Homily - First Sunday In Lent

There is neither an excuse or a reason to have missed Mass the first Sunday in Lent but it happened.  To make up for it, this blogger searched for a homily online that he might have heard had he gone to Mass, not just any Mass but a Traditional Mass in Latin.  The homily that was found was given in 2015 but it is just as relevant in 2018 and likely in the years to come.  The homily for "Dominica Prima in Quadragesima 22 February 2015" can be read by going to RORATE CÆLI 's website [1].   It concludes with these words: "only with prayer and fasting will the demon with which modern man is possessed be cast out." [2]  Prior to this ending, the priest who gave the homily quoted Cardinal Ratzinger before he was Pope Benedict XVI [3]:

“The primacy of God is not really achieved if it does not also include man's corporality.  The truly central actions of man's biological life are eating and reproduction.  Therefore virginity and fasting have been from the beginning of the Christian tradition two indispensable expressions of the primacy of God, of faith in the reality of God.  Without being given corporeal expression also, the primacy of God with difficulty remains of decisive moment in man's life.  It is true that fasting is not all there is to Lent, but it is something indispensable for which there is no substitute.  Freedom in the actual application of fasting is good and corresponds to the different situations in which we find ourselves.  But a communal and public act of the Church seems to be no less necessary than in past times, as a public testimony to the primacy of God and of spiritual values, as much as solidarity with all who are starving.  Without fasting we shall in no way cast out the demon of our time.”

Latin (Tridentine) Mass homilies tend to be spiritually fulfilling and at the same make no reference to the news of the day which is irrelevant to achieving holiness which is what Mass is about if even it lasts only for the duration of the Mass.  Learning and experiencing some degree of holiness during a Tridentine Mass is infinitely better than none at all which takes place more often than not at post-Vatican II Masses.


[1] https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2015/02/homily-by-traditional-priest-for-fe irst.html
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.