Censings

CHRISTMAS EVE - YEAR C December 24, 2015 Saint Cecilia Catholic Community Palm Springs, CA Rev. David Justin Lynch Isaiah 9:1-6 Psalm 96:1-3;11-14 Titus 2:11-14 Luke 2:1-14           + In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, AMEN.           Refugees have received lots of publicity over the past few months. One or more of the political candidates have particularly called out those arriving from Syria and applied negative and inaccurate stereotypes to them.  They have referred to all Syrians as terrorists.  They want to embargo all Muslims from entering our country for an indefinite period of time, and turn away Syrian refugees.   Surprisingly, all these candidates purport to be Christians, and are directing their campaign pitch to win votes from other purported Christians by exploiting hostile feelings towards immigrants and refugees whose culture and race is different from theirs.  I wonder, however, if these folks would be hostile to Jesus

FOURTH SUNDAY OF ADVENT – YEAR C December 20, 2015 Saint Cecilia Catholic Community Rev. David Justin Lynch Micah 5:1-4A Psalm 80:2-3;15-16;18-19 Hebrews 10:5-10 Luke 1:39-45        + In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, AMEN.        Businesses, churches, and families have meetings from time to time to talk about what’s important to them. Many people, however, see meetings as wasting time that could be used getting stuff done. That is true for many meetings. However, encounters between human persons physically present to one another have value, in and of themselves. Personal interactions with other people is one of the joys of being human, and affirmation that humanity was created to live in community. I would like to have been a fly on the wall at the meeting between the Blessed Virgin Mary, mother-to-be of Jesus, and Saint Elizabeth, mother of Saint John the Baptist.  I truly would not know what to expect. As a male person, I have abso

THIRD SUNDAY OF ADVENT – YEAR C December 13, 2015 Saint Cecilia Catholic Community, Palm Springs, CA Rev. David Justin Lynch Zephaniah 3:14-18 Isaiah 12:2-6; Philippians 4:4-7 Luke 3:10-18        + In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, AMEN.        Occasionally, I go to the movies. Prior to the featured film, the theaters typically show a series of trailers with excerpts from upcoming movies in the near future. The idea is to give you a preview of what’s next in the film world. In today’s Gospel, John the Baptist gives us a preview of the message that will come from Jesus in the future.  The Gospel doesn’t give us the exact time line, but we can infer that it will be soon, and indeed, within few paragraphs, we can read in Luke about the Baptism of Jesus, the fasting of Jesus in the wilderness for forty days, and the commencement of His ministry. Today’s Gospel invites us to ask ourselves, based on the message of John the Baptist, do we really

SECOND SUNDAY IN ADVENT – YEAR C December 06, 2015 10:30 AM Saint Cecilia Catholic Community Rev. Dcn. David Justin Lynch Baruch 5:1-9 Psalm 1:1-6  Philippians 1:4-6; 8-11   Luke 3:1-6           + In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, AMEN.           When I was in college, one of my many occupations was that of news reporter for a radio station in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Among my duties was to cover the Presidential candidates in the nineteen seventy two election when they came to town. While doing that, I often had contact with the candidate’s advance team, whose job was to prepare the way for the candidate. As a result of that experience, I’ve always thought of John the Baptist as the “advance man” for Jesus. Like the advance team in the political campaigns, John’s job was to prepare people for the arrival of Jesus.  Good political advance work takes into account the local situation where the candidate will speak. For that reason, the adva

FIRST SUNDAY IN ADVENT – YEAR C November 29, 2015 Saint Cecilia Catholic Community Rev.Dcn. David Justin Lynch Jeremiah 33:14-16 Psalm 25:4-5;8-10;14 I Thessalonians 3:12-4:2 Luke 21:25-28;34-36 + In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, AMEN.        Happy New Year! No, I am not bestowing on you an early wish for a happy two thousand sixteen. I’m wishing you a happy Church New Year. Today is the First Sunday in Advent. The word “Advent” comes from the Latin verb  “advenire,” which means "to come toward, to draw near, to approach." During Advent, we remember and celebrate God's drawing near to us in Jesus Christ. The beginning of another Church year commences with our anticipation of the coming of Jesus as we prepare to celebrate His incarnation.  Beginning the Church year with the First Sunday in Advent is countercultural. It is out of sync with every other time structure in our lives: the academic semester, the fis­cal year, the

FEAST OF CHRIST THE KING – YEAR B November 22, 2015 Saint Cecilia Catholic Community Palm Springs, CA Rev. Dcn. David Justin Lynch II Chronicles 5:1-2;11-14 Psalm 150 Colossians 3:12-17  John 18:33b-37 +In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, AMEN.        When we think of kings, we think of sovereign rulers, someone in charge of a country who rules autocratically by decree. Living in a country where there is a king gives some people a high degree of security. We who live in a constitutional democracy have trouble with the concept of a king. Kings have a bad reputation among Americans: this country was born out of rejection of a monarchy, to escape an oppressive King of England. Hereditary rulers with absolute power are an anathema to us.  We’re accustomed to elected officials who return to private life. In the rest of the world, monarchies have constitutionally limited powers in most of the countries where they still exist, with kings and

THIRTY-THIRD SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME – YEAR B November 15, 2015 Saint Cecilia Catholic Community Rev. Dcn. David Justin Lynch Daniel 12:1-3 Psalm 16:5;5-11 Hebrews 10:11-14;18 Mark 13:24-32 + In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, AMEN.        Today’s Gospel reading is a bit scary. It’s what’s called an apocalypse, what the dictionary describes is a destruction of the world on a truly catastrophic scale.  Imagine the wind and water of Hurricane Katrina in two thousand five, plus an earthquake like the one in San Francisco during the nineteen eighty nine World Series, plus the fire of the nine-eleven attacks of two thousand one, all occurring at the same time, in the same place, with only a small and lucky percentage of the population surviving.  And just a few days ago, the people of France experienced an unfortunate foretaste of mass disaster, which I am sure they perceived as apocalyptic.        The Bible as we know it has two major ex