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 Gaudete Sunday, the 3rd of Advent?
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:
[…]
“Make straight His path!” cries the Baptist.
The perennial admonition rings out with such force: go to confession.
The straightening can be gentle now, even if it involves tears, restitution, and penance. Later, the Straightener will do the straightening Himself. Yet this sobering truth does not extinguish joy. On the contrary, it grounds it. There is more than this world. There is Heaven. There is the final summation of all things “ut sit Deus omnia in omnibus… that God may be all in all” (1 Cor 15:28). The reason for joy is not merely approaching. The Reason Himself is drawing near.
The human experience of time mirrors this acceleration.
In finem citius.
Motus in fine velocior.
The closer we get to the end, the more things seem to speed up.
This applies to our aging lives, where years seem to vanish with increasing speed. It applies also to the liturgical year, whose structure sweeps us, swiftly and sweetly, into the heart of the mysteries. Holy Church does not merely inform us about salvation history. She immerses us in it. She draws us into the Mystery which is the cause of our joy.
[…]
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many good points. Gaudete! this is not the same as being entertained and comfortable in the world. the desert fathers went into the desert to be away from those things and from the lukewarm Christians who had become commonplace after the legalization of the Holy Faith. St. John of the Cross, whose feast is today, was trying to reform his monastic community. the brothers would have none of it. they beat him and imprisoned him for nine months. rather than falling into despair, though, he was diligent in prayer and started composing the spiritual canticle, a great work of poetry.
in more recent times Jacques Fache (sp?) was an atheist and a playboy. in 1956 he robbed a bank in Paris, then shot and killed a policeman. he was sentenced to death by the guillotine and held in solitary confinement in the interim. in that solitude, he converted. the night before his execution he exclaimed with great joy “tomorrow i shall see Jesus!”
Sunday’s sermon was about the Gospel passage where John the Baptist sends his disciples to Jesus to ask if he is the Messiah. The Modernist explanation is that John worn down by his confinement in prison was doubting his belief in Jesus as the Messiah and needed to confirm it. In contrast, the traditional explanation is John was firm in his faith about Jesus, prison did not bother a man who had lived in the wild on locusts and honey, but that he wanted his disciples to go ask Jesus so that they would be converted.
Attendance was down a little for the 8:30 mass due to a snowstorm that dumped 2 to 4 inches of snow overnight, but enough showed up that we needed 2 priests to administer communion.