Opening Address Bloom’s Daily Offering for Friday, and the Lesson ends this morning the way it ended on Sunday and twice since: with a prayer that you may abound in hope. Not hold on to some. Not keep enough to be going on with. Abound. This is the Feria VI after the Second Sunday of […]
Category Archives: Daily Offering
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Opening Address Feed my sheep. That is the whole of the order given in this morning’s Mass, and it is given three times before the Lesson has even begun. Today is white, in the middle of a violet fortnight, for a bishop of Rome who died on this day in 384. The Mass itself is […]
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Oppening Address Look forgivingly on thy flock. That is the one sentence this Wednesday adds to a week that has otherwise said everything it has to say already, and it is worth the whole morning. Advent hands us the Second Sunday’s Mass for the third time in four days. The readings are the ones we […]
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Opening Address Bloom’s Daily Offering for Tuesday, and today the Church gives you a text you were given two days ago, on the grounds that it was written for our learning and learning is not a thing that happens once. This is the Feria III after the Second Sunday of Advent, third class, and the […]
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Oppening Address The glory of Jerusalem is a title, and titles have a history. Today the Church says it to a girl in Nazareth who has not yet answered the angel, and it is worth knowing where the Church got the sentence. It did not compose it for her. It found it already in use, […]
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Opening Address The Gospel this morning hands out three unequal sums before a single person in it has done anything at all, and it gives the reason in a single clause: to every one according to his proper ability. Five talents to one man, two to another, one to a third. Not a standard allocation […]
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Opening Address The Church gives St. Sabbas three sentences this morning and gives him nothing else whatsoever, and the first of the three carries the phrase this offering is built on: what we may not have through any merits of ours. No Introit of his own. No Lesson, no chant, no Gospel. A man born […]
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Opening Address A teacher of life. Those are the last four words the Church says about the man whose feast this is, and they arrive at the very end of the prayer, after everything grander has already been said. Listen to the order. The Collect opens with office. It calls him a great Doctor, foreshown […]
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Opening Address How beautiful are the feet. That is where the Epistle arrives this morning, and getting there takes four questions in a row, each one moving the answer a step further from the person you started with. How shall they call on him in whom they have not believed. How shall they believe him […]
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Opening Address The Introit this morning does something a liturgy almost never does: it measures something and reports the dimension rather than passing a verdict. Two clauses, side by side, and each one gets a size. I have seen an end to all persecution—that is the first, and it puts a limit on the harm. […]