Your Sunday Sermon Notes: Pentecost Sunday 2024

Too many people today are without good, strong preaching, to the detriment of all. Share the good stuff.

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

Tell about attendance especially for the Traditional Latin Mass.

Any local changes or (hopefully good) news?

A taste of my thoughts from the other place: HERE

For this mighty Feast of Pentecost we first scrabble after some context to enrich our participation.  The sacred liturgical celebration of the mysteries of our salvation make us present to them and them to us.  Sacramental reality is not inferior to sensible reality.  Indeed, it embraces and elevates it and us, it transforms us.  In the strongest sense possible, we are our rites.  Therefore, we are never deeply content without deepening content, which includes context, even from the depths of history.

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About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

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6 Comments

  1. idahocatholic says:

    We had a fabulous sermon at our SSPX with a visiting priest. Our regular pastor is out for the next few weeks witnessing nuptials. Our chapel is a little empty this time of year due to 1) a whooping cough outbreak, 2) graduations, 3) the beginning of summer vacation. Usually we have a full chapel Saturday night and standing room only (plus basement overflow) at our 2 Sunday Masses. Our confession lines are also regularly 10-20 people long before each Mass. We are actually looking to either build or renovate a new chapel because we’re bursting at the seams. The local bishop (Boise diocese) will likely get rid of the only TLM in southern Idaho in the future. It’s already been moved to a dilapidated church and isn’t advertised publicly. So, we plan to have a lot more growth coming soon — we’ve already tripled or quadrupled in number since 2020.
    As for the sermon, I actually took notes so I’d remember some of it. With a toddler going between my husband and I and my less than young brain, I need all the help I can get! Essentially his main point was that we need the Holy Ghost in order to attain salvation. He gave the example of the Apostles before and after Pentecost. Even with Christ teaching them, they still betrayed, denied, and abandoned Him. After Pentecost, however, they converted thousands in one day. He said the difference is that when we rely on ourselves and our own natural abilities, we will fail. We have to have the gifts of the Holy Ghost through Baptism and Confirmation in order to supernaturally be other Christs in the world. His final point was that we must be conformed to Christ through the Holy Ghost in order to attain salvation. He said it far more eloquently, but I think I shared his main points. He was an excellent speaker and the best of the new SSPX priests I’ve seen at getting his point across. Usually after only 2 years as a priest, they seem to still be perfecting their public speaking — both the actual sermon writing and getting over nerves. That being said, we always have something concrete we can take away from every sermon. I definitely have much to meditate on this week from that sermon.

  2. Patrick-K says:

    I had the pleasure of hearing a sermon from Fr. Cliff Ermatinger. It was pretty dense but one thing that stuck out was the comparison of unity of human and divine wills with a musical chord, neither note is eliminated but merge to become something better. Just like every time I’ve been there (St. Stanislaus in Milwaukee) it was completely full, with many young families.

  3. Pax--tecum says:

    The Holy Ghost was not given to just one of the apostles, but to all of them: to Peter, who had denied the Lord, to John, who was Christ’s favourite apostle, to Thomas, who only started to believe after he had touched the wounds of the risen Lord (here our parish priest said that the sermon would take too long if he mentioned all the others as well). Thus, the Holy Ghost, the spirit of truth, is given to all of us. And just as the apostles weren’t perfect and made mistakes, so do we often make mistakes and sin, even though we have the spirit of truth. Then he reminded us not just to indulge in a happy feeling because of the fruits of the Spirit which Paul mentioned in the latter part of the second reading (Gal., 5, 16-25), but also to take care of the sins Paul mentioned in the first part, because they are abundant in our parish and our society.

  4. JonPatrick says:

    Yesterday we attended the 8:30 AM Low Mass at Holy Ghost FSSP parish in Bethlehem PA as we were leaving later that morning for a quick trip up to Massachusetts. Fairly well attended with long lines for confession that continued during mass. Since this was Pentecost Sunday and the church is dedicated to the Holy Spirit this was a good opportunity to talk about the history of the parish (founded in the mid 19th century by German Catholics) and describe the murals at the tops of the church walls whose theme is the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

    After mass we had prayers of consecration to the Holy Spirit (I may not have gotten the name right) and singing of the Veni Creator Spiritus.

    My wife and I both agree that we’re not sure we could ever go back to a Novus Ordo mass now. I just hope that the FSSP can continue and is not shut down by this crazy Vatican, whose goal seems to be to snuff out any signs of authentic Catholicism.

  5. Andrew says:

    A Jesuit priest (I know) celebrated TLM in Miami. He spoke of the sacramentality of all creation where everything IS what it IS whether we know it or not, while everything is a sign pointing at something else and the signs need to be interpreted and the Spirit enlightens the interpreter so that his perception can correspond to the truth.

  6. SursumCorda17 says:

    Two first Masses this weekend (both NO) for seminarians who were assigned to our parish during their formation – one for the Pentecost Vigil and the other for Pentecost. Both featured sermons mostly as exhortations to the new priests by the seminary rector, but both were well presented. Attendance at both was exceptional, and the choices made for both in areas where flexibility is permitted were quite tasteful, including chanted ordinary and propers.

    We held a holy hour the evening before the ordination and the prayer Fr. Z has posted here as a daily prayer for priests was used! As soon as Father started to recite it, I thought, “this sounds familiar…”

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