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I based my sermon on the Epistle.
Talked about our Lord being the Mirror that we look into. We see ourselves as we are – our sins, faults, and failures. The closer we draw the more we see. The spiritual life is work. We overcome these sins … through fidelity to prayer, and the Sacraments. We we walk away for prayer and the Sacraments we think we are ok as we are and begin to deny sin.
At our outdoor Latin Mass in a parking lot Father announced the good news that we can return to our churches from next week, as a federal judge has suspended the unfair restrictions placed on worship services in this state. Deo gratias! … and yet … I had come to quite like the parking lot Masses, even when it rained and we had to stay in our cars.
Secondly, the situation sparked a thought. As far as I know, it is only TLM priests and their congregations who have gone to the considerable trouble of arranging outdoor Masses during the “Covid-1984” madness. I should be happy to learn of NO priests who have also done this but don’t know of any personally. If this observation holds true in general, I would venture to say that it is because the TLM people just care more.
Could it be that God allowed these 50 years in the wilderness to train the TLM community—in fact to create a TLM community where none, as such, existed pre-Vatican II—in preparation for a time to come, when that dogged persistence and never-give-up spirit would be needed? Could it be that this is Phase II of that training? Just a thought.
Fr. Greg Bierbaum at St. Mark in Highlands Ranch, CO made two excellent points about why he is going to be saying Mass ad orientam regularly from now on. First is that he will be facing who he is talking to. Second is that he is a like a military leader who does not lead his troops by going backwards. He leads by turning and facing the same way as the people and leading them into battle. Father Bierbaum also explained how he overcame the shutdown of St. Mark by the Tri-County Health Department on Friday when they tried to stop Masses from beginning again this weekend! https://stmarkhr.org/mass-with-father-bierbaum/ If you want to hear the whole homily it starts at about the 20 minute mark on the May 16th video.
We watched the live stream Mass from the St. Mary’s FSSP chapel in Providence RI.
The world would have us believe that freedom is not having to follow the rules. Yet as Christians we understand that we are only completely free when we love God and by loving Him follow his commandments, which frees us from the slavery of sin. But more than just following rules, God wants us to be His adopted children
I joined, virtually, with the Dominican Rite of the Mass offered at St. Gertrude’s Parish and Priory in Cincinnati. Fr. preached on the Gospel from John 16, especially the difficult passage where Christ tells the disciples “When that day comes you will make your request in my name, and I do not say that I shall pray to the Father for you, for the Father loves you himself, because you have loved me and believed that I came from God.”
He made the point that we can understand this passage to mean that Christ, while the one Mediator between the Father and us, isn’t like some divine ambassador or negotiator, running back and forth between us and the Father. Rather, because of our baptism, we ourselves are incorporated into Christ, so that in a real way, when we petition the Father in Christ’s name, it is the Whole Christ petitioning the Father.
Fr. also made a good point (among many!) about why the celebrant seems to fall silent, or almost silent, during some parts of the Mass, in particular the Canon: the priest ceases to be the personality that he is in himself, and becomes configured as the alter Christus, speaking as Christ Himself, these most intimate words to the Father.
At our live-streamed Missa Cantata from St. Mary’s in Kalamazoo, our new pastor, Fr. Jose Haro said (in re the Epistle) that since we receive Jesus on our tongues, we should be especially wary of committing sins of the tongue.