First Sunday of Advent - Mass with Fr. Mike Schmitz

i invite you to stand to you i lift up my soul oh my god to you i have trusted let me not be put to shame nor let not my enemies exalt over me and let none who hope in you be put to shame psalm 25 verses 1-3 in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit the lord be with you um today on the first sunday of advent um it's one of the things that uh i don't know how your week has been how your holiday has been with thanksgiving or even this weekend it's probably still going on um but one of the things for our students is that that first trip home um after a semester away is always a test and it's a test of like one you're here it's one of those situations that i'm growing so much i'm becoming more generous i'm becoming more patient with people i'm so much more selfless i uh pray really well and then they go home for four days or so and it's that's the test the test is how are you doing around people that you're not choosing to be around more than just the one day and so that's the thing for all of us is we have to spend hopefully you got to spend time with people that love you the people that you love um whether you were able to or whether you weren't maybe you had to spend that whole holiday working or maybe you had to spend the holiday by yourself it's those situations those circumstances that can reveal our hearts to us that um i thought i was more patient than i am and i realized i'm not i thought it was more generous than i am and i realized i thought i was more okay with being alone and i realized that sometimes i get incredibly overwhelmed by being alone my guess is over the last four days of this holiday weekend your the truth of your heart has been revealed i know the truth of my heart has been revealed and on this first sunday of the church year this first sunday of advent what we do is we just say okay lord the truth of my heart has been revealed to me that i'm not as much like you as i wish i was and i'm not as much like you as you're calling me to be and so now i ask for your help help me to be more like you help my heart to be more like your heart and we call it to the lord now for mercy lord jesus you came to call sinners lord have mercy you came to seek and to save the lost christ have mercy you lived intercede for us at the right hand of the father lord have mercy lord have mercy may almighty god have mercy on us forgive us our sins bring us to everlasting life let us pray grant your faithful we pray almighty god to resolve to run forth to meet your christ with righteous deeds at his coming so that gathered at his right hand we they may be worthy to possess the heavenly kingdom through our lord jesus christ your son who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the holy spirit one god forever and ever invite you to be seated as we hear from god's word a reading from the book of the prophet isaiah you lord our father our redeemer you are named forever why do you let us wander oh lord from your ways and harden our hearts so that we fear you not return for the sake of your servants the tribes of your heritage oh that you would rend the heavens and come down with the mountains quaking before you while you wrought awesome deeds we could not hope for such as they had not heard of from of old no ear has ever heard no i ever seen any god but you doing such deeds for those who wait for him would that you might meet us doing right that we are mindful of you in our ways behold you are angry and we are sinful all of us have become like unclean people all our good deeds are like polluted rags we have all withered like leaves and our guilt carries us away like the wind there is none who calls upon your name who rouses himself to cling to you for you have hidden your face from us and have delivered us up to our guilt yet o lord you are our father we are the clay and you are the potter we are all the work of your hands the word of the lord thanks be to god lord make us turn to you let us see your face and we shall be saved lord make us turn to you let us see your face and we shall be saved o shepherd of israel hearken from your throne upon the cherubim shine forth rouse your power and come to save us lord make us turn to you let us see your face and we shall be saved once again o lord of hosts look down from heaven and see take care of this vine and protect what your right hand has planted the son of man whom you yourself made strong lord make us turn to you let us see your face and we shall be saved may your help be with the man of your right hand with the son of man whom you yourself made strong then we will no more withdraw from you give us new life and we will call upon your name lord make us turn to you let us see your face and we shall be saved a reading from the first letter of saint paul to the corinthians brothers and sisters grace to you in peace from god our father and the lord jesus christ i give thanks to my god always on your account for the grace of god bestowed on you in jesus christ that in him you were enriched in every way with all discourse and all knowledge as the testimony to christ was confirmed among you so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revelation of our lord jesus christ he will keep you firm to the end irreproachable on the day of our lord jesus christ god is faithful and by him you were called to fellowship with his son jesus christ our lord the word of the lord thanks be to god [Music] [Music] hallelujah the lord be with you reading from the holy gospel according to mark chapter 13 verses 33-37 jesus said to his disciples be watchful be alert you do not know when the time will come it is like a man traveling abroad he leaves home and places his servants in charge each with his own work and orders the gatekeeper to be on the watch watch therefore you do not know when the lord of the house is coming whether in the evening or at midnight or at crow or at morning may he not come suddenly and find you sleeping what i say to you i say to all watch the gospel of the lord i should have a seat so um i know that i i wonder i have a sense that uh when it comes to like this time of this season in our lives there's a lot of things that we just want to be over with like just want to kind of get be done be past this so maybe it was this weekend maybe you had uh a great holiday maybe you did not have a great holiday maybe it was one of those things like let's just get this done let's get in let's get eat our food let's get out let's just be done with this or even like when it comes to um this whole advent leading up to christmas sometimes it's like let's just get through this advent let's get through this christmas well a lot of times that's our attitude right our attitude is let's just get this over with um or i just want to be done um and that can be like even a daily thing like i just get this guy i just want this monday to be over with i don't know how many times i've heard people say like i just can't wait for 2020 to be over as if like there's something special about 2020 it's not it's just you know whatever it's like the sense of like i just want this week to be done with um or like again maybe even the holiday that we were given this last weekend you're just like finally it's sunday i just finally get to be over with this i think a lot of times even when it comes to covid when it comes to i know minnesota has experienced more restrictions and and kind of more severe lockdowns recently this whole kind of midwest upper midwest area has and that sense of like i just want this to be over i just want this i want this to be done with let's just get through this and get back to normal and i it reminds me of the fact that i remember like when this first kind of broke there was um things like okay this is how serious it is there was a guy he was on um some news channel and he said something along the lines of we need to prepare like the american people or the people of the world for the fact that this isn't just kind of like a a weekend blizzard like where you kind of get hunkered down for four days but this is gonna be a really long duration this is gonna be like a year more than one year kind of a situation um i mean i get it because at the same time you can say yeah i know but i'm tired of this um not only tired of this but there's some devastating things here every from everything from i just think of how many uh people's dreams like our students high school students right now who are a senior they're they're seniors and they've been working so hard to at their sport and they can't play their sport they've been working so hard um to at their their instrument or in in theater our college students who have worked their entire lives to be collegiate athletes and then are denied the opportunity or even just i mean even even more serious like people losing their livelihoods obviously with all these businesses being shut down like i want to be this don't want this to be over with or people losing their lives we can say again i just want this to be done i want this to be over with but in in the midst of that what is our real temptation in the midst of all this what we're saying i just want to be done with this i want to be through this on i want to be over what we're saying ultimately is um the temptation is what it always is which is i i don't like this moment so i want to be just distracted by it by something else uh like i don't like what's going happening right now so i'm going to divert my attention from what's happening right now to anything else and this doesn't have to just be covered this could be any day of our lives it could be a saturday i want the saturday to be done with i want this stage in my life to be over with a lot of times we have this and so we don't like where we are presently so we divert ourselves or distract ourselves because i don't want to be here and when we do that we're doing the exact opposite of what jesus is telling us to do in today's gospel in fact he's been telling us to do this in like the last four weeks gospels where he's saying like stay awake stay alert and what is he saying ultimately when he's saying those words stay awakened alert because why because he's coming back i mean that's pause the first sunday of advent the church reminds us of the end these first weeks of advent the church reminds us that at the end of time jesus christ will return like it's called the second coming of christ for a reason he's coming back and he's telling us in the gospel to mark's gospel today he's telling us okay when i do that's going to happen so be ready messiest louis talks about this and he says what is be ready what does being ready look like he says that's not fear because you can't live in fear you don't can't live with this like this emotion of like i'm always trepidatious about this and it's also not excitement because we can't live with the emotion of excitement always and jesus said to be always ready so it's not so it's not fear like i'm always ready because i'm afraid it's not exciting because i'm always ready i'm always ready because i'm excited what is it basically jesus is saying when he says be awake be alert he's saying be here be here now and i know that i spend so much of my life saying i don't want to be here no i don't want to be now i want to be done like i want to be through this i want to get over with this i want this to be i want to get back to life and the reality is this is life this is the crazy thing regardless of where you are right now in your life whether um horrible moment or an incredible moment maybe whether you had the most lonely heartbreaking holiday or you had a holiday full of people and love and life the truth is this is life like this is there's no going back to life because this is life this sunday right now that you're experiencing this is not a pause this is not a detour this is your life and this is my life i know sometimes we don't want it that way i mean we get good because of the pain of life and that's in fact that's what people in that isaiah is writing to isaiah is writing to the the people of judah the kingdom of judah it's the two tribes in the south um and he's writing to them in a very difficult time in a time where where they were unfaithful and and he's speaking almost for the people um and one of the things he says is god why do you let us do this like why do you let us like drive our car off the road god why do you let us be unfaithful why why do you allow us to turn our backs on you just and you could almost hear him say just get us through this like i i want this whole like here we are we're faithful to you they're not faithful to you then we're people again we're not faithful again i just want this to be done i want this be over with just get us through this and that's why he says at the end of this reading he says and yet you o lord are our father you're the potter we're the work of your hands basically you are shaping us like even in the midst of us like driving our crowd forward even in the midst of us making a shipwreck of our lives you're in the midst of this and what you're doing is we realize we're not done yet and so what you're doing is you are shaping us you're crafting us you're working on us and so same thing is true with us when we say i just want to get through this i want to be over with this the reality is i am not done yet and you are not done yet what we have at every single moment is god the potter shaping us this is what it is to believe in god's providence this is what it is to believe in god's will and in our daily lives because if we believe in god's providence if we believe in god's will in our daily lives what we realize is that his will is not somewhere else his will is right here his will is not later his will is right now and even if it's like me striving to keep using this image or driving our car off the road even if it's driving our car off the road that's god's will now what that means is there's two kinds of god's will maybe you've heard this before there's god's perfect will which is his will for our good his will for our wholeness his will for our holiness it's always oriented towards the well it's always on purpose his perfect will is always on purpose but there's also a thing called god's permissive will and god's permissive will is in the middle of this world in the midst of this world where we have free will he allows things to happen that weren't part of his perfect plan weren't part of his perfect will he allows them to happen for two reasons one is so that we can retain our freedom so we can actually be free to choose him we have to be free to not choose him if we're actually free to choose him and secondly because he knows he can bring about a greater good by allowing us to choose this thing so god's perfect will is his his actual will he's what he wants for us more than anything that's his perfect will perfect plan but then there's his permissive will where he allows these things that immediately are difficult these things that are immediately are suffering these things that immediately are horrible because he needs to preserve our free will so that we can love and he also wants to well he knows that he can bring about a greater good so even in isaiah chapter 63 and 64 we see this we see he's isaiah saying we have chosen evil you've let us that's your permissive will because you know you can bring a better greater good and yet you are the potter and we're the clay that's your perfect will now i realized that that at this point you could say that seems so foolish like why would you trust god in every moment and everything in every circumstance if he's going to allow he's if he's going to allow us to choose these awful things it seems foolish to trust him like that it does seem foolish until you know the character of god it is completely foolish until you know the character of god that's why isaiah begins today's reading and ends today's reading by saying these four words you are our father you are our dad and that's the only reason why we can trust you that's the only reason why in the midst of suffering in the midst of pain that's the only reason why we can cry out and say i will be done i mean it's it's kind of like this i marriage marriage makes no sense like the promises people make in marriage make no sense where you say to someone um everything i have is yours like my bank account every all the money i made in my entire life it's now it's now our money and or by the way like hey all the debt you have accumulated in your life now it's our debt that makes no sense makes no sense for anyone to do that it makes no sense to say all the stuff i have is now our stuff it makes no sense to say my hopes and dreams are now our hopes and dreams they're yours now and if you want to change them they're changing in fact i remember doing marriage prep with a couple um this last year and uh they're both from central minnesota and roughly stearns county area and uh they grew up 15 miles apart from each other really close to each other their families are still in that same area um he had a job there right after college a good paying job a job where he could not only make a great living but he could also see his family see his nephews like be with his families um she wanted to live on the west coast and so uh he did not want to learn the west coast and so thus began this conversation they would have to have right of like it doesn't make any sense for us to leave all our family members all of our friends have this great job to go to the west coast just because you want to live by the water and yet in that process of that conversation he gradually got to the point where he was like you know what i will i will leave my parents i will leave your parents i will leave all my family i will leave my job that i have which is super stable and go find go to a place i don't even have a job yet why because i'm willing to give up my dreams because we're married now now it's our dreams like i'm really willing to give up my future because this is now our future and even more dramatically what couples say in marriage is they they say now my body is yours again that's a crazy thing to do in light of the world that's a crazy thing to do in light of what we know about broken human nature so why do people do it and why is it a good thing you can only do it when you trust the other person you can ephesians chapter 5 where saint paul writes he says wives submit to your husbands and so many wives so many brides choose that reading why because they've realized the depth beneath it which is if i truly trust this man if i truly love this man i know he love i trust in his love for me then i can i can actually submit to him i can actually surrender my heart to him i can surrender my mind my body to him why because i know that the second part of ephesians chapter five is husbands love your wives as christ loved the church and laid himself down for her because i trust that he is going to lay down his life for me see this is this is the key it's the ingredient that changes everything we can think that god is this distant tyrant or this distant uh uncaring god but if we know that he truly is present we know that he truly actually loves us in every moment then we actually get to receive every moment from his hands if it's not just god then our prayer becomes not just god help me through this moment but god you've given me this moment i've been thinking about this a lot because um uh father walter chizek is a priest that i brought up probably five times in the last nine months i'm not sure it's been a lot but because his book he lead with me is probably the the most influential book that i've read on my my life in the last 20 years maybe my entire life so if you want to read a book that will change your life that you'll change the way you look at god it will change the way you look at your own life it will change the way you pray he leadeth me by father walter chizek is i can't i can't recommend it highly uh more highly um but his story right is that he was an american a polish-american catholic priest who wanted to become a missionary in russia to serve the the soviet people the russian people and um he gets into russia basically around the time of world war ii he immediately gets imprisoned as a german spy and he describes one of the first prisons that he got into was a place called perm in his prison cell was about 30 feet by 30 feet and when he got there in the morning uh there were five people he said by evening that night there were over 100 men in this prison 30 feet by 30 feet over 100 men he described he said the cells were so badly overcrowded hardly any room to move he said there was no running water slop buckets were the toilets the windows were covered by mud metal shutters so there was a little light and very l and less fresh air so we were filthy we had no such thing as a change of clothes we slept on the unwashed floor with insects crawling over us the air was always foul you could not get rid of the reek of that nauseating stench out of your nostrils you simply had to ignore it as best you could but on top of this he said was so degrading so humiliating that some men just stopped thinking of themselves as men and knowing at that mind through it all was this feeling of helplessness and injustice because all those people were political prisoners basically they were accused of something they did not commit and so he said um we all we beyond this misery we all share in common there's one finally final humiliation he had to bear so he he was with these men and they're all unjustly imprisoned they all felt helpless they all felt degraded and he said but there's this one final humiliation that he had to bear at one point he at first thought if i just tell my fellow prisoners that i'm a catholic priest um he said i could maybe elicit some some sympathy from them like maybe if i they would realize wow you really are innocent like you haven't done anything against the state but once he told them he was a catholic priest he said their response uh was not what he expected he said that the soviet state had done a good job of training these men to believe that priests were by nature evil that priests were either simpletons or they were dupes of the capitalist system or they were alcoholics and women chasers or perverts he says and he says i was stunned at the depth of feeling and prejudice against the church that came spilling out of their mouths he's more so under the circumstances because most of us in the cell were political prisoners nearly all of us were unjustly suspected and accused of things we never did and never given an opportunity to answer the accusation or the charges we shared a common grievance and a common sense of personal anguish and outrage and humiliation and hopelessness there's least a minimal sense of camaraderie among the prisoners but in that moment it was taken away from me because he said i would have became known i was a priest i was cursed at i was shunned i was looked down upon and despised and how he said i was at a loss it almost brought me to tears like in this 30-foot by 30-foot cell with over 100 other men in this filth he imagined this man almost brought to tears at how isolated and how alone he felt he said he couldn't explain myself to anyone this is this big quote he said there was no one to turn to no one to talk to no one from whom i could seek advice or sympathetic understanding no one who could offer me any consolation and so as i've done in every other crisis i turned to god in prayer and i sought his help his sympathy his consolation and he said since i was suffering especially for his sake since i was despised precisely because i was one of his priests he could not fail to comfort me when he himself and his human life had fitted isaiah's description of despised and utterly rejected he too had sought for someone to comfort him and had found none so surely he could sympathize with my plight surely he would find me and comfort and console me and he says this he says his way of consoling me however was to increase my self-knowledge and my understanding both of his providence and the mystery of salvation because i turned to him in prayer in the depths of my humiliation when i rant him utterly dejected because i felt useless and despised the grace i received was the light to recognize how a large an admixture of self had crept into the picture i had been humiliated and i was feeling sorry for myself no one appreciated me as a priest and i was indulging in self-pity i was being treated unfairly unjustly out of prejudice and there was no one to listen to my sad story and offer me sympathy so i was feeling sorry for myself he said that was the real extent of my humiliation yes the cell was awful and the conditions were inhuman maybe maybe they were even designed to be inhuman but because the conditions were inhuman with no reason that i or any other man had therefore ceased to be human we were not and did not have to be a product of our environment because the conditions were degrading only if we let ourselves become degraded he said shouldn't i rather rejoice that i've been loud allowed to imitate jesus christ more closely and this is the thing is this is this key father chizek realized that in this moment i just want to get through this that he said lord you you've brought i i'm here in this prison cell just i need your help to get me through this but he realized in this moment that it was the lord who brought him to that moment that it was actually from his hands that he received every moment it was from god's hands that he received every day here's a question imagine if we believe that imagine if we believed okay god you see all things that you know all things and you love me in all things imagine if we believed god you act you sent me this moment either as a part of your perfect will or as a part of your permissive will because you know that even in the midst of suffering even in the midst of great grief and pain you know you could even use this like you know one thing it would change i think i don't think i think we would spend less of our lives in that constant state of let's get past this let's get over this let's get through this i think we would take joy in any and every moment because then we'd actually be christians like if we saw that we saw every moment as a actually a gift from the hand of our father we'd actually that's when we begin that's when we would begin to be christians we that's when we begin to be actual followers of jesus christ who take him at his word when he tells us that he loves us when he tells us that the father knows our every need that he tells us that the father knows the hairs from our head that he when he tells us that the father even knows when a sparrow falls to the ground and he cares about it and that we're worth more to him than many sparrows if we believed that then we will we then we could be here then we could be now which is the entire point of the gospel the point is he's coming back how am i ready how do i prepare myself again not this state of fear because he can't sustain that not a state of excitement because we can't sustain that but just by being present to every moment knowing that this is from your hand father by being by actually being wherever you are by doing whatever it is that you're called to do at any given moment this is the last thing it's a i know i've basically just stolen father chizek's words all day today but he said this he says how many ways had i allowed this admixture of self this luxury of feeling sorry for myself to cloud my vision and prevent myself from seeing the current situation with the eyes of god no one no matter what their situation is ever without value no one is ever useless in god's eyes no situation is ever without its worth and purpose in god's providence it is a very human temptation to feel frustrated by the circumstances to feel overwhelmed and helpless in the face of the established order yet under the worst imaginable circumstances a man remains a man with free will and god stands ready to assist him with his grace even more than that god expects him to act in those circumstances in these situations as he would have him act his last word is god does not ask the impossible of any person and he was not asking more of me really than he asks anyone he said he said this about his time in prison and he said about his time in a soviet gulag every christian each day of his life god was asking only that i learned to see the suffering of these men around me these circumstances in prison as sent from his hand and ordained by his providence he was asking me to do something that was all he was asking of me or expecting of me that's all i had to do it was plenty and it cannot it cannot be done while i sat feeling sorry for myself nor was i powerless to do it it was within my power to do it and i could count on his grace to sustain me this is the crux this is the the point of maybe the entire book and not the least of his graces was the light to see and understand this truth to see that this day like all the days of my life came from his hands and served a purpose in his providence i had to learn to believe that no matter what the circumstances to act accordingly with complete trust and confidence in his will his wisdom and his grace how are we ready how are we ready for the lord's return how are we ready in every moment then not just to get through this day or get through this crisis get through these circumstances but to truly be here i believe it's by trusting that this moment this day has been given to you by his hand and all he's asking is for us to receive it with trust and that means to receive it where we are i want you to stand as we profess our faith i believe in one god the father the almighty maker of heaven and earth of all things visible and invisible i believe in one lord jesus christ the only begotten son of god born of the father before all ages god from god light from light true god from true god begotten not made consubstantial with the father through him all things were made for us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven and by the holy spirit was incarnate of the virgin mary and became man for our sake he was crucified under pontius pilate he suffered death and was buried and rose again on the third day in accordance with the scriptures he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the father he will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and his kingdom will have no end i believe in the holy spirit the lord the giver of life who proceeds from the father and the son who with the father and the son is adored and glorified who has spoken through the prophets i believe in one holy catholic and apostolic church i confess one baptism for the forgiveness of sins and i look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come amen confident in our fathers love and care for us we now approach him with all of our needs that church leaders may be blessed with wisdom and holiness to guide the church in the season of advent we pray to the lord lord hear our prayer that peace will flourish among nations afflicted by war and strife and for the leaders of those nations we pray to the lord lord hear our prayer that christians may follow the gospel mandate to be on guard against all forms of disrespect for the sanctity of human life we pray to the lord hear our prayer that all people will seek justice and have compassion for the poor and hungry of our world we pray to the lord lord hear our prayer that our hearts be filled with joy as we prepare for the birth of jesus let us pray to the lord lord hear our prayer that those who have died may be granted the peace of god's kingdom we pray to the lord lord hear our prayer for the grace this week to see every moment and be present to every moment as god's uh as coming from god's hands and trusting that it is for our good we pray to the lord lord hear our prayer we continue to offer our prayer as we pray at the diocese of duluth prayer for vocations almighty father we beg you for an increase in religious vocations and holy marriages in our diocese help us to be generous in our response to your call choose from our homes those who are needed for your work and strengthen us with the courage to say yes and to follow you help us as a diocese as a parish as families to encourage and foster vocations to the priesthood permanent diaconate and consecrated life we commend our prayers to our patroness mary queen of the rosary and ask this through jesus christ our lord amen blessed are you lord god of all creation for through your goodness we have received the bread we offer you fruit of the earth and work of human hands it will become for us the bread of life blessed are you lord god of all creation for through your goodness we have received the wine we offer you fruit of the vine and work of human hands it will become our spiritual drink pray my brothers and sisters that my sacrifice and yours may be acceptable to god the almighty father except we pray oh lord these offerings we make gathering from among your gifts to us gathered from among your gifts to us and may what you grant us to celebrate devoutly here below gain for us the prize of eternal redemption through christ our lord amen the lord be with you lift up your hearts let us give thanks to the lord our god it is truly right and just our duty and our salvation always and everywhere to give you thanks lord holy father almighty and eternal god through christ our lord for he assumed that his first coming the lowliness of human flesh and so fulfilled the design you formed long ago and opened for us the way to eternal salvation so that when he comes again in glory and majesty and all is at last made manifest we who watch for that day may inherit the great promise in which we now dare to hope and so with angels and archangels with thrones and dominions and with all the hosts and powers of heaven we sing the hymn of your glory as without end we acclaim holy holy holy lord god of hosts heaven and earth are full of your glory hosanna in the highest blessed is he who comes in the name of the lord hosanna in the highest you are indeed holy o lord and all you have created rightly gives you praise for through your son our lord jesus christ by the power and working of the holy spirit you give life to all things and make them holy and you never cease to gather a people to yourself so that from the rising of the sun to its setting a pure sacrifice may be offered to your name therefore o lord we humbly implore you by the same spirit graciously make holy these gifts we are brought to you for consecration that they may become the body and blood of your son our lord jesus christ at whose command we celebrate these mysteries for on the night he was betrayed he himself took bread and giving you thanks he said the blessing broke the bread and gave it to his disciples saying take this all of you and eat of it for this is my body which will be given up for you in a similar way when supper was ended he took the chalice and once more giving thanks he gave it to his disciples saying take this all of you and drink from it for this is the chalice of my blood the blood of the new and eternal covenant which will be poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins do this in memory of me the mystery of faith we proclaim your death o lord and profess your resurrection until you come again therefore o lord as we celebrate the memorial of the saving passion of your son his wondrous resurrection and ascension into heaven and as we look forward to his second coming we offer you in thanksgiving this holy and living sacrifice look repay upon the ablation of your church recognizing the sacrificial victim by whose death you willed to reconcile us to yourself grant that we who are nourished by the body and blood of your son and filled with his holy spirit may become one body one spirit in christ may he make us an everlasting gift to you and so that we may obtain an inheritance with your elect especially with the most blessed virgin mary the mother of god with blessed joseph her spouse with your blessed apostles and glorious martyrs and with all your saints and whose constant intercession in your presence we rely for unfailing help may this sacrifice which is a reconciliation which is made oh lord our may this sacrifice of our reconciliation we pray o lord advance the peace and salvation of all the world be pleased to confirm in faith and share to your pilgrim church on earth with your servant francis our pope the order of bishops all the clergy and the entire people you have gained for your own listen graciously to the prayers of this family whom you have summoned before you and your compassion and merciful father gather to yourself all your children scattered throughout the world to our departed brothers and sisters and to all who are pleasing to you at their passing from this life give kind admittance to your kingdom there we hope to enjoy forever the fullness of your glory through christ our lord through whom you bestow on the world all that is good through him and with him and in him oh god almighty father in the unity of the holy spirit all glory and honor is yours forever and ever amen at the savior's command informed by divine teaching we dare to say our father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil deliver us lord we pray from every evil graciously grant peace in our days that by the help of your mercy we we may be always free from sin and safe from all distress as we await the blessed hope and the coming of our savior jesus christ lord jesus christ who said to your apostles peace i leave you my peace i give you look not on our sins but on the faith of your church and graciously grant her peace and unity in accordance with your will who live and reign forever and ever may the peace of the lord be with you always lamb of god you take away the sins of the world have mercy on us lamb of god you take away the sins of the world have mercy on us lamb of god you take away the sins of the world grant us peace behold the lamb of god behold him who takes away the sins of the world blessed are those who are called to the supper of the lamb lord i am not worthy that you should enter under my roof but only say the word and my soul shall be healed the body of christ the body of christ the body of christ the body of christ an act of spiritual communion my jesus i believe that you are present in the most holy sacrament i love you above all things and i desire to receive you into my soul since i cannot at this moment receive you sacramentally come at least spiritually into my heart i embrace you as if you are already there and unite myself holy to you never permit me to be separated from you amen the lord will bestow his bounty and our earth shall yield its increase psalm 85 verse 13 let us pray may these mysteries o lord in which we have participated profit us we pray for even now as we walk amid passing things you teach us by them to love the things of heaven and hold vast to what endures through christ our lord couple quick announcements three quick announcements in fact a one is a thank you and thank you for all those who supported us i mentioned this last weekend but um there have been so many people who have supported the ministry up here at the university of minnesota duluth so thank you so much um yeah there's can't even say any more than that so thank you so much secondly is um we have started we're gonna start at the end of this advent beginning of christmas which is actually the beginning of the new year on january 1st we're starting this uh new thing that called the catholic bible in year podcast if you're interested in that um please know that you're invited to check it out if you want more information or like to sign up for email updates and whatnot to be part of a list you can text the word catholic bible all one word it's two words but one word together a catholic bible to the number three three seven seven seven so just really simple catholic bible three three seven seven seven the third quick announcement is tomorrow night monday night um uh father mark toops father josh johnson and sister miriam headland are gonna be um live i believe online at ascension this at this channel i think um to begin their rejoice series so they put together this i think my father mark might have like spearheaded it and their father josh and sister mariam have just really come alongside and helped a ton with it um it's uh basically a journey through len uh it's advent in that land same colors um journey through advent and um starts tomorrow night monday night i'm sure there's some information in the description below underneath this mass right now i think that's all the announcements we have other than happy thanksgiving last week and happy advent right now is where we're called to be right here and right now say michael the archangel defend us in battle be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil may god rebuke him we humbly pray and do thou prince of the heavenly host by the power of god cast into hell satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls amen the lord be with you may almighty god bless you all the father the son and the holy spirit amen go in peace glorifying the lord by your life thanks be to god cortis [Music] [Music] a [Music] [Music] oh [Music] mariah you

Channel: Ascension Presents

Views: 82,524

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Id: nMCNjCqxLAo

Length: 49min 21sec (2961 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 29 2020