What'd you hear today?

I have recently begun to read the propers of the masses of each Sunday during the Roman Catholic Lent, although I do not attend the local Novus Ordo "service". (I have two requirements of the Holy See before I do so again: one, that the Latin liturgy be restored as the "ordinary" form and not tampered with, and two, that the shamefully exalted Bernard Law be humbled, preferably in a desert monastery. Obviously, my little schism will not be quickly healed.)

Yesterday was the fourth Sunday in Lent, known as Laetare Sunday (in the old calendar, God only knows what it is called today). It is a reprieve from the rigorous (nowadays, perfunctory) penitential fasting preceding and following on until Easter. As I remember, most sermons (today called "homilies") used to expatiate on the Gospel, in this case the miracle of the loaves and fishes. But I find the Epistle particularly perspicacious (Galatians 4, verses 22-31, RSV)

For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave and one by a free woman. But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, the son of the free woman through promise.

Now this is an allegory: these women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery; she is Hagar. Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia; she corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children.

But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother. For it is written, "Rejoice, O barren one who does not bear; break forth and shout, you who are not in travail; for the children of the desolate one are many more than the children of her that is married."

Now we, brethren, like Isaac, are children of promise. But as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so it is now.

But what does the scripture say? "Cast out the slave and her son; for the son of the slave shall not inherit with the son of the free woman." So, brethren, we are not children of the slave but of the free woman.

As altar boys, we responded "Deo gratias (thanks be to God)". I forbear to think what might be the responsorial ejaculation of the altar girls during this Christian Ramadan.

We observed Global Worship Sunday, and heard the OT reading (the selection of the least of Jesse's sons to be king) in Spanish and Thai, courtesy of some local exchange students. Psalm was the 23rd. Gospel was the healing of the man who was born blind. I love the detail about Jesus spitting in the mud to make a paste.

We are rotating midweek Lenten services among several churches, so last Wednesday I heard an entirely different sermon on the same gospel. My 13 yo daughter's favorite line is when the healed man gets a little snippy with the Pharisees who keep pestering him: "I already TOLD you."

The pastor of my Evangelical Free Church--a Reformed-minded former Lutheran--preached a straightforward expository sermon on the meeting between Jesus and the Samaritan woman from John 4. It was quite good.