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Sunday 30 April 2017

Good Shepherd Sunday and the Lamb's High Feast - woe to the hireling who defy the True Shepherd

Today, is "Good Shepherd" Sunday according to the Gospel in the proper Roman Rite. Why the liturgical revolutionaries had to change it to next week in the nervous disordered and modernist rite after 1500 years can only be described as diabolical.

It is critical for every Roman Catholic to get themselves free of the modernist rite and return to the traditional Mass and to read the Divine Office according to the pre-revolutionary rites. Those who cannot, I urge you to at least read the Missal on line for Sundays if that is all you can do and to read and pray the Office according to the Divino Afflatu available at the top right tab, "Divine Office." 

Not only will it strengthen you to endure the horrors coming upon us in Church and State, it will give you solace and comfort and connect you with the riches of the faith from those who came before 1950 and the false notion of a great Catholic decade, in fact, a decade leading up to destruction.

The Sermon below is by Pope St. Gregory the Great who died in 604. Would that every priest and bishop could write and speak as this today.


Image result for st gregory the great


From the Holy Gospel according to John
John 10:11-16
At that time, Jesus said unto the Pharisees: I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd giveth His life for His sheep. And so on.

Homily by Pope St Gregory the Great.
14th on the Gospels.

Dearly beloved brethren, ye have heard from the Holy Gospel what is at once your instruction, and our danger. Behold, how He Who, not by the varying gifts of nature, but of the very essence of His being, is Good, behold how He saith: I am the Good Shepherd. And then He saith what is the character of His goodness, even of that goodness of His which we must strive to copy: The Good Shepherd giveth His life for the Sheep. As He had foretold, even so did He; as He had commanded, so gave He ensample. The Good Shepherd gave His life for the sheep, and made His Own Body and His Own Blood to be our Sacramental Food, pasturing upon His Own Flesh the sheep whom He had bought.

He, by despising death, hath shown us how to do the like; He hath set before us the mould wherein it behoveth us to be cast. Our first duty is, freely and tenderly to spend our outward things for His sheep, but lastly, if need be, to serve the same by our death also. From the light offering of the first, we go on to the stern offering of the last, and, if we be ready to give our life for the sheep, why should we scruple to give our substance, seeing how much more is the life than meat? Matth. vi. 25. Antiphon at the Song of Zacharias. I am the Shepherd of the sheep: * I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life: I am the Good Shepherd, and know My sheep, and am known of Mine. Alleluia, Alleluia.

And some there be which love the things of this world better than they love the sheep; and such as they deserve no longer to be called shepherds. These are they of whom it is written : But he that is an hireling, and not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth 12. He is not a shepherd but an hireling which feedeth the Lord's sheep, not because he loveth their souls, but because he doth gain earthly wealth thereby. He that taketh a shepherd's place, but seeketh not gain of souls, that same is but an hireling; such an one is ever ready for creature comforts, he loveth his pre-eminence, he groweth sleek upon his income, and he liketh well to see men bow down to him.

V. But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us.
R. Thanks be to God.




And a most relevant hymn from the Office in its English version and one of my personal favourites. 



 Ad regias Agni dapes,
Stolis amícti cándidis,
Post transitum Maris Rubri,
Christo canámus Principi: 
Divína cujus cáritas
Sacrum propinat sánguinem,
Almíque membra córporis
Amor sacérdos immolat.

Sparsum cruorem postibus
Vastator horret Ángelus:
Fugitque divisum mare;
Merguntur hostes flúctibus. 
Jam Pascha nóstrum Christus est
Paschális idem victima,
Et pura puris mentibus
Sinceritatis azyma.

O vera cæli victima,
Subjécta cui sunt tartara,
Soluta mortis víncula,
Recépta vitæ præmia. 
Victor, subactis inferis,
Trophæa Christus éxplicat;
Cæloque apérto, subditum
Regem tenebrárum trahit.

Ut sis perénne mentibus
Paschále, Jesu, gáudium,
A morte dira criminum
Vitæ renatos líbera. 
Deo Patri sit glória,
Et Fílio, qui a mórtuis
Surréxit, ac Paráclito,
In sempitérna sǽcula.

Amen.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wasn't good Shepherd Sunday at NO Mass. Heard the road to Emmaus "story" the priest called it.

Kathleen1031 said...

What a stinging rebuke to the clerics we have.
Great example of what a real and true pastor sounds like. What will happen when people no longer even know what one sounds like. They already mistake the pap they are hearing as wisdom.

Leah said...

I went today to a Ukrainian Divine Liturgy and how beautiful it was. It is a 1 1/2 hour drive, but it is at a reasonable time. I will go as often as I can.

Julian said...

Good Shepherd Sunday is one of my favorite Sundays and it is probably my favorite Gospel of any Sunday of the year. In the traditional rite of course.

Anonymous said...

We had that on Bright Tuesday in my Ukrainian Greek Catholic church.