Too many people today are without good, strong preaching, to the detriment of all. Share the good stuff.
It is the 3rd Sunday of Ordinary Time in the Novus Ordo and the 3rd Sunday after Epiphany in the Vetus 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 a few thoughts about the orations in the Vetus Ordo for this Sunday: HERE
Heaping hot coals on someone’s head doesn’t sound very charitable. What could this mean? In ancient times it was critically important to keep a fire going in the home. Great effort was made to bank coals in ashes over night and get the fire going again later. Providing food and drink and fire were ways to tend to your neighbors’ true needs. For the Romans a sentence of exile was given with a decree of aquae et ignis interdictio… privation of water and fire. You were to be denied the essentials of life precisely so that you were forced to leave the area or die. The reverse of this is how on the day of her marriage a bride would be received by her husband with fire and water, which represented that he would care for her needs. Hence, heaping coals on a person’s head is the opposite of cruelty. It is a way of waking them up to their true selves. As St. Augustine put it, your kindness will burn away your enemy’s hatred.
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I learned something in our priest’s homily about the centurion. I didn’t notice that this same centurion had built a synogogue for the Jews, as recounted in Luke 7. This fact wasn’t the main point of the homily, but it was a reminder for me that there is always something to learn from Scripture every time we read it!
For Sunday, Father continued solid recent series on vocation & Call, and the different accounts of the Twelve first being called.
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Stopped in at a local chapel for Mass during the week last week to mark Year’s Mind for a family member – got a wonderful homily on Christian Unity, the pilgrimage of Pope Paul & the patriarch of Constantinople in 1964, and some quick historical background (going back to the east-west split & mutual excommunications in 1054).
I went to the well-attended High TLM today, and it was really nice to hear the choir accompaniment. The priest discussed the fact, which I didn’t know, that this gospel can be thought of as manifesting something about Jesus’s role, namely the Divine Physician. Apparently, last week was Miracle Worker, at Cana. These are all continuations of Epiphany, and they reveal important divine qualities Jesus has. Anyway, I like the fact that we can spend more of January considering some aspects of Our Lord that were introduced earlier in the Christmas season. This year in the Novus Ordo, we had Epiphany, Baptism the literal next day, and then it felt like we were unceremoniously dropped into Ordinary Time again.
The priest discussed the healing of the Leper, and briefly discussed the isolation they experienced. He said that our serious sin is what incurs automatic excommunication for us. We need the divine healing of our savior in Confession to come back. “Some clergy,” he noted, describe the Church as a refuge for sinners, and that is true, he agreed, but they are leaving out the most important part, which is the ministry of healing through forgiveness of sins.
Pretty based, I thought.
Latin Mass in Calgary had at least 500 people at the noon Mass. Two babies were baptized after Mass, one being my daughter. Two other newborns in the parish born this week. So another two baptisms next week. More than half the parish is school aged children.
We must also have faith like the Centurion.
Solemn High Mass, Feast of St. Agnes (parish patron saint). Short sermon in German, in which the regional superior of the FSSP pointed out that St. Agnes is a patron saint for archbishops and urged us to pray for her intercession towards them. Very urgent, in my humble opinion.