It was the 3rdd Sunday of Advent.
Was there a GOOD point made in the sermon you heard at your Sunday Mass of obligation?
Share the good stuff. Quite a few people are forced to sit through really bad preaching. Even though you can usually find – if you are willing to try – at least one good point in a really bad sermon, that can be a trial. So… SHARE THE GOOD STUFF which you were fortunate enough to receive!
Tell about attendance especially for the Traditional Latin Mass. I hear that it is growing. Of COURSE.
Any local changes or (hopefully good) news? We really need good news.
I have some thoughts posted at One Peter Five.
We have deep holes in which darknesses are harbored, memories which need purification and healing. We have artificial constructs of pride about ourselves, which might manifest in presumption, haughtiness, or false humility. Christ is going to raise those holes and press down those mountains whether we have tried in advance to do so. He offers us the help of actual graces and the sacraments and the examples of saints in the Church. But it is going to happen. One day.
Here’s a poll. Anyone can vote. Only registered and approved participants can comment, and I hope you do. The SHADE of rose would be interesting to know.
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“St. Augustine … teaches that creation points with its very form and being beyond itself to the Creator. “Tell me of my God,” he says, “You are not he, but tell me something of him.” And each creature has the same response – “Ipse fecit nos/ He made us.” Their response arises from their beauty, Augustine says. Like the Baptist, we are, each and every one of us, lamps lighting the path of the Lord, making ready for his arrival.
“When he arrives – on Christmas morning, at the end times, in our hearts right now – our task is to hail him and then recede in humility. I think the reason St. John the Baptist is so central to our faith, the reason he is the greatest of the prophets, is because he reveals the shape of all our lives.”
Our seminarian deacon made an interesting historical point about Sunday’s gospel in which when John the Evangelist was asked if he were the Christ, he said he was not worthy to untie Christ’s shoe. In the book of Ruth there is a story about when a man died, his nearest brother had a right to the widow. If he deferred, he took off his shoe and passed it to the next relative to show he was giving up his right. So our deacon said in this passage John was denying his own right to the bride (the Church) and saying she belonged to Christ (the bridegroom).
Gladly we have donated 6 sets of rose vestments as part of our Rose Vestment Project
At the Novus Ordo of our sister parish, rose vestments (although we really need to get a matching set for our deacon. The dalmatic was a very light shade, while Father had on a deeper-colored chasuble. And, sadly, the Chalice veil and burse were violet. Something to work on in the coming year!). Our priest was a young Jesuit who was up until recently assigned at our local college; he was back in the area visiting for Christmas. Great priest! Father spoke about the importance of finding our voice as St. John the Baptist did, to be God’s instrument in proclaiming the truth about Christ to an otherwise-deaf world. Tied in how “vocation” stems from the same root as “vox/vocis,” and how our collective vocation is to speak out for Christ and for God in whatever particular vocation we are given.