Your Sunday Sermon Notes – 23rd after Pentecost (NO: 32nd Ordinary) 2020

Was there a GOOD point made in the sermon you heard at the Mass for your Sunday (obligation or none), either live or on the internet? Let us know what it was.

Also, are you churches opening up? What was attendance like?

For my part,…

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
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5 Comments

  1. Dan says:

    I myself made a comment on an abc news article today regarding the crack team of scientists that Biden and Harris are assembling for COVID. I simply pointed out that two people who outright deny basic science, like how a baby in the womb has fingerprints, and its own DNA so is a separate human being, or males have a Y chromosome, and two males cannot in anyway naturally have children, and two females cannot have children without the cooperation of someone with a Y chromosome, are not qualified to choose qualified scientists.
    After some very ugly followups my post was promptly deleted. I got canceled. I feel a little proud that I was kicked out of their group so quickly.

  2. ajf1984 says:

    We have been blessed at our N.O. parish to have had public Masses for the last several months, and attendance has been fairly strong as far as I can tell! Granted, we’re restricted to every other pew, but we have not had to start going the “ticketing” route, and I’ve arrived as ‘late’ as 5 minutes before Mass with my family of 7 and the ushers have still managed to get us in.

    Father’s homily yesterday was a strong one, emphasizing that the “oil” of the virgins was really their own lives of virtue and the preparations that each of them made (wise virgins) or failed to make (foolish virgins) to welcome Christ into their lives. This is why, Father explained, the five wise virgins did not share their oil with the foolish ones: just like I can’t give anyone else the virtues I have cultivated myself, nor can they get into Heaven based on my efforts, neither could the foolish virgins have benefited from the preparations of the wise.

    A little cuteness after the Dismissal–Father has the laudable practice of hearing Confessions before and after Mass, and yesterday said, “If the Gospel, or my homily, scared you, just come to Confession! You’ll be all set.” We are blessed with truly heroic priests, and I thank God and pray for them every day.

  3. Charles E Flynn says:

    Cardinal Dolan had a strong conclusion for his sermon, about 31 minutes into this video:

    ST. PATRICK’S CATHEDRAL Sunday Mass – November 8th 2020

  4. Mariana2 says:

    Thanks, Father!

  5. Attendance was pretty good on Sunday for the 8 a.m. Mass, in contrast to past Sundays, on which it’s been fairly sparse. Every other pew is roped off–but we now have holy water again!

    The priest’s sermon was terrific–because it could be easily remembered. The theme was the Gospel reading of the parable of the wise and foolish virgins. The priest pointed to the oil, the trimming of the wicks, and the wise virgins’ telling the foolish virgins to go out to the merchants and buy oil. He likened the oil to a constant prayer life, the trimming of the wicks to going to confession (which he recommended be done regularly), and the admonition to go to the merchants as what one should do about people in one’s life who are following their own idols instead of God: don’t mess with them and let them go their way.

    It was a medieval-style tropological sermon. And because it had a clear structure, not just a ramble about this and that, it stayed in my mind. More sermons should be like this.

    By the way, until recently, the Mass reading of that parable used the word “bridesmaids” instead of “virgins,” which I always thought sounded ridiculous. It brought to mind girls in matching party dresses and also the movie Bridesmaids, all inappropriate for a time when wedding customs were quite different from our own. So I’m glad they’ve gone back to virgins. Now to get rid of “o’clock,” which always makes me smile. Christ died at “three o’clock”? Hey man, they didn’t have clocks back then! What’s wrong with “the ninth hour”? Why are Mass-goers thought to be so stupid that they can’t figure out how people told time at the time of Christ? Same with “the eleventh hour” in the parable. That phrase has become part of common usage ( synonym for ‘the last minute”), so it’s insane to “translate” it as “five o’clock.

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