Opening Address Good morning, and welcome. Today is Saturday, the eighth of November, and the calendar has nothing of its own to put here. When a Saturday in this stretch of the year comes up empty, the Church hands it to Our Lady, so the vestments are white and the Mass is the fifth Mass […]
Author Archives: Pastora Tori Matthews
07
Nov
Nov
Opening Address Good morning, and welcome. Today is Friday, the seventh of November, the Feria VI after the Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost. The vestments are green. There is no saint on the calendar today and no commemoration attached to the Mass, which means the Church hands us the Sunday’s own texts one more time, unchanged, […]
06
Nov
Nov
Opening Address Three mornings in a row the same Mass has opened with the same sentence, and the sentence is a claim about power: there is none that can resist thy will. Sunday said it, Wednesday said it again, and today says it a third time in green, with nothing else on the calendar. That […]
05
Nov
Nov
Opening Address Paul spends four verses handing out equipment and one verse saying what the equipment is for, and almost everyone reads the four and skips the one. The armour of God is famous. The sentence that tells you who you are wearing it against is not famous at all, and it says, flatly, that […]
04
Nov
Nov
Opening Address Everyone remembers the accounting. The master comes home, the servants line up, the sums are read out, and one man is thrown into the dark. What almost nobody remembers is the sentence the two commended men actually hear, which is not a score and not a ranking but this: faithful over a few […]
03
Nov
Nov
Opening Address Today the Church does something it does on no other day of the year. It gathers up every person who has died in the faith, refuses to sort them, and asks one single thing for the whole crowd at once: eternal rest give to them, O Lord. Yesterday belonged to the saints, the […]
02
Nov
Nov
Opening Address Bloom’s Sunday Mass, and today it opens on four words that the Gospel puts in two different mouths: have patience with me. We offer this Mass in the Independent Catholic tradition—not affiliated with or recognized by the Roman Catholic Church, but standing in the same Roman Rite, held by a pastor for whom […]
01
Nov
Nov
Opening Address Let us all rejoice in the Lord, celebrating a feast day in honour of all the Saints. All of them. One morning, one Mass, and a congregation which no man could number. Beloved, grace and peace to you this Saturday, however you have come to be reading: certain, unravelling, or trying the first […]
31
Oct
Oct
Opening Address Serve thee with a quiet mind — the Collect doesn’t ask for the adversity itself to vanish first, and it’s worth carrying into this morning before anything else is said. Beloved, grace and peace to you this morning — however you arrive here: tired or hopeful, certain or doubting, welcomed elsewhere or shut […]
30
Oct
Oct
Opening Address Fillest every living creature with blessing — not the deserving, not the grateful, not the ones who ask the right way, just every living creature, and it’s worth carrying into this morning before anything else is said. Beloved, grace and peace to you this morning — however you arrive here: tired or hopeful, […]