Food For Thought: Sunday sermons that might have been - but for the Homily

When the Second Vatican Council called for priests to give homilies based on the scripture readings of the day rather than the more general traditional Sunday sermon, there were suddenly far fewer opportunities for priests to specifically address areas of spiritual or pastoral need unless the two things happened to coincide -- which doesn't seem to happen very often. These pastoral reflections, originally distributed with the parish newsletter, were written in order to do both things at once by providing something for people to read in their own time at home in addition to the homily that they had heard at Mass. They are, therefore, Sunday sermons that might have been, but for the homily.