Was there a good point made in the sermon you heard at the Mass that fulfilled your Christmas Mass Obligation? What was it? There are a lot of people who don’t get many good points in the sermons they must endure.
For my part, 1st Mass of Christmas, Midnight Mass (Dixit Dominus) …
And – on very little sleep – for the 2nd Mass, Mass at Dawn (Lux fulgebit) …
I post these “Sunday Sermon Notes” entries for several reasons. First, as I mentioned, above, there are people who don’t have an opportunity for something edifying in church. You can usually extract with pliers some good point, but often enough these days that can be difficult. Therefore, giving others good points you heard is helpful.
Also, if you are aware of these posts, perhaps you will be inspired to listen more closely and try to remember what Father said more accurately. Everyone wins that way.
Meanwhile, my good friend Fr. Murray was on Fox early this morning. HERE
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No points from the sermon, but posting just to say, May every blessing of the Christmas season be yours, Father Z! And thank you and God bless you for all you do for us. And may your ministry continue to be fruitful. Love from, Marion Ancilla Mariae II.
I am sure that I’m going to mess this up just in the way I say it, but Father spoke about how the Eucharist was the continuation of the Incarnation–that God loves us SO MUCH, He became man to be with us, and before going to Heaven, He instituted the Eucharist, so He could STAY with us, body, blood, soul, and divinity. It was SUCH a good homily. Brought me to tears of gratitude many times. God is so good. Praise be to Him forever! Happy Christmas, everyone!!
In my homily, I worked over the idea of “home.” We feel a longing for home this time of year, yet in reality, all — not only some — of us are away from home. Our home was the Garden, but we left, and ever since, God has longed to bring us home. That is the whole story. It was always about the Incarnation, and the Cross, and Resurrection, and about going home to be united with God forever. Christmas isn’t about satisfying our longing, but rather, making us hunger and thirst for home all the more: being with Jesus.
I went to Midnight Mass at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Albany, NY. Our Bishop stated in his homily that the same God who came as a baby comes to us truly in the Eucharist in that very Mass.
A fairly obvious, but good, point made at my Midnight mass from Father was connecting the Incarnation at Christmas with the Cross. The crib, he said, only makes sense when understood through the context of the cross. He spoke about St. Anslem’s book about why God became man, and that the ONLY reason God became man was to save us for our salvation. As we get caught up in the merriment of the Holidays, we should also remember this is a day of mourning for us to because we know that the Christ child born today will one day hang from a tree.
Thank you very much, Father Z, especially for your homily of Lux Fulgebit Mass.
Blessed Christmas Season to you and your blog-readers, and thank you for the beautiful AdventcaZts to help prepare us in prayer.
TLM. 3rd Mass: Puer natus est nobis. Father told us not to embarrassed about being a Catholic, a faith of great beauty and truth. He emphasized that it is reasonable, with the Incarnation of our Lord prophesied centuries before by Micah and Isaiah, so that when the Magi arrived from the East, enquiring about the location of the Messiah, it was well-known to the Jewish priests that he must be born in David’s city, of David’s line
(Given the reference to the Magi, I was slightly disappointed that we did not conclude the Mass with the Last Gospel of the Epiphany, as stipulated in my 1951 and 1957 Missals. But Father was following the 1962 rubrics scrupulously. I guess that is a good thing, although the omission of the Last Gospel smells like Annibale’s work to me.)
Happy Christmas to all!
I talked about the Eucharist hidden in the mystery of Christmas. Bethlehem “House of Bread,” Our Lord in the trough in the manger the Panis Angelicus, the origin of the word Christmas “Christ’s Mass” and tied it all together in how we give gifts in imitation of the Father giving us the greatest gift that He still gives us in every Mass. He is the greatest give given and the greatest gift we receive. All of our Catholic Churches are little Bethlehems. Not only is the Mass the Sacrifice of Christ made present, but through the Verbum Domini, it is a little Christmas that makes Christ present to feed us with His life, love and grace.
Merry Christmas!
I hope the points I made were good points. I was one of three people offering “lessons” in our Unitarian Universalist congregation’s service of readings, lessons and carols. I spoke about Ebenezer Scrooge (a Unitarian–or at least, Dickens was) and the importance of planning no one beyond redemption and expiation; how in a time of divided politics we ought to be careful to disagree without vilifying; how Scrooge was a 1%er who was nevertheless as good a friend and as good a boss and as good a man as the good old City ever knew. May the same be truly said of us.
The other two homilist spoke about the courage to create peace in families, and the courage to be hospitable to strangers; I was the final lesson-ist.
Let your heart be light. Thanks for the work of this blog.
[It is time to come back to the Church. Please come back. You are needed and you need what only she can give. And you know this.]
1. Go to Mass
2. Go to Confession
3. …. Catholics in the pews, if you’ve not been to confession recently do *not* come up to receive the Holy Eucharist
4. Go to Confession
5. The Devil is amongst us; this is proved by the lack of morality today where it is common for people to live together before getting married; when [he] was younger that was not the norm — sadly it has become the norm today.
6. Go to Confession.
7. Pray the rosary.
8. Go to Confession (honestly, Father mention Confession about 4~5 times.)
Today’s sermon contained the point that a child is given to us, and one of the things that means is that life is turned upside down as the baby’s needs and schedule take precedence over our own.
First, the church was beautiful. No surprise, it is known as the wedding church because so many want their wedding to be there
After the Gospel there was a skit about the Grinch, with one adult and children It would have been fine had it been at an Elementary School Christmas (er. . . Holiday) production. But wrong time, wrong place.
Father turned the old axiom of “it’s better to give than to receive” on its head: Christmas reminds us that sometimes, it is better to receive than to give, when we are receiving the Lord and the grace He alone can give. Some nice anti-Pelagian themes, as well as a highlighting of the need for repentance and Confession!
Traveling do not at our usual parish for a 4pm vigil Mass. Was well done with the priest and 2 deacons on beautiful vestments it looked like an NO equivalent of a solemn Mass.
The homily spoke about God’s love for us such that He became one of us. We are loved by him and we should look in the mirror and remind ourselves of that.
Having begun the ministerial fellowship process as a UU–and invested a lot of schooling, learning, reading. and money to get to that point–I’m unlikely as ever to return to Catholicism. It’s simply something I cannot intellectually, spiritually or morally assent to any longer, as the non-theist and religious humanist whom I’ve become. I have great respect for its history and traditions and occasionally also for its praxis. Your blog is helpful to me in understanding how and why the Church moved from where it was when I was younger. I’m not much for debating these days but still enjoy reading here. Thanks for the kind thoughts.
Our Pastor made two points. As a society we’re focused more on the preparations for the the feast: shopping, decorations, etc. we miss the meaning what it means to have God incarnate. To that point, we look at depictions of Jesus’ birth fairly sanitized. We should remember that Mary and Joseph were the lowest of an oppressed people. After their journey if you want to see what they might have looked like, go to our Texas/Mexico border. Very powerful!
[Eye roll.]
Went to the Novus Ordo Mass during the day. Gospel was therefore supposed to be from John Chapter 1. My mind was geared for that. Priest decided to do reading from the Mass at dawn. Totally flustered me. So, remembering the charity of Bob Cratchit towards Scrooge while Cratchit’s wife was going to speak ill of him (“Dear, it’s Christmas”), I’ll bite my tongue.
Please Priests! Assume there is at least one person in the congregation who knows what you should be saying or doing. Please say or do what you should for the sake of that one person.