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Our pastor preached a VERY good strong solid sermon on the evil and wrongs of artificial contraception and the positivness of Natural Family Planning. It was a sermon that needed to be heard by everybody.
Working from the parables of the treasure in the field and the pearl of great price (the OF Gospel), our priest spoke on how neither of those people earned that wealth, just as we don’t earn our the grace God gives us, but to use it, they had to be willing to sacrifice. So it is both a free gift of God that costs us nothing, but also something that requires everything from us.
A visiting priest from Africa gave a meaty homily that I could remember after I left Mass, as is not always the case. He spoke of the parable of the treasure, asking us to decide what is the most valuable treasure in our lives, as we examine all the treasures we have. He fleshed it out beautifully, challenging us.
Our sermon was delivered by a deacon from the FSSP. I don’t remember everything he talked about as I had a three-year old to contend with, but a few things he mentioned is that to “love Christ is to love the Church, and to love the Church is to love Christ.” He also reminded us that outside of the Catholic Church there is no salvation. It was a very beautiful sermon and one with a lot of excellent points.
My two year old gave the sermon this week…Chucking a tantrum in the car park. Still, it was better than any heretical sermon I’ve heard. Apparently the real sermon was on eternity and our time we have to prepare for it.
OF: To many Catholics only live on the surface. We need to dig and dive into the depths of our souls to meet the living Lord Jesus Christ. It takes courage to go beyond being Sunday Mass only.
EF: Based homily on Introit. Talked about the temple and how it was all pointing to new temple the Church. The sacrifice pointed to the new perfect sacrifice. All to worship in spirit and truth. And, how our churches must raise our minds, hearts, and souls to heaven.
My homily was on the treasure/pearl. The treasure, of course, is Christ. But we must go all in; we don’t just get handed the treasure.
I tied it in with a special event this coming Friday and Saturday, when we’ll welcome a Fatima statue with special devotions, a renewal of parish consecration to our Lady, an all night vigil before the Blessed Sacrament, all following the Traditional Latin Mass. I made the point that if the TLM is challenging, well — what did we just hear in the Gospel? I moved onto saying that Mary’s heart is the field where the treasure of Jesus’ heart is “hidden” — but not really: she offers us Jesus constantly.
Anyway, I tried to make the devotions around the statue visit appealing. Let’s see what happens.
17th Sunday Ordinary Time-
Father C decided to focus just on the parable of the pearl merchant. The merchant owned many fine jewels, but decided to sell all of them in order to get the finest pearl. Fr said the point was that our choices are often not black or white—a clear good, instead of a clear evil. Often, it is sacrificing something good, perhaps everything, so that one can have something far better.
He cited a story of a parish family he knew: the non-Catholic father was becoming irreversibly blind, and the Catholic mother was dejected over this. But the son piped up “Don’t worry, God will not take something good away without offering another good in its place.” Later that year, the father was baptized into the Catholic Faith, the pearl of great price.
Over the course of our lives, we are often –somewhat reluctantly– giving up our good things (health, family and friends, material wealth) while preparing for our meeting with Jesus Christ, the only treasure that matters.
The great price is a great sacrifice. Those on the parable gave up everything they had for the treasure. The treasure is the Church, and the Eucharist. The Lord calls us to give up many things, maybe everything. He does not promise a reward on Earth or comforts. He does not promise we will have friends or a job on this path. We may be asked to give up knowing what the future holds for us.
Those who are willing to give up everything to obtain the Eucharist Desiree I. We too must desire the Lord. Our other desires, if good, all point to the Lord. If bad, lead us away. We cannot obtain what we do not desire. It is desire that moved us to make the sacrifice.
Ours was an FSSP Mass. The priest talked about the parable of the “Unjust Steward”.
Ours was an NO Mass at the parish near our vacation place. Very good sermon based on the parable of the pearl merchant. At sermon’s end he invited a young woman to join him and say a few words. A CUA graduate, she has finished one year’s work in a school in the South Bronx, and was preparing to leave on a two-year mission to Honduras to teach, build housing, clothe, feed, etc. Quite moving, and she has given up a lot of what would be a normal life for a 25-year-old in order to find her pearl. It was a good end to a good sermon.
On a side note, it appears that the recently appointed 29-year-old pastor is slooooowly making the service less Protestant-wannabe and more actual Catholic. The five-piece jazz combo that previously gigged near the altar is gone, replaced with a pianist and seven-voice choir. No more guitarist, sax player, drummer, keyboardist, or tambourine shaker. And he chants some prayers. He mentioned (gasp!) that it’s not a requirement to dash across the aisle in crack-the-whip style holding hands while beginning the Pater Noster. Progress.
Excellent homily, as always, in our NO mass (in Latin, ad Orientem, Roman Canon aloud, all parts sung in Gregorian, ends with Salve… truly an excellent sight of what the “reform of the reform” should be). Father, reminded us that the Kingdom of Heaven is God Himself, and we are called, as the second reading reminded us, to know God in order to participate in His glory in heaven; knowledge of God which starts here and which we should ask God to grant us -as Salomon did- by asking Him to inhabit in us, as the seed of said future glory.
I attended the bilingual Mass at our parish yesterday (I try to attend at least once a month, since it helps me practice my Spanish and it has also helped me learn bits and pieces of Latin) and the deacon preached on the parable that God is king (Reino de Dios) and that God comes first. It’s a way of thinking before taking action. The deacon also reminded the congregation that the Eucharist unites us Catholics together.
My wife and I attended Our Lady of Grace in Pasadena, a new and small Anglican Ordinariate outreach, for the first time. Father preached on understanding the Kingdom of Heaven not just as where you hopefully go after you die, but as both already with the faithful on earth, and as the eternal, physical heaven that will occur after the Final Judgment and the general Resurrection. My wife is Presbyterian and strongly considering converting, and Father, who also was once Presbyterian, offered during fellowship after to meet with us for RCIA-like discussions weekly in the coming months. A very wonderful Sunday altogether.
We have to bring forth the Kingdom on Earth and how we can do that, using examples from the parish and community.