Your Sunday Sermon Notes – 4th Sunday of Lent – Laetare – 2025

Your Sunday Sermon Notes – 4th Sunday of Lent - Laetare - 2025

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

It is the 4th Sunday of Lent in the Novus Ordo and in the Vetus Ordo.   It is nicknamed “Laetare Sunday”.   In England of yore, people went “mothering”. It was also called “Mid-Lent” Sunday (because Lent once started later).

Surprisingly, the experts of the Consilium didn’t do away with Lent completely.  How backwardist.

The Roman Station is Holy Cross in Jerusalem.

QUESTION: At the Mass you went to, was the Station mentioned?  Let us know in the combox.

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

Tell about attendance especially for the Traditional Latin Mass.

Any local changes or (hopefully good) news?

I have a few thoughts about the orations in the Vetus Ordo for this Sunday: HERE

A taste:

In the ancient Church of Rome, we Catholics didn’t begin the most serious period of penitential fasting until this midway point before Easter.  Originally, the Lenten period began with Quadragesima or “Fortieth”, also the Latin name now for Lent.  The days from Ash Wednesday through Saturday were added later to take into account the Triduum, etc.  Hence, we are about 20 days into ancient Lent which is why this 4th Sunday was called “Dominica in vigesima … Sunday on the twentieth” and also “caput ieiunii … the start of the fast”.  At this mid-point, there was a brief pause for us to catch our breath, as it were, like Jewish pilgrims needed on the way up the long sloping climb to Jerusalem.  In fact, the Collect for Mass has the very word “respiremus … may we catch our breath, be refreshed”.

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Harrowing vision of Padre Pio

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Daily Rome Shot 1282

Daily Rome Shot 1282

Welcome registrant:

EdwardVIII

Please remember me when shopping online and use my affiliate links.  US HERE – UK HERE  WHY?  This helps to pay for health insurance (massively hiked for this new year of surprises), utilities, groceries, etc..  At no extra cost, you provide help for which I am grateful.

Please support the wonderful traditional monks of Le Barroux.

Daily Rome Shot 1282

This…

And this…

And this…

Daily Rome Shot 1282In chessy news… HERE

Black to move and mate in 4.

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Friday of the 3rd Week of Lent: Feast of the Five Holy Wounds. Did you know?

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Daily Rome Shot 1281

Daily Rome Shot 1281

Photo from The World’s Best Sacristan™.

Please remember me when shopping online and use my affiliate links.  US HERE – UK HERE  WHY?  This helps to pay for health insurance (massively hiked for this new year of surprises), utilities, groceries, etc..  At no extra cost, you provide help for which I am grateful.

New advances in science give us new insights into … scientia.

May God forgive these men for what they are doing to the faithful and to themselves.

And therefore…

Please support the wonderful Summit Dominican’s by visiting their store.

Daily Rome Shot 1281

In chessy news… FIDE has opened up online a “digital museum”. HERE

Black to move.

NB: I’ll hold comments with solutions ’till the next day so there won’t be “spoilers” for others.

Daily Rome Shot 1281

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Daily Rome Shot 1280 – Card. Pell miracle?

Hey Fathers!  How about a clerical Guayabera shirt?

Daily Rome Shot 1280 - Card. Pell miracle?

Daily Rome Shot 1280 - Card. Pell miracle?

Photo from The World’s Best Sacristan™.   This is the cupola of the Chiesa Nuova, depicting the Triumph of the Trinity.  New illumination.

Welcome registrants:

RETIRED
prrgttx

Please remember me when shopping online and use my affiliate links.  US HERE – UK HERE  WHY?  This helps to pay for health insurance (massively hiked for this new year of surprises), utilities, groceries, etc..  At no extra cost, you provide help for which I am grateful.

I had a note from the monks of Norcia with a photo of a brewing action shot. Not so long ago, monks would fast during Lent with only beer. I’m not a huge beer fan, but this stuff is fantastic. They have three kinds.

Daily Rome Shot 1280 - Card. Pell miracle?

Meanwhile…

Another something beautiful…

Visitation in 5…4…3…2…

Archbishop Aguer: Vatican too full of ‘self-praise’ to recognize the serious decline of the Church

White to move and mate in 4.

NB: I’ll hold comments with solutions ’till the next day so there won’t be “spoilers” for others.

Daily Rome Shot 1280 - Card. Pell miracle?

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Daily Rome Shot 1279

Daily Rome Shot 1279

Please remember me when shopping online and use my affiliate links.  US HERE – UK HERE  WHY?  This helps to pay for health insurance (massively hiked for this new year of surprises), utilities, groceries, etc..  At no extra cost, you provide help for which I am grateful.

Elsewhere…

Daily Rome Shot 1279In chessy news… yesterday I split a pair of games in OTB. The second had me in serious trouble, as my opponent kept reminding me. I fought back in the endgame with a rather clever maneuver to promote a pawn even as his four pawn juggernaut was moving up the board at my beleaguered king and pawn defender.  Victory was sweet.

White to move and mate in 4. HERE

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“the foundations of social order have been demolished”

Blessed Ildefonso Schuster, the great liturgist, Benedictine and once Cardinal Archbishop of Milan, has an interesting comment in his entry for today’s Mass, for the Wednesday of the 3rd Week of Lent.  He takes a cue from the Oratio super populum… the Prayer over the People which follows the Postcommunion on weekdays of Lent.  Here’s the prayer, first, and then Schuster.

Prayer over the people
Let us pray.
Bow your heads to God.
Grant, almighty God, we beseech You, that we who seek the grace of Your protection, delivered from all evils, may serve You with untroubled minds.
Through Jesus Christ, thy Son our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end.
R. Amen.

Note: The Station Church is San Sisto Vecchio which is where the body of Pope Sixtus II is found.  He is the Pope murdered with his deacons, one of whom was St. Lawrence.

Schuster:

In the final Blessing the priest—as though still moved by the cruel death of Sixtus II and his deacons who were martyred not far from there–again implores the protection of God, that being freed from danger we may with an un-troubled mind devote ourselves to his holy service. Respect and deference to parental authority, which is the first of all natural authorities, are the essential conditions and the basis of all social order. The child—and in many ways humanity is still a child—before he can understand must believe in the authority of those who teach him and guide him. Without this obedience all education and progress is impossible. If modern society is now beginning to realize all the horror of the state of anarchy into which it has fallen, it must seek the first cause of this evil in the fact that the foundations of social order have been demolished, and that the law of egoism and the worship of the State have taken the place of the Decalogue.

 

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Daily Rome Shot 1278 – The Parish™

The schedule at The Parish™ where I will be for Holy Week, Easter and beyond.  It will be a profound sojourn and participation, as I know from experience.

Daily Rome Shot 1278 - The Parish™

Welcome registrants:

FormerlySBC
JRLandman
Salty Muskoxen

Please remember me when shopping online and use my affiliate links.  US HERE – UK HERE  WHY?  This helps to pay for health insurance (massively hiked for this new year of surprises), utilities, groceries, etc..  At no extra cost, you provide help for which I am grateful.

This from the great Cardinal Zen:

And this…

The Ring was destroyed on 25 March…

Very cool…

In chessy news…

CRAZY PUZZLE. White to move and mate in 6.

Daily Rome Shot 1278 - The Parish™

Yesterday, I watched the Blitz tournament after the close of the American Cup in St. Louis.  Fun!   OTB for me today.

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Questioning the “success” of frequent Communion

At Crisis find a piece by Michael Ortiz which delves into the long term effect in the Church of the practice of frequent Communion.   He reasonably points out what the intention of Pius X was and, in good circumstances, the benefits of frequent Communion which are hardly to be questioned.

However, he also underscores that when Pius X made the changes by lowering the age for Communion and promoting frequent reception there were two major differences from today.  

Consider how I often write that “we are our rites”.

Ortiz points to the fact that at the time of Pius X there was a true Eucharistic fast.  In fact, people were to fast from midnight.   Hence, there was bodily hunger.  Pius XII reduced the fast to 3 hours in 1957.

Elsewhere, I’ve written that we, being both soul and body and not soul only, should be properly disposed to receive in both body and soul.

In soul we are disposed to receive by going to confession and being in the state of grace.

In body we are disposed to receive by fasting.

Immediately after the Resurrection, Christ began to teach the disciples (Mary Magdalen, the men at Emmaus) that they had to learn a new way of Him being with them: the Eucharist.  When He was with the disciples in His earthly ministry, they were “feasting”.  When He ascended they were going to “fast”, but He was still with them in the Eucharist.

Let us simply admit that today’s Eucharistic fast (one hour before Communion) is a joke.

A subtle message is imparted: if we only have to fast for an hour, what we are receiving must not be very important.

Another point Ortiz makes is that, in Pius X’s time down to the 60’s we had the Roman Rite’s Vetus Ordo in which substantial sections of the Mass were in silence.

I’ll add that they required stillness.

It is in the difficult moments, the “apophatic” moments” of deprivation that we encounter mystery in a special way.

Being in the state of grace and fasting prepare us for these transformative moments.

Being unconfessed for (usually) years and being entirely unaccustomed to denying appetites and being inundated in a brightly illuminated space that looks like a municipal airport lounge while being shouted at by people with amplifiers… doesn’t.

We had not long ago an effort at “Eucharistic Renewal”.  It seems to me that a great deal of serious soul searching about reality is needed.

Moreover, there can be no Eucharistic Renewal without a renewal of the Sacrament of Penance.  PERIOD.

Ceterum autem censeo sacramentum paenitentiae redintegrandum.

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