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 the this Sunday? Probably Corpus Christi in the Novus Ordo and an external observance in the Vetus Ordo.
Tell about attendance especially for the Traditional Latin Mass.
Any local changes or (hopefully good) news? I know there is a lot of BAD news. How about some good news?
A taste of my thoughts from the other place: HERE
The traditional liturgy, in all its solemnity and beauty, must shape us into lovers of truth which means, therefore, doers of the Word. Chanting the Creed or repeating “Domine non sum dignus” are not a substitute for feeding the poor. But neither is feeding the poor a substitute for chanting the Creed and beating our breasts before Communion. Holy Church bids us do both. They are two sides of the same coinage offered by Our Lord to the Father on the Cross for our salvation.
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Our visiting SSPX priest preached about “the sinner and the saint” of Corpus Christi. He described the sinner, that is, the sinful doubt of Father Peter of Prague, whose doubts about transubstantiation were taken away when the Host began to bleed at the Consecration. This bleeding Host and the corporal were taken to Pope Urban, who forgave the sinful priest for his doubt, and instituted the Feast of Corpus Christi. Then Father told us about the saint of Corpus Christi, how Pope Urban asked St Bonaventure and St Thomas both to compose offices for the new feast. When St Bonaventure heard the composition of St Thomas, St Bonaventure endorsed that of St Thomas over his own. Father quoted a few lines of the beautiful Sequence.
Our visiting priest included that we who assist at the Traditional Latin Mass are people who believe that Hosts can bleed. I will never forget that statement.
After Holy Mass, we had a procession through the neighborhood, which delightfully included passing folks watching from the parking lots of a Jehovah’s Witness hall and a Lutheran church.
We had a good homily from our university chapel’s priest, who is leaving us next week to go to another assignment. (He’s going to a university chapel in a big city, plus having several parishes and a parochial school under his care. The load has been too much for a couple priests in a row, so they’re sending him in. Hoboy. Please pray for him.)
This penultimate homily was about how he had realized during his priest training that he should pay attention to various things in the Mass prayers, like how we are almost always praying to the Father, and how the Son is pointed out as being the offering that is presented to Him. Father got typically passionate about this sacrificial dimension of Mass, tying it into Corpus Christi.
We didn’t have a procession, because it was too hot, but I think they did one connected to Mass on Thursday afternoon, before all the rain and storm. (I was working.) Father likes processing around campus, and the chapel has had a canopy for a few years now; but obviously fewer students are around during the summer semester.
The incoming priest is a younger guy who was part of a cluster team caring for several parishes up north, and now he’s going to have just the university chapel. (Plus helping out everybody in a hundred mile radius, because he’s one of the younger priests. But it’s not a bad gig for learning to be a pastor.)
Oh, yeah, and we had the short version of the Sequence. Very good rendition. I just wish we could have had it all.
Our deacon preached about the typology of the Eucharist using the 12 Stations of the almost Holy Eucharist.
We had a beautiful Corpus Christie procession with many of those at Mass joining in. Mass attendance was down a bit, probably because it was announced last week that there would be incense. (Horrors!!!) Fortunately, no one died from the puny plume of smoke emanating from the thurible.
I carried a flag with the Sacred Heart on it – a bold move and the only banner. Baby steps. We prayed the Rosary as we processed. No hymns were sung. The public procession idea is relatively new for the area, so the people are not quite in full procession mode, but that’ll come as they get more comfortable.
At the local NO Mass the sermon was banal, but Father Joseph Mary’s sermon on the EWTN Mass at the Shrine of the most Blessed Sacrament in Hanceville AL was brilliant. He discussed the relationship between devotion to the Blessed Sacrament and that to the Sacred Heart. Noted that secular treatments of St Francis ignore his deep devotion to the Eucharist and Eucharistic devotion.
Father Richard Cippola’s sermon is published on the Rorate Caeli blog is also first class.
Attendance at the diocesan Vetus Ordo was among the most I’ve seen it because it was followed by a large Corpus Christi procession that many NO brothers and sisters attended, though some just sat outside and waited for the Mass to end and procession to start (as they likely already fufilled their Sunday obligation). Hopefully that made some see the beauty of the Mass of the Ages.
After the lovely procession, I talked to a young lady and asked her what she thought of the “Latin Mass,” she said she didn’t like how you couldn’t hear what the priest was saying, unlike her “Latin Mass” she grew up attending. I was able to gather that she attended a Novus Ordo with a few prayers in Latin and, like seemingly a majority of Catholics I talk to, thought that the “Traditional Latin Mass” is just a Novus Ordo that says the Pater Noster and Agnus Dei in Latin, and with less female altar boys. And of course, that the Novus Ordo is just an English translation of the Vetus Ordo, with all the prayers and readings and gestures exactly the same… if only most Catholics knew the rich faith we’ve been robbed of.
We had a visiting priest who always has such simple yet profound homilies. I was at a NO vigil and he talked about the “strictness” of receiving the Eucharist in the past and is it the same today? Yes, because He has not changed. He also mentioned not receiving in the hands because your hands are not consecrated. Love to hear it.
At St. John Henry Newman Catholic Church, an Ordinariate parish in Irvine CA, the newly ordained deacon delivered a well researched sermon on the Eucharist. As one interested in etymology, I was gratified to learn of our sacrament’s direct relationship to the Old Testament “thank offering” — todah in Hebrew. How very relevant to the Passover Seder!