Daily Offering · 23 September 2026 · Ember Wednesday of September
Daily Offering: September 23, 2026 | The Joy of the Lord Is Our Strength
Welcome to Bloom’s Daily Offering for Wednesday, September 23, 2026, Ember Wednesday of September, second class, with a commemoration of St. Linus, Pope and Martyr. St. Thecla is displaced entirely today, and the joy of the Lord is our strength is the line this…
The order of this offering
Before the readings
Offering and Canon
I
Opening Address
Welcome to Bloom’s Daily Offering for Wednesday, September 23, 2026, Ember Wednesday of September, second class, with a commemoration of St. Linus, Pope and Martyr. St. Thecla is displaced entirely today, and the joy of the Lord is our strength is the line this whole morning turns on.
This is a fast day, one of the four sets of Ember days kept at the turn of the seasons, and the vestments are violet.
And here is the thing worth arriving for. On a day appointed for fasting, the Church stands up and reads aloud a command to eat fat meats, drink sweet wine, send food to people who have nothing ready, and stop being sad. The reason given is that the joy of the Lord is our strength.
Wherever you are this morning, you are welcome here. If you cannot fast, if fasting is dangerous for you, or if you simply are not going to, the joy of the Lord is our strength was never waiting on your performance.
The Mass keeps the older Ember shape: two lessons, each with its own Gradual, and two Collects before the second reading. Both lessons are printed.
II
Introit
Rejoice to God our helper: sing aloud to the God of Jacob. Take a psalm, and bring hither the timbrel: the pleasant psaltery with the harp. Blow up the trumpet on the new moon, on the noted day of your solemnity. For it is a commandment in Israel, and a judgment to the God of Jacob.
He ordained it for a testimony in Joseph, when he came out of the land of Egypt: he heard a tongue which he knew not.
(The psalm’s own first verse, “Unto the end, for the winepresses, a psalm for Asaph himself,” is a title clause and is not sung.)
(Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen. The antiphon is repeated.)
A fast begins with timbrel, psaltery, harp and trumpet. That is the first oddity of the day and it is not the last, and the joy of the Lord is our strength is where they all end up.
III
Collect
Let us pray.
May our frailty, we beseech Thee, O Lord, find support in the help of Thy mercy; so that what is marred by its own nature may be restored by Thy grace. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen.
The prayer concedes frailty in its opening word and never asks us to stop being frail. It asks that the damage be repaired from outside, and the joy of the Lord is our strength travels the same way.
IV
First Lesson
Thus saith the Lord God: Behold the days come, saith the Lord, when the ploughman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that soweth seed: and the mountains shall drop sweetness, and every hill shall be tilled.
And I will bring back the captivity of my people Israel: and they shall build the abandoned cities, and inhabit them: and they shall plant vineyards, and drink the wine of them: and shall make gardens, and eat the fruits of them.
And I will plant them upon their own land: and I will no more pluck them out of their land which I have given them, saith the Lord thy God.
V
Gradual
Who is as the Lord our God, who dwelleth on high: and looketh down on the low things in heaven and in earth?
℣. Raising up the needy from the earth, and lifting up the poor out of the dunghill.
VI
Second Collect
Let us pray.
O Lord, we beseech Thee, grant to Thy praying household that, as they fast from bodily food, they may also abstain mentally from sin. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen.
VII
The Commemoration
St. Linus, Pope and Martyr.
Look forgivingly on Thy flock, Eternal Shepherd, and keep it in Thy constant protection, by the intercession of blessed Linus Thy Martyr and Thy Sovereign Pontiff, whom Thou didst constitute Shepherd of the whole Church. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen.
(This prayer stood here before, in December, where it was the day’s own Collect rather than a commemoration.)
VIII
Second Lesson
In those days: And the seventh month came: and the children of Israel were in their cities. And all the people were gathered together as one man to the street which is before the water gate, and they spoke to Esdras the scribe, to bring the book of the law of Moses, which the Lord had commanded to Israel.
Then Esdras the priest brought the law before the multitude of men and women, and all those that could understand, in the first day of the seventh month. And he read it plainly in the street that was before the water gate, from the morning until midday, before the men, and the women, and all those that could understand: and the ears of all the people were attentive to the book.
And Esdras opened the book before all the people: for he was above all the people: and when he had opened it, all the people stood. And Esdras blessed the Lord the great God: and all the people answered, Amen, amen: lifting up their hands: and they bowed down, and adored God with their faces to the ground.
And they read in the book of the law of God distinctly and plainly to be understood: and they understood when it was read.
And Nehemias (he is Athersatha) and Esdras the priest and scribe, and the Levites who interpreted to all the people, said: This is a holy day to the Lord our God: do not mourn, nor weep: for all the people wept, when they heard the words of the law.
And he said to them: Go, eat fat meats, and drink sweet wine, and send portions to them that have not prepared for themselves: because it is the holy day of the Lord, and be not sad: for the joy of the Lord is our strength.
(The Missal’s Lesson passes over the two lists of names at the fourth and seventh verses, which give the men standing beside Esdras and the Levites who hushed the crowd.)
IX
Second Gradual
Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord: the people whom he hath chosen for his inheritance.
℣. By the word of the Lord the heavens were established; and all the power of them by the spirit of his mouth.
(These two verses stood here on Sunday as well, in the same order, three days ago.)
X
Gospel
At that time: And one of the multitude, answering, said: Master, I have brought my son to thee, having a dumb spirit. Who, wheresoever he taketh him, dasheth him, and he foameth, and gnasheth with the teeth, and pineth away; and I spoke to thy disciples to cast him out, and they could not.
Who answering them, said: O incredulous generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you? bring him unto me. And they brought him. And when he had seen him, immediately the spirit troubled him; and being thrown down upon the ground, he rolled about foaming.
And he asked his father: How long time is it since this hath happened unto him? But he said: From his infancy: And oftentimes hath he cast him into the fire and into waters to destroy him. But if thou canst do any thing, help us, having compassion on us.
And Jesus saith to him: If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth. And immediately the father of the boy crying out, with tears said: I do believe, Lord: help my unbelief.
And when Jesus saw the multitude running together, he threatened the unclean spirit, saying to him: Deaf and dumb spirit, I command thee, go out of him; and enter not any more into him. And crying out, and greatly tearing him, he went out of him, and he became as dead, so that many said: He is dead.
But Jesus taking him by the hand, lifted him up; and he arose. And when he was come into the house, his disciples secretly asked him: Why could not we cast him out? And he said to them: This kind can go out by nothing, but by prayer and fasting.
The Offering
Daily Homily | The Joy of the Lord Is Our Strength
Start with the plain contradiction, because the Church has not tucked it away.
A fast day that says eat
Start with the plain contradiction, because the Church has not tucked it away.
Today is a fast, and the second Collect says so outright. Then, minutes later, from the same altar, this is read to the room:
Go, eat fat meats, and drink sweet wine, and send portions to them that have not prepared for themselves: because it is the holy day of the Lord, and be not sad: for the joy of the Lord is our strength.
Eat. Drink. Give some away. Stop being sad.
Four imperatives, and not one of them is a fast. The reason attached is that the joy of the Lord is our strength, which is the only load-bearing clause in the sentence.
That is not an accident of the lectionary. Somebody chose that passage for this day, knowing the congregation in front of it would be hungry, and the choice says something the fast on its own would not. It puts the joy of the Lord is our strength into the mouths of people who are going without.
It says the fast is not the point. If it were, the reading would be about the fast. Instead the reading is a feast, and the joy of the Lord is our strength sits at the end of it as the reason there is anything to celebrate.
And it leaves both standing. The fast holds, the feast holds, and the joy of the Lord is our strength is what holds while both are true.
The joy of the Lord is our strength
Now slow down, because the grammar of the joy of the Lord is our strength is doing the work.
The joy of the Lord is our strength. Not our joy. Not the joy we manage to produce on a difficult morning. The joy belongs to the Lord, and what it supplies is ours.
Read it the other way round and you get the sentence most of us were handed: your joy is your strength, so if you are low you are weak, and you had better work on that first. The verse says nothing of the kind. The joy of the Lord is our strength puts the possessive where we cannot reach it.
Everything on the near side of that clause is out of our hands. The joy is His. The strength it becomes is a consequence, not an achievement. And the joy of the Lord is our strength is stated flatly, in the present tense, to people who had been weeping thirty seconds earlier.
That is why the fast does not sit awkwardly beside it. A fast is a thing you do, and this clause is a thing that is true whether or not you do it. They are not in competition, because they are not the same kind of sentence.
It also means the clause cannot be failed. You can keep a fast badly, or break one, or never begin. None of that reaches the joy of the Lord is our strength, because the subject of that sentence is not you.
Yesterday’s Collect asked that mercy be poured out on everyone who asks, with no clause about worthiness. Today goes one step further and does not even require the asking. The joy of the Lord is our strength is not offered as a transaction; it is reported as a fact about God that has consequences for us.
They wept, and were told to stop
The verse before it is the one that makes it land, and it is easy to read past.
This is a holy day to the Lord our God: do not mourn, nor weep: for all the people wept, when they heard the words of the law.
Understand what has just happened, because the joy of the Lord is our strength is spoken straight into it. The law has been read out loud, plainly, from morning until midday. The people have heard it, understood it, and burst into tears, which is a perfectly reasonable response to hearing a standard read out in full.
And the response from the men who read it to them is: stop. Do not mourn. Do not weep. Go and eat something, because the joy of the Lord is our strength.
Sit with how unusual that is. A congregation meets the measure it has not reached, reacts exactly as sincerity is supposed to, and is told the reaction is wrong for the day, because the joy of the Lord is our strength. Not that their grief is fake. That it is out of place, because the joy of the Lord is our strength and today is a holy day.
Put the fruit test to the opposite teaching, the one that says grief is the proof. It grows people who perform contrition to be believed. It grows a room where the person who is doing well is quietly suspected of not taking it seriously. And it grows the conviction that if you are not sorry enough, nothing has counted and the joy of the Lord is our strength was meant for somebody steadier.
Esdras closes that door. The weeping stops, the food comes out, and the strength named in the sentence is the Lord’s joy rather than the congregation’s remorse.
And see who the food is for. Send portions to them that have not prepared for themselves. The instruction assumes a room containing people who brought nothing and made no arrangements, and it does not ask why. They are fed on the same day and from the same table, and the joy of the Lord is our strength covers them too.
Help my unbelief, and the healing anyway
Now the Gospel, and this is where the day’s own text calls for a naming, so I will make it.
A father brings his son, thrown into fire and water since infancy. The disciples could not help. He says to Christ, if thou canst do any thing, help us, having compassion on us, and Christ answers, if thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.
Then the father says the most honest sentence in the Gospels. I do believe, Lord: help my unbelief. That is a man standing inside the joy of the Lord is our strength without being able to feel it.
And here is what happens next. Christ heals the boy. Not after the father’s faith is resolved, not once the doubt is cleared up, but immediately, while the man is still standing there having just admitted his belief is partial.
Disabled and chronically ill people carry the opposite teaching in a form that is specific, familiar and exhausting: that healing withheld is evidence of faith withheld. It is almost never said as a rule. It lives in the prayer offered again more loudly, in the question about whether you have really surrendered it, and in the slow shift of the failure onto the one who is unwell.
This space named the same group in August, and the claim was different. That morning was about being spoken to as though you were a child. This one is about whether your faith is audited to explain why your body has not changed, while the joy of the Lord is our strength says the strength was never yours to supply.
Set today’s Gospel against it, because the sequence refutes it. The father’s belief is explicitly incomplete and he says so out loud. The healing happens anyway. Nothing in the passage makes the man’s doubt the obstacle, and the joy of the Lord is our strength is exactly the arrangement in which that is possible.
See too what the father actually asks for. If thou canst do any thing, help us, having compassion on us. Not help him—help us. The man asks on behalf of a household, because a long illness is never one person’s weather, and the joy of the Lord is our strength is addressed to the household as plainly as to the patient.
Two things this is not saying. Nothing here promises anybody a healing, and the joy of the Lord is our strength is not a guarantee dressed up as a clause. And nothing here makes anybody’s faith smaller for being whole and untroubled. The teaching under examination is the one that turns an unchanged body into a verdict on the person inside it.
The year she could not keep it
Let me bring it down to the size it lives at.
There is a story sometimes told of a woman who had kept every Ember day for something like sixty years. She set out the urn and the cups, knew which weeks were fast weeks without looking, and had never once made a point of any of it.
The year she could not keep it, she did not announce that either. She told one person, in the kitchen, counting cups, and said she felt like a fraud putting the tea out.
The person she told was about forty years younger, had no idea what to say, and said the wrong thing first, which was that God would understand. She waved that off. She knew God understood; that was not the difficulty.
The difficulty was that she had spent sixty years being the woman who kept it and could not work out what she was now. Then she went back to counting cups, and the younger one thought about it for years.
What she would tell you is that nothing resolved it. She kept setting out the urn. She never got the sixty years back and she never stopped minding. She simply found that the hall was the same hall and the cups still needed counting, and that no one in the room had been keeping her record but her.
Which is the whole of what the joy of the Lord is our strength does for a person in that position. It does not restore the record and it does not tell her the loss is small. It relocates the strength.
If none of the theology here is yours, the point survives. A practice kept faithfully for decades can stop being possible, the identity built on top of it does not survive intact, and that is a real loss rather than a failure. The joy of the Lord is our strength is the religious name for the thing that does not move when it happens.
So carry that out with you. The fast is a good thing and you may keep it. But the strength in today’s reading is not the fast, and the joy of the Lord is our strength whether you are counting the cups or sitting down because you cannot.
And if you are weeping this morning because you have heard the standard read out plainly and know what you have not met, Esdras has already answered you. Do not mourn. Go and eat something. The joy of the Lord is our strength, and it was never going to be yours.
↑ The order resumes below.
XII
Secret
May this offering, O Lord, we beseech Thee, wipe away our transgressions, and make holy the minds and bodies of Thy servants for celebrating this sacrifice. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen.
Minds and bodies, both made holy by the offering rather than by the fasting. On an Ember day that is worth hearing twice, and it is the same arrangement as the joy of the Lord is our strength.
XIII
The Holding
May God keep you this Wednesday in whatever you are carrying, and may no one ask you today to prove you meant it. If you are fasting, keep it gladly. If you are not, or cannot, the joy of the Lord is our strength applies to you in the same words, unaltered. May Almighty God bless you, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.
And if that language is not yours, take it plainly. Sadness is not the receipt for sincerity, and the people who love you are not waiting on one.
XIV
Frequently Asked Questions
Four sets of three days—Wednesday, Friday and Saturday—kept at the turn of each season in the 1962 calendar, marked by fasting and, historically, by ordinations. Today is the Wednesday of the September set, which falls in the harvest, and it is second class and kept in violet.
It is the closing clause of the second Lesson, 2 Esdras 8:10, in the Douay’s wording. The grammar is the point: the joy belongs to the Lord and the strength is what it supplies to us, so the sentence is not asking anybody to feel joyful in order to be strong. It is stated to a congregation that had just been weeping.
Because the Church chose that passage for this day, and the contrast is doing the teaching. The fast is a discipline we undertake; the Lesson is a statement about what is already true, and the two are different kinds of sentence rather than competing instructions. The Offertory and Communion of this Mass return to the same reading.
Because Ember Wednesdays keep an older shape than an ordinary weekday Mass: a first Lesson and Gradual, then further Collects, then a second Lesson and Gradual before the Gospel. Both are printed here in full, the first from Amos and the second from 2 Esdras, which the Douay also calls Nehemias.
No, and the passage goes out of its way to say otherwise. The father states plainly that his belief is incomplete—”I do believe, Lord: help my unbelief”—and the healing follows immediately, with nothing in the text making his doubt the obstacle. If you have been told that an unanswered prayer is a verdict on your faith, this morning’s Gospel is not where that teaching comes from.
Because the Douay-Rheims numbers this chapter one behind most modern translations. The Missal cites today’s Gospel as Mark 9:16-28, which is correct in the Douay; in a modern Bible the same passage runs from 9:17 to 9:29. Nothing in the text differs—only the numbering.
St. Linus is commemorated today as Pope and Martyr. This Offering prints his Collect and asserts no biography, because very little about his life can be said with confidence. St. Thecla, Virgin and Martyr, also falls on 23 September but is displaced entirely by the Ember day, so nothing of her Mass is said.
No. Grief is not the receipt for sincerity, and a room that treats visible distress as proof somebody has understood will get performances rather than honesty. In one plain sentence: tell the person who is struggling to eat something, not to look sorrier.
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Propers for Ember Wednesday of September are taken from the 1962 Roman Missal. Scripture is quoted from the Douay-Rheims Bible. The liturgical spine of Faith in Bloom is The New Marian Missal for Daily Mass by Sylvester P. Juergens, S.M., S.T.D., Regina Press, Imprimatur 1961.
Faith in Bloom is offered by Bloom Ministries in the Independent Catholic tradition and is not affiliated with or recognized by the Roman Catholic Church.
