Censings

Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time July 15, 2018 Saint Miriam Pro-Cathedral, Flourtown, Pennsylvania Rev. David Justin Lynch, Guest Preacher Amos 7:12-15 | Psalm 85 9-14 Ephesians 1:3-14 | Mark 6:7-13        + In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, AMEN.        One of the larger challenges facing the independent Catholic movement in many places is building up a congregation. I speak from experience as a church-planter in Palm Springs, California, where three years ago, my wife, Deacon Sharon, and I, started Saint Cecilia Catholic Community in the lobby of my former law firm with four people.  We now get twelve to fifteen on a typical Sunday, and we sometimes fill the church on days we have baptisms. Many of our protestant sisters and brothers are very good at what’s known as evangelism, which is the fancy word the church uses to describe its sales and marketing efforts.  M...

Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Saint Cecilia Catholic Community July 01, 2018 – 10:30 AM Rev. David Justin Lynch Wisdom 1:13-15; 2:22-24 | Psalm 30:2;4-6;11-13 2 Corinthians 8:7,9;13-15 | Mark 5:21-24;35B-43        + In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, AMEN.        One of the more difficult challenges committed Christians face in the world that lies beyond the walls of the church are the stories in the Bible that have a supernatural element, like that found in today’s Gospel reading, where Jesus takes the hand of an ostensibly dead girl and bids her to awaken, whereupon she gets up and walks around the room. Our atheist and agnostic sisters and brothers would brand today’s Gospel as an untruthful myth, something that never did happen, and never could happen, just like the scriptural account of the raising of Lazarus and the resurrection of Jesus Himself.  Secular people...

CORPUS CHRISTI Saint Cecilia Catholic Community, Palm Springs, CA June 03, 2018 – 10:30 AM Exodus 24:3-8 Psalm 116:12-13;5-18 Hebrews 9:11-15 Mark 14:12-16;22-26             + In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, AMEN.             Today is the feast of Corpus Christi, a Latin expression that means, “Body of Christ.” In many churches, the people will hear homilies on Eucharistic adoration, the image of the Church as the Body of Christ, and lots of music about identifying bread with Christ’s Body. We will be doing some of that, too. In fact, today’s Mass will include “One Bread, One Body,” and finish with a rousing rendition of, “I am the Bread of Life,” but this morning I’m going to talk specifically about the blood of Jesus. After all, the Church calendar denominates today as “The Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ,” so today we’re going to give the Blood of Jesus some sembla...

Sixth Sunday of Easter May 06, 2018 10:30 AM Saint Cecilia Catholic Community Rev. David Justin Lynch Acts 10:25-26;34-35;44-48   Psalm 98:1-4 I John 4:7-10   John 15:9-17         + In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, AMEN.        I came of age in the free-love 1960s, which was widely understood to mean, free sex. In particular, I remember 1967, known as the Summer of Love. It was a social phenomenon, characterized by hundreds of thousands of young people sporting hippie fashions of dress and behavior who converged in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury neighborhood and elsewhere. They gathered to celebrate an alternative culture to replace the materialism and consumerism that characterized mainstream life in the 1950s and early 1960s.   But the 1960s was more than a sexual free-for-all. The 1960s had a serious and everlasting message as well, one we would do well to h...

EASTER SUNDAY Saint Cecilia Catholic Community Rev. David Justin Lynch April 1, 2018 10:30 AM Acts 10:34A;37-42 Psalm 118:1-2;16-17;22-23 Colossians 3:1-4 John 20:1-9        + In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, AMEN.        What exactly do we celebrate on Easter Sunday? In the secular world, we associate Easter with the season of Spring. We have Easter bunnies, Easter chicks, Easter baskets full of colored hardboiled eggs, and children hunting eggs. What do all these things have to do with the biblical account of the resurrection of Jesus? The answer is, plenty. Spring is a time of new life. We see buds on trees, flowers arising out of the ground, and many animals giving birth. Bunnies, eggs, and chicks symbolize new life.   Rabbits are among the most prolific reproducers of all the animal species. One female rabbit and her male partner will produce about 72 rabbits a y...

GOOD FRIDAY March 30, 2018 – 7:00 PM Saint Cecilia Catholic Community Rev. David Justin Lynch Isaiah   52:13-53:12 Psalm 31:2;6;12-13;15-16;17;25 Hebrews 4:14-16;5:7-9 John 18:1-19:42 + In the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, AMEN. Today, we commemorate the day when evil people did a bad thing to Jesus. They killed him, pure and simple.  Jesus was a victim of capital punishment. Today, I will explain to you why the death penalty is wrong, always and everywhere, no matter what the circumstances. That may sound rigid and judgmental in and of itself, and indeed, it is, intentionally so. As many of you are aware, I have a law degree, and I used to be an attorney. One of the concepts we learned in criminal law was, “malum in se.” That’s Latin for, “bad in and of itself.” What that means is that there are some acts that are bad, period, with no room for debate. For Catholic Christians, that means any killing of another person, self-def...