Your Sunday Sermon Notes: Resumed 5th Sunday after Epiphany (32nd Ordinary – N.O.)

Too many people today are without good, strong preaching, to the detriment of all. Share the good stuff.

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

What was attendance like?

Tell about attendance especially for the Traditional Latin Mass.  I was getting reports that it is way up.

Any local changes or news?

For those of you who regularly viewed my live-streamed daily Masses – with their fervorini – for over a year, you might drop me a line.  There are developments.

I have some remarks about the TLM – HERE “Sinful Clerics of a Spotless Church”

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
This entry was posted in SESSIUNCULA and tagged . Bookmark the permalink.

14 Comments

  1. Julia_Augusta says:

    Totally packed Latin Mass at St. Nicholas du Chardonnet in Paris (SSPX) at 10:30 am. The earlier Mass was also very crowded. The priest (Italian) gave a good homily about death and the particular judgement (in French). The choir and organist were amazing. The people in attendance were old, middle aged, young, plus families, therefore, a broad section of French society. It’s so encouraging to see so many faithful French Catholics.

  2. Julia: I always enjoy my visits to that church. Ditto about the choir. And I always look at the two announcement boards in the back of the church: so many things going on! They are deeply connected to each other through the liturgical, catechetical and social life of the place.

  3. Raphael Sabadim says:

    Hi Father, your blessings

    From SSPX in Campinas, Brazil

    We have a very little house-turned-chapel that fits 70 people, but there were 120 today (we have some 1000 faithful souls who unfortunately have to take turns due to space constraints).

    Father talked about how meditation on the word makes people who are already faithful go out of their way into a priestly or religious vocation, but warned that we must be careful not to dismiss our current duties as heads of families (specially warning married men they have worldly duties to be fulfilled with tools from this world that are not ours even though we bought them, therefore we must not get over-attached to them, like cars, houses, etc).

    I’m chasing our priest to come to my home and entronize Our Lady of the Immaculate Heart + the Sacred Heart of Jesus…. As I wait I’ve been keeping our little homemade altar.

  4. redneckpride4ever says:

    From the SSPX chapel in Gilford, NH:

    Fr. Pieroni shared how St. Augustine made note of the weeds being heresies and how that will affect God’s judgment. The wheat is gathered and brought to the barn (Heaven) while the weeds are tossed to be burned (a place that Bishop Barron says may be empty…he should weed his garden).

    He had no qualms in saying point blank that earthly temptations cause people to leave the faith. He stated that he doesn’t much care for those who say they used to be Catholic but are now Christian (to paraphrase him, he said “You all know me well enough that you now how I’ll respond to that one”).

    He also pointed out that Henry VIII would be disgusted by the modern Church of England but said (again paraphrasing): “It’s still his fault for not wanting to accept the rules of the true faith”.

    He also noted that in modern times the weeds are growing in the true Church (cough…James Martin…cough). He did not specify names but I’m sure I wasn’t the only one to have an image of a Jesuit in my head.

    Overall fantastic as always. At one of the pot lucks a couple months ago a lady acknowledged his strictness.

    I told her after having a laughing hyena in my NO parish back in the 90s who turned our Mass into a virtual stand-up routine that strict was a welcome and refreshing trait.

  5. Dave P. says:

    Another crowd at St. Stanislaus in Milwaukee – still waiting for the first homily of our newly-ordained Canon. Canon Jayr preached well, as always, focusing on the Gospel and the theme of judgement.

    Still waiting for a visit from you, Father. I think you’d really like the new stained-glass window of St. Thomas Aquinas…also, Canon Jayr makes his own liqueurs…

  6. JonPatrick says:

    Interesting @redneckpride, I did not realize there was now an SSPX chapel in New Hampshire. Used to be that Boston was the furthest North that they came.

    Our regular Saturday evening NO Mass had a visiting priest from the Heralds of Good News, a missionary society based in India. His homily was a little hard to hear due to his accent, but I believe the gist of it was that we are all missionaries not just the priest and have a duty to spread the good news.

    Earlier that day we had our First Saturday traditional Latin Mass which this month was also the translated Mass for All Souls Day, complete with black vestments and unbleached candles. It was well attended. Father preached on the importance of confession, what a great gift it is, also that if you haven’t been to confession in over a year that is one more sin you need to confess. If people realized how important it was we would have lines stretching around the block. He also talked about the importance of praying for the dead, especially those souls in Purgatory with no one to pray for them.

  7. Suburbanbanshee says:

    Ordinary Form. Good attendance, saw more new people who weren’t college kids, as well as tons of the normal and new college attendees. The last couple weeks were somewhat sad ones, because one of the guys had his brother in high school drown; so they had a prayer service in this college chapel the week before Halloween, as well as the normal funeral Mass over at their home parish.

    The homily was about how people should give to the poor even if they themselves are currently poor, as a way of training the habit. Not sure how this went over, as a lot of college kids these days are not just poor and in debt, but unable to buy sufficient food; which is why the school has a food pantry, and why the KoC food drive every year is so impressive at the chapel. But college is a time when people like getting challenged, so I think the students liked it better than middle-aged worrywarts like me! Anyway, a good homily.

  8. HyacinthClare says:

    Notes from Fr. Elijah Mundattuchundayll, FSSP’s first mass after his ordination to the priesthood last Sunday: Fr. Terra, who was significant in Fr’s vocation, preached, mostly to the seminarians at Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary in Denton, NE, but also to the dozens of us from Phoenix and other friends who had come to see “our” Elijah be ordained. He’d been an altar boy since our church started in 2004. Fr. Terra’s sermon was “Give Me a Man.” He said God asked Mary to give Him a man, as men can experience death, and it was going to require the death of the perfect victim to save mankind. Then he told the seminarians that God was asking the same of them, asking for men who would live for Him and not be afraid to die for Him.

    He told the story of two priests, one from central Europe during the time of the communists who had barely escaped from the death of his entire family at their hands. The man came to the United States and was a priest here. The US government told him that they had information that the communists were still looking for him and that he should “watch out.” Shortly after that, he got a very late phone call, “Father, will you hear my confession?” The obvious thought came to his mind; but he was a priest. He opened the church and waited in the confession… and didn’t know what he was waiting for. It actually WAS a confession, not his murder, but he had God’s courage to do what priests do even if it had cost him his life.

    His second story was one very tender to all of us in Phoenix, the story of Fr. Kenneth Walker, who was murdered in a robbery at our church in 2014. He said Fr. Walker had known from God that he would die young, and would die by violence. He had told his parents that. (This is the first I ever heard that story.) It made something that an FSSP priest said at his funeral make sense for the first time. The man said, “He told us, ‘It’s all worth it, if I just get to say mass one time.'” He’d said mass for about 2 years before his murder at the age of 29. He is our unofficial guardian saint at Mater in Phoenix… answers to prayer to him are uncountable now. There was not a dry eye in the back of the seminary church, where all of us from Phoenix were listening, and Fr. Terra was crying, too.

    God says, “Give me a man, who will live for my people and is not afraid to die serving them.” What an honor to have been able to be there that holy day.

  9. leftycbd says:

    TLM here. Priest preached that November is a time to remember the dead, but also the four last things, and how we should use this time to take account of where we are regarding them. (Death, Judgement, Heaven, Hell). He apologized for the confusion at this time in the missal, being the ‘buffer time’ at the end of the year in the TLM.

  10. Liz says:

    HyacinthClare, THANK YOU! I’ve been telling people about Fr. Terra’s absolutely beautiful sermon at Fr. Mundattuchundayil’s first mass but I did a poor job summarizing it. You did so well. Congratulations to your parish. There are many graces and consolations, I’m sure. We are so excited that is Fr. Mundattuchundayil is now a priest forever!

  11. redneckpride4ever says:

    @JohnPartr8ck

    The chapel was originally built and run by Fr. Hector Bolduc after he departed from the SSPX. After his passing another independent priest took over. Upon his becoming elderly prevented him from being able to physically offer a Mass, the SSPX began sending priests there weekly. I started attending long after the Society took the reigns.

    The current priest assigned to service the chapel is Fr. Christopher Pieroni from the priory in Ridgefield, CT. He also offers Mass at the Woburn (Boston) chapel.

    Fr. Kevin Robinson from the same priory has also been a visiting priest, and I had the honor of having him bless my Holy Ghost chaplet just a few months before he appeared on Tucker Carlson when he was interviewed on how religious clergy were responding to the COVID-1984 lockdowns.

  12. Gregg the Obscure says:

    pretty odd day. i attended the first Mass of the day rather than my usual 1030 because a Catholic charity i support had arranged for the intention to be the repose of my wife’s soul (she passed in July and just this past week the headstone was set in place so i prayed at the grave Saturday). ironically enough we had a guest homilist from Catholic funeral and cemetery services. he explained the importance of making arrangements both as to providing some comfort to one’s survivors and, in these dark times, assuring that the mortal remains are treated in accordance with their inherent dignity given that the state government has recently approved human composting. the celebrant was a brilliant prof from the seminary. given the one homily i’ve heard of his, i had really hoped he would be preaching. even so, the joy with which he celebrated was edifying.

    before Mass there was a brief talk from a seminarian in conjunction with the annual seminary appeal. he is from Myanmar and will be returning there this summer. while he didn’t mention it, the persecution of Catholics there is fierce and it is likely he will face martyrdom before long. (see https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2021/10/16/catholicism-in-myanmar-solid-faith-amid-a-tenuous-existence/ )

  13. Chuck4247 says:

    Not the sermon nor homily per se, but I think it spoke more than his homily did.

    I went to college with Father a few years back, and he’s still a bit green. You could tell, at times, that he was not very confident in many of the things he was doing. He had no altar boys to help him, and that made some of the actions appear more awkward than normal as well. (Side note: Please pray for that diocese, they are hurting horribly for priests)

    However, the moment that he elevated the Host in the Eucharistic Prayer, a smile broke out on his face. You could tell that he had immense Joy in that moment. It was the look of a kid at Christmas, the look of a child who’s parent is finally back home after months or years away, a look that said “the rest of the world is irrelevant, because I have Him”.

    Those few seconds said more about what was important than a semester’s worth of lectures ever could. I pray he never loses that Joy…

  14. JillMary says:

    Ordinary Form, fairly full at 7:30. I am new to this parish so unsure how it compares to pre-Covid. The Gospel was the Widow’s mite story. Our guest priest (and diocesan vocations director) suggested in today’s world it is time we are greedy with. How generous are we with our time in all areas of our faith – prayer, meditation, serving and loving others? We are time hoarders. Of course the church and poor need money, but it’s time we all seem to think we don’t have enough of these days.

Comments are closed.