Your Sunday Sermon Notes

This is a little late, but … was there a good point made in the sermon you heard for your Mass of Sunday obligation?  Let us know.

Can you remember the sermon after more than 24 hours?

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10 Comments

  1. Veritatis Splendor says:

    Father spoke of how God chose the most unlikely people to make Him known, namely women and unborn children. He mentioned how we wouldn’t recognize them now either. After all, we don’t even consider unborn children as people. (That was just a brief mention, but it was there) There was a lot more.

  2. acardnal says:

    Mass in the Extraordinary Form: the Offertory Prayer was the Ave Maria. I don’t recall that ever occurring in the OF.

  3. Helier says:

    At my age, I sorrowfully had to refresh my memory with a re-reading of the Gospel, however:
    EF: point: Repentance for sins, our sins against each other have downstream effects on those we sin against. Would that we could be more cognizant of this each day.

  4. monnica says:

    I made notes on the sermon on Sunday so here goes.

    Our pastor preached on the Hail Mary.

    To say “Hail Mary” with awareness is to turn away from ourselves and toward her. To say hi demands this turn away from ourselves. Our pastor walks down Main St. to Dunkin Donuts almost every day around six in the morning. At that early hour there are fewer people around and they are more likely to say hi. When he walks down Main St. later in the day, people are more absorbed in themselves, in their own affairs, and almost no one says hi.

    “Blessed art thou among women.” What did it mean for Elizabeth to say that? She was putting this woman, her younger relative, above herself. She did not know the name of Jesus yet (later to be placed after her words in the Hail Mary) but she gives Him a kind of inarticulate recognition. Many pictures of the Visitation show Elizabeth standing and embracing Mary. The stained glass window in our church is unusual in that it shows Elizabeth kneeling before her in worship — not worshiping Mary but the One who is with her.

    Having an abundance of people in our world who are baptized, we are called to recognize those who, regardless of the state their souls may be in, are through baptism, bearers of the Divine, of Christ. (Our pastor gleaned this thought from Pope Francis.)

    Maybe we can find a moment, during these last days of Advent, to pray, for once in our lives, a slow, attentive Hail Mary.

  5. JonPatrick says:

    EF Mass. God doesn’t impose on us but woos us. He is like the father in the parable of the prodigal son who runs out to meet the wayward son when he returns. God makes himself small to give us room to grow. Christ will not enter our lives unless we let Him in. We have to say yes to Him.

  6. jameeka says:

    After beautifully discussing the Rorate Caeli opening verse, about becoming fertile soil for the growth of the Word of God, Father A talked about Christmas, and what gift should we give back to God this time? Our selves. When we are together with family, there are predictable “issues”. Parents, sons and daughters, siblings should try to be patient with each other, forgiving, giving people the benefit of the doubt, promoting peace and joy. This will be our gift back to God. He said that “we all knew what he was talking about”. Yup.

  7. zag4christ says:

    One of our younger priests who began his ministry at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Lourdes and now cares for several rural parishes in the northern part of the diocese surprised us Sunday by celebrating the early morning Mass. During his homily he explained that he and one of his colleagues (fellow seminarian) and now a priest at the Cathedral “exchanged parishes” for the period between the 4th Sunday of Advent and Christmas Eve so as to allow parishioners the opportunity to have their confessions heard by a priest that they are not familiar with or known by. They felt that may encourage more people to seek the sacrament. He went on to describe his experience as both a penitent seeking absolution from one of his brother priests and the honor he feels and experiences when he is able to hear confessions. It was one of the most profound and moving homilies I have heard in a long time. And of course, his main point was GO TO CONFESSION!
    Peace and God bless,

  8. Priam1184 says:

    Ordinary Form: A real homage to the Blessed Virgin Mother of God. An answer to the Protestant charge that we Catholics made up the title of ‘Mother of God’ by pointing out that it was Elizabeth, as recorded in the Gospel of Saint Luke, who first addressed her by that title. And in truth it was God Himself who gave her that title because Saint Luke records that Elizabeth was “filled with the Holy Spirit” when she made that immortal utterance.

  9. benedetta says:

    Knowledge, one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, helps us to observe the ways of God. For example, an ultrasound photograph of a baby’s face at six months of development helps us to appreciate better that God came in this form to us at Christmas, and God’s love for human persons by this. Furthermore, quoting Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, the great attribute of the celebration of Christmas is joy. The joy that we experience is connected to this knowledge of God, of the ways of God, of God’s esteem for us.

  10. frjim4321 says:

    Began by touching on the myth that “Christmas is for Children,” which really doesn’t hold up to the reminder from the write to the Hebrews that Jesus was born in order to die; his birth was in a sense simply the beginning of his journey to Calvary. Thus the celebration of the incarnation is not childish, but very much adult business.

    Segued into an exposition based on the psalm, “Lord make us turn to you, let us see your face and we shall be saved.” Our ability to recognize and see the face of God provides us access to the saving grace that Jesus Christ in fact earned for us by virtue of his sacrificial death and subsequent resurrection.

    Coda was a reprise of the “Christmas for Children” myth that may in fact have a very beautiful rationale in that is was, indeed, an unborn child who first recognized the nearness of the Lord.

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