Your Sunday Sermon Notes – Sunday in the Octave of Christmas (N.O. Holy Family) 2023

It’s the Sunday in the Octave of Christmas and, in the Novus Ordo, Feast of the Holy Family.  It’s the last day of the calendar year and the 1st anniversary of the death of Benedict XVI.

Was there a GOOD point made in the sermon you heard at your Sunday Mass of obligation?

Share the good stuff.  Quite a few people are forced to sit through really bad preaching.  Even though you can usually find – if you are willing to try – at least one good point in a really bad sermon, that can be a trial.  So… SHARE THE GOOD STUFF which you were fortunate enough to receive!

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 posted at One Peter Five.  A taste…

However, the Child, didn’t stay tiny. We read in Sunday’s Gospel from Luke 2 He “grew and became strong”.  So too in the course of our lives the crib of our hearts must also grow to be more heart-like, more throne like.   This is perhaps why some hold out against the radically unmerited gift of the Christ Child’s little hand: the wood of the manger foreshadows the wood of the Cross.  Our heart Crib must also grow Cross like.

On the stream today I also read a page from Benedict XVI in From the Depths of our Hearts which he published with Card. Sarah.

The Cross of Jesus Christ is the act of radical love in which reconciliation really is accomplished between God and the world marred by sin. This is the reason why this event, which in itself is not of a cultic type, [not “cultic” in the sense that the soldiers who crucified him were not priests purposely offering sacrifice.  They were offering THE SACRIFICE, but as unwitting agents, except post factum for the centurian.] represents the supreme adoration of God. In the Cross, the “katabatic” line of descent from God and the “anabatic” [like the downward and upward wind currents caused by convection… a theme in Ratzinger’s thought stemming from exitus-conversio-reditus] line of humanity’s offering to God become a single act. Through the Cross, the Body of Christ becomes the new Temple at the time of the Resurrection. [“Destroy this Temple…”.] In the celebration of the Eucharist, the Church and even humanity are ceaselessly drawn into this process and involved in it. In the Cross of Christ, the critique of worship by the prophets definitively reaches its goal. Even so, a new worship is instituted at the same time. The love of Christ, which is always present in the Eucharist, is the new act of adoration. Consequently, the priestly ministries of Israel are “annulled” in the service of love, which always signifies concomitantly the adoration of God. This new unity of love and worship, of critique of worship and glorification of God in the service of love, is certainly an unprecedented task that has been entrusted to the Church and that each generation must accomplish anew.

And that last part is a problem.  Benedict underscores how what Christ did was for the whole world, all humanity.

The first commandment requires us to believe in God, to worship and serve him, as the first duty of the virtue of religion (cf. also CCC 2084 and 2135). The Angelic Doctor says in his mighty Summa (II-II, 81, 1) that religion is the virtue by which men exhibit due worship and reverence to God as the creator and supreme ruler of all things. We must acknowledge dependence on God by rendering Him a due and fitting worship both interiorly (e.g., by acts of devotion, reverence, thanksgiving, etc.) and exteriorly (e.g., external reverence, liturgical acts, etc.).

The virtue of religion can be sinned against by idolatry, superstitions, sacrilege, blasphemy…. and neglect.

When worship becomes disordered, no longer shot through with the transcendent, but mostly involved in the immanent, then everything else we do is going to be “off”, at the level of our individual lives, as families, parishes, nations or the whole world.

What Benedict identified was “entrusted to the Church” for the sake of the whole world.  But if the Church’s worship of God, the best way to guarantee the fulfillment of the virtue of Religion, is screwed up, then how to we expect that the world will be anything but screwed up given that there is a “Prince of this world”?

Right worship is the key.

Save the Liturgy.  Save the World.