Your Sunday Sermon Notes

Was there a good point made in the sermon you heard for your Mass of obligation?

For my part, I had both EF and OF today, including a 1st Holy Communion.  Nice.

I spoke about the liturgical year and its arc and our lives and their arcs.  The Lord comes to us during both in various ways.  Proper disposition for the ways that the Lord comes to us.  To tie in the 1st Communion, which she received on the anniversary of her Baptism, I continued with the issue of disposition, but also said that disposition is a continuous focus throughout our lives, in view of the final way the Lord comes, to greet us in heaven, but that begins for us at a certain point in time in our lives.  Everyone present should make sure their Communions are a pure and special as their First in view of the rest of our lives and the goal of heaven.

 

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7 Comments

  1. DD says:

    Father talked about the ideas of journey and Jerusalem, based on the first reading and the psalm. He pointed out that teaching was done in the synagogues, but that God was in the Temple in Jerusalem and was were the people wanted to go. Going to Jerusalem always meant going up because it was located on a mountain and he reminded us of the times Moses and Jesus went up to mountain tops. We must always be moving forward and upward. If we coast, we go only down.
    He said we don’t live just day-to-day, but we are moving towards an end (our Jerusalem). Thanksgiving was like our trail camp where friends and family had joined us. Now it was time to break camp and move up the mountain. This way of speaking comes naturally to him because he has spend some time living in Nepal. It was much better than my summary of it!

  2. jameeka says:

    Father spoke of “wake-up calls”. He said perhaps some of us have received one—and life was never the same again. He urged people this Advent to consider swallowing our pride (a big gulp) and forgiving that son, daughter, relative, friend who may have hurt us deeply, and start communicating with them again. He says we should do it because Jesus Christ has commanded us to do so, through Him.

    Father has had two close friends die recently, including one suddenly the day before Thanksgiving, and I think he is impressing upon us the lateness of the Hour. And, it’s Advent.

  3. un-ionized says:

    Nice homily on God speaking the language of silence. There was some contrasting of before Noah, after Noah, after the Resurrection. Didn’t get all of it but it was great.

    And I went to confession and only hurt myself a little kneeling and that’s part of the penance.

  4. AveMariaGratiaPlena says:

    Father (ours, the second-in-command for our parish, is a “baby priest”!) spoke of preparing for the end of the world or the end of one’s life, whichever comes first. It was an excellent reminder to keep one’s focus on heavenly rather than earthly things (a constant challenge for me), and to go to confession frequently.

  5. KAS says:

    Monsignor ‘s homily was on recognizing hope in the focus on gifts and rather than complain of the materialism use the hopefulness to point people to the hope that is Christ. The anticipation of gifts can be directed to the anticipation of the coming of the messiah. He said it better than I.

  6. Chris Garton-Zavesky says:

    “Adventus” means “the arrival”… and usually meant an important official or king, and usually involved anticipation before the arrival itself. How well do WE wait for anything in our daily lives?

  7. Matilda P says:

    OF at the local cathedral. There are two types of preachers–one is the popular type, who’ll tell you jokes and stories and assure you that God will understand, and loves you, and forgives you. These preachers aren’t wrong, for God does understand, and does love you, but they elide the truth of sin. (That was the very phrase he used, the ‘truth of sin’!) The other type is less popular, because they tell you the truth. They might chastise. They might ask you to do things for your own good, or for that of others. But this is the truth of things! We are not Christians so that we can be comfortable and self-serving, and so that we can feel good about meeting all our own needs, neglecting others, all the while going to Mass every Sunday!

    Then he went on to talk about the archdiocese’s capital fundraising campaign (which is huge because of various local factors, including migrants and so on) and how urgent the mission of the local church is. 65% of Catholics in our country don’t go to mass, and nearly 90% of youth baptised as children leave. Vocations are dropping, priests are getting old, parishes are (still) packed to capacity (even with only 35% of baptised Catholics)… all in all, following the archbishop’s example he called first for prayer, and then challenged us to give what we can. The local Catholic population is pretty well off, so every fundraising really doesn’t have to be so painful, but well…

    Msgr H is one of the reasons, by the way, not to give up on the Jesuits. (:

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