My Sunday Mass intention today is for my benefactors, those of you who donate regularly, ad hoc, or send things.
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 17th Sunday after Pentecost in the Vetus Ordo (25th 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.
[…]
September was the old “seventh month,” and at Rome the harvest stood in the background of the Church’s prayer. The fields are being gathered in, the year bends toward its close, and the liturgy begins to take on those autumnal notes which will become more insistent as the Sundays advance: judgment, perseverance, the end of the age, the gathering of God’s people. The 17th Sunday after Pentecost arrives in the traditional Roman calendar just after the autumn Ember Days, those ancient days of fasting, prayer, thanksgiving, and ordination which sanctify the turning of the season.
Against that background the Introit begins with Psalm 118: “Iustus es, Domine, et rectum iudicium tuum … Thou art just, O Lord, and Thy judgment is right,” and the psalm verse adds, “Beati immaculati in via … Blessed are the undefiled in the way.” A way is set before us. We are to walk it undefiled.
Then comes one of those terse Roman Collects which can open an entire theology in a handful of words:
Da, quaesumus, Domine, populo tuo
diabolica vitare contagia:
et te solum Deum pura mente sectari.
[…]
Canon remarked that this is the third time the Scribes and Pharisees tried to trick/trap Our Lord, in the course of this chapter, and the third time they’ve lost. He reminded us that Our Lord (I think I’m remembering this correctly) had God-level knowledge of the Scriptures, so there was a lesson in this for us: we can’t beat Satan with our own skill because he (Satan) is vastly more intelligent than we are, but God can beat Satan on our behalf, so we should trust Him and ask Him for help in overcoming temptations to sin (and, presumably, ingrained habitual sin.)
NO: the laborers in the vineyard. due to recent surgery and a foot injury, i was in the nave rather than the loft. that was a great disappointment for me.
hearing a homily on the one vice i don’t have (surely only because i have a superabundance of all the others!) was pleasant. As always, Father shared wisdom of the church Fathers. Chrysostom was prominent today: if you begrudge the new convert when you’ve been confessing the same sins for forty years or more, you are the one whom the Lord condemns in this parable. Also the first laborer was Adam, the next Noah, the next yet Abraham, the penultimate set Moses and David (how i love David!), and the last us gentiles.
oh. when i was in hospital last week, they lost my beloved scapular of 10+ years. after Mass Father blessed its inferior replacement.
Annual Yom Kippur themed service. You might have enjoyed the sermon, it was about repair and repentance. I was asked to write the Call to Worship and built it around the late Stanley Kunitz’s poem “The Layers.”
[Good grief.]