Was there a good point made during the sermon you heard at the Mass to fulfill your Sunday obligation (under pain of mortal sin under most circumstances).
Let us know!
Today, I said the NOVUS ORDO at the request of the pastor, who had just done THIS.
I made the point that Christ called John the greatest man who had ever been born.
I explained that John was great because of his love of God.
Love of God allows you to do whatever your vocations call you to do.
What do you love?
And to young people, John prepared his love and actions, because he spent time in the desert. You have to have some desert in your lives now, learning to say “No” to yourself, decreasing so Christ can increase.
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Father mentioned about the 3 major birthdays we celebrate in the Church and besides Jesus and Mary , John the Baptist is one of those 3. He also made the point that St. John was the greatest man who had ever been born. He spoke about St. John saying he must decrease while Jesus increases. He spoke about St. John’s hardships of how he lived. Also about St. John’s bravery for speaking up to Herod about his adultery. He spoke of how St. John leapt in St, Elizabeth’s womb when he heard Mary’s greeting. How God allowed St. Elizabeth in her old age while barren to conceive St. John. He told us we should strive to be like St. John the Baptist—humble and detached from the world.
At the Saturday evening Vigil Mass, our priest, here in Italy, linked the first reading from Jeremiah with Gabriel’s announcement to Zechariah … that “from the womb they were called”. God had great plans for them.
He then developed this into the fact that we are all called, that God knows each one of us intimately, from the moment of conception … even before, in His divine plan. The psalm also carries this theme.
Like Jeremiah, however, we too often make excuses, “I am a child”; any excuse rather than accept God’s love and His plan for us.
With such intimate knowledge and love for every individual, God will never abandon us; He is ALWAYS there for us, waiting for us to turn to Him, so that He can help us become the people we should be.
Like Jeremiah and St John the Baptist, we fulfil God’s plan when we listen to Him with open hearts, allowing Him to act through us. Amen.
I attended both the Byzantine Divine Liturgy and the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite which had the same homily, since our bi-ritual priest delivered both. Note that the birth of St. John the Baptist occurs when the days are starting to grow shorter (“I must decrease”) whereas Christmas occurs as the days are starting to grow longer (“He must increase”). He compared John to the best man at a wedding who in those days disappeared as soon as the groom had been presented to the bride. A humble man looks away from himself and to the Lord. Only through the humility that comes from repentance can we experience true freedom and thereby true joy.
Father said all the prophets before Saint John the Baptist basically pointed towards the coming of the Messiah. St. John is the only one who said, Ecce Agnus Dei. Here he is. And the importance of that is shown by the fact that these words are in each and every Mass. This is a paraphrase.
1. “He must increase and i must decrease”
2. the meaning of the name John
3. the last words of JtB in scripture, repeated at every Mass, are what his life and ours should be about: pointing to the Lord
Our priest-in-residence gave a very good homily. Started off similarly to others here, discussing how only 3 birthdays are celebrated on the liturgical calendar, and all 3 were born holy: Jesus for obvious reasons, Mary through immaculate conception, and John was ‘born’ holy because he accepted the Lord while still in the womb (“leapt for joy in his mothers womb”). At that point (and I can’t recall how he transitioned, but it made sense at the time) he transitioned to Sts. John Fisher and Thomas More, the Fortnight for Freedom and the primary danger to Religious Freedom being the perversion of marriage through contraception, abortion, and same-sex “marriage”. He explained that our current situation is due to the separation of the trinity of marriage, sex and babies. I had never heard the word ‘sodomy’ used so many times in a homily (maybe never at all), saying same-sex “marriage” is not a celebration of love, but of sodomy. Very powerful, very frank, very courageous. We have wonderful priests in our parish!