Pastor’s Corner — December 4th, 2022
Gospel Preaching Series: Recap of #1 and a Look Forward to #2
Last weekend I began the preaching series on the Gospel Message, which as we all know can be broken up into four parts:
1. The goodness of creation (Created)
2. Sin and its consequences (Captured)
3. What God has done with sin and its consequences (Rescued)
4. Our response to God for what he’s done (Response)
My homily to kick off the series (Intro and Created) was admittedly a little long last weekend, even with the understanding that our preaching series homilies are intentionally on the longer side for the sake of solid teaching. If you missed my homily, please watch/listen to it on YouTube so you can follow the rest of the series.
In the midst of the very positive feedback, a few parishioners had questions about the proper Catholic biblical interpretation of the creation accounts in Genesis. It’s important to remember that the sacred author of the beginning of the book of Genesis used symbolic and figurative language to convey profound historical and theological truths as defined by the Catholic Church such as:
1) God created the world out of nothing (CCC, 327)
2) That God infused the first man with a spiritual soul (CCC 362-66)
3) That all of us descended from one set of parents (CCC 360)
4) We were in a state of original holiness, in which there was harmony with God and creation in such a way that man did not have to suffer and die (CCC, 376)
5) There was an historical fall of the first human couple through a rejection of God (CCC, 389-90)
(From A Catholic Introduction to the Bible: The Old Testament by Brant Pitre and John Bergsma, p 100)
This week’s homily (Captured) is going to be a bit harder for us to hear because it’s about why everything is so messed up in the world. It’s about the bad news of what happened and how it affects everything. This bad news is what puts the good news of the gospel in context.
Advent Concert at St Pat’s on Dec 16 in the Church at 7pm
Ever since I was little, I loved to sing. I was in the children’s choir at school, went to the adult choir when in high school, in the schola and choir in both seminaries I attended, and even sang a German solo for the Christmas concert when I was on faculty at the seminary. I say this as a little plug to come to our Advent Concert on December 16th which features our beautiful choir and other musicians that lead us in worship at Mass. You may have noticed that I’m one of them, but don’t come just for that in case it’s a big let down. Haha. Hope to see you there!
A Talk on Prophecy by Deacon Kevin on Friday Dec 9 at 7pm in the Church
Before he graduates and is ordained a priest, each seminarian must do what’s called an integrating practicum. The purpose of this practicum is to integrate his theological and pastoral formation by developing a presentation on a relevant topic in the Church. The seminarian submit their presentation to their professor, present it in class, and present it at a parish. Because of the research that goes into these topics, they usually are well done.
Since Deacon Kevin is assigned here in the last year of his formation, he is going to do his integrating practicum here at St Pat’s. His topic is “Living in the Prophetic” which should be really good. In this talk he will explore what it means to engage in prophecy as a Catholic in the modern world. For reference Fr. Joe did his integrating practicum on transgenderism, which he preached on multiple times. The tile of my mine was “God is Neither Right or Left: The Fullness of Catholicism.” (Of course, this shouldn’t surprise you given my recurring insistence that we as Catholics see all of reality through the lens of the perspective of the Catholic faith, which cannot fit into narrow political categories) If you have time to support Deacon Kevin and attend his presentation, please do so. It’s December 9th in the Church at 7pm.
Your servant in the Lord,
Fr. Mathias