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 15th Sunday after Pentecost, or the 22nd Sunday of Ordinary Time?
Tell us about attendance especially for the Traditional Latin Mass.
Any local changes or (hopefully good) news?
A couple thoughts about the sign of the cross: HERE A taste…
If you are perhaps enveloped in mourning or concern, struck with anxiety and fear about your lot or that of a loved one, remember the resolute tenderness of the Lord for the widow of Nain. If you are lonely or can’t see a way forward, know that Jesus has the same compassion for you as for her. He will extend it to you in the way He knows you most have need of it. If you are carrying the death-bier of the memory of your sins, perhaps still unconfessed, Christ will raise you from your cast-down state.
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Many years ago, at least 20, a priest said of this gospel that Jesus heard the prayers of this woman for her son. Then he asked, “How much more likely is He to hear the prayers of his own mother?” This is a simple but true observation that one cannot forget.
Today Father told us to aim for Heaven, not Purgatory.
If we aim for Purgatory , we will end up in Hell.
At our FSSP parish near Seattle the priest used the Gospel reading to talk about death. Specifically, how our culture does not want to deal with it properly, e.g., “Celebration of Life” versus a requiem Mass, not burying the dead, and not praying for the deceased. He also said that we have to live our lives cognizant that we will all die. And that for the dead life is not ended, but changed.
Our priest spoke eloquently about how so many of us live as effective atheists. He cited Ted McCarrick and Jimmy Savile as egregious examples but cautioned us on how we all can slip into that pit. We have to remind ourselves that God sees everything, everywhere and all the time.
About 180 people at our diocesan TLM. The Vatican axe is supposed to fall in March of 2025.
If we aim for Purgatory , we will end up in Hell.
Unless he has some prophetic insight about every Christian on earth who aimed for Purgatory is in Hell and not Purgatory now, without even one exception, then he should not say that.
It’s not so difficult to look up the word “may” in the dictionary (which has equal terrifying effect, or greater, because it is, you know, actually true). Come on, fathers.
Imrahil,
My priest was addressing a mindset.
He wasn’t purposing a definitive claim with the Last 4 Things.
If we are “aiming for purgatory “, that probably means there’s something else we should be doing spiritually that we are knowingly neglecting .
Otherwise, we would be aiming for Heaven.
Dear monstrance,
I know he was addressing a mindset. The thing is he addressed it with an incorrect statement, aimed to shock rather than to report information. I don’t think in deliberate speeches – and sermons are deliberate speeches one ought to use incorrect statements for effect. In fact in my own mind I have a hard time not to subsume suchlike speaking under the header of “lies”; and even if one might find a definition not to call it with that nasty name, I don’t think that is how the Truth should be fought for.
I also think that the effect that he is looking for, shock, will actually be greater if he uses a correct statement, viz., if instead of
“If we aim for Purgatory, we will end up in Hell”
he were to say
“Oh, there may be some who say ‘If I make it to Purgatory, that’s enough for me’. Beware. You have not made it to Purgatory, yet. God does not love false humility; and you, preferring some sinful pleasure to God who appears to you as begruding said pleasure – think: you are assuming he, The Good, is not good enough to you! -, may turn out not to love Him at all, after all. There may well be a soul who aimed for Purgatory, but ended up in Hell in eternal brutally-painful torture, urrks, urrks, urrrrrrrrks ” – here the preacher attempts at making sounds of someone being tortured – “because she had in life not aimed high enough.”
Which is the more shocking? The correct one or the hyperbolic one? I think the correct one.
Reverend Father, pardon the abuse of the comment-section.
– That being said, I don’t think (but that mind-you is a totally separate issue, and certainly not one I’d have abused the comment-section for) the topic is really good for a Sunday sermon for a normal parish, except by making clear (as preachers should) that of course one really ought to aim for Heaven because it really is bliss and because after all God really does will our good. – The reason is that the parish Sunday sermon appears to me to be addressed to incipientes, as the scholastics would have said: to beginners, and beginners have a certain excuse to set the specific topic of perfection aside for the time being; they have it hard enough anyway to repress sinful tendencies, and also because they need to not be demotivated. Also, people who say “I aim for Purgatory” may not mean that they wish to go on in mortal sin and hope to die between Confession and the next sin; nor even that they wish to go on in venial sin: they may just exaggerate they noble impulses of humility too much, or they may labour under a false conception of holiness without knowing how much fun stuff isn’t at all forbidden; coming to think of it, how much the holy things are themselves fun stuff.
Imrahil,
Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
My priest would do much greater justice to his message with its whole context than I attempted with one sentence.
But, I would disagree that Sunday Mass is the time throttle back on the Gospel. It’s the only Mass most practicing Catholics attend.
I believe the days of soft peddling the Last 4 Things should be in our rear view mirror and fading rapidly.