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It’s the 18th Sunday after Pentecost in the Vetus Ordo and the 26th Sunday of the Novus Ordo.
Elsewhere I guess its the 5th Sunday in the Season of Creation? HERE Did you get any of that in your parish today?
More importantly, 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. I hear that it is growing. Of COURSE.
Any local changes or (hopefully good) news?
I have some thoughts about the Sunday Epistle reading posted at One Peter Five.
A taste:
Today Paul reminds us, through his ancient audience, in God’s lavish goodness and how many benefits they, we, have received from Him. We can legitimately say that Paul is addressing us, many centuries removed. In the Letter’s “superscription” (vv. 1:1-3), after greeting one particular figure, Sosthenes, Paul wrote: “To the church of God which is at Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
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Lovely High Mass in Sanford, FL, for our Lady of the Rosary with a sermon on the Psalms as Rosary, divine songs of the greatest joy and deepest pain that Mary, Joseph and their Son knew by heart, prayed daily like the Rosary and lived out their lives. After the Last Gospel, father prayed in Latin (over a packed nave who followed on English handouts) the full Exorcism Against Satan and the Rebellious Angels, published by order of His Holiness Pope Leo XII. I can’t think of better news.
At an SSPX Mass . . . the Gospel was Jesus’ healing of the paralytic man and Jesus’ timeless question to the Pharisees: “which is easier to say, ‘your sins are forgiven’ or ‘arise and walk?’ ”
Jesus FIRST forgives the man’s sins and only then heals him physically. Had Jesus done them in the opposite order, it would have been the first historical instance of a Zombie – a man physically alive but dead on the interior.
So, the order of grace and the supernatural life vastly surpasses the order of nature and the physical life in importance. Someone should tell that to Rome, particularly in light of yet another document on climate change (Laude Deum?) . . . Rome these days seems obsessed with the order of nature and completely indifferent to the order of grace, the supernatural.
We got a sermon about the upcoming push to amend our state’s constitution to make abortion a right. He tied it into the Gospel about the son who said he wouldn’t do his father’s will, and then later he did; he encouraged anyone who had been involved with abortion to repent and come back.
Our archbishop has called for a 54-day novena (I forget what day we’re on now — 31, maybe?), btw.
The Novus Ordo readings for today focused on God’s justice and mercy. The homily at Christ the King Parish here near Hollywood did likewise, as is appropriate — but was
buttressed by references to other biblical passeges, leaving me with a sense of acquired or reinforced knowledge. Not every homilist prepares so carefully.
But the reason I am posting this evening is that my wife and I saw a great performance of Mozart’s Don Giovanni this afternoon, which certainly seems to have been inspired, at least in part, by today’s first reading (Ezekiel 18: 25-28).
Oh, almost forgot the best part. At the end of Mass the priest read the Exorcism Prayer of Pope Leo XII. It was in Latin (of course) and took about 15 minutes. He said that the Society (SSPX) was directed by their Bishop to say this prayer at all parishes this Sunday. My surmise is that this was prompted by the Synod meeting this month and the frank acknowledgment that the devil is afoot in the institutional Church these days.
Good for the SSPX.
Away from home and attended a church I had never been to before with some trepidation as one has with an unknown Novus Ordo parish. Somewhat reassured when I saw that the celebrant was a young African, in my experience they are usually orthodox. I was not disappointed as he gave a barn burner of a homily on how we tend to be like the Pharisees and the 2nd son who say yes but don’t follow through with doing God’s will.
Sunday was our German equivalent of Thanksgiving, and on Saturday evening I was at a NO Votive Mass for the purpose (with the strange NO custom of inserting the Sunday readings into a Mass that is not of the Sunday). We had a nice Thanksgiving altar with carrots, corncops, walnuts, pumpkins, paprika and one bread, also flowers, you get the idea.
In the sermon, our preacher and celebrant expressed gratitude for the gifts of nature, then to address the “usual question” (my expression): How can we give thanks for all of God’s gifts when at the same time, people are starving, devastated by war, etc? Isn’t that a denial that the evil belongs to nature, too? After all, there’s no farm without a dung-heap for sure! But we don’t erect a celebratory dungheap in Church for Thanksgiving, and are rather glad we don’t…?
Well, in the beginning, it was not so. Evil had not been part in God’s original plan. Christ came to redeem us from that, and now we’re (we were) going to receive the real deal (not the additions), which is the Body and Blood of Christ. And for that, we’ll be thanks-giving.
On Sunday morning I was at my VO vicariate where we had the external feast of the Rosary, com. of the Sunday (with Last Gospel) and St. Remigius Bp Conf.
We’re going to have one other Marian month and are going to pray the Rosary on such-and-such dates and times. Why do we do that? Because it’s what a dutiful, loving child does, say hello to its mother. Christ himself took three years for the preaching and miracle-working and sacrament-establishing, but 30 years he was at home at his mothers’ place. And what did He do there? In the morning, he greeted his mother.
There are those who say it is hypocritical to always say the same thing over and over again. A young lady once said that to some famous bishop (forgot who it was). He was like, “are you, by any chance, in love with some one”? “Well yes, I am engaged and we have already set the date for our wedding.” “But maybe your fiancé does not love you? How would you know he does?” “I know it because he tells me he loves me over and over again.” “Then he’s a hypocrite”, said the bishop…
Plus other certainly good stuff which I do not now remember in a concrete manner.
One note for my first comment: Actually, the German Thanksgiving has nothing to do with a Season-of-Creation (which even according to those who had that idea should be over now) but is an annual thing.
It is, by the way, one of the few things that I think improvable in “trad liturgy” that the Thanksgiving Votive Mass just seems not to be done there. What an important feast, and who’s going to celebrate it if the Church doesn’t? Yes, it is almost always Rosary Sunday (one in seven years excepted when September 30 is a Sunday) and yes, trads are urban-centered for eminent practical reasons, but city-dwellers are in my view more, not less, than rural people in need of hearing about fields, tractors, pigstys, wheat, corn, potatoes, sheep and the rest of it and sweating bodily labour. It’s no good to give them analogies to what the Bible means when it says “shepherd”; they need to get what an actual, literal shepherd is, for education if for no other reason.
It really could be done: A Votive Mass for the Most Holy Trinity – or maybe, combining it with Rosary Sunday, for our Lady of the Rosary, on the rationale that we have indeed prayed for a good harvest among other things, using the Rosary and praying for her intercession -; add the orations pro gratiarum actione sub una conclusione; attach a nice little 15-minute devotional service…
Excuse the digression.
Traveling back to the desolation that is the Diocese of Cheyenne after two glorious Sundays in two different TLMs in two different states, we were treated to a very thoughtful sermon by our deacon.
Our deacon is an oncologist who has established clinics in Sheridan, Casper, and southwest Alaska. He’s been in Alaska the last few weeks during the salmon run.
He described how the salmon, after laying and fertilizing the eggs, protect the nests of eggs from marauding trout. They do not eat
during this process and slowly fall apart, leaving flesh behind for the hatchlings before dying and being swept away to feed bears, birds, and other fish.
He tied this very real picture of the fish giving their all to Christ emptying himself in the second reading and feeding us with his flesh. It was a very effective lesson.