That’s my impression of Protestant engagement with Mary in general.
The darker one probably makes the dirt less visible. Immaculate, you might say.
Huh. I’ve sung various versions (Bach, Rutter, a version written for a youth choir when I was a teenager) in both United Methodist and Presbyterian churches a number of times and heard numerous sermons on it over the years. In fact one year when the choir was singing Bach’s Magnificat one on the Sundays in Advent, they did the whole Advent sermon series on the text, breaking it down into four segments and doing one each week of Advent.
I think the Presbyterian lectionary has it as the text one of the weeks of Advent every three years, so any church following the lectionary should get it at least that often.
I have never heard of a lectionary either!
The lectionary basically spells out the scripture reading each week. Some churches are more detailed than others. I believe the Roman Catholic lectionary spells out all of the prayers and everything and the priests are really expected to follow it unless there’s a really good reason to deviate from it.
In the Presbyterian Church I think the lectionary is really just one scripture passage and I know it’s just suggested and pastors are free to develop their own sermon series’s instead, and they frequently do.
Lectionaries typically go through a two or three year cycle, so you might be on Year A or Year B or Year C of the cycle and then they start over. And they can be revised from time to time, but it’s something set by the denomination rather than the individual church.
Hmm, Jews read the Torah according to a schedule. There’s a one year cycle and a three year cycle. I’m not sure who uses the three year cycle, maybe the Sephardim. But essentially all the congregations in the world read the Torah according to one of those cycles. And there’s a haftorah reading associated with each Torah reading. (Haftorah is the part of the bible that’s not Torah. We read the Torah in order, but jump around the rest, reading a part the rabbis thought complemented each Torah reading.)
So i can chat with another Jew across the country about this week’s Torah reading, if i want to.
1 Like
Yes, I almost added that I was pretty sure this was an idea that Christianity got from Judaism.
And I think Roman Catholics could do the same: speak to another Roman Catholic about this week’s scripture readings.
There are certainly advantages. It’s less work for the pastoral team as they don’t have to come up with their own ideas. If I’m out of town and I miss going to my own church and I go to a different church following the same lectionary then I’m going to hear the same passages read and a sermon on roughly* the same topic.
With Presbyterian churches having a lot more freedom to do their own thing for pretty much any reason or no reason at all, it is a little less likely that if I go to a randomly selected Presbyterian church that I will hear the same readings as in my own church. But I have certainly had the experience of mentioning to another Presbyterian from a different church “yesterday’s sermon was about X” and they responded “yes, ours was too”.
*The two pastors might choose to focus on different aspects of the same text, of course.
Sancta Maria
Mater Dei
Ora pro nobis peccatoribus
nunc
et in hora mortis nostrae
And yes, there’s a cycle of readings. I think it’s the same throughout the Church (just in the appropriate language), and for some Masses there are alternate readings due to special feasts, etc.
Americans can get the daily readings here:
I get them via email daily, and they usually tack on a couple paragraphs of commentary from some Church Father, Saint, etc.
For example, here’s what they sent with yesterday’s readings (haven’t gotten today’s yet):
Saint Augustine (354-430)
Bishop of Hippo (North Africa) and Doctor of the Church
Sermon 11, 2-3The Widow of Zarephath
The poor widow had gone out to look for two blocks of wood to bake some bread: it is at this time that Elijah meets her. This woman is the symbol of the Church; because a cross is made of two pieces of wood, the woman, who was destined to die, searches for something by which to live eternally. There is a hidden mystery in this (…) Elijah tells her: “Go, feed me first with your poverty, and you will not run out of your goods”. What a blessed poverty! If the widow received here on earth such retribution, what a reward may she hope to receive in the life to come!
I insist on this point: let us not expect to harvest the fruit of our sowing now, at the time we sow. Here on earth, we sow with difficulty what will be the harvest of our good works, but only later on will we gather the fruits of this with joy, according to what is said: “Those who go forth weeping, carrying sacks of seed, will return with cries of joy, carrying their bundled sheaves” (Ps 125:6). Actually Elijah’s act towards this woman was not her reward, but only a symbol of it. For if this widow would have been rewarded here on earth for having fed the man of God, what a miserable sowing, what a poor crop! She received just a temporal good: a jar of flour that did not go empty and a jug of oil that did not run dry till the day the Lord watered the earth with his rain. This sign that was given to her by God for a few days was therefore the symbol of the future life where our reward could not be lessened. Our flour will be God himself! As the flour of this woman did not run out in these days, we will not be deprived of God for all the rest of eternity (…) Sow with faith and your harvest will surely come; it will come later on, but when it will come, you will reap it endlessly.
Where should the heathens go for their daily reading? 
You mentioned St Augustine of Hippo, but what about St Augustine of Raleigh?
I understand the Catholic Church disseminates some draft sermons, or topics, or something. Maybe other churches do as well. No Jewish organization does this as far as I know. Each congregation may discuss completely different issues inspired by the Torah reading. The two big things a bar mitzvah kid needs to do to prepare are to learn to chant their Torah portion in Hebrew, and to write a “dvar”, the sermon-like-discussion they will give based on that reading. And those dvars can be all over the books. I went to one where the young woman compared God’s actions in the reading to a person with PMS. Another where they compared ritual cleanliness described in the passage to the covid guidelines.
2 Likes
Not that I am aware of, at least in the sense of something from the hierarchy that says “review this before you write your sermon and incorporate it”. A bishop of any particular diocese might do this (certainly within his purview, don’t know of any examples). I think there are places that publish “sermon starters” as optional source material, but typically, each priest is supposed to apply the readings to the particular parish’s needs, similar to how you describe the Jewish congregations. In the dioceses I have resided in there have been rare occasions where the bishop has asked a message be read/played at each Mass in each parish in the diocese on a particular weekend, but that has probably happened less than a handful of times that I remember. There may be common themes, like Mission Sunday, where the USCCB suggests messages about the missions are given that particular weekend, and sometimes on those weekends we have had priests visiting from the missions give a regular sermon (homily), plus a plug for the missions too. But overall, sermons/homilies topics are up to the discretion of the homilist.
okay, I remember reading someone who was surprised to hear the same sermon, nearly word for word, at two churches. I don’t remember for certain what the denomination was, but I thought it was Catholic.
We’re not used to the “book of sermons” approach, and there are a wide variety of homily styles. My pastor likes to start/end the homilies with a sign of the cross, for instance, and he often focuses on something central in the catechism (often the Real Presence) because… well, most Catholics in the U.S. aren’t well catechized. Another priest in our parish is young and likes to drop in Pokemon or Tolkien references ( I think the pastor had a talk w/ him about appropriate analogies, and he cut back a bit). A third priest is from Nigeria, and has this deep, booming voice, so he can’t talk rapidly in our church because of the echo. So he focuses on the readings and keeps it simple.
All three of the priests prepare their homilies ahead of time… but Stu used to work for a Dominican who basically ad libbed his homilies. He had been a priest for over 30 years, and knew his stuff. It would be like me going to teach a probability class - I wouldn’t need to prepare any lecture notes, just remember what topic I’m going to cover.
I’m certainly not saying this is impossible, especially if a little plagiarism is going on, but it isn’t something I’d expect to be centrally directed, outside of what I have described.
One funny thing regarding the “portability” of sermons. My pastor related a story about someone behaving badly in traffic on the way to church (outside of Mass time), flipping the pastor the bird, and then after a mile or two seeing the pastor pull into church parking lot behind them. We had a Lutheran visitor once, and I accompanied him to the nearby Lutheran church. Their pastor told a variant of the same story, except it was a Catholic nun who gave the him bird, and she pulled into my parish. I was feeling rather charitable and didn’t point out after the service that there are no nuns assigned to my parish, and given their scarcity in the diocese, his story is more likely to be a “legend” than literal truth.
Yeah, I’ve been to a lot of Catholic masses for a Protestant, and discussed homilies with Catholic priests and this was certainly always the impression that I had of the Roman Catholic church’s M.O.
Was is the same priest? There’s a massive priest shortage, so I believe there are some churches that share priests.
Even if not, it actually wouldn’t shock me if priests from neighboring parishes were sharing sermons. I think they tend to have a lot on their plates. Like the two Catholic churches in my neighborhood growing up that I went to a bunch used to have about 4 priests each. My step-brothers knew how to figure out which priests were preaching at which masses (no mean feat, pre-internet) and plan accordingly.
Nowadays the big churches are one church one priest, and the smaller churches are sharing. So if priests from neighboring parishes said “I’ll write this week’s homily and you write next week’s” … I doubt anyone would think there was any sort of problem with that.
That said, I think deacons (who are allowed to get married, but may also perform a lot of official duties in the church such as most or maybe all of the sacraments, and certainly homilies) are taking on more and more duties that used to be more commonly done by priests.
No, it was someone saying they had been impressed with a sermon, and then less impressed when they heard someone else give almost the same sermon, and they realized there was some sermon-service feeding the bones of the sermon to the different officiants.