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It’s the 5th Sunday Remaining after Epiphany in the Vetus Ordo and the 32nd Sunday of 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? We really need good news.
I have some thoughts about the Sunday Epistle reading posted at One Peter Five.
As we approach the end of the liturgical year, an odd thing happens in the Church’s traditional calendar for the Vetus Ordo. The Sundays left over after Epiphany are finally dusted off, “resumed,” and prayed until the liturgical year is concluded. This is because of the vagaries of the Moon and shifting date of Easter and, therefore, Septuagesima, Ash Wednesday and, naturally, Pentecost itself. In some years the Sundays after Pentecost don’t take us all the way to Advent. Thus, we fill the gap with the post-Epiphany Sundays that we didn’t get to before Septuagesima Sunday. Get it? Even so, last week was the 23rd Sunday after Pentecost. This week we have the formulary for the 5th Sunday after Epiphany. Next week will be the 6th Sunday after Epiphany. To bring the year to a close we have the 24th and Last Sunday after Pentecost. After that is the 1st Sunday of Advent.
We have already seen our Epistle for this Sunday, the 5th Sunday Remaining after Epiphany – Colossians 3: 12-17 – way back for the Feast of the Holy Family.
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An excellent sermon today that I know I can’t do justice to.
Father spoke on music. We all know that certain lyrics and certain genres of music are bad on their face. He challenged us to think about the music not just the words. Music can cause feelings of happiness, sadness, etc and so certain music can cause feelings that lead us to sin. He pointed out that the Greeks knew some music could lead to undesirable behavior and thus banned certain music.
He did mention rock ‘n roll. I’m thinking some there today might think their music is “safe”. But he challenged us all to think beyond what we’re used to listening to and examine whether it leads us to virtue or sin.
I know folks who cling to their 60s & 70s music sure that it’s way better (and “cleaner”) than today’s offerings. But listening to him today I thought maybe we should all be reexamining that assumption.
My daughter is making her first holy Communion today. 20 something first communicants. A happy day indeed!
Father preached on the virtue of Hope. He discussed its relationship to the other theological virtues. He mentioned that the sins against Hope seem very prevalent these days. He gave strong analogies to both despair and presumption in the context of competitive sports, noting that a founded hope will motivate us to do what we know we need to do while its absence will make us complacent and more likely to fail. He spoke of the four last things and the importance of having a view toward them that is both realistic and filled with authentic Hope.
He closed by reciting the Act of Hope. Like some other priests, he has cards he hands out in the confessional with prayers he prefers to give as penances. One day he gave me one with the Acts of Faith, Hope, and Love. He uses a slightly different text than was familiar to me for the Act of Hope. The card included a pleasant addition to the trilogy, which i have incorporated into my regular usage “in this Faith, Hope, and Love i intend to live and to die”.
His preaching on Hope was timely both in the broad sense given the horrible things going on in the world and the Church at large and in the narrower sense for me given some recent serious personal setbacks.
I heard two sermons on the same Gospel (parable of the wise and foolish virgins) today — one from a Lutheran service and the other at Mass. Both sermons emphasized the need for readiness to meet God, whether at death or at the end of time, and both sermons mentioned the military mottoes “Semper Fi” (Marines) and “Semper Paratus” (Coast Guard) as examples to follow.
The Lutheran pastor went into more detail about the background of the Jewish wedding customs involved, and how the wedding date wasn’t set in advance — the wedding took place whenever the groom had his home ready to receive his bride. The bride and her attendants only had a very general idea of when the groom would show up and it could happen at any time of day or night. The priest didn’t go into that, but emphasized how the oil symbolized grace, how you can’t “lend” your own sanctifying grace to someone else who doesn’t have it, and how you keep your lamp “filled” by frequent reception of the sacraments of penance and the Eucharist.
Fr. Leith, SSPX offered Mass per usual but the sermon was done by Bishop Fellay. In all honesty it was a great antidote to the frustration I’ve been feeling since +Strickland got axed.
He explained that the reason we have war and strife in this world is sin, pure and simple. He noted how when we are attacked that we want justice, but in the process we forget that the person was also made by and for God.
He said our Lord took the responsibility of all sinners upon himself. He explained that our Lord is offered in the sacrifice of the Mass and how we receive the body, blood, soul and divinity, explaining God’s infinite love for us.
He took such basic Catholic doctrine and brought it to an advanced but easily grasped level.
My family was fortunate enough to meet him personally at the potluck after Mass. He laughed heartily when my 10 year old son asked if it was true that he had his own article on Wikipedia.
People can debate the Econe consecrations all they wish, but there should be no doubt in my mind that Archbishop Lefebvre chose well in selecting Bishop Fellay.
I realized just how much I’ve been letting frustrations beat me down and speak impulsively. Today made me see the necessity of carrying my cross in the face of moral injury.
Who knew one could find such in a small chapel on a New Hampshire back road in the woods?
As for why the Gospel reading was the same in both churches: many Lutheran and other Protestant churches follow a “Common Lectionary” that has roughly the same Sunday readings on the same 3-year cycle as the (Novus Ordo) Catholic Church does. The Lutheran church also had the same second reading (Thessalonians) but a different Old Testament reading (from Amos instead of Wisdom, possibly because Wisdom is a deuterocanonical book not in Protestant Bibles).
In the NO we have the parable of the wise and foolish virgins. We must always be prepared as we do not know when the “bridegroom” will come. It might seem that the wise virgins were being uncharitable in not giving the foolish ones some of their oil. But the foolish ones had ample opportunity to get oil for themselves and did not prepare themselves.