...vestment colors go nuts. Today's vigil featured a priest vested in red - either trying to do rose without having it, or somehow mistaking the color of the day with the consistory. It also had the rather odd feature of the priest doubling in the role of cantor by heading over to the musical area to sing and play tape-recorded music. While the effort is nice, the priest really looked weird doing it, besides the recording being very boring by this point, as the exact same tunes have been played every vigil in Lent thus far and it's a pretty simple and choppy synthesizer trying to sound like a piano. I'm pretty sure everyone's getting tired of Common Psalm 130 too, which has also been used every vigil Mass.

Last Gaudete Sunday, I mentioned how I saw vestments in three different colors at another parish, rose on the main celebrant, purple on the deacon, and red on the pastor when he dropped in for announcements. I'll be there again tomorrow, praying that the homily there also does not turn into a lesson on diocesan finances as it did today at the vigil.

As a sidenote, the gospel lesson for this day, John 3:14-21, is useful for my exegesis paper, particularly in verse 18 and following:

He who believes in him is not condemned; he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does what is true comes to the light, that it may be clearly seen that his deeds have been wrought in God.

In Romans 2:1, the "man" is told that he has condemned himself through hypocritical judgment. That would seem to say of the man in Romans 2:1 that he shares the qualities of the unbelievers given here. The judgment upon them seems to fit in with Romans 2:2. Time to check the interlinear tomorrow and see if the Greek matches.

UPDATE: According to the interlinear I checked, there is indeed a grammatical match between the passages. Also, while scanning the various books I checked out, it seems Romans 2 is one of the most disputed parts of all of Romans. Why on earth do I keep choosing difficult exegetical passages?

- Posted by in Catholic at 1:20 AM