Sermon Central
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The Plague Year Homilies
Contributed by W Pat Cunningham on Jun 6, 2020 (message contributor)
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1. Exercising Prophetic Gifts In A Time Of Trouble
Contributed on Jun 6, 2020
In every age the Holy Spirit does these wonders, and in our present difficulty that same Spirit is doing it again.
Tuesday of the Tenth Week in Course In our era we are experiencing a dislocation of everything we routinely counted on to anchor our existence, are we not? Many of us in the West define ourselves by our occupation, our plans, our religious practices, our social interactions. And for most of us ...read more
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2. Who Is The Real Enemy
Contributed on Jun 13, 2020
Where is the endless mercy and compassion of the God of the Covenant?
Tuesday of the Eleventh Week in Course 2020 For those who knew the promise God made through Moses as the Israelites journeyed through the desert, what was happening to Israel about 870 years before Christ was a great puzzle. God had revealed Himself as One full of tender mercy and compassion to ...read more
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3. Turn Away From False Alliances And Rely Only On The True God
Contributed on Jun 20, 2020
God subjected Himself in the person of Jesus Christ, the God-man, to ridicule and torture and death, so that after rising from the dead, He could form a people.
Tuesday of the Twelfth Week in Course 2020 If a far-seeing leader in the Middle East back in the centuries before Christ had wanted to found a city or territory for his people, he would have chosen a place with natural defenses, like the island of Tyre in the Lebanon area. Tyre survived as a ...read more
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4. Gideon, Scientist
Contributed on Jun 21, 2020
Is this pandemic God’s judgement against us? I am reluctant to say it, but what else can it be? It certainly ought to wake up all Americans to our responsibilities to restore goodness to our land.
Gideon, Scientist Here in the Book of Judges, we see a very sad history. It’s not unlike some of the ages in our nation’s history, including the one we are laboring in today. Time after time we read that “The people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord; and the Lord gave them into ...read more
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5. The Logos Is The Solid Rock
Contributed on Jun 25, 2020
Jesus challenged His disciples–and that means not just the original ones but us today–to build His Church on solid rock
Thursday of the 12th Week in Course 2020 Logos is Solid Rock Rock or sand? Where do you build your house? On a solid foundation or on shifting sand? The listeners who heard Jesus’s words here probably had or knew someone who had built on a poor subsurface. After all, the region of Palestine is in ...read more
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6. Martyrdom--Its Real Meaning
Contributed on Jun 27, 2020
What Matthew records of the prophecy given by Jesus about persecutions has been lived out somewhere in the world in every century since the Resurrection.
Tuesday of the 13th week in Course 2020 The First Martyrs of the Holy Roman Church Today’s news is troubling, and we fear that tomorrow’s will be even worse. Mobs of misinformed and misled millennials have been rampaging across the urban landscapes, tearing down monuments to long-dead role models ...read more
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7. Restoring The Marriage Covenant Between God And His People
Contributed on Jul 4, 2020
What is the end we are pursuing as a nation as we work our way out of this prison?
Tuesday of the 14th Week in Course 2020 Plague Year Homilies The prophet Hosea saw more clearly than many of the other Israelite prophets that the many problems facing the breakaway kingdom of Israel boiled down to infidelity. The covenant that God had made with them in the desert hundreds of ...read more
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8. David And The Census And The Plague
Contributed on Jul 8, 2020
We can look to the past, either in the Scriptures or in our own country’s history, and discover that when we repent of our sin and cry to Our Lord, He always answers.
Plague Year Homilies: David and the Census The second book of Samuel, which recounts the life and rule of King David, ends with several passages we would call “appendices,” because they appear to be tacked on by the editors of the book. It’s either difficult to put them into the history, or they ...read more
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9. Oy Vay--What Shall We Do?
Contributed on Jul 11, 2020
It’s time for us to imitate the early Christians, not Ahaz. Political solutions are like bandages. They can stop the blood flow but they can’t cure the fundamental disease, which is loss of faith in God, and disobedience to His commandments.
Tuesday of the 15th Week in Course 2020 Plague Year homilies When you consider it, God, whom we call by a kind of nickname “Yah” every time we sing the Gospel acclamation, God was heavily invested in His people. Specifically, He made a promise to King David, the greatest of the kings of Israel, ...read more
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10. Exorcising The Culture
Contributed on Jul 18, 2020
One of the first things we ask a candidate is to renounce Satan, all His works–that’s sin I guess you know–and all His promises and ceremonies.
Tuesday of the 156th Week in Course 2020 Plague Year homilies In the days we are now experiencing I suspect that nearly all of us would agree with the Psalmist that we want the Lord to judge the peoples with equity and guide the nations on earth. But that is a prayer for every age, every ...read more
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11. Maybe We Need To Listen To Saint Paul Tell Us The Value Of Moaning
Contributed on Jul 19, 2020
The Spirit of God will help each of us, if we ask, to pray that the Will of God is always done on earth as it is in heaven, and to work together so that is accomplished in our day.
Sixteenth Sunday in Course 2020 The Plague Year Homilies I suppose if you walked into our chapel to pray one day, and found somebody kneeling or bowing down and giving off profound and continuous moans, you’d either call the rectory or EMS. But let me just throw a few realities at you: the entire ...read more
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12. Drought, Pestilence, Famine, And Repentance
Contributed on Jul 25, 2020
Our culture, which has especially violated the commandment to love God by turning the Lord’s day into a market day, and has violated the commandment to love our neighbor by murdering millions of preborn infants, is clearly under judgement.
Tuesday of 17th Week in Course 2020 The Plague Year Homilies The Church providently provides for us a series of fitting readings this year, currently from the prophecy of Jeremiah. Today we pick up in chapter 14 with what is called a series of prophecies during a great drought. Earlier in the ...read more
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13. When The Wind Is Blowing Against Us What Do We Do?
Contributed on Aug 1, 2020
In times of crisis, in plagues and wars and economic disaster, we are called by God to minister to each other in this way
Tuesday of the 18th Week in Course: St. John Vianney I’d like you to get out of your wallet or picture in your mind a hologram. You know, it’s the image imprinted on many credit cards to help merchants validate them. You look at it from different directions and it looks three-dimensional. ...read more
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14. Yes, It Can Get Worse
Contributed on Aug 4, 2020
This is not what you expected, and this is not what we deserve, is it? Or is it not?
Yes, It Can Get Worse I know that many of you are very concerned about the coming congressional, senatorial and presidential elections. You have shared with me your troubled thoughts about a certain political party getting control of both Congress and the presidency. There are worries that the ...read more
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15. Belief In God Or Murphy?
Contributed on Aug 6, 2020
I think it may be true: More people believe in Murphy than believe in a loving God seen in Jesus Christ.
Believe in God, or Murphy? Friday of the 18th Week in Course 2020 If we had been Assyrians in the time during and after 612 years before Christ, roughly the time of the prophecy of Nahum, what would we be thinking and feeling? Nineveh, capital of Assyria at that time, had been besieged for months ...read more
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16. Even In A Catastrophe, We Should Glorify The Lord By Our Lives
Contributed on Aug 8, 2020
In heaven, then, when we succeed in becoming like Christ as His servants and siblings, the Father will give us honors beyond anything we could hope for.
Monday of the 19th Week in Course: St. Lawrence One of the directions we deacons can give at the end of Holy Mass says “Go in peace, glorifying the Lord by your life.” The idea is to go out from the Eucharistic celebration and bear fruit, bringing the Gospel to your friends and colleagues. That ...read more
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17. Husband, Not Baal
Contributed on Aug 10, 2020
How does the Gospel apply to the current unpleasantness, or any other crisis in which there is a lot of economic distress?
Tuesday of the 19th Week in Course 2020 St. Clair Why did the people of Israel, the Chosen People of the True God, in the language of the Bible, go “whoring” after false gods, when week after week they had heard the story of their God, the One who loved them and rescued them from Egyptian slavery? ...read more
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18. Repenting The True State Of The Union--Or Disunion
Contributed on Aug 15, 2020
Even as the speech was delivered, a critter that could only be seen with an electron microscope was beginning to multiply through both the communist and the free world.
Tuesday of the 20th Week in Course 2020 When we catalogue the favored cultures and cities of history, the city of Tyre, cultural mother of the great and bloody Carthaginian empire, has to be written near the top of the list. The word, “Tyre” literally means “rock,” because in the time of the ...read more
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19. O Woman, Great Is Your Faith
Contributed on Aug 16, 2020
Cleansing the heart and intentions is way more important than ceremonial washing of hands, even in the time of COVID-19
20th Sunday in Course 2020 My ancestors came mostly from Ireland, although the coat of arms we display in our home, that says “Cunningham,” is actually Scottish. I suppose that confirms the British suspicion that the Irish tend toward appropriating the property of others. Nonetheless, the fact ...read more
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20. Violent Bands Of Pharisees
Contributed on Aug 22, 2020
To convict someone who died in the thirteenth century for actions that were considered heroic and kingly then, but that some people take offense to today is particularly ironic.
Tuesday of the 21st Week in Course 2020 It’s providential that the Church has given us a series of hard-hitting readings during the past month–hard-hitting but full of the Trinity’s love and compassion. It is particularly fitting that in a year when violent bands of Pharisees are roaming the ...read more
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21. Take Your Faith Into The Voting Booth
Contributed on Aug 29, 2020
We must this November take our faith into the voting booth, and avoid supporting people who would enfeeble the Christian conscience.
Tuesday of the 22nd Week in Course 2020 There are two species of spirit, pneuma in the Greek, and we see the first, the holy variety, in St. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians today. Here in chapter 2, Paul has just written about the reward of the just, which we long for: “But, as it is written, ...read more
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22. Forgive--Especially Your Enemies
Contributed on Sep 11, 2020
Forgiveness not only gets you forgiven, it gives you psychological relief, and it can even make a friend out of an enemy.
24th Sunday in Course 2020 As I share some thoughts about the Sacred Scriptures given to us by the Church for this coming Sunday, it is Patriot Day, September 11, nineteen years into the new world bequeathed to us by four violent but related acts that unforgettable Tuesday. And every three years, ...read more
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23. Political Signs, Rain Lilies And The Vineyard Labor Reward
Contributed on Sep 13, 2020
We need to subject all our political opinions an conversation to the continuing need for repentance called to us by Scripture.
25th Sunday in Course 2020 It’s seems like the political yard signs this election cycle have been cropping up for two years, like the rain lilies that sprout overnight after a heavy downpour. If your convictions about the relevance of your faith to society have made you politically aware and ...read more
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24. Woman Of Sorrows, Hoping Only In Christ
Contributed on Sep 15, 2020
Whatever honor and respect is due to Mary is solely because of the life, death and resurrection of her Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Lady of Sorrows, Woman for All September 15, 2020 If there is one title of the Virgin Mother of Christ that all Christians should agree on, it is “Our Lady of Sorrows.” John the Evangelist is very clear that in the hour of Jesus’s passion, crucifixion and death, He was guarded by a handful of ...read more
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25. Everybody Needs To Learn Humility
Contributed on Sep 19, 2020
Mary understood, as every Christian should, that any great thing that happens in our walk with Christ is due to the Lord’s graceful action and will.
Tuesday of 25th Week in Course 2020 Today’s story from the life of Jesus Christ is from St. Luke’s Gospel, and it looks like proof of alienation of Jesus from His extended family, doesn’t it? The family is trying to get to Jesus for some reason, and the crowd tells Him about it, and He seems to ...read more
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26. Repent And Do
Contributed on Sep 19, 2020
Every one of us, at the end of every day, should ask the same question: are we the first son or daughter, who refused, or the second, who said “yes, sir,” but didn’t do?
26th Sunday in Course 2020 Anyone who has raised more than one child can empathize with the parent in this story from St. Matthew’s Gospel. In fact, it’s a little like the story of the Prodigal Son from St. Luke. Dad says to the first son, presumably the oldest, “Go work in the vineyard today.” He ...read more
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27. Prayer For Our Nation
Contributed on Sep 23, 2020
The problem is not something solvable by election returns, and we have to stop acting like it is.
Thursday of the 25th Week in Course 2020 National Day of Prayer/Fasting Herod Antipas was the primo politician of Palestine two thousand years ago. As one of the few surviving offspring of Herod the Great, Antipas ruled Galilee and Perea, but he was pretty paranoid. John the Baptist had preached ...read more
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28. Even The Angels Will Serve
Contributed on Sep 25, 2020
Today we are at the beginning of what could be a terrible time in the history of the Catholic Church and all the communities who call themselves Christian.
Tuesday of 26th Week in Course 2020 Michael, Gabriel and the Archangels Today is a special day for me and my family. My birth name was Michael, and the day reminds me to thank, in spirit, the woman who bore me and gave me to my adoptive parents, who taught me the faith and gave me a loving ...read more
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29. Riots And Rancor And Have No Anxiety!
Contributed on Sep 27, 2020
But whatever happens on November 3, God remains supreme, and God’s glory is assured, in our hearts and worship and ultimately in the victory Christ has won.
27th Sunday in Course A 2020 The Plague Year Homilies About forty years after the Resurrection of Jesus, in the third year of the Jewish revolution against the Romans, Supreme Leader Titus encircled the walls of Jerusalem and began a siege. It began three days before the Passover feast, and it is ...read more
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30. Loving Lady Poverty To Pull Society From Chaos To Christ
Contributed on Sep 30, 2020
Francis, the poor friar in his garment of third-rate cloth who smiles through his poverty is enormously attractive, because he is totally exceptional.
Feast of St. Francis of Assisi 2020 October 4, 2020 G.K. Chesterton said about St. Francis that “he plunged after poverty as men have dug madly for gold.” He was in love with what or who he called “Lady Poverty” for a crazy but practical reason and it has to do with spreading the Gospel of the ...read more