We had a guest priest at Mass today. Our pastor is in Rome studying and being refreshed, so we are having some guests come in to help Fr. Weiss with all the Masses. The priest today was the new assistant pastor from St. Theresa's - I've seen his picture on the website, and I passed him after churc one day at St. Theresas, but I've never heard him speak. He is a very young priest, just ordained in 2006. He is an intellectual type. His homily included Greek words and a lot of background information on Corinth. That was really cool. He also told us that he became a priest because of Fr. Weiss, which made me love Fr. W. even more than I already do (Boo really likes him, too, and never want to leave church without saying goodbye). Usually when Fr. W preaches, he uses scripture, movie trivia, and comic book characters to drive the point home. It works really well for him, because his faith is so obviously sincere that he just sees it in everything he looks it. I enjoy that, I really do. I always wish Lee were with me, because he would totally "get" the connection between the Superman trailer and Advent. But it was fun to have an "intellectual" sermon today. Our main pastor preaches in a third style, the "life application' style if you will. They are all great.
In Mass, the focus is on receiving communion, not on the sermon, so the priest usually only speaks for 10-15 minutes. (My ADD brain loves this - I listen to sermons all week at home in the car and while I do laundry or clean my kitchen, but sitting through an hour sermon is really hard for me. It's not that I can't sit still; I can. I just stop hearing it after awhile. In our two-hour classes, I have to take notes hard or else draw to stay focused.) I don't think it would be good for the homily to be the only teaching you had all week. On the other hand, we have a LOT of scripture in every service. Every week (every day, actually) there is a full passage out of the Old Testament, a full passage out of the New Testament writings, a full passage out of the Gospels, and a responsive reading or song out of the Psalms. What's really good about this is that you get a full scope view of scripture, rather than just studying the pastor's favorite book for two months a year every year, or focusing on one verse out of context. Not all pastors do this of course, but many do. I love having the whole church study the same thing at the same time. Before I started going to Mass, I found a devotional that was for the whole family, studies for every age level every day for a year. I fell in love with the idea of the whole family studying together - imagine my delight when I found out that a worldwide church already does this... lol
No comments:
Post a Comment