Opening Address Welcome to Bloom’s Sunday Mass for the Sunday within the Octave of Christmas. Today’s Epistle draws a small legal picture and then overturns it in a single line, and the line it lands on is the one we are staying with: an heir also through God. This is offered in the Independent Catholic […]
Author Archives: Pastora Tori Matthews
27
Dec
Dec
Opening Address Follow thou me. Three words, and they are the whole of what one man is given on a morning when he asks a question about somebody else. Welcome to Bloom’s Daily Offering for Saturday, December 27, 2025. Today is the feast of St. John, Apostle and Evangelist, second class, and the vestments are […]
26
Dec
Dec
Opening Address I see the heavens opened. That is a sentence said by a man with stones already in the air around him, and it is the sentence this whole Mass decides to keep. Welcome to Bloom’s Daily Offering for Friday, December 26, 2025. Today is the feast of St. Stephen, Protomartyr, second class, and […]
25
Dec
Dec
Opening Address Welcome to Bloom’s Christmas Mass, the Mass at Midnight for the Nativity of Our Lord. The waiting is over, the violet is gone, and the Gospel of this Mass is the one most of the world can half-recite: a decree, a road, a manger, and a field full of working men who are […]
24
Dec
Dec
Opening Address Welcome to Bloom’s Christmas Eve Mass, the Vigil of the Nativity of Our Lord. Tonight the whole Church leans toward one birth, and the Gospel it hands us this morning is not the stable and not the shepherds. It is a man alone with a decision, and the single adjective Matthew gives him: […]
23
Dec
Dec
Opening Address Welcome to Bloom’s Daily Offering for Tuesday, December 23, 2025. Today is a feria of the fourth week of Advent, second class, and the vestments are violet. There is no feast, no saint and no commemoration, and for the third morning running the Church hands us the same Mass without changing a syllable […]
22
Dec
Dec
Opening Address Welcome to Bloom’s Daily Offering for Monday, December 22, 2025. Today is a feria of the fourth week of Advent, second class, and the vestments are violet. There is no feast, no saint, no commemoration, and not one word in today’s Mass that was not said yesterday. So the whole morning belongs to […]
21
Dec
Dec
Opening Address Bloom’s Sunday Mass, and Paul spends this morning’s Lesson telling a congregation to stop the trial they have already started, so judge not before the time. This is the Fourth Sunday of Advent, first class, violet, the last Sunday the Church will give us before the feast. We offer this Mass in the […]
20
Dec
Dec
Opening Address Every valley shall be filled. That line arrives late this morning, at the very end of a long stretch of reading, and by the time it comes you have already sat through five prophecies and an Epistle. This is the Ember Saturday of Advent, the last of the three Ember Days that fall […]
19
Dec
Dec
Opening Address Friday of the Ember week in Advent, and the Church puts two arrivals in front of us before it says anything else. Isaias promises a shoot coming up out of a stump somebody cut down. Luke sends a young woman up into the hill country in a hurry, and when she gets where […]