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 12th Sunday after Pentecost, or the 22nd Sunday of Ordinary Time?
Tell 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…
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Then comes the parable’s twist: a Samaritan appears. The Samaritans were a mixed people, descendants of Israelites left in the Northern Kingdom after the Assyrian conquest (8th c. B.C.) and of foreign settlers. They accepted only the Pentateuch, rejected Jerusalem’s Temple, and worshipped on Mount Gerizim. By the 1st century, Jews regarded them as ritually impure, ethnically tainted enemies. Josephus records that Samaritans once desecrated the Temple by scattering bones during Passover (Antiquitates Judaicae 18.30). Such was the enmity. Yet this Samaritan is “moved with compassion” (σπλαγχνισθεὶς, splagchnistheìs from the delightful verb σπλαγχνίζομαι, splagchnízomai, in turn from σπλάγχνον, splágchnon, “internal organs, guts, viscera, bowels”). Splagchnízomai, as fun to type as to say, is a delightful verb often used of Christ Himself (cf. Mt 9:36; Mk 6:34). Splágchnon is where we get English “spleen” and “splenic”. In ancient times and into the Medieval period, according to the theory of humorism, no joke, the spleen was considered the seat of emotions, for it excreted “μέλαινα χολή, melaina kholé or black bile”, which when dominating made one melancholy. But I digress. While I am not sanguine about avoiding additional digressions, we must keep moving lest you become bilious or phlegmatic.
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Father had a homily on humility. The point was not so much that you should lower your opinion of yourself, as that you should avoid thinking and acting as if you’re better than everybody else. If you treat people with kindness and politeness, that’s a good start on becoming humble.
10:30 AM High Mass for the 12th Sunday after Pentecost. Not quite as crowded as usual, perhaps some have gone away for the long weekend.
The Church is a hospital for sick people i.e. those who are sick spiritually. If you go into a hospital you expect to find sick people there. They may not have the same sickness as you do. You would not say “that person doesn’t have my sickness so he doesn’t belong here”. In the same way we shouldn’t think that someone who comes into the church with tattoos or noisy children or whatever offends us shouldn’t be there.
In the story of the Good Samaritan we are the traveler who is assaulted by the Devil and left spiritually half dead. The representatives of the old law pass by as their need for ritual purity is more important than helping someone. The Samaritan represents Jesus who has already paid for our healing by his sacrifice on the Cross, mush as the Samaritan in the story pays the innkeeper 2 pennies ahead of time. Making up the balance of what is owed for our healing happens when we go to confession. The inn where we are taken to for healing is the Church.
now that’s the kind of humorous commentary that befits a homily!
that being said, i heard an excellent Sunday homily on humility. Aquinas: humilitas est veritas. Rafael Merry del Val’s litany of humility with some interlinear explanatory commentary. a reminder that one should never receive the blessed Sacrament while not in the state of grace that and one must confess at least once per year.
For 22nd of O.T., our pastor discussed how Christ’s parable of sitting at the lower vs higher place is not a mere lesson on social etiquette, but a broader question of genuine humility, self-emptying vs. a desire to take. He contrasted Satan and Mary, examples of people who sought the higher vs lower place.
My reflection was on the beauty in doing hard things and eudaemonic joy. It had quotes from Irish priest John O’Donahue, among other sources.