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 this 12th Sunday after Pentecost in the Vetus Ordo (20th Ordinary Sunday in the Novus Ordo)?
Tell us about attendance especially for the Traditional Latin Mass.
Any local changes or (hopefully good) news?
A taste of what I offered at 1 Peter 5 this week. I wrote about the 2nd Sunday after Pentecost but related it to the great feasts nearby.
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St. Augustine (+430) reads the wounded traveler as Adam in the human race. Jerusalem signifies the heavenly city of peace from whose blessedness man fell. Jericho signifies mortality. The robbers are the devil and his angels. The priest and Levite signify the priesthood and ministry of the Old Testament, which could not restore fallen man to salvation. The Samaritan signifies the Lord. Augustine writes, “The inn is the Church, where travelers returning from their pilgrimage to the eternal fatherland are refreshed” (Quaestiones Evangeliorum II, 19). Elsewhere he condenses the identification: “perduxit ad stabulum, id est ad Ecclesiam … he brought him to the inn, that is, to the Church” (en. ps. 125, 15).
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The parable carries a sharper warning. Jerusalem to Jericho can symbolize a descent from the life of grace into mortal sin. The robbers strip the soul of sanctifying grace and wounded both reason and will. The man becomes “half-dead,” unable to restore himself to supernatural life by his own power. Christ comes first with prevenient grace. The binding of wounds suggests examination, instruction, and contrition. The door of the inn suggests the confessional. Within, the recovering sinner is fed with the Eucharist and restored to the living communion of the Church.
That image bears urgency when Catholics, bewildered by scandal, confusion, bad leadership, or ecclesiastical folly, are tempted to walk away. The inn may contain incompetent servants, yet Christ still brought the wounded man there. The Church remains the place in which He entrusted the means of sacramental healing. Spiritual apathy, unconfessed grave sin, abandonment of prayer, and separation from sacramental life place the soul back on the road where robbers operate.
Whatever wicked or weird things some churchmen may do, Christ’s Church remains the place to which the Samaritan carried the wounded man.
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amenamen on QUAERITUR: Have we brought Jesus Christ closer to the people entrusted to us?: “There was an effort, in the early stages of the Endless Synod, to solicit massive amounts of input from every…”
