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We celebrated the Feast Day of St. Maximillium Kolbe. The sermon was all about him and our need to imitate his courage in facing the assaults on our faith today. If we face actual martyrdom, God will give us the grace we need to face it.
“I have come to set the earth on fire,”
And “Ask not what the Church can do for you, ask what you can do for the Church.”
Father (relatively new to the parish) asked how many of us want to be lukewarm in our marriages, in our relationships with our kids or parents, or in our friendships. Asked how many really want the gift of eternal life offered us by God. We had a funeral recently for someone who was greatly respected by the parish; so many people turned out that they broke one of the pews. (Lots of very large, very muscular guys all crammed together into a pew…it didn’t make it.) Father asked if we want to continue building that kind of community where everyone comes together in love and honor, or if we just want to go sit at home and not come to Church. He called out as many service organizations he could think of (e.g., the Knights) and asked everyone to consider joining one and being involved in our church, to be on fire with zeal for service to the Lord.
Not technically part of the sermon but at the end of the Mass he asked everyone to try to make it to the Mass tomorrow for Assumption, even though there is a dispensation, saying Mary is very special and it’s a great joy to celebrate her Assumption.
Priests like this help me not worry about whatever the latest heresy of the Holy Father is, may God bless him. The Church is in good hands, the hands of the Holy Spirit which moves and works in the ordained and the laity alike.
Father explained what it means that Jesus brings division. The Devil gets that name from the Greek word diabolos which means the one who divides. We usually think of Jesus as the one who brings unity and peace. In the first reading we see the prophet Jerimiah. When he speaks the truth the society is divided and Jerimiah is persecuted.
We can see this division in ourselves too. We know that doing right will bring happiness but we often end up attracted to doing the opposite. Reflecting on this, we can understand the division that Jesus brings when, for the love of God, we despise the things in us that keep us separated from God. Father invited us to accept the burring love of God into our hearts to purge those things from us.
The division of the Devil is cold and stale and it will always remain so. The division of Jesus is a burning love that will consume all and grow into a unified peaceful whole. As the second reading says we are surrounded by the cloud of witnesses. These are the saints who have run this race to the successful end. The saints were not made from different stuff than us. They started out the same and, with the burning love of God we too can reach the beatific vision.
Sometimes our difficulties, trials and temptations leave us feeling alone and helpless. But we have a “cloud of witnesses” who inspire us by their example and intercede for us in the kingdom. The is a saint for everyone. Someone that each of us can relate to. The say to us, “If I could make it, you can make it.” They are our family awaiting us in the Father’s house.
Jeremiah faithfully passed along a message that was not popular: that in a critical time of instability, Israel should trust in God and not in foreign alliances. God’s message was not popular, but it was nonetheless true.
In modern times, Pope Paul VI was acted most prophetically in issuing Humanae Vitae. We see now, 40+ years later, that all the fallout from widespread use of contraceptives which he foresaw has actually come to pass. Humanae Vitae is not a popular message today, but it is nonetheless true. When some of the Canadian Bishops issued the Winnipeg Statement (that if you think birth control is OK, then it is OK for you) this caused a lot of confusion and did a lot of damage. Confession is always available for those who were caught up in this and ended up using contraception at one point.
By our baptism, we are all called to a prophetic role, which means living in a profoundly counter-cultural way. Those who take Catholicism seriously today, are not popular in society and sometimes even within their own families. When Jesus said that he would bring divisions within families. it is not that God actually wants this, but it is a foreseeable result of some being lukewarm whilst others are more zealous in their faith. In a campfire, green wood burns poorly with a lot of smoke but dry wood burns cleanly and strongly. Strong Catholics are “dry wood” and their countercultural lives burn prophetically hot.
“If you are willing to help Christ set fire to the world, then surrender yourself – body, soul, heart, and mind – to the mercy he freely gives you. Once freed from your burden of sin, you are free to tell the truth. And nothing burns the darkness of this world like the truth.”
http://hancaquam.blogspot.com/2016/08/help-him-set-world-on-fire.html
Fr. Philip Neri, OP
13th Sunday After Pentecost
Gospel is Luke-Jesus healing the ten lepers, only one coming back and thanking Jesus.
Father spoke about 10% of the Portland Oregon archdiocese is Catholic, of those maybe 10% actually go to Mass.
Fulton Sheen in the late 1940s predicted the beginning of a “religious age”. We do have signs of many sorts of religion around us—the yoga studio nearby is well attended, as are the Hindu temples. Their god(s) are not our God though.
It is a great gift to have the Catholic faith. We all have family members who are not Catholic, or who have fallen away. And maybe we ourselves have fallen away for awhile before returning.
Never underestimate the value of going to Communion in a state of grace—attending mass, going to Confession regularly, praying for our families, and community. There is great power of sanctification going on, even if not overtly visible.
God is looking down on our city (which is pretty much un-Catholic) and seeing little points of light and hope, when we few try to remain in a state of Grace and implore His light and healing for the lepers among us. ( Maybe then he won’t destroy the city?—that’s me, not Father)
My husband and I and 3 boys visited a nearby town for 6pm mass. Music was crummy (my 14 year old whispered his dislike for it before we even got to the Gloria), homily was superb. Father challenged us to be brave enough to stand up for the truth. For the first time since attending mass in 2007, I heard from the pulpit, “A man is a man, a woman is a woman, a baby in the womb is precious life, and marriage is between a man and a woman.” And he said it all in the same sentence! Amen.
Parish that had 6 pm mass and isn’t my cup of tea. Lifeteen Mass. oy! Visiting priest from Ghana who asked everyone who wanted to become a saint to raise their hand. Not too many were interested. He gave attributes of saints, such as old, young, indicating that anyone can become a saint then named a bunch of diverse saints including St Maximilian and exhorted us to follow in their footsteps.
It was sister parish weekend at that parish and he talked about those who had been helped by the parish, which built the high school he attended and gives scholarships, he was a scholarship recipient.
The seminarian made me laugh as he introduced himself as a priest in training.
A wonderful homily on confession. Fr. discussed the basics of going to confession, examination of conscience, and what happens at absolution. He also discussed the abuse of the confessional. He then discussed his goals for the local Oratory to include having enough priests to enable confessional availability 24 hours a day.
Oh, and he announced that the mass time is being moved from 11:30 to 11:00AM.
Apropos the day’s Gospel, Father cited St. Ignatius Loyola on ingratitude—”the greatest sin and the root of all sin”—and then gave a brief catechesis on the day’s Collect, its expression of desire for faith, hope, and charity and love of God’s commands.
Our associate brought up the Biden mess, and quoted from Abp. Kurtz’s statement on it. How’bout that, eh?
At the Ordinariate parish I now attend, Father preached on how Jesus brings peace only to those faithful to him and division to everyone else because by embracing and living out the Catholic life, those who do not follow Christ will automatically turn on you.
He also preached on how Christ said “If the world hate you, know ye, that it hath hated me before you.,” and that non-Christians liking us and what we believe is a problem. He finished his homily this statement:
“If you truly believe and act like it, they will hate you. Good.”
EF Mass; the priest who offered it teaches at a seminary. It was a tremendous sermon on the need for giving thanks instead of being ungrateful, and gave us what is perhaps the most well-known quote from Jesus to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque:
“Behold this Heart which has so loved men that it has spared nothing, even to exhausting and consuming itself, in order to testify its love. In return, I receive from the greater part only ingratitude, by their irreverence and sacrilege, and by the coldness and contempt they have for Me in this sacrament of love.”
and a quote from G.K. Chesterton:
“You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing, and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.”
Wonderful, wonderful sermon. I only wish he would publish his sermons, as he talks so very, very fast.
I preached at Divine Liturgy Sunday, so (naturally) the sermon was just *full* of good points. Saturday had been the Feast of St Maximos, and I’d been thinking about monothelitism, so I preached about that horrible heresy. Or rather, about the Incarnation of the Lord, all the theological errors people have fallen into concerning it — denying that Jesus is God, denying that he’s a man, denying that he’s one single person, denying that his humanity is complete and functional (which is where monothelitism comes in) –, and why it’s *essential* to our salvation that Jesus be God and Man, so that we men, incorporated into him, can be joined and united to God.
I worried ahead of time that the congregation might be bored, but I needn’t have — they seemed to lap it up, thank God.