Too many people today are without good, strong preaching, to the detriment of all. Share the good stuff.
It was the 2nd Sunday after Easter in the Vetus Ordo and the 3rd Sunday of Easter in the Novus Ordo.
Was there a GOOD point made in the sermon you heard at your Sunday Mass of obligation?
Tell about attendance especially for the Traditional Latin Mass. I hear that it is growing. Of COURSE.
Any local changes or (hopefully good) news?
I have some thoughts about the Sunday reading HERE.
Coat of Arms by D Burkart
on So very cool that it needs its own post! VOYAGER 1 is TALKING AGAIN!: “Thanks Father Z, cosmology lesson as only you can impart.”
on ROME 24/4– Day 35 (-6): adventures in symmetry: “Hmmm. Those kind of tassels have always reminded me of fancy curtain tiebacks so I have avoided making them but…”
on So very cool that it needs its own post! VOYAGER 1 is TALKING AGAIN!: “Fr.Z sez: …The Voyagers are destined—perhaps eternally—to wander the Milky Way and then become characters in Star Trek…. V’ger!! https://youtu.be/gxAaVqdz_Vk?t=96”
on So very cool that it needs its own post! VOYAGER 1 is TALKING AGAIN!: “Being from Florida, I remember when both Voyagers launched – you could see them from our house. At that time,…”
on So very cool that it needs its own post! VOYAGER 1 is TALKING AGAIN!: “Too bad the Curia has drifted too far from its power source…”
on So very cool that it needs its own post! VOYAGER 1 is TALKING AGAIN!: “Voyager 2 launched on 20 August 1977, from Cape Canaveral. Voyager 1 launched from Cape Canaveral on 5 September 1977.…”
on So very cool that it needs its own post! VOYAGER 1 is TALKING AGAIN!: “I guess Voyager I gives new meaning to the poem High Flight. Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of…”
on So very cool that it needs its own post! VOYAGER 1 is TALKING AGAIN!: “Now this is very interesting. Not just looking up at some small dots of light overhead!”
on ROME 24/4– Day 34 (-7): The burial place of… PLATO?!?: “The final resting place of Plato puts me in mind of a memorable excerpt I once read about Aristotle in…”
on ROME 24/4– Day 34 (-7): The burial place of… PLATO?!?: “Someone pointed out the St. George’s Day Google Doodle with its background account to me – with one of the…”
on Three items of interest: a conversion, a connection, and a con job: ““George Farmer, aka Candace Owen’s husband. He is a revert” If I’m reading the interview correctly, first a convert, then…”
on Three items of interest: a conversion, a connection, and a con job: “Not to detract from anything Imrahill said, but well, the papally-attested infallible ordinary magisterium about a catholic truth, not the…”
on So very cool that it needs its own post! VOYAGER 1 is TALKING AGAIN!: “Understatement of the year: they don’t make them like that anymore!” on So very cool that it needs its own post! VOYAGER 1 is TALKING AGAIN!: “What happened to Voyager 2? And what sort of “science” data will Voyager 1 soon be able to resume transmitting?…”
on So very cool that it needs its own post! VOYAGER 1 is TALKING AGAIN!: “Not too shabby for a 77’ model.”
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A Daily Prayer for Priests
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Father today spoke of us praying for Our Sheperds. Priest, Bishops and Cardinals.
He Must of been talking about Archbishop Paglia.
I was playing with ChatGPT this weekend. I gave it this prompt, “Please generate a sermon for a Roman Catholic priest to deliver on the Bible readings for the Third Sunday of Easter Lectionary: 46. Please include one quotation from the Catena aurea by St Thomas Aquinas and a quotation from Saint Augustine.” Below is what it generated in ~ 15 seconds.
My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this Third Sunday of Easter, we gather together to reflect on the Word of God as we continue our journey through this Easter season. Today’s readings offer us valuable lessons on faith, repentance, and discipleship. Let us open our hearts to receive the teachings of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
In the first reading from the Acts of the Apostles (3:13-15, 17-19), we hear the powerful testimony of Peter, who boldly proclaims the resurrection of Jesus Christ to a crowd in Jerusalem. He reminds them that they had denied Jesus and called for His crucifixion, but God had raised Him from the dead. Peter urges them to repent of their sins and turn to God, so that their sins may be wiped away.
This message of repentance and conversion is as relevant today as it was in Peter’s time. We are all sinners, and we all need God’s mercy and forgiveness. Let us follow Peter’s example and turn to God with contrite hearts, asking for His grace and guidance as we strive to live a life of holiness.
As St. Augustine reminds us, “God has promised forgiveness to your repentance, but He has not promised tomorrow to your procrastination.” Let us not delay in turning to God, but rather seek Him earnestly and without delay.
In the Gospel reading (Luke 24:35-48), we hear the beautiful account of Jesus appearing to His disciples after His resurrection. At first, they were frightened and thought they were seeing a ghost. But Jesus reassured them that He was not a spirit, but rather had risen from the dead. He then opened their minds to understand the Scriptures and the prophecies that foretold His suffering, death, and resurrection.
Just as Jesus revealed Himself to His disciples, He reveals Himself to us in many ways, especially in the Holy Eucharist. As St. Thomas Aquinas teaches us in the Catena aurea, “In the Eucharist, the same Christ is present that suffered for us, and rose again; the same that ascended into heaven, and will come again at the last day.” Let us approach the Eucharist with reverence and faith, knowing that we are receiving the very body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.
As we continue our Easter journey, let us remember that our faith is not based on human wisdom or cleverness, but on the power of God’s Word and the reality of Christ’s resurrection. Let us be witnesses to His love and mercy, and let us seek to live out His commandments in our daily lives.
May the grace of God be with us all, and may the Holy Spirit guide us on our journey of faith. Amen.
My family and I were camping out of state this weekend, so we stopped by a church for mass on the way home. Despite some good points emphasizing baptism and the need to break open the scriptures, I was completely distracted during the homily by two points:
1) The priest’s repeated insistence that Jesus was “messing with” his disciples by appearing to them knowing that they didn’t recognize him (which the priest seemed to find very funny)
2) The priest’s whipping himself up into an emotional frenzy to the point of tears by relating a story about his bedside visit to a parishioner. This is twice now this year that we have visited a parish where there have been waterworks during the homily. It is very off-putting.
“Please generate a sermon”
Can anyone really be surprised? Does the output for that homily request look original, or does it look like it rephrased six different homilies that are already on the Internet?
It is an excessively cautious homily, that says what has already been said a hundred times before.
Having said that, the language is impressive as is the speed with which it generated the response.
Our Priest discussed the Thomistic view vs. the Scotus view on the purpose of the Incarnation.
Traveling, we attended the Divine Liturgy of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church for the second Sunday after Pascha. The gospel was St. Mark’s account of the resurrection. It was the women who were faithful and stood by the cross while the disciples had fled who were privileged to witness the resurrection first. Note it was them who ventured out to anoint the body while the disciples were locked in the room “for fear of the Jews”. We should not be afraid also.
This I remember..our priest comparing Jesus on the road to Emmaus to the television program, Undercover Boss.
Because in our old age (71 and67) my wife and I are guardians of her 3 year-old great niece—I don’t know whether I am bragging about our good works or complaining about it—I could not hear the sermon completely, but at the vetus ordo our priest argued that when Jesus said that He is the good shepherd the Pharisees knew He was equating Himself with God. I missed most of the explanation but it included more than David saying “the Lord is my shepherd”. He went on to point out that too many bishops and priests act like hirelings rather than shepherds, especially during the COVID episode. (But he also could have meant this in terms of the responses to Traditionis Custodes. By the way this priest also offers the NO. It seems to me he sees it as his duty to offer both because different people benefit from each form of the Mass.)
Our wonderful Associate Pastor, who we shall be very sorry to lose come July 1, reminded us that Jesus’ disciples were walking away from Jerusalem. Away from the place Jesus had set his sights on to fulfill his earthly mission and bring salvation to the world. Perhaps they were giving up, perhaps they were carrying the word of His resurrection to others who had not heard, maybe they were afraid or feeling confused or unworthy. Regardless, Jesus didn’t abandon them – He walked with them, conversing, hearing the news, then making Himself known in the breaking of bread. He allowed them to glimpse Him in his glory – and he wants to invite us into that glory. He wants to perfect us and gives Himself to us in the Eucharist where we can encounter His glory – to help us on our way to be perfected in His kingdom where we will finally be all that he created us to be.
Although it was not at this Sunday’s Mass, one of the best homilies I have heard on the Road to Emmaus pericope was on a bus trip through Chicago, where I had a layover that allowed me to attend noon Mass. The priest used the occasion to argue that the episode on the road to Emmaus disproves the Protestant theology of Sola Scriptura, because Jesus, the very Author of the Bible, spent two hours explaining the scriptures about the Christ to the two disciples while walking to Emmaus, to the point that their hearts were burning, and, yet, they did not recognize God right in front of them until Jesus consecrated the (Catholic) Eucharist.
My thoughts…
Jesus commanded no one to write a book about him; he did command that the Eucharist be celebrated as a perpetual memorial. Reading the Bible is important – it will give one knowledge of Christ, as St. Jerome points out – but if Protestants really want a personal relationship with Christ, let them make themselves presentable to receive the validly confected Eucharist (not their invalid sham substances in Protestant services). There, they will encounter the risen Lord and recognize Him as He is.
Of course, merely receiving the Eucharist does not guarantee salvation – there were many who ate with Christ whom he said never knew Him (Lk 13:26-27), but food is responsible for creating or replenishing DNA in cells and if we really place ourselves at the feet of Christ and follow Him, His Heavenly Food will reform our spiritual DNA to be a match of His own.
It takes a stomach prepared to process food for it to become nourishment and it is humility that gives us a stomach empty and ready to receive nourishment. The word, Emmaus, means, hot spring, and if we are humble, the Eucharist will become a hot spring, filled with the Holy Spirit, bubbling up and filling us and through us the world with true life.
The Chicken
Our Canon related the dire numbers of religious and priestly vocations now and previously. Then he related how in his entrance class of 13 at the tradtional seminary that all but one are priests today. Two are diocesan and only one discerned out. Also, that the average age of a priest in the US is 34 and that he is younger than that. He related visiting a traditional diocesan 94 year-old priest to give him last rites and the apostolic blessing. The priest was depressed and worried about the state of the Church. By the time canon left, the priest’s outlook was brightened and encouraged, especially after hearing about the tradtional community and what is happening therein. This is what the priest does, he is there to help you get to heaven. Another time, another canon told about going into the African bush to give last rites to a dying parishioner. The hut had a mud floor, but from under the man’s bad, he pulled out his baptismal candle, ready to be lit for the journey to God!!!
Deacon spoke on. The Real Presence and it’s importance to Catholics and how we need to recognize Him in the Eucharist – it was gorgeous
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