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The homily focused on the importance of prayer, and the many forms of prayer.
I reflected on the stunning words of the Incarnate Son of God: “I am meek and humble of heart.”
Sermon on the four last things . . . The existence of hell shows both God’s mercy and his justice. For those unrepentant sinners who choose not to be with God, He provides a place for them to go where He is not.
Yes….Father spoke about intellectual pride…..used Luther as an example….declaring he was for sure a heretic..and explaining for those who had any doubts what a heretic is exactly….thereby showing Luther fit the definition.
Here in Hong Kong, we observed the feast of the Chinese martyrs. The priest gave a good homily about the blood of martyrs being the seed of the Church, and how persecution is not in and of itself a good thing, but that God can turn evil to good purposes.
Monsignor noted the connecting element of the first reading and Gospel (ordinary form) was the word Meek. The homily was about the virtue of Meekness, which St Thomas says is the virtue opposite of anger. Meekness is not being mousy or a doormat but it requires self-possession.
14th Sunday Ordinary Time
Fr C started with an observation about the first reading from Zechariah: “See, your king shall come to you…meek, and riding on an ass, on a colt, the foal of an ass…He shall banish the chariot from Ephraim, and the horse from Jerusalem”
The King of Peace comes on a ‘hybrid’—with the best features of both a horse and a donkey, therefore a ‘mule’—more suited to agriculture, and living longer than a horse yet an animal signifying peace.
Then, Fr talked about Karl Marx’s statement that “religion is the opium of the masses”—Marx was an atheist and a materialist. Opioids dull the pain and suffering, but is that all there is to Christianity? We talk now of an opioid ‘epidemic’…. When Jesus says “Come to ME, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest” after He says “no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him”—the people know that He, Jesus, is claiming to be divine.
We have many burdens/yokes on earth, but Jesus is claiming that He can make them lighter by us taking on His yoke as well, which is the Cross. He, God, becomes Incarnate, and experiences the same burdens and suffering we are bearing now, and He transforms our suffering into union with Him. And this union brings us to God the Father, and makes us whole.
Fr Bryan fcoused on th eimportance of uniting our lives to Jesus and the idea of being easily yoked. It was probably one of more memorable sermons I’ve ever heard.
Today was bacon Sunday at my Byzantine Rite parish. Father told us that it’s eady to love Jesus when things are going well but Much more difficult when Jesus wants us to change.
We had a visiting priest today. He tied in the readings with Card. Sarah’s new book the Power of Silence. There were a lot of great things he said, but the thing that stood out the most to me is that God is in the silence. There is beauty in the silence and noise is chaos. He gave examples, not sure if they were from the book or from his own experience. He said, “Do you hear the sunrise, the beauty of the night sky, the flowers bloom, a child growing in it’s mother’s womb, what about when the Priest says the Words of Consecration, when simple bread is turned into the Body of Christ and when wine is turned into the Blood of Christ?” He went on to say that you find God in the silence. He also gave another remarkable example, he has a Lutheran Pastor friend and he remarked to him one day that every time I enter a Catholic Church there is something there, even in the silence, but when I go to my own church, it is empty. Yes! because we have God in our church. We need to shut out the distractions, the noise, the tv, phones, etc. if we want to find to God.
I am traveling and attended Mass at a college Newman center. One of the main points was that we burden ourselves with our sins, but when we come to Jesus in Confession, he takes away our burden and gives us rest. An excellent sermon by a very young priest who also said Mass very reverently. I pray that there are and will be more like him.
EF Mass for the 5th Sunday after Pentecost. An external obedience as done by the scribes and pharisees is not enough; our obedience must be internal, from the heart. Abusive language toward someone can be as bad in God’s eyes as if we had killed them. Repentance must be to God and the persons we hurt. As we say in the Lord’s Prayer just before communion – “forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us” – Do we really mean this?
Not so much a good point but a funny story about JPII and Jesuits. Father said that when JPII became pope he went around Rome and visited all the head houses for each order of priests. When he came to the Jesuit house, there was a great statue of St. Ignatius of Loyola with something along the lines of “Go and set fire to the world.” The pope pointed out the fire extinguisher right behind the statue and said, “And you wonder why you Jesuits can’t get any vocations!”