Was there a good point made in the sermon you heard for your Mass of Sunday obligation?
I was deacon for the Mass so I didn’t preach. However, the celebrant spoke to not being afraid of three things, temptations towards fear, the Church’s mystery, her doctrine, and her works.
Coat of Arms by D Burkart
A Daily Prayer for Priests
My "challenge coin" for my 25th anniversary of ordination in 2016.
Want one? I do exchanges with military and LEOs, etc. and you can make a donation.
Loading ... Loading ...
They find you a pro-life agent in your area who commits to giving a portion of the fee to a pro-life group!
Help Monks in Wyoming (coffee – UPDATED LINK) and Norcia (beer) and the wonderful "Soap Sisters" of Summit, NJ!
Please follow me on Twitter!
If you travel internationally, this is a super useful gizmo for your mobile internet data. I use one. If you get one through my link, I get data rewards.
Nota bene: I do not answer these numbers or this Skype address. You won't get me "live". I check for messages regularly.
WDTPRS
020 8133 4535
651-447-6265
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Our three weapons against the temptations of the devil are fasting, humility, and prayer.
In light of the Gospel account of the Lord’s sojourn in the desert and temptations, I talked about both our total dependence on God, and the power of “No”: saying no to the desires of the flesh, of the eyes, and of the ego, so we can give a true yes to God.
You will not have a holy Week without a holy Lent. Do penance. Spend time with God.
It was our Deacon’s turn to preach the homily, and like all of his sermons, it was a doozy! “Believe in the Devil, and also believe in Hell because they both exist, and many people may be headed there” Many of us get a little enthusiastic knowing Deacon Joe is due.
We have an enemy who is terribly powerful, and wholly dedicated to the destruction of all that is good. He is vicious and envious and by nature, much stronger than us. He wants us in Hell for all eternity.
But we also have a Redeemer, infinitely powerful, Who, as a man, dedicated Himself to our redemption and salvation. He wants us in Heaven with Him for all Eternity.
We are regularly tempted by the devil, the flesh, and the world. But since sin is a choice of the will, these temptations are not sin, only our choosing to give into them is.
Our Lord suffered temptation in the only way he could, externally from the devil, since His Human Nature is so completely united to His Divine nature, that the Flesh and the World cannot tempt Him.
Nevertheless, the Devil uses all three to try to tempt Him.
Turn the Stone to Bread — Flesh
Bow down and worship — The Devil
Throw Yourself down, the Angels will catch you — the World
Even though the devil cites Scripture, he lies, and he is no match for Our Blessed Lord in this trial in the desert.
We should take hope from this that as long as we cling to Jesus and His holy Mother, our guardian Angels and the saints, we cannot lose.
Oh. — and when the temptations come, don’t talk to the devil directly. Turn to our Blessed Lord or Our Lady, scourge of demons, or our Guardian Angel, or the other saints. As our Blessed Lord says in Psalm 90, I will protect him because he has known My Name.
After a year on the front line of the battle with the world, Lent is a time in the safety of the rear, getting cleaned up and refitted.
Mass in the EF.
The three pillars of Lent: Prayer, fasting, alms giving. The three sources temptation: The flesh, the world, the devil.
Wake up from your sleep walking this Lent.
The devil, like a good Protestant, selectively uses scripture to lead Jesus astray. ??
Our Lord being true God and true Man in His humaness, His senses, pain receptors were much more refined than ours, and so the pain of His isolation and hunger during the 40 days in the desert, was much more than we could ever undergo. And Our Lord did this so that we might not be alone in our struggles. There was more.
My priest instituted ad Orientum worship in our parish this morning Sermon was about why it is important and how we can best participate He also brought back communion kneeling on the tongue for those who can/wish to and he spoke of the need for reverence during worship
Mass in the OF. Father walked us through the three types of temptations Satan offered our Blessed Lord, and then highlighted the last line, “Satan departed from him for a time.” This is a reminder that Satan was always lurking about around Our Lord during His earthly ministry, trying to trip Him up or catch Him out. And if Satan lurked about the Master, how much more does he hang out in the shadows around us, looking for any narrow crack through which to whisper his deceits to us. While Father didn’t explicitly reference it, I couldn’t help but recall the admonition of St. Peter that we must remain vigilant and alert, for the Adversary is prowling around seeking to devour us!
Forgot to mention–the homily began with a reminder that, just as the Sport Which God Loves Most (aka baseball) requires its players to go back to the basics after a long winter of laxity, so too our Church gives us this Holy Season to go back to the basics of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving so that we can beef-up our spiritual muscles after perhaps growing cold/lax since last Lent!
The Chinese priest began with a quote from Sun Tzu’s Art of War:
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
He said he would concentrate on the first temptation in the limited time available, since if we succumb to this kind of temptation, we are more likely to succumb to the other two. Bread is good, and necessary for life, but we can be tempted to gain even good things in the wrong way, or treat them as the most important thing in life, when they are not.