Thine Own Service

Thine Own Service

Tag Archives: advent

Homily for Advent III

17 Sunday Dec 2017

Posted by Fr James Bradley in Homily

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

advent, confession, gaudete, homily, plainchant

10846138_10100708572179402_7982235390006470770_n.jpgSince about September this year, at the start of the Sung Mass on Sundays here at Holy Family we have replaced the opening hymn with a chant that changes each week. If you come to Mass on a weekday you will hear, even before the Priest says “In the Name of the Father,” a similar short text very often taken from the psalms or some other part of scripture. This text, whether sung or said, very often presents the ‘theme’ of the Mass. For instance at a Mass for the Dead we sing, “Rest eternal grant unto them, O Lord, and let light perpetual shine upon them.” And on Christmas Day, “Today Christ is born, today the Saviour has appeared.” The text is called the Entrance Antiphon or Introit, because it is supposed to be sung as the Sacred Ministers enter the church for the start of the Mass.

Continue reading →

Homily for Marian Consecration 2017

12 Tuesday Dec 2017

Posted by Fr James Bradley in Homily

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

advent, consecration, homily, marian, mary, our lady, our lady of guadalupe

30941195950_f54f54ec2b_z.jpg

This homily was given at a Mass preceding the final act in the 33 Day Consecration of Saint Louis Grignon de Montfort, on the eve of the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

In the life of the Church there are many things which go by different names. We talk about the Sacrament of Penance, or Reconciliation, or Confession. And in a similar way there are times when we describe different things with the same word. We know, for instance, that the blessing invoked by us over our breakfast cereal is different from that given by the Priest at the end of the Mass.

Continue reading →

Homily for Advent II

11 Monday Dec 2017

Posted by Fr James Bradley in Homily

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

advent, evangelisation, homily

28342935794_65f568a6fd_z.jpg

During the season of Advent we fix our minds on the two “comings” of Christ. First, and most obviously His coming amongst us as the Word made Flesh in His Nativity. Even the world outside the Church acknowledges this. Despite its best efforts to sanitise Christmas and to denude it of its essential message, even the world sees that there is something that speaks to the heart of what it means to be a human being in that little baby in a stable stall. So, first of all, Advent is about our journey toward Christ in His first coming at Bethlehem in Judaea. Secondly, and perhaps less popularly, the season of Advent looks towards the coming of Christ again at the end of time. This is far less comforting (for believers and non-believers alike) but Christians profess: “He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead.” And so He will; Christ will return and will expose the hidden places of our hearts, to judge us and all of mankind according to our deeds. He will come to sort the sheep from the goats (Mt 25:32).

Continue reading →

Homily for Advent I

03 Sunday Dec 2017

Posted by Fr James Bradley in Homily

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

ad orientem, advent, homily, liturgy

27053006446_5b2eba0ef3_z.jpg

Today the Church begins a new liturgical year with the start of the season of Advent. The First Sunday of Advent is of course not just the Church’s “New Year’s Day” but the opening of our preparations for the celebration of the Nativity, the birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ according the flesh, when God comes to make His home with us at Christmas. As we prepare for the coming of the Christ Child, in this season we also recall that, as we affirm in the words of the Creed, “[Christ] will come again to judge the living and the dead.” Just as we look forward to His first coming in the manger at Bethlehem, so also our minds are also fixed on His second coming at the end of time “to achieve the definitive triumph of good over evil which, like the wheat and the tares, have grown up together in the course of history” (CCC 680). It is for this reason that the gospel for this first Sunday of the season of Advent presents to us those alarming words of the Lord to His disciples from the Gospel according to Saint Mark: “Be on your guard, stay awake, because you never know when the time will come” (Mk 13:33).

Continue reading →

Homily for Advent I 2016

27 Sunday Nov 2016

Posted by Fr James Bradley in Homily

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

advent, homily, liturgical year, liturgy, plainchant

28854692122_0dae893b82_z.jpg

Detail from the Church of Saint Elizabeth of Portugal, Richmond

https://thineownservice.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/fr-bradley.mp3

 

It is always a very great pleasure for me to come to this parish and to visit a place that has such a wonderful and rich liturgical life. Your Pastor has helped to create for you here a place in which we can truly experience what a mediæval English carol called “heaven and earth in little space.” In the beauty and reverence of the Sacred Liturgy we come into the realm of the natural and peer into the realm of the supernatural. We catch a glimpse of the reality of heaven through the signs and symbols of the liturgical celebration on earth, and so understand more and more what it is to be members of the mystical Body of Christ, joined as we are in our worship to the worship of the saints in the kingdom of heaven. We experience in the “little space” of our church building the worship of heaven here on earth.

Continue reading →

Homily for Sunday XXXIII of the Year

12 Saturday Nov 2016

Posted by Fr James Bradley in Homily

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

advent, homily, liturgical year, virtue

30763724371_e2398f821d_z.jpg

Crucifixion, Germany, c. 1200, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

As we come to the end the great swathes of green Sundays of the Year, over the course of the past few weeks the Church has begun to hint at the arrival of a new liturgical season. Next Sunday she will celebrate the solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, and the following Sunday she will be clothed in violet as she begins that majestic season of Advent; the time when those who are one with Christ in baptism celebrate his threefold coming. As Saint Bernard says: “In the first coming he comes in the flesh and in weakness; in the second, he comes in spirit and in power; in the third, he comes in glory and in majesty.”

Continue reading →

Divine Worship: Late Advent Ferias

23 Wednesday Dec 2015

Posted by Fr James Bradley in Liturgy, Ordinariate

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

advent, anglicanorum coetibus, BSDW, Divine Worship, liturgy, O Antiphons, ordinariate

St Mary Charleston.jpg

The Nativity of the Lord, Saint Mary’s, Charleston SC

As we have already mentioned, the winter Ember Days having moved from their traditional position in the third week of Advent, Divine Worship: The Missal makes available certain Mass formularies proper to the weekdays from 17 to 24 December. In this article we will consider how these days are commemorated in Divine Worship and what we might gain from their inclusion in the liturgical life of the personal ordinariates.

Continue reading →

Homily for Advent IV

20 Sunday Dec 2015

Posted by Fr James Bradley in Homily

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

advent, homily, our lady

2015-12-20 11.04.48.jpg

The Banishment from Eden, by Martin Travers in Divine Worship: The Missal

In five days’ time the Church will once again take up the joy and festivity that is characteristic of her annual celebration of the Lord’s first coming in his nativity. After four weeks of intense spiritual preparation, we will have the chance to recognize the advent of our Messiah—Christ, the true God and true Man—and to keep festival with our brothers and sisters across the world, and indeed throughout the ages, as we mark once more that birth which is at once like any other, and yet unlike any other at all. At the threshold of so great a feast, the Church pauses one last time to catch her breath that, arriving at the manger, our hearts may be truly ready to offer the worship and adoration that is due our incarnate God, who humbled himself to share in our humanity. As she comes to rest on this fourth Sunday of our Advent journey, the Church’s liturgical texts present us with the person of Our Blessed Lady, she who embodies—in a most literal way—the journey to the nativity of the Lord; she who did not simply prepare for this moment by the nine months of her pregnancy, but was prepared before time for this noble task, by God himself. As the seventeenth-century divine, Thomas Ken, put it: “The Holy Ghost His temple in her built, / Cleansed from congenial, kept from mortal guilt; /And from the moment that her blood was fired, / Into her heart Celestial Love inspired.”

Continue reading →

Collects of Divine Worship: Advent IV

19 Saturday Dec 2015

Posted by Fr James Bradley in Liturgy

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

advent, Divine Worship, DW: Collects, ordinariate

20903570813_5dbe27be69_z.jpg

The Sacrament of Confession, Saint Mary’s Seminary, Baltimore, MD

Raise up, we beseech thee, O Lord, thy power, and come among us, and with great might succour us: that whereas, through our sins and wickedness, we are sorely hindered in running the race that is set before us, thy bountiful grace and mercy may speedily help and deliver us; who livest and reignest with the Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

As we come to the threshold of the Lord’s nativity, the strains of the Advent Prose may be heard to echo in the collect given to us by the Church for this day. Indeed, that very text is found in the Introit at the Mass for the Fourth Sunday of Advent: “Drop down, ye heavens, from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness: let the earth open, and bring forth a Saviour.” And we are put in mind also of another text: “O that thou wouldst rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains might quake at thy presence” (Is. 64: 1).

Continue reading →

Homily for Ember Friday in Advent

18 Friday Dec 2015

Posted by Fr James Bradley in Homily

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

advent, ember days, homily, sacrifice, worship

16056260789_06acc1e58e_z.jpg

Sacrifice of Noah, Italy, c. 1600, in The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

Nestled between the feast of the virgin-martyr Saint Lucy and the Fourth Sunday of Advent, the Church sets aside three days for a particularly acute preparation for the coming feast of the Lord’s nativity. These Ember Days, known in Latin as the Quatuor Tempora, are found (as that name suggests) at four times of the year, fixed not to the liturgical cycle but the seasons. By these Almighty God, whom we recall in this season of Advent as Alpha es et O, the Lord of all things, sanctifies mankind as by his incarnation: blessing with his divine and supernatural presence the human and natural realm in which we live.

Continue reading →

← Older posts

Enter your email address to follow:

Categories

  • Canon Law
  • Evangelisation
  • Homily
  • Liturgy
    • Beauty
  • Media
  • Music
  • Ordinariate
  • Pope Francis
  • Talk
  • Uncategorized

Tags

advent Anglicanism anglicanorum coetibus Anglican Use apologetics architecture baptism Beauty Benedict XVI bishops BOL2015 BSDW bxvi canon law catechesis catholicism charity christmas church communications communion confession cross discernment discipleship Divine Worship DW: Collects easter ember days eucharist evangelisation extraordinary form faith fid formation fr robert barron heaven holy week homily intentional catholicism law lent liturgy mary mass media mercy morality music new evangelisation new media ordinariate ordination our lady papacy passiontide patrimony plainchant pope pope benedict pope francis pre-lent priesthood reform of the reform sacred heart sacrifice septuagesima sherry weddell social communications social media tracey rowland unity virtue vocation worship

Archives

  • February 2021
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • April 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012

Blog Stats

  • 128,227 hits

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Blog at WordPress.com.

Cancel

 
Loading Comments...
Comment
    ×