How are we "treating Jesus" these days? - Wednesday in Holy Week, March 31st, 2021 - S + L Mass at MQW Cathedral downtown Montreal

  Gospel & Homily MP3 version                                 Homily PDF version        

   Sign of the +      Greeting      I’m Fr. Gilles Surprenant, priest of Montreal and Madonna House Associate. Here we are at last in Holy Week. On Palm Sunday as we listened once again to the proclamation of the Passion of Our Lord, we may have wondered how we are treating Jesus today. How am I treating Jesus today in my neighbour? During this Live Daily Mass, the Lord Jesus invites us with great love to walk with Him this Holy Week.             (Intention)            Thank you.

Penitential Rite         Brothers and sisters let us acknowledge our sins and so prepare ourselves to celebrate the sacred mysteries. “I confess to Almighty God….”  

HOMILY

When I was young, I thought Judas Iscariot must have been a terrible man. After all, what he did was terrible, betraying Jesus was bad enough, but also getting money for it is shocking. Jesus was right to say it would have been better for him if he had not been born.

Still, as I grow older, I have come to realize that God allowed Judas to fall into darkness for a kind purpose, for all of us that is. It’s because the darkness that swallowed Judas is the very same darkness that oppresses all of us human beings during our time on this Planet Earth.

The darkness is that we no longer believe that God loves us. We think we believe it in our heads, but in our hearts, not so much. If I really believed that God loves me, I would go about my life differently, I think. Material things and all sorts of fears would have less of a hold on me, and my heart would be much more sensitive to what is happening to other people.

We want to believe God loves us… that is why we go to church when the churches are open and, when they’re closed, it is why we attend Mass on TV or on the Internet. We really want to know in our bones that God loves us, with no shadow of doubt. We want to put all our trust in God for our lives, but like Peter walking on the water, as soon as we feel the wind of trouble, we take our eyes off Jesus and focus on ourselves… and we begin to sink….

 God our Creator and Father knows; so, He had pity on us and sent his only begotten Son to Earth to become one of us by the Holy Spirit in the womb of Mary, the Immaculate Conception. The Eternal Son knew He was in for it when He became human. He knew we let our fears dominate us, and that the risk was very high we would kill Him; as in the end we actually did.

I can’t imagine that I might betray Jesus as Judas did or deny Him as Peter did. However, when I think of how easily I let myself be upset with people close to me or how easily I forget to be kind or to show concern for others with real acts of caring and forgiveness; then I begin to understand how I do or fail to do these things to Jesus when I do or fail to do them to others.

God our Father doesn’t want us to become paralyzed with guilt – that’s the favorite trick of Satan the Accuser, the Devil, God’s Adversary. Jesus saves us by showing us God’s love in his passion; He did this for us so that we can truly believe that God loves us. The Holy Spirit offers to help us to love others as Jesus loves us, with everything we are and have, our whole self.

Jesus saves us every time we confess our sins to Him. “Father in Heaven, help us to humbly confess our sins and that You are God: the Father, + the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Announcement

We thank you for your daily prayers and donations to the Cathedral and Salt + Light Media in support for this Live Daily Mass. Blessed Holy Triduum to you and your families.

Blessing and Dismissal

 

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https://frgilleshomilies.blogspot.com

© 2006-2021 All rights reserved Fr. Gilles Surprenant, Associate Priest of Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montreal  QC
© 2006-2021 Tous droits réservés Abbé Gilles Surprenant, Prêtre Associé de Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montréal QC

We find it difficult to trust in God's tender love due to the "dark things" within us - we need to confess - Wednesday, 4th Week of Lent & St. Patrick's Day, March 17th, 2021 - S + L Mass at MQW Cathedral downtown Montreal

 Gospel & Homily MP3 version                                 Homily PDF version        

Saint Patrick, Bishop

Sign of the +                   Greeting 

Hello. I’m Fr. Gilles Surprenant, priest of Montreal and Madonna House Associate. In this 4^th week of Lent and we are past the mid-point to Easter. St. Patrick is the apostle who brought Jesus to Ireland. Like St. Joseph whom we honor this year, St. Patrick knew Jesus personally; as did all the saints. During this Live Daily Mass, the Lord once again invites each of us to trust in Him and open ourselves completely to be renewed by Him. (Intention) Thank you.

Penitential Rite         Brothers and sisters let us acknowledge our sins and so prepare ourselves to celebrate the sacred mysteries.  

 Announcement 

We thank you for your daily prayers and donations to the Cathedral and Salt + Light Media in support for this Live Daily Mass.

Blessing and Dismissal

HAPPY SAINT  PATRICK'S DAY !!!

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HOMILY

The words we just heard from the Lord through the prophet Isaiah are an unforgettable expression of tenderness. There are many such proofs of God’s tender love for us, his children, throughout the Sacred Scriptures. When we consider Jesus, how He lived his life, his mission and then how He surrendered Himself into our hands, the hands of his persecutors; we should not be astonished at God’s declarations of tender love for us.

Perhaps what is truly astonishing is how difficult it is to understand why we find it so hard, so difficult to believe in God’s tender love for us. We have a hard time actually believing that God loves us; that He loves me. Why is that, do you think?

In John’s Gospel we see what great efforts Jesus made to give understanding to the Jewish leaders about who He was and about what He was doing. Could it be that these Jewish leaders were resisting Jesus for the same reasons we do?

Jesus did not fit into the ways they understood their religion and their God. I believe that we have a similar problem. We all have ideas about who God is and about what we expect of Him. It is just as shocking to us as it was to those Jewish leaders that God does not fit into our ideas.

God has his own ideas, because his understanding of Himself and of all that He has created is far higher, broader, and deeper than any understanding we could ever have.

God understands Himself to be a community, a Holy Trinity of divine Persons – the Eternal Father, the only-begotten Son who became human in Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life. God the Holy Trinity is the most wonderful love story in the universe, and we have been created to participate in this awesome love story, this divine Family.

What is holding us back from plunging with delight into this wondrous community of love which is in God? I suppose that for each of us there could be many things holding us back. If I have been hurt, I may be unwilling to forgive the one who hurt me; I may even desire revenge.

Lent is a gift from God: a time to stop and let the Holy Spirit illumine my conscience, my mind, my heart, and my soul to see the dark things that keep me from accepting God’s love and from loving everyone – even those I don’t like. It is time to surrender my darkness to the Lord.

It is hard at any time, even more so during this Pandemic, to confess our sins to a priest. We don’t like to admit we messed up; yet this is how Jesus wants us to reconcile with God, because Confession makes it real. “Father in Heaven, help us put away our pride and humbly declare by confessing our sins that You are God: the Father, + the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

https://frgilleshomilies.blogspot.com

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© 2006-2021 All rights reserved Fr. Gilles Surprenant, Associate Priest of Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montreal  QC
© 2006-2021 Tous droits réservés Abbé Gilles Surprenant, Prêtre Associé de Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montréal QC

Is God real for me? Am I attentive to God or am I living in denial like the Apostles were? - Wednesday, 2nd Week of Lent, March 3rd, 2021 - S + L Mass at MQW Cathedral downtown Montreal

  The Gospel and Homily MP3 file                    The Homily PDF file   

                       Sign of the +                            Greeting                        

Hello. I’m Father Gilles Surprenant, priest of Montreal and Madonna House Associate. Here we are already in the second week of Lent. How is your Lenten observance coming along? During this Live Daily Mass the Lord continues to encourage us to come closer to Him; so we can apply our Lenten disciplines towards this goal. (Intention) Thank you.

Penitential Rite         Brothers and sisters let us acknowledge our sins and so prepare ourselves to celebrate the sacred mysteries.  

HOMILY

How real is God for me? How real is God for you? God was obviously real for Jeremiah the prophet, because in his prayer Jeremiah was addressing his complaint to someone real and capable of granting his request. His enemies didn’t like Jeremiah’s declarations in the Name of the Lord; so they plotted to get rid of the prophet. For these people, it’s obvious that God was not real; they had no fear of repercussions from God, because they didn’t believe God is real.

With the Apostles, the situation is not quite the same. They all believe that God is real, and by this time, they believe – more or less – that Jesus is the Son of God. So why do they fail to feel anything as Jesus tells them about what is soon going to happen to Him in Jerusalem? Why do they fail to have any sympathy for Him? Why are they not supportive of Him? Well, it’s not too difficult to understand, I think. They are in denial. The coming passion and death of Jesus is so horrible that they can’t face it, they can’t admit it to themselves; they can’t deal with it.

We are probably all familiar with this kind of reaction in the face of terrible realities. This may be the greatest cause of trouble for married couples. When something awful happens or is about to happen, we may fail to show each other sympathy and instead retreat into denial, a mechanism that conveniently makes the intense emotion go away temporarily. Relationships can endure denial briefly, but it is necessary to recover soon and be there for the other.

It is beautiful to see how Jesus reacts to the denial of his Apostles. At first, they are silent, and then the mother of James and John tries to assure that her sons will have a future when Jesus is gone. Jesus does not reproach her in her maternal concerns, nor her sons in their denial. On the contrary, Jesus softens the harsh reality of the persecution to come by using a pleasant image: the sharing and drinking of a cup. He knows they really love Him and want to be with Him; so He puts it this way. Jesus knows that they are not quite ready now to face his passion and death, but later they will be ready to face their own persecution.

Then Jesus gives them Himself as their example to follow. They are to serve one another and not look for positions or honors. What about us? What about me? What about you? There are no doubt many life situations that we don’t want to face, that we don’t feel we are able to face, but we must sooner or later face them. Today the Lord Jesus assures us once again that we are not alone. With Him, in the Father’s love, and with the Holy Spirit, we can do all things.

It is hard for us to go to a priest and confess our sins. We don’t like to admit we messed up. Yet this is how Jesus wants us to reconcile with God, because Confession humbles us and makes us real. “Father in Heaven, help us put away our pride and humbly declare by confessing our sins that You are God: the Father, + the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Announcement 

This Live Daily Mass costs more for Salt + Light Media and Mary Queen of the World Cathedral than the amount set for you to air your Mass intentions. As we continue to develop this Live Daily Mass under Pandemic conditions; we count on your daily prayers and support. You may send your donations and Mass intentions for the Cathedral to Salt + Light Media. Thank you. To contact me simply send an email to fathergilles@gmail.com

Blessing and Dismissal

 

https://frgilleshomilies.blogspot.com

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© 2006-2021 All rights reserved Fr. Gilles Surprenant, Associate Priest of Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montreal  QC
© 2006-2021 Tous droits réservés Abbé Gilles Surprenant, Prêtre Associé de Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montréal QC