Sunday, June 20, 2010

Sermon: 12th Sunday of The Year

Well folks, thanks to some encouragement from some of you I have started recording my sermons once again. You can listen to them here or in your ipod/iphone by subscribing to White Around The Collar on itunes by clicking here.

4 comments:

Matt said...

Very good sermon. When it comes to other people’s crosses, one might ridicule them, or one might be like Simon of Cyrene, as you describe here:

Third, Jesus says that he who wishes to follow him must take up his cross daily. My brothers and sisters, we all have crosses.

Some of us here this evening have very heavy crosses: crosses of grief, crosses of physical suffering, crosses of depression and anxiety. And Jesus tells us if we want to follow him, we have to take up those crosses daily. Daily.

Notice he doesn’t say we have to pick up our crosses and carry them when it’s easy, or when it doesn’t seem very heavy. Every single day we have to pick up our crosses and follow him. And that is really hard. It gets real old, real fast to day in and day out carry our cross.

But we don’t have to carry it alone. Jesus is carrying the cross with us. He is leading the way, and if we allow him, he’ll help us along the way. He’ll guide us along the path. He’ll keep us from falling into those potholes on the road. He’ll show us the way around roadblocks.

And just like Jesus had help from Simon of Cyrene along the way of the cross, so he’ll send people into our lives, our own Simon’s who will help us to carry our cross, who will walk with us and encourage us.

My brothers and sisters, Jesus calls us to pick up our cross every day and to and follow him.

Father Christensen said...

Matt,

Thanks for your comments. I appreciate them. I especially appreciate that you took the time to transcribe the audio.

I would like you to clarify something for me though. You provided a link to something on Fr. Z's blog as an example of riduculing those who have heavy crosses. Are you thinking that the homosexual activists that were having a "kiss in" in front of the Cathedral are the ones doing the riduculing or are you saying that people taking part in the counter protest are the ones riduculing? Just curious to know what you were thinking.

Matt said...

Neither, and I probably should have stayed on topic. Just one particular commenter there seemed to go low against another commenter. I happened to have stop by WDTPRS (via The American Catholic which linked to Fr. Z's commentary) before stopping here. The comment was still on my mind while listening to your sermon.

Matt said...

I guess I should add that the first time I listened, I saw myself as the person with the cross thinking about the days I refused to carry it. And I thought that the sermon was good at that point.

The second time I listened, I wondered if I was supposed to be the Simon in someone else's life, and really liked your sermon at that point.