Your Sunday Sermon Notes

7 Comments

1. Adaquano says:

   9 April 2018 at 12:26 PM

   Fr. emphasized something he has been banging the drum on lately – that we need to be humble enough to allow Christ to heal us and let him dwell in us. He particularly stressed how Jesus continually makes Himself available to us, but we must act to allow Him to change ourselves.
2. Hans says:

   9 April 2018 at 12:39 PM

   Each one of us believers has a role to play in helping draw others to faith, particularly through our own Christian behavior. The best way to become more Christian in our behavior is to go to confession regularly. That is the great gift we have received from Jesus through the Apostles and their successors the bishops in John 20:23.
3. frjim4321 says:

   9 April 2018 at 3:35 PM

   Debunked the “Doubting Thomas” myth; e.g., “Let us go to Jerusalem and die with him,” and “My Lord and my God.” Our ability to trace our understanding of the dual natures of Christ back to that statement of faith. Thomas’s only fault was the he was an empiricist. He spread the gospel as far or further than any of the conventional apostles. Christian churches of the East – far older that us – attribute their antiquity to his mission and ministry; he was a builder both practically and allegorically. The Christianity of India owes its progeny to Thomas. The precious relics of his hand which probed the wounds of Christ were rescued from Mosul only four years ago. Seeing is not always believing, but we believe what we do not see; and are thus blessed, but what causes us to believe is the power of the testimony that we have received and that we in turn need to pass on to the generations that come after us. Our faith gives us victory over the world; that implies a responsibility on our part to be diligent in its transmission.
4. GuyCovert says:

   9 April 2018 at 11:10 PM

   This Saturday night was Pascha was in the Romanian Catholic Church, and the homily was the reading St. John Chrysostom’s Easter homily.

   From the first part:

   “Let all pious men and all lovers of God rejoice in the splendor of this feast; let the wise servants blissfully enter into the joy of their Lord; let those who have borne the burden of Lent now receive their pay, and those who have toiled since the first hour, let them now receive their due reward; let any who came after the third hour be grateful to join in the feast, and those who may have come after the sixth, let them not be afraid of being too late; for the Lord is gracious and He receives the last even as the first. He gives rest to him who comes on the eleventh hour as well as to him who has toiled since the first: yes, He has pity on the last and He serves the first; He rewards the one and praises the effort.”

   A link to an electronic copy on EWTN: https://www.ewtn.com/faith/teachings/resub1.htm
5. TonyO says:

   10 April 2018 at 8:38 AM

   Pinch-hitter for pastor made this point: Thomas was called “the twin”. There is a figurative sense applicable to this: As when you see a twin, you may think that “Oh, this one is Thomas”, but there is that nagging doubt “but what if it’s the other way around ” because you are not sure? You are torn between accepting that it is Thomas and rejecting that it is Thomas. You have evidence before you, but you also know there is another possibility, so the evidence is not definitive.
   Likewise, when Thomas saw Christ, he had some evidence before him that Christ was resurrected, but from time immemorial there have been ghost stories and the like, so the evidence of “just seeing” was insufficient. Multi-sensory confirmation is far better evidence than single-sense information: touching as well as seeing, if not quite sufficient for a mathematical proof, is certainly sufficient for all other kinds of affirmations, especially in the practical arena. You can also throw in the speeches Jesus made, especially the extended discourse with clarifications of “all scripture” with the two disciples going to Emmaus, his appearances before a multitude, and twice (at least) Jesus ate food as well. The multiple layers of confirmatory evidence was sufficient for even the most careful observers.

   It was not a fault that Thomas asked for more evidence than that of a single sense. It is a blessing to us that he did so. For, while we believe that what the Apostles claimed about Christ, they really believed, on the strength of their consistently holy lives in the face of decades of persecution leading to their deaths, we have to have a good reason to believe ALSO that when the Apostles believed in the risen Christ, they themselves had good reason for believing that. Thomas helped give us that. Thomas was no more an “empiricist” than is the careful theologian / scientist who investigates the claims of a miracle for the purposes of declaring a beatified person to be a saint, who eventually concludes that “yes, this is a miracle, there is no reasonable natural account for the event”. The desire to seek for evidence about things that CAN HAVE evidence is a good thing, not a bad thing. What is wrong is to be the kind of empiricist who insists that there is nothing else but sensory and material reality, and Thomas certainly was not that.
6. Fr Martin Fox says:

   10 April 2018 at 9:42 AM

   My homily was about heaven; that is Jesus’ great goal for us, and what our Faith is about. I emphasized confession as the “doorway to heaven.” I also talked about how heaven isn’t where we end up by default, but rather it is a choice. We begin to have our heaven here, or else we begin to have our hell here. And I also pointed out that when we go to confession, and afterwards, continue to struggle, that’s purgatory. Not fun, often very hard, but still, the path to sainthood. If we keep going to confession, we will change, even if it comes slow and hard.
7. Fr Martin Fox says:

   10 April 2018 at 9:42 AM

   I might add, it is my intention to talk about heaven as much as seems reasonable in my Easter homilies.

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