As you know, I am the celebrant for the Cathedral's 12th Sunday After Pentecost EF Mass on Sunday.
So I worked diligently to develop my usual outstanding homily that normally brings applause even from the EF crowd. (Just kidding).
But what I noticed when I went to save my homily on my computer is that I already had a 12 Sunday After Pentecost saved from last year, which means that even though I usually take this Mass only once or twice a month, that I am taking the 12th Sunday After Pentecost twice in a row at the Cathedral and my new homily sounds a lot like my homily from last year!
With only one cycle of readings for the Extraordinary Form, how can an excellent preacher avoid being diminished by repeating himself each and every year? What's a priest to do??????
12 comments:
The assumption is that the congregation remembers what you said last year.
And it's not necessarily a diminution to repeat a good message.
That your homily sounds like last year's is, in some ways, a good thing. A homily should be based on the readings, hence, with the same readings...
Preach the same homily, eventually it will sink into the heads of the faithful. I did the same with my kids.
Rather than just preach another sermon on the good Samaritan, perhaps it might be apposite to reflect on the Old Testament references in this Mass, in the Epistle and the Offertory in particular.
Were I preaching, I would take the text from the Communio: 'et vinum laetificet cor hominis' (that wine may cheer the heart of man) and conflate this with the reference to beer in the Rituale, that it brings health to body and soul. I would mention Chesterton's ale-mugs and Belloc's superb quatrain:
But Catholic men who live upon wine
Are deep in the water, and frank and fine;
Wherever I travel I find it so.
Benedicamus Domino.
By which time, the teetotallers in your congregation will have taken umbrage and decamped to the Methodists who promote their heresy. Good riddance to them.
If you have nothing to say, say nothing
One old pastor around here was criticized "you preach on the same things over and over, when are you going to talk about something new", he replied "when i stop hearing the same things over and over in the confessional"
You can always pull a homily out of the introit or gradual ;)
Bee here:
I did not hear your homily of last year, so perhaps it is similar to this, but you could reflect on how the Good Samaritan is a per-figurement of Our Lord Jesus Christ. We are all wounded by the "robbers" and "vagabonds" in life. We lie wounded on the roadside, unable to help ourselves, until along comes One who takes pity on us, binds up our wounds, pouring into them the wine of charity, and the oil of forgiveness, and carries us Himself to a place of safetym the Church, where the ministers there will attend to us until He returns. He has paid the price of our care with His Blood, and when He returns, He will repay the caretakers whatever is owed in balance.
I read this reflection in a book called Divine Intimacy by Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen. In all my years as a Catholic, I have never heard or considered the metaphor. When I read it in preparation for tomorrows reflection, I was deeply moved.
God bless.
Bee
Father preach the same sermon.
Bee,
Divine Intimacy and The Imitation of Christ are my favorite books!
By making the Samaritan - The Good Samaritan, the Samaritan Woman at the Well - the center of the story or the hero, the Gospel writers were challenging our preconceptions about who is "In" and who is "Out."
The same is true of Cyrus, the "outsider," who is used by God for the return of the Jews from Exile.
Many will come from the north and the south, the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast.
We don't get to choose who will enter the Kingdom. To do so is an exercise in self-aggrandizement and presumption.
Father Mike's comment is the best.
Bee here:
Much to my surprise, this morning at the TLM at St. John Cantius in Chicago, the priest's homily was almost the same as the interpretation I had read on the Good Samaritan.
He said the interpretation was from the early Church Fathers, and mentioned Origen, St. John Chrysostom, an I believe, St. Basil , who viewed the man who fell in with robbers as he was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho (from a high place to a "low" one), as Adam and the Fall of Man, and by extension all of us, who fall into sin or are buffeted by temptation. He said the priest, and the Levite who passed by but did nothing represented the Law and the Prophets, who could not save or bring salvation.
Jesus, of course is the Samaritan (whom the Pharisees and Scribes disdained). He carried the victim to the inn, that is the Church, on his own beast (I don't recall what he said that represented) and ministered to him Himself, then, when he had to go, paid with two coins, which were the Sacraments and the second thing I don't recall. (I am thinking he said the Eucharist, but that is a sacrament, so I don't know). And that when He returns He will repay those who acted in His stead any more that was owed.
It was amazing, and I was so gratified to know the source of this interpretation is the Church Fathers.
Afterwards I was thinking to myself of how it was said Jesus often taught in parables, and chided the disciples for not being able to discern their meaning, and yet, even to this day, we do not see the deeper meaning of the parables He taught with.
And the beginning of today's Gospel also came to mind: "At that time, Jesus said to His disciples: Blessed are the eyes that see the things which you see. For I say to you, that many prophets and kings have desired to see the things that you see, and have not seen them; and to hear the things that you hear, and have not heard them."
God bless.
Bee
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