Too many people today are without good, strong preaching, to the detriment of all. Share the good stuff.
It is the 3rd Sunday of Ordinary Time in the Novus Ordo and the 3rd Sunday after Epiphany in the Vetus Ordo.
Was there a GOOD point made in the sermon you heard at your Sunday Mass of obligation?
Tell about attendance especially for the Traditional Latin Mass. I hear that it is growing. Of COURSE.
Any local changes or (hopefully good) news?
I have a few thoughts about the orations in the Vetus Ordo for this Sunday: HERE
Heaping hot coals on someone’s head doesn’t sound very charitable. What could this mean? In ancient times it was critically important to keep a fire going in the home. Great effort was made to bank coals in ashes over night and get the fire going again later. Providing food and drink and fire were ways to tend to your neighbors’ true needs. For the Romans a sentence of exile was given with a decree of aquae et ignis interdictio… privation of water and fire. You were to be denied the essentials of life precisely so that you were forced to leave the area or die. The reverse of this is how on the day of her marriage a bride would be received by her husband with fire and water, which represented that he would care for her needs. Hence, heaping coals on a person’s head is the opposite of cruelty. It is a way of waking them up to their true selves. As St. Augustine put it, your kindness will burn away your enemy’s hatred.
