Once called Mt. Eremos, this is the site where it is thought that Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount and so the place is now called the Mount of the Beatitudes. The domed structure, upper left, is a chapel.
It's time to begin looking to the weekend ahead and the scriptures for this Sunday's liturgy which you can find here, along with some background material on the same texts.
Our parish is having a Mission, February 4-7 and the priest preaching the Mission is also preaching at all the Masses this weekend. This, then, will be one of those rare weekends when I need not prepare a homily. A bit of a breather? Yes. But I really ought to have a bumper sticker made for my car with the slogan, I'd Rather Be Preachin'!
Sunday night I had my annual "Ask Fr. Fleming Anything" evening with our confirmation candidates. One of the questions on the 3X5 cards they handed in was, "As a priest, what do you enjoy doing the most?" That was an easy one to answer: preaching and celebrating the sacraments!
Click on the link to the St. Louis University site above and start your pondering of the Word. I'll be joining you and wondering with you, "Hmm... wonder what the homily will be about this weekend?"
The Spirit works in strange ways! This morning while enjoying my first cup of coffee, I randomly selected an old favorite book, "The Jesus I Never Knew" by Philip Yancey. I then randomly selected a page and read. It happened to be from my least favorite chapter, the one on the sermon on the mount and the beatitudes. Amazingly the section I read was inspiring and instructive. Then I opened your blog and saw the immediate reference to that same portion of the gospel and that the readings will be the beatitudes this Sunday ...well times like these make it very easy to feel the pull of the Spirit!
ReplyDeleteI read in a couple of places this morning that since the feast of the Presentation (2/2) is a feast of the Lord in the general calendar, it outranks a Sunday in ordinary time. Therefore the propers for a Saturday evening mass of anticipation should be for the feast day, not ordinary time. Are you in agreement with that Concord Pastor? It's confusing since the feast day falls on a Saturday but an evening mass would be for the Sunday. I'm wondering how many parishes will actually follow that rule.
ReplyDeleteAnne: there's really no confusion or conflict here and any parish that celebrates the Presentation at a Mass after 4:00 on Saturday, 2/2, will be in error.
ReplyDeleteThe liturgical day ends at sundown and the next day begins: this is the basis for the legitimacy of Mass on Saturday evening anticipating the Sunday celebration.
Mass during the day this Saturday will celebrate the Presentation up until 4:00 p.m. while evening Masses (after 4:00 p.m.) will celebrate the 4th Sunday in Ordinary Time.
Thanks for the clarification.
ReplyDelete