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It’s the 16th Sunday after Pentecost in the Vetus Ordo and the 24th Sunday of the Novus Ordo.
Elsewhere today I wrote about my discovery that today is the 3rd Sunday in the Season of Creation. HERE Did you get any of that in your parish today?
More importantly, 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 Epistle reading posted at One Peter Five.
A taste:
[W]hen Paul launches into this section of his missive to the denizens and Ephesus and beyond, what does he do? He provides the context for his communication, his suffering imprisonment. Then he “kneels down” and prays for his readers. He frames the entire discourse in fervent prayer, not just for strangers whom he knows of in theory, but as loved ones whom he knows of like family. It’s not just about how much you know. It’s everything about your unity with and openness to God’s will. It’s about your full, conscious, and active receptivity to all God wants to give you.
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Well…to be honest…today’s homily was more of a heads up.
Fr. Leith, SSPX, was citing Our Lord being questioned about healing on the Sabbath. He also cited the need to teach the faith Our Lord gave us. This lead to Apostolic succession, leading to canon law, leading to states of necessity, leading to 1988, leading to the age of 3 certain bishops…
I’m sure you know where this is going. All that is known is that there was a private meeting. No names, numbers of candidates, nor dates are decided on. If there are, it is under wraps.
This is all that is publicly known. The day is coming. Let’s hope and pray all works out in the end.
The only petition in the Lord’s Prayer that is conditional is “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us”. Some translations will replace the concept of “trespass” with that of “debt”. In any event while the other petitions simply ask God to exercise His generosity, this one looks to place a limit on it. Now that can be taken in a way that is not constructive if it makes us fear that God is out to deny us forgiveness. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
This was followed with an extensive discourse on Confession. My recollection may be a bit jumbled about the order of things as i’m still not used to sitting in the choir loft.
Sometimes people will say they just confess their sins directly to God. Well, that directly contradicts our Lord’s own words in Scripture to the first bishops regarding the forgiveness and retention of sins – which he then quoted. He mentioned the necessity of confessing at least annually, thought noted that this is not frequent enough for any one he knows well. He said that he himself confesses every other week and has been told that our Archbishop follows that same schedule. He mentioned the necessity of confessing all mortal sins in kind and number before receiving the Eucharist – and briefly defined mortal sin for those hazy on the concept.
He said that some people have told him that he is intimidating. (These people must be quite the milquetoasts!) He replied that he is but following the Fathers of the Church who exhort priests to be lions in the pulpit, but to be lambs in confessional. This bit i remember verbatim: “If some bum of a priest was rude to you in the confessional, i on behalf of all priests sincerely apologize. i am gentle in the confessional and i have many repeat customers, you can ask them!” He then mentioned the parochial vicars and extolled their gentleness (for which i can vouch personally, although one of them seems to not have any personal experience regarding one of my besetting sins so i tend to avoid him).
Since God is so abundant in offering forgiveness through Sacramental Confession, receipt of that forgiveness should motivate us to have a forgiving attitude toward our families, neighbors, friends, work colleagues and all the people who do us wrong since our own offenses against God are worse than anything other people can do to us. He even mentioned online comment sections FWIW.
I preached on forgiveness at the OF. We need grace to forgive because our broken human nature effected by original sin is drawn toward sin and unforgiveness. The great act of forgiveness came from the cross and through the cross we have the power to forgive.
At the EF I preached on grace – sanctifying and actual. We depend on God for every good deed, yet the hitch is our free will. He will never force. He gives the grace but we still have to assent.
Traditional Mass in Calgary was a full house. I’m convinced there is a new baby every two weeks. Saw a brand new bambino today from a beautiful young couple!
Heard some Reginald Lagrange quoted that God wills our complete transformation in Christ. It was so beautiful it made one verklempt. Pray to be what God has truly called you to be and in doing so will be more human.
It was a wonderful day! God is Good.
My husband and I are at a gathering of cousins on my side. While all profess to be Catholics, we were the only ones to go to Mass today.
We looked online and found a traditional Latin Mass parish run by the FSSP. We chose to go to the sung Mass.
The church was packed and the young visiting priest was a former altar boy there. His sermon emphasized that the efficacy of the sacraments does not depend on the holiness of the priest and gave quite an extensive explanation of sacramentals.
We spoke with two ushers afterwards. The parish church was built by the parish several years ago and is paid off. They recently bought an additional 5.5 acres for expansion. The pastor and associates live on the opposite side of the 5.5 acres in a house bought by the parish. Their average collection is $2,000 more per week than needed for their budget. They are averaging 6 new families per month joining the parish. They have four men from the parish that are now priests and one professed sister.
They were warm and welcoming. Several people greeted us and asked if we were new to the parish.
This is how to do it!
Good sermon about the near occasions of sin, & practical definitions of those situations. Full house, as usual, at our FSSP parish
The really good news is that due to a scheduling mix up, we are temporarily short one priest, and our DIOCESAN Bishop, Peter Libasci, is filling in on Monday mornings to offer the traditional Mass to ease the load on our Pastor.
No ‘Mcbutterpants’ stuff here…
I take it that you do not regard Ephesians as Deutero-Pauline?
I was at home yesterday, asleep, rather than at church. I am getting over a bout with COVID.
Church finances for the last year were explained at our FSSP parish. 1) our finances are very healthy. 2) we are in the preliminary stages of beginning a capital campaign to build our permanent church to replace our chapel, which, even with five Sunday Masses, is increasingly too small to accommodate the parish’s growth.