What was the homily about this weekend at your church?

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What makes a homily good? Should it be related to the scripture of the day, is it inspirational, is it a ‘lesson’ of some church teaching? Is it affected by the priest’s or deacon’s public speaking ablitity? Hindered by an accent? or by how well it holds our interests?

What did you all hear at mass today that will stick with you throughout the coming week??

Our priest invites the children up and directs his talk to them first. He asked them to name their favorite prayers, then he invited them to say a prayer every day for the building of our church. Then he requested similar prayers from the adults. He went on to speak of the sacrifices made of certain religious orders, as they compared to today’s reading of making sacrifices to follow Jesus.

I can’t say that I’m always impacted by every homily I hear, there are times I have trouble staying focused…
So… What did you all hear this weekend???
 
VAC said:
What makes a homily good? Should it be related to the scripture of the day, is it inspirational, is it a ‘lesson’ of some church teaching? Is it affected by the priest’s or deacon’s public speaking ablitity? Hindered by an accent? or by how well it holds our interests?

What did you all hear at mass today that will stick with you throughout the coming week??

Our priest invites the children up and directs his talk to them first. He asked them to name their favorite prayers, then he invited them to say a prayer every day for the building of our church. Then he requested similar prayers from the adults. He went on to speak of the sacrifices made of certain religious orders, as they compared to today’s reading of making sacrifices to follow Jesus.

I can’t say that I’m always impacted by every homily I hear, there are times I have trouble staying focused…
So… What did you all hear this weekend???
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Vocations and yes it was very related to the Scripture readings
 
Ours was about going where God calls you, even when it means sacrifice. Basically, that God will call us, and to follow that call means that we will suffer, and we will have to embrace the cross out of love for Him. It was most definitely related to the Scripture readings, and delivered effectively by a visiting priest who just left the parish where he had been pastor and was filling at our parish while waiting to be sent to Rome for graduate studies. He hadn’t wanted to leave that parish, but realized that he needed to go where God was sending him.
 
Our priest tied in Christ’s command to leave your father unburied to follow Him to Mass attendance.

He pointed out how many come up with excuses not to attend Mass, like those in today’s Gospel reading offered excuses on why they could not follow Jesus when He called them.

Excellent homily!! 👍
 
At the Saturday vigil where I cantored, an apology for the lack of air conditioning and organ, and the story of how both of them broke this week. A couple of general comments which I do not remember. All very short because it was hot and the priest wanted to keep things moving. But, to his credit, he did not omit or shorten any other part of the Mass.

At the Cathedral today, vocations, the need to answer God’s call right away and not look back. Very good.

Betsy
 
It was about "once you put your hand to the plough there is no turning back.

It was about putting God first, leave the dead to bury the dead etc; those that don’t aren’t fit for the kingdom of God.

Also the Priest mentioned the effort of those at Mass to be there, when we could have lay in our beds.

That’s the highlights, blunt and to the point.
 
It was extremely memorable. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a more heart-wrenching homily or sermon. He could enter it in Sermon Competition and beat Chuck Swindoll!

Our presiding priest is from another country. He went through the Gospel and explained the verses–that we should be willing to give up all our comforts to follow Jesus, that we must forget about the past, and not look back.

So far, cut-and-dried Bible exposition. Lots of yawns from the congregation. We know this stuff.

Then the priest told us that only a few weeks earlier, during a trip back to his country, he had buried his mother. (This was a surprise to all of us.)

But he couldn’t stay in his country long enough to complete the traditional mourning with his family. A parishioner drove him back to the big city and the airport, and during the long drive, he wanted to shout and cry, “No, Lord! Let me stay here! Let that church in the U.S. find another priest! I want to stay here and mourn for my mother with my family!”

Talk about bringing the Gospel to life. Our priest is living it right now!

Wow. You could have heard a pin drop. For once it wasn’t the babies crying, it was the grownups. Our poor priest!

He told us that Jesus wants 100% out of us to be His disciples, but that many of us are weak and can only give 70%. We have to work on getting to the place where we can give 100%, but it is very, very hard. He asked us all to pray for him and for each other.

I don’t think I’ll forget this sermon anytime soon.
 
Our Priest telling us a story about his young nephew trying to kill a bee!!:confused: It was supposed to be related to comittment and he tended to mumble alot. He’s a nice man, genuine, but not great at giving a homily unfortunately.😦
 
SeekerJen said:
Ours was about going where God calls you, even when it means sacrifice. Basically, that God will call us, and to follow that call means that we will suffer, and we will have to embrace the cross out of love for Him.
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Sounds like ours - our priest most always does really good homilies. And a bit of ‘if your faith isn’t costing you you need to examine yourself’ kinda thing.

Has anyone noticed that part of the same Gospel is repeated tomorrow (Monday)? A little odd.
 
My pastor started with John and James asking to call down fire on the Samaritan town. He explained that, although they had been there for the Sermon and Jesus’ teaching they still didn’t get it-- wanting to destroy the Samaritan town. But, they would get it eventually-- John teaching God is love, and James teaching about good works being needed in addition to faith. So, it isn’t a surprise that we aren’t saints yet-- even they had to grow, and they had Jesus Himself. However, despite that we are all called to be saints-- although we may not all be saints right now, we are all called to be saints by the time we die, which is a gradual process where we open ourselves to God and allow Him to shape us. That’s the basic gist of it.

-Rob
 
In Britain, this is pro-life Sunday, so we had a homily about abortion and a pastoral letter from the Archbishop, very encouraging, despite the rarity of pro-life material here! 😦
 
Ours was on putting God first, before all.

The Deacon said that we don’t have to take it literally that we can’t go to our parents’ funeral, or live in a house, but that if these things are taking precedence over our relationship with God, then we need to re-examine our lives and straighten things out with Him.

I thought it was one of our Deacon’s better homilies - and he’s usually quite good, anyway. 👍
 
reminder that we are commemorating our country’s independence, and the basic God-given freedoms. the meaning of true freedom–the liberation from sin and death inherited with original sin and destroyed by Christ. How the culture is rapidly flinging away true freedom by embracing bondage to sin. the threats to our freedom, including those enshrined in the Constitution, by political forces, for example, the 9th circuit court of California (surprise, surprise) who has just upheld a lower court ruling criminalizing hate speech, including such fightin’ words as “marriage” “union of one man and one woman” and “natural family”.
 
My pastor does a great job on his homilies and he always links it to the scripture readings.

Jim
 
Our homily was interesting. It had to do with the excuses people gave Jesus. “I want to bury my father,” keeping in mind that he didn’t say his father was dead. “I want to bid farewell to my family,” or do you want to ask their permission, etc.

The homily had to do with following Jesus first and putting ourselves second. The sacrafice (sp?) we make NOW will be worth it.
 
We went to the first Mass of a newly ordained priest today. He was a seminarian intern in our parish last summer and fall.

Another priest gave the homily and it was mostly addressed to the new priest, but wonderful all the same. He took the luminous mysteries and examined them in light of John Paul II’s “be not afraid” statement and related them to various aspects of the priesthood.

He also had a few words about the newly ordained priest - it took him 10 years to make it through from the beginning of seminary to ordination. The day had been long in coming!

A beautiful Mass!
 
Everybody has a vocation. Everybody is called to follow Jesus. How we do that is learned through prayer and discernment, then following, not stopping short. Comparions made to being taken to an ice cream parlor, allowed to have have ANY AND ALL the ice cream in the place, free, and just standing in the doorway, stopping short, and looking at all the ice cream without ever even taking a taste. Second comparison: Couple marries, goes through the reception, goes to the honeymoon site, groom goes to carry bride through threshold, and just just stands there with the bride in his arms, never moving toward the marriage bed and the marital embrace.

Yes, it was a very good homily. Father just came back from “Bible Camp” (a little annual tune-up for priests, alsts abotu a week). He always learns something while he is there.
 
I find it encouraging to read your comments on the homilies in your own churches. I gave the homily this weekend at 3 Masses in our Parish. Mine sounds quite a lot like several of those mentioned here - people making excuses not to follow Jesus, the excuses I’ve used in my own life, etc. I always PRAY prior to Mass that the power of the Holy Spirit work through me and that the message would be the one HE wants delivered.
Pray for your priests and deacons.
 
Finally explaining Jesus’ comment…‘Let the dead bury the dead.’ I never got that before this weekend–thank you to my parish priest! It means that perhaps (from an earlier conversation not noted in the Bible) the man’s family is not a group of believers, and thus are ‘dead’ to Christ…dead to the word of God…thus, let the dead bury the dead. It was more elaborate than this, but I am grateful to have had that explained to me.🙂
 
whatevergirl said:
Finally explaining Jesus’ comment…‘Let the dead bury the dead.’ I never got that before this weekend–thank you to my parish priest! It means that perhaps (from an earlier conversation not noted in the Bible) the man’s family is not a group of believers, and thus are ‘dead’ to Christ…dead to the word of God…thus, let the dead bury the dead. It was more elaborate than this, but I am grateful to have had that explained to me.🙂
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Are Priest said that the man meant he would follow Jesus after his father died-not that he was dead now.
 
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