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 Christmas (jabbed or not!), either live or on the internet? Let us know what it was.
What was attendance like? You might add what Mass for Christmas it was – there are three!
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.
I have some written remarks about the TLM Mass for Christmas – HERE
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Pingback: Your Sunday Sermon Notes: Christmas – Via Nova Media
In this province of Quebec – north of the 49th,in Canada guys,the government ordered that (disordered actually) as of Dec 20th, 2021 – no one can enter a place of worship without a vaccine passport. . .(with the sole exception of funerals which allow 250 people with passports or only a maximum of 25 people without passports).
That’s it in a nutshell – emphasis on “nut.”
I certainly would not want to have to do a bishop’s job at this time (or maybe any time) but there hasn’t even been a whimper out of the chancery office – they’re playing right along . . .which is severely disappointing. They could’ve been blindsided this time around. The last we heard, the government had finally granted places of worship “essential service” status, but on Dec 20th, they snatched it away again. How can you trust someone who doesn’t keep their word ? There is definitely a thread of hostility towards the Church running through all of this.
The archdiocese doesn’t seem to be, umm, interested in posting the actual words of segregation on their website : When one clicks on this colorful COVID-19 Health Guidelines in Effect in the Archdiocese of Montreal on their web page, one is immediately directed to a pdf download.
Pretty well all the parishes are kowtowing to the segregation with a fair amount of them offering Holy Communion in the parking lot to the segregated following certain Masses . . .the general recommendation is for the segregated to watch the streamed Mass first. Apart from a parish I’ll mention below, I haven’t seen any Communion offered to the segregated following weekday Masses yet – only following Christmas and Sunday Masses.
There several exceptions. Padre, I hope it might warm your heart a bit, albeit in a sad way, to know that a particular FSSP parish which is popular with many of my close friends, decided to close for the interim rather than enforce segregation within the Catholic Church. These guys really have 20/20 Catholic vision: “Leave no man behind.” . . .Gotta love ’em.
Might one be permitted to wonder if things may have been somewhat different had those good priests’ who serve that parish been our bishops and/or episcopal vicars at this difficult time ? As their notice on the web page says, “The priests remain at your entire disposition for confessions, sacraments, sacramentals, spiritual direction., etc.”
I haven’t lost hope yet because right now, I am blessed with a very good confessor who makes himself available. Last Confession, I mentioned to him that during a rare, permitted, brief visit before our Blessed Lord in the tabernacle I’d intimated to Jesus how I hated what they were doing to us, but that I liked what it was doing to my soul. Forced Eucharistic fasts can be a great refiner’s fire: When we end up hungering and yearning for Him in Holy Communion, that is surely a positive thing.
Prayers and best wishes to you , our fellow readers and all those who are dear to you Padre.
God bless you, have a Merry and holy Christmas, and thank you for this blog.
Diocesan TLM, undisclosed location and time, as I don’t want to put a target on our backs. Well-attended. I’d say perhaps 300 attendees, including four nuns in traditional habits, Knights of Columbus there in force. Beautiful singing, great cantor. Father’s sermon steered totally clear of Traditionis Custodes as well as any of the other current controversies in the Church, as he focused totally on the great miracle of Christmas, i.e., of the Word made flesh in form of the Christ child.
As I observed the congregation, I couldn’t help shake my head at how wrong the TLM-bashers in Rome are in their condemnations of us. They don’t know us, and they don’t want to know us, but far from the rigid, reactionary crackpot weirdos of the fevered Roman imagination, here’s what I saw: beautiful families of all socioeconomic classes, devout teens, dignified retirees, young singles, neck-tattooed hipsters, interracial couples, the aforementioned traditional sisters, fashionista young women, among many others. In short, I saw Catholics.
Just as an aside, to be fair, I did manage to open the pdf on the Archdiocese’s web site after disabling a couple of extensions in my browser.
Pax tecum.
Mass: TLM Missa Cantata.
Third mass of Christmas: Puer natus est nobis.
Location: classified.
Celebrant: classified.
Actually, between Corona and Custodes, it’s a small miracle that I can get to a TLM at all. I wonder if this cloak and dagger routine is going the new normal.
The sermon: (Not classified.) The Gospel for this Mass (John 1:1-12) is also read as the Last Gospel for the rest of the year. At the words “Et Verbum caro factum est et habitavit in nobis” we genuflect. We also genuflect when the same words are said in the Angelus.
“The Word became flesh and dwelt among us”.
We genuflect, to honour this supreme event: the God of all the universe becomes a man, for the salvation of each one of us.
I hadn’t been able to attend Mass for a couple of months, for a variety of reasons, but mostly the handicap and a bit of the covid — despite a number of attempts to do so.
Though I’ve finally worked out how to make it feasible again, by going down 90 minutes earlier (2½ hours before Mass total) and so giving my giving my body the extra time it seems to need to warm up and evacuate the pain sufficiently for it to be tolerable. Which is good !!
Our new PP has in other good news started making the Mass more Latinate again, as the two previous PPs did, and at least the basic minimum of Latin, Gregorian Chant, and ad orientem, though most of the Mass is still ad populum.
The focus of the sermon was squarely on the Incarnation of the Eternal Logos in the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the philosophical, moral, religious, and personal implications of this irruption of the Divine into our simple human lives, against the fakeness of mere human-created “glories”.
Haven’t unfortunately, for the above reasons, had the opportunity yet to ask him if the weekday TLM Masses have been continued or not.
Archbishop Aquila directed the clergy of Denver to preach on particular themes during each week of Advent:
1. that we were created good by the God who loves us and that we do not have the ability to create our own reality;
2. that we fell into sin and cannot escape it on our own;
3. that God, in the person of Jesus Christ, became man to free us from sin;
4. in response to this, we are called to change our lives and to bring others into relationship with God and His holy Church.
Father recapped all of that, so he went pretty long. He then included a great ten sentence exhortation to GO TO CONFESSION and reminded all present not to present for the Eucharist if one is aware of not being in a state of sanctifying grace. (on the way out of the church after Mass i heard a lady of a certain age grouse about that comment)
I have not attended Mass in a while at my childhood parish for a few reasons, one of which was the complete lack of reverence of the Mass. So I was happily shocked by what I saw at Christmas Eve Mass, and so much so that while I was waiting for Mass to begin I thought, “I can wait to tell Father Z!”
My childhood parish is in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, and unfortunately the parish had suffered for more than a decade under the care of a few unstable priests. Thankfully, the priest who was the weekend assistant of many years became the parish’s full-time pastor. Thanks be to God! Father has been here for a little over a year and the changes he has made are thrilling. He has gently, but steadily restored the church and the Mass. The “renovation” in the 70s/80s is being replaced with classic, traditional touches giving the church more of an old world feel. No more ugly felt banners. No more tacky altar decorations. A beautiful Nativity scene greeted you in the narthex. Fake Christmas trees with white lights and red bows and giant poinsettias decorated the church. The Mass was simply the most reverent NO Mass I have attended in years. (I am thirty years old for reference and have only ever attended NO Masses.) Gone was the ridiculous directive to shake hands before Mass and gone was exchanging the sign of peace. Incense was used during the procession in the beginning and at the end. Incense was used to bless the altar after the procession and before consecration. The altar servers (two boys and one girl) were extremely respectful unlike in the past. The choir was decent and such a relief from those horrid guitar Masses. Father’s homily focused on Christ coming into a world which rejected him, and references were made to Pope Benedict’s Infancy Narratives which I re-read this Advent. My family coordinated our attendance to match that of a family of which we have been friends for almost twenty years.
All in all, it was one of my favorite Christmas Eve Masses. Many thanks, Father Z, for teaching me that I should expect a reverently celebrated Mass and what a cheap imitation looks like. I think I knew it intuitively, but you verbalized it and have taught it through this blog. Wishing you a merry Christmas season and a happy, healthy new year.
With love and gratitude, Vivian
Christmas Eve, Novus Ordo (in English) in my local parish church, the first time I’d been to Mass there since March 202o as I usually attend an Ordinariate Mass an hour’s drive away.
One really good point in the sermon – Humility: the humility of Our Lord Jesus Christ, being born in a stable, not in a palace that might ordinarily be considered more fitting for the King of Kings, and the humility of the shepherds who were the first to come and worship the new-born Lord: simple agricultural workers, not the high and mighty, wealthy and important citizens.