Your Sunday Sermon Notes

Was there a good point or two made in the sermon you heard at the Holy Mass to fulfill your Sunday obligation?  Let us know what it was.

For my part, for this Feast of the Most Precious Blood, I spoke about the 7 times we hear in Scripture when Jesus shed blood.

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11 Comments

  1. frjimt says:

    My focus was on the words of clement from the celebration sat of the First Martyrs of the Church of Rome: “let us fix our gaze on the Blood of Christ, realizing how precious it is to His Father, since it was shed for our salvation & brought the grace of repentance to all the world.”
    As this was embraced by those who refused the ‘envy of the devil’ & converted the world because Christians did what the world (saw/sees) as foolish: embracing both the rich/poor, healthy/sick, man/woman & treating them as did Christ: meeting their needs living in such a way that Paul’s quote rings true: whoever had much did not have more & whoever had little did not have less.
    This defeats socialism, communism, unbridled capitalism & any other ‘ism’. For these will fail, Christ will not fail us who live discipleship, avoiding those weapons of the evil one: jealousy & envy.

  2. TonyO says:

    Our deacon brought to light a new facet in the gospel that I had not heard before, about Mark’s gospel with Jesus healing Jairus’ daughter and the woman who had hemorrhaged for 12 years. In the Mosaic ritual law, a woman who is menstruating is “unclean”. That means that this woman would have been constantly unclean for much or all of the 12 years – a very great burden on her, to prevent her from participating in many ordinary parts of daily life. This is one reason why the woman wanted to touch Jesus secretly, so she didn’t have to publicize her being unclean to the whole crowd, but also so as not to make public that Jesus too would be unclean by touching her. Similarly, touching a dead body would also make a person unclean, but this is just what Jesus did when he picked up the girl’s hand, and said “Talitha, koum”.

    Yet God is the God of life, not of death (as we have from the first reading, from Wisdom). Death has no power over Jesus, and when Jesus and death collide, it is Jesus who must prevail: the girl is made living, rather than Jesus made unclean. Similarly, when the woman touched Jesus, it was not Jesus who became unclean, but she who became clean: He says “your faith has made you whole.” These and other events are part of how Jesus, who fulfilled The Law, also superceded the Law and then set it aside for the Law of the New Covenant, so that the old Law of Moses was to be no longer binding on Christians. Thus the old ceremonies and rituals are defunct, not because they were bad, but because they have been superceded.

    Side note: before Jesus gets to Jairus’ house, another messenger comes to say the daughter died. Jesus goes there anyway, and says the girl is not dead but asleep – and the people jeer at him for saying so. While the household almost certainly had people who could tell the difference between death and something less grave, this probably should not be understood as Jairus and his household jeering at Jesus, but others: when a person dies, there would be mourners who publicly wailed and cried; for wealthy men and public officials, there would be paid mourners who would lend a more polished air to the affairs of the funeral with their more polished public grieving. Jesus, in declaring the girl was not dead, would be ruffling the feathers of the paid mourners, and by healing the girl would put them out of a paid gig. Not surprisingly, they didn’t much want his interference. More than likely, with the girl brought back to life, they would be unable to submit a bill even for the portion of the grieving period that they worked. These are more likely the ones who ridiculed Jesus, rather than those of Jairus’ own household.

  3. jaykay says:

    Today in our Archdiocese in Ireland is the feast of St. Oliver Plunket, Archbishop of Armagh, martyred at Tyburn during the “Popish Plot” hysteria, 1st July 1681. So we had the red chasuble. Father, a visiting Priest, celebrated the (NO) Mass beautifully and in his homily dwelt expressly on the courage of St. Oliver, betrayed by his own, unfortunately, in giving witness to the true faith, and of the forgiveness he expressed to his enemies, including his “judge”, the notorious Lord Chief Justice Jeffries. This story, he explained, needs to be retold because so many have forgotten it. It was a short but rivetting homily… because so many have either forgotten or, more likely these days, just never knew. Thank you, Father.

    Oh yes, he also chanted the doxology in Latin. We in the choir delivered a rousing “Amen”. As one fellow bass said to me after: “haven’t heard that here in nearly 50 years!”. (He’s been a choir member since 1947, as a boy).

  4. Shonkin says:

    Our pastor talked about the lessons in the three readings. Since we are coming up on Independence Day, he first mentioned the fact that many of the Founding Fathers were members of the Enlightenment, who expressly did not believe in miracles. Thomas Jefferson, for example, cut all references to miracles out of his Bible. Others of them would read biblical accounts of miracles with a wink. They used a sophistic argument: Since God created Natural Law, He would have no reason to violate it.
    Then Father pointed out the error in their reasoning. As the first reading from the Book of Wisdom said, God did not make death; it came into the world by the envy of the devil. Thus, in resurrecting Jairus’ daughter, Jesus did not violate Natural Law; He was setting the world right, in this instance undoing damage done by Satan and by Adam and Eve.

  5. Akita says:

    I went to Mass at an SSPX mission today.

    The sermon was multifaceted and riveting. Father explained that it was a first class feast and that the Precious Blood is central to what we believe as Catholics. Every supplication we make to the Father can be made through invocation of the Precious Blood. The imagery of the blood soaked garments of the scouraged Christ was compared to those who smash grapes for wine. But only Our Lord is the vineyard worker who could expiate sin and quash the Vineyard of Wrath. (Not those exact words, but powerful imagery). Father took us back to the Old Testament and the story of Moses sending forth two scouts into the Promised Land, meeting a native pagan prostitute and recounted if she would aid the Israelites, she and her household would be spared when the Israelites overtook the land. To identify her house she hung a red cord in the window (symbolic of Christ’s Saving Blood). This prostitute repented, was saved! She married and was upright. She is King David’s grandmother and thus Jesus’ ancestor as well!

    Father conveyed profound sorrow that this Great and Holy First Class Feast was lost after Vatican II.

  6. GrumpyYoungMan says:

    (Semi-regular) Visiting Franciscan encouraged us to pray the Litany of the Most Precious Blood, especially in reparation for the sins of clergy.

  7. Dismas says:

    I caught some good snippets tying in the (OF) readings with the Gospel, and it was likely a good homily. We recently acquired a part-time priest to help with our pastor, part time as he’s also the priest for the local Catholic high school. I was hoping to hear from him, but sadly, I was busy trying to keep three very active, nimble, small children (badly in need of a nap) within the general vicinity of the pew.

  8. zag4christ says:

    I attended the vigil Mass at Our Lady of Peace in Pinedale, Wyoming. The priest is Father Peter James, who is from Kenya originally, but he is a priest of the Diocese of Cheyenne. His homily focused on the importance of faith, both of the woman who suffered from hemorrhages for 12 years, and of the faith of the father who pleaded for the healing, or really, the recovery from apparent death of his 12 year old daughter. In both instances, turning ones life over to God completely resulted in miracles. Fr. Peter James emphasized that only when we completely give our lives to God in faith, as the woman with hemorrhages and the father of the young girl who died, will we experience the Grace that God is offering to us.
    Fr. Peter James cares for three different parishes in the largest county in the lower 48 states. He offers Confession prior to every Mass. He works 7 days a week for 11 months of the year, then he goes home to Kenya for 1 month to be with his family. Can you imagine what it is like for a priest from Kenya to minister to rural communities in western Wyoming?
    At the end of Mass, the deacon, Dan Kostelc, celebrating his ordination anniversary of 14 years, read the announcements of upcoming events, such as the annual DeSmet Mass, which is the anniversary of the first Mass celebrated in Wyoming (1841), and also the fund raiser for the retired priests of Diocese https://kofcknights.org/CouncilSite/index.asp?CNO=9917 which I think you wil appreciate.
    Peace and God bless.

  9. iPadre says:

    In the OF, I talked about trust. Our daily lives our lived in human trust, but nobody has more love or concern for us than God. He knows what is best for our good, and our salvation.

    In the EF, I talked about the Precious Blood. Blood has three purposes: to nourish, fights disease, and removes waste. The Precious Blood does the same – nourishes “Unless you eat my body and drink my blood you have no life within you.”; fight disease/ protects from evil. They make their doorposts with blood of a lamb and our souls are marked with the Blood of the Lamb of God.; Finally, it removes waste (purifies). “So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood.” Hb 13:12

  10. I spoke about pornography and other addictions, although I never actually used the word “pornography” or anything explicit. I had attended a priests’ workshop on this subject, and folks knew I’d been away, so I was partly giving a report on the week; but the readings, about healing and coming back to life, seemed providential.

  11. fichtnerbass says:

    We had a visiting priest who made the connection between the word emptor as buyer (as in caveat emptor or buyer beware) and redeemer or redemptor – the re-buyer paying the price or ransom for our souls.

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