walked out of the woods and into the road near the command center. He was perfectly fine, except hungry. Best sermon I could have had. Plus, we were able to hit up another mass afterwards with some of the search and rescue people!

  14. jfk03 says:

    This is the Sunday of the Myrrhbearers in the Greek Catholic Church. After discussing how apparent inconsistencies in the accounts in the four Gospels actually fortify the historicity of the Resurrection, our priest went off topic, suggesting that we must pray for the Archbishop of San Francisco, who is under vicious attack from forces within the Church.

  15. SimonDodd says:

    OF, not my regular parish. Very good homily taking the perduring wounds of Christ after the resurrection as a springboard to talk about our suffering in this world being not overlooked by God, not incidental to our growth, that God uses all to his purpose.

  16. I was stumped for awhile preparing my homily, so I decided to focus in on the decision our Lord made to be made known in the breaking of bread. I talked about why the Eucharist is important to us. And I answered the doubt some have about the Eucharist, since it looks and tastes like bread.

  17. Susan G says:

    My priest said that today’s readings were all about sin, and the fulfillment of Christ coming as the Suffering Servant. He said that the proper response to sin is not hiding from God in despair but coming to Him in recognition of His Mercy and, like Thomas, acknowledging Him as “My Lord and God.”

  18. SanSan says:

    Archbishop Cordileone spoke about the importance of faith formation and how each parish within the Archdiocese is inter-related to one another. When he visits each parish he likes to point out how the parishes support the Archdiocese and the Archdiocese works to support each parish with their faith formation and the different ministries within each parish. He spoke about the importance of St. Patrick’s Seminary and the ongoing prayers for priestly formation of the young men there. Next week this courageous and faithful Archbishop will be in Wash, D.C. for the March for Marriage outside the Supreme Court. Let’s pray that the 9 justices will not try to redefine something that cannot be redefined.

  19. Reconverted Idiot says:

    EF: Who are the hirelings who flee? The wolves in shepherd’s clothing?
    “Pastoral” (versus Doctrinal) is an “abuse of language”. Liberalism and modernist heresies in the world today. All tied up. Quite a few nodding heads, hands on mouths, faces that say it all. Brilliant sermon. God bless this young, newly ordained priest. A real blessing of a sermon.

  20. Wiktor says:

    I must admit I was daydreaming, but it was about superstitions, fortune telling and such.

  21. MikeToo says:

    Father mentioned the wounds of Christ that he showed the disciples. He talked about stigmata occurrences. He asked, how could a glorified body, one that would be perfect, carry wounds? The wounds of Christ did not make his body imperfect but perfected it. Christ show us his wounds for our benefit as proof but also in solidarity with our wounds. We all carry wounds but try to hide them. This has been brought to new level in the Facebook age when we all pretend to carry on perfect lives with no suffering. We can admit our wounds, join our suffering to Christ and if we die with Christ we will be raised with Christ.

  22. jplsr says:

    Our parish has EF every week. Today father spoke specifically about Good Shepherd Sunday, complete with discussion of early Christian art in the catacombs and in early mosaics. He pointed out that today the bishops talk to be the good shepherds and the people those who hear their voice.

  23. DavidJ says:

    Had a visiting priest who is starting a seminary in India. From “Parents, if you do not call your children out when they sin, then you will be accountable for them” to “If we stay silent the world will continue to slaughter Christians without pause” to “don’t wait for your priest or bishop to act, you need to act” I was very impressed. If his seminary can produce priests with such conviction, I think we will be well served by it.

  24. Skeinster says:

    One of our associate pastors grew up on a sheep ranch, so we eagerly await his Good Shepherd Sunday sermon each year.
    This year he combined today’s gospel with the parable of the sower and the seeds. What can keep us from hearing the Shepherd’s voice? Hardness of heart, worldliness, temptations, fear of opposition and human respect- all these must be resisted.

  25. rtrainque says:

    EF-Father talked about good shepherds vs. hirelings as it relates to the clergy. Brought up a good point that I must remind myself of pretty much daily: While we certainly have our share of hirelings today, a good number of “liberal” priests are doing what they do with the best of intentions. It is a problem of poor formation and the pervasive effects of modernism; they just don’t know better. He of course clarified that we must not cut error any slack.

    Not a sermon note, but rather a pre-Mass announcement note: Father is being transferred. He let us sweat it out for a good second or two; I was sure he was about to say he was on his way to some parish in the middle of nowhere or out of the state entirely. But God surpasses our expectations, and effective July 1 Father is on his way to St. Joseph c0-cathedral right in Burlington where he will continue offering the traditional Mass every Sunday, with the possibility of some weekdays as well! This is HUGE for our diocese in terms of exposure to the TLM, and a boon to my regular attendance. Frankly this was a totally unexpected move from Bishop Coyne (at least in my estimation) and the answer to a prayer of mine since I first discovered the TLM.

  26. Tim in Dixie says:

    OF. There was no drummer in the band today. Someday we’ll return to hymns and not songs at Mass.

  27. mo7 says:

    [Paraphrasing greatly and hopefully accurately] Father spoke about the tremendous responsibility and burden of being a ‘shepherd’. That rather than beautiful puffy white sheep being fostered, sheep are smelly and stupid. Quite a different picture of this day than we’re accustomed. That being a ‘shepherd’ is full of pitfalls of fame and the desire for recognition particularly in the higher echelons of church power. This is the 2nd or 3rd Sunday that I have heard Father mention high level clergy [no names mentioned but assumed by all given our NY location] seeking the adulation of the world. He again reminded us that though we are in the world, we are not of the world. Please pray for this wonderful priest.

  28. goodone121 says:

    My parochial vicar talked about Confession, relating it to car maintenance.

  29. JonPatrick says:

    EF Mass, Father talked about the Good Shepherd leading us in a world full of “wolves” particularly a world that preaches we should be able to do whatever we feel like, which has led us to the point where any kind of sexual gratification must now be glorified e.g. same sex “marriage”. Only by following the Shepherd can we pass through the valley of the shadow of death.

  30. MacBride says:

    To add to @rtrainque (we go to the same EF Mass). Fr spoke about the crisis in the Church today stating that the Church in Vermont is dying (this is true about the Church in the NE). He said the clergy are scattering the flock (well intentioned or not) and that we should pray for our bishops and priests daily.

  31. Giuseppe says:

    OF Mass. Talk about David Brooks’s recent writing/talk about resume virtues vs. eulogy virtues. Christ was recognized in the Eucharist. How will others recognize us as Christians? Does Christ animate you? If so, how do you show it? What will people say of us on our death?

  32. Gregg the Obscure says:

    OF: Peter gave the lame man an encounter with Jesus, and the lame man was healed. We too can give people encounters with Jesus for their benefit. Some extensive reading from Misericordiae Vultus. This was from our young deacon who is scheduled to be ordained a priest next month. I have it on good authority that he is having seminarians sing the propers at his first Mass, which will be a Sunday Mass. :-)

  33. ByzCath08 says:

    From Byzantine Catholic Divine Liturgy:

    Father focused on the Gospel reading from Matins, The Road to Emmaus. Continuing his Paschal theme of the Eucharist, which was started on Holy Thursday, Father spoke on what it means when it read “They came to know Jesus, in the breaking of the bread”. That this phrase used in the New Testament was the Divine Liturgy/Mass. That we can’t have a personal relationship with Jesus without the eucharist. No matter how hard one may try (Protestants), you are missing the key element, established by Jesus.

  34. Suzanne Carl says:

    Jesus seeks the apostles who are in hiding. They don’t seek Him, He seeks them. He seeks us as well.

  35. benedictgal says:

    My parochial vicar talked about the need for reverence and obedience in worship.

    I managed to capture the essence of what he said here:

    http://benedictgal-lexorandilexcredendi.blogspot.com/2015/04/rubrics-and-relevance.html

    He takes what he says to heart, celebrating Mass Ad Orientem since Advent 2014.

  36. Allison says:

    Fr. Gregory Plow at Franciscan University prayed a beautiful Missa Cantata EF Mass on Sunday in which he spoke about the Good Shepherd carrying his lambs and “active” participation. For photos and a minute of video highlighting the polyphony choir please see http://www.totustuusfamily.blogspot.com/2015/04/extraordinary-sunday-in-steubenville.html

  37. zag4christ says:

    Fr. Connall , relating to the Gospel, wondered how Jesus felt listening to the disciples talk about Him and not recognizing Him. He encouraged us to always be attempting to see Christ as He presents Himself to us in our lives daily.

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