Daily Offering · 26 September 2026 · Ember Saturday of September
Daily Offering: September 26, 2026 | Daughter of Abraham
Welcome to Bloom’s Daily Offering for Saturday, September 26, 2026. This is the Ember Saturday of September, a day of the second class, and the longest Mass you will meet in an ordinary week. Five Lessons, four Graduals, six Collects, and only then the…
The order of this offering
Before the readings
The Word
Offering and Canon
I
Opening Address
Welcome to Bloom’s Daily Offering for Saturday, September 26, 2026. This is the Ember Saturday of September, a day of the second class, and the longest Mass you will meet in an ordinary week. Five Lessons, four Graduals, six Collects, and only then the Epistle and the Gospel. We read the whole of it, and it ends with a woman whom Christ refuses to describe by her condition and calls a daughter of Abraham instead.
Wherever you are, you are welcome here. If you have been waiting a long time for something that keeps getting put back by one more day, stay for the Gospel, and stay for the daughter of Abraham at the end of it. The argument Christ makes there rests on nothing you have earned. You are already a daughter of Abraham, and no rule was written to be read against a daughter of Abraham.
II
A Word on Today’s Propers
Ember days come four times a year, three days each time, and September’s are the vintage set. We kept the Ember Wednesday of this week on Wednesday and the Ember Friday yesterday. Saturday is the long one: five prophecies before the Epistle, and the day on which the Roman Church anciently conferred ordination. The daughter of Abraham comes at the very end of all of it.
One thing here is not new, and I would rather say so than have you find it. The Fifth Lesson and the Sixth Collect are the texts we printed on the Ember Saturday of Advent last December, because every Ember Saturday ends its Lessons in the same furnace. Everything else is new to this archive: five Collects, four Graduals, the Epistle, and the Gospel that gives us a daughter of Abraham.
III
Introit
Ps 94:6-7; Ps 94:1
Come let us adore and fall down: and weep before the Lord that made us. For he is the Lord our God.
℣. Come let us praise the Lord with joy: let us joyfully sing to God our saviour. 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.
IV
Collect
Almighty and everlasting God, Who by healing self-denial dost cure both body and soul, we humbly beseech Thy majesty that Thou wouldst mercifully hear the devout prayer of them that fast, and grant us help for the present and for the time to come. 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.
V
The First Lesson
And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Upon the tenth day of this seventh month shall be the day of atonement, it shall be most solemn, and shall be called holy: and you shall afflict your souls on that day, and shall offer a holocaust to the Lord.
You shall do no servile work in the time of this day: because it is a day of propitiation, that the Lord your God may be merciful unto you. Every soul that is not afflicted on this day, shall perish from among his people:
And every soul that shall do any work, the same will I destroy from among his people. You shall do no work therefore on that day: it shall be an everlasting ordinance unto you in all your generations, and dwellings.
It is a sabbath of rest, and you shall afflict your souls beginning on the ninth day of the month: from evening until evening you shall celebrate your sabbaths.
VI
The First Gradual
Ps 78:9-10
Forgive us our sins, O Lord: lest they should say among the Gentiles: Where is their God?
℣. Help us, O God our saviour: and for the glory of thy name, O Lord, deliver us.
VII
The Second Collect
Grant us, we beseech Thee, almighty God, that by fasting we may be filled with Thy grace, and by abstinence be made stronger than all our enemies. 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.
VIII
The Second Lesson
So from the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when you shall have gathered in all the fruits of your land, you shall celebrate the feast of the Lord seven days: on the first day and the eighth shall be a sabbath, that is a day of rest.
And you shall take to you on the first day the fruits of the fairest tree, and branches of palm trees, and boughs of thick trees, and willows of the brook, and you shall rejoice before the Lord your God.
And you shall keep the solemnity thereof seven days in the year. It shall be an everlasting ordinance in your generations. In the seventh month shall you celebrate this feast.
And you shall dwell in bowers seven days: every one that is of the race of Israel, shall dwell in tabernacles: that your posterity may know, that I made the children of Israel to dwell in tabernacles, when I brought them out of the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God.
IX
The Second Gradual
Ps 83:10, 9
Behold, O God our protector: and look upon thy servants.
℣. O Lord God of hosts, hear the prayers of thy servants.
The Missal’s own Latin has moved here. The Vulgate psalm asks God to look on the face of His anointed; the Gradual asks Him to look on His servants, and makes the psalm’s singular prayer a plural one.
X
The Third Collect
Defend Thy household, we beseech Thee, O Lord, that the remedies of eternal salvation which we seek by Thy inspiring we may obtain by Thy bestowing. 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.
XI
The Third Lesson
Feed thy people with thy rod, the flock of thy inheritance, them that dwell alone in the forest, in the midst of Carmel: they shall feed in Basan and Galaad according to the days of old.
The nations shall see, and shall be confounded at all their strength: they shall put the hand upon the mouth, their ears shall be deaf.
Who is a God like to thee, who takest away iniquity, and passest by the sin of the remnant of thy inheritance? he will send his fury in no more, because he delighteth in mercy.
He will turn again, and have mercy on us: he will put away our iniquities: and he will cast all our sins into the bottom of the sea. Thou wilt perform the truth of Jacob, the mercy to Abraham: which thou hast sworn to our fathers from the days of old.
XII
The Third Gradual
Ps 89:13, 1
Return, O Lord, how long? and be entreated in favour of thy servants.
℣. Lord, thou hast been our refuge from generation to generation.
XIII
The Fourth Collect
Grant, we beseech Thee, O Lord, that we may so abstain from bodily food that we may fast likewise from the sins that beset us. 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.
XIV
The Fourth Lesson
For thus saith the Lord of hosts: As I purposed to afflict you, when your fathers had provoked me to wrath, saith the Lord, and I had no mercy: so turning again I have thought in these days to do good to the house of Juda, and Jerusalem: fear not.
These then are the things, which you shall do: Speak ye truth every one to his neighbour: judge ye truth and judgment of peace in your gates. And let none of you imagine evil in your hearts against his friend: and love not a false oath: for all these are the things that I hate, saith the Lord.
And the word of the Lord of hosts came to me, saying: Thus saith the Lord of hosts: The fast of the fourth month, and the fast of the fifth, and the fast of the seventh, and the fast of the tenth shall be to the house of Juda, joy, and gladness, and great solemnities: only love ye truth and peace.
XV
The Fourth Gradual
Ps 140:2
Let my prayer be directed as incense in thy sight, O Lord.
℣. The lifting up of my hands, as evening sacrifice.
XVI
The Fifth Collect
As Thou grantest us, O Lord, to offer Thee this solemn fast, so grant us, we beseech Thee, the help of Thy forgiveness. 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.
XVII
The Fifth Lesson
But the angel of the Lord went down with Azarias and his companions into the furnace: and he drove the flame of the fire out of the furnace, and made the midst of the furnace like the blowing of a wind bringing dew, and the fire touched them not at all, nor troubled them, nor did them any harm.
Then these three as with one mouth praised, and glorified, and blessed God in the furnace, saying:
(Here the canticle Benedictus es is sung, in place of a Gradual.)
This Lesson and the Collect after it are the texts we printed on the Ember Saturday of Advent. They close the Lessons of every Ember Saturday in the year.
XVIII
The Sixth Collect
O God, Who didst mitigate the flames of fire for the three children, mercifully grant that the flame of vice may not burn us Thy servants. 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.
XIX
The Commemoration
Sts. Cyprian and Justina, Martyrs
May the unceasing protection of the blessed martyrs Cyprian and Justina cherish us, O Lord: for Thou ceasest not mercifully to regard those whom Thou hast granted to be helped by such aid. 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.
XX
The Epistle
Brethren: For there was a tabernacle made the first, wherein were the candlesticks, and the table, and the setting forth of loaves, which is called the holy. And after the second veil, the tabernacle, which is called the holy of holies.
Having a golden censer, and the ark of the testament covered about on every part with gold, in which was a golden pot that had manna, and the rod of Aaron, that had blossomed, and the tables of the testament.
And over it were the cherubims of glory overshadowing the propitiatory: of which it is not needful to speak now particularly. Now these things being thus ordered, into the first tabernacle the priests indeed always entered, accomplishing the offices of sacrifices.
But into the second, the high priest alone, once a year: not without blood, which he offereth for his own, and the people’s ignorance. The Holy Ghost signifying this, that the way into the holies was not yet made manifest, whilst the former tabernacle was yet standing.
Which is a parable of the time present: according to which gifts and sacrifices are offered, which can not, as to the conscience, make him perfect that serveth, only in meats and in drinks, and divers washings, and justices of the flesh laid on them until the time of correction.
But Christ, being come an high priest of the good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hand, that is, not of this creation: neither by the blood of goats, or of calves, but by his own blood, entered once into the holies, having obtained eternal redemption.
XXI
The Gradual
Ps 116:1-2
O praise the Lord, all ye nations: praise him, all ye people.
℣. For his mercy is confirmed upon us: and the truth of the Lord remaineth for ever.
XXII
The Gospel
At that time, Jesus spoke this parable: A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it, and found none. And he said to the dresser of the vineyard: Behold, for these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down therefore: why cumbereth it the ground?
But he answering, said to him: Lord, let it alone this year also, until I dig about it, and dung it. And if happily it bear fruit: but if not, then after that thou shalt cut it down.
And he was teaching in their synagogue on their sabbath. And behold there was a woman, who had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years: and she was bowed together, neither could she look upwards at all.
Whom when Jesus saw, he called her unto him, and said to her: Woman, thou art delivered from thy infirmity. And he laid his hands upon her, and immediately she was made straight, and glorified God.
And the ruler of the synagogue (being angry that Jesus had healed on the sabbath) answering, said to the multitude: Six days there are wherein you ought to work. In them therefore come, and be healed; and not on the sabbath day.
And the Lord answering him, said: Ye hypocrites, doth not every one of you, on the sabbath day, loose his ox or his ass from the manger, and lead them to water? And ought not this daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the sabbath day?
And when he said these things, all his adversaries were ashamed: and all the people rejoiced for all the things that were gloriously done by him.
The Offering
Daily Homily | Daughter of Abraham
The shape of this Mass is an argument, made long before the daughter of Abraham arrives.
Five Lessons, and then one woman
The shape of this Mass is an argument, made long before the daughter of Abraham arrives.
Four of the five Lessons are about a calendar. Leviticus fixes a day of atonement and forbids work on it. Leviticus fixes a feast of booths and forbids work on that one too. Zacharias takes four fast days and promises they will turn into great solemnities.
Then comes a Gospel in which sacred time is used against a woman, and Christ settles it by calling her a daughter of Abraham.
The lectionary did that on purpose. The Ember days are the Church’s own thanksgiving at the vintage, and they were the days Rome conferred ordination. The Church spends a morning on the law of holy days and hands you the one story where that law is the obstacle, and where a daughter of Abraham is what it obstructs.
The Epistle works the same seam. Hebrews walks the furniture of the first tabernacle, the censer, the ark, the rod of Aaron that had blossomed, and then says the quiet thing: those gifts and sacrifices can not, as to the conscience, make him perfect that serveth. The apparatus was real. A daughter of Abraham stands in a room full of apparatus this morning, and none of it reaches her.
He does not argue the rule
Read what the ruler of the synagogue says, because it is more reasonable than it is usually made to sound. Six days there are wherein you ought to work. In them therefore come, and be healed; and not on the sabbath day. He is not refusing her. He is scheduling a daughter of Abraham.
Christ does not abolish the sabbath, and he does not tell the man he has misread his own law.
He argues from inside it, the way a lawyer argues. You untie an ox on the sabbath and walk it to water. Untying is permitted; the only question left is who counts. Then he answers that question with a name. And ought not this daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the sabbath day?
This is a family argument about how a family’s law should be read, and the passage has been made to carry what it cannot bear. A daughter of Abraham is not an outsider being defended against her own people. She is the reason the law exists. Any reading that turns this scene into a verdict on the Jewish people has lost the argument Christ is making, since his whole case rests on her belonging to them.
Apply the fruit test where it belongs, which is to our own record. Ask what Christian rule-keeping has grown when it met a daughter of Abraham at the wrong hour of the week. It grew buildings with a step at the door and a good reason for the step. It grew rotas that could not be moved and people who therefore could not come. It grew the words not today, said kindly to a daughter of Abraham, for eighteen years.
She is a daughter of Abraham
Everything turns on where a daughter of Abraham gets her standing.
Christ does not call her a daughter of Abraham after she is made straight, as a reward for the healing. He calls her that while the argument is still running about whether she should have been healed at all. She was a daughter of Abraham bent double, and she is a daughter of Abraham standing up, and nothing in between changed her name.
So hear what this text does not say, because a Gospel about a body being unbound can be misheard by anyone taught that their body is a debt. It does not say she was bound by something she did, or that the eighteen years were a sentence she had earned. Being unbound is never the price of her belonging, because the belonging is what he argues from, out loud, in front of everybody. If you are not made straight this morning, you are not less a daughter of Abraham this afternoon.
I will name who most needs that said. Disabled people are told, constantly and often gently, that their inclusion is a scheduling problem. The ramp is coming. The rota will be looked at. Come on a Tuesday when there is more help.
Every one of those is the ruler of the synagogue’s sentence. The Gospel answers it with a daughter of Abraham who had been standing there the whole time.
Let me be exact about how this differs from yesterday’s claim, since these are two mornings running on a woman, an indignant host and a rule. Yesterday was about love given without being earned. Earning is not today’s question at all. Today is about standing, which a daughter of Abraham holds bent or straight, and the argument rests on kinship rather than on mercy.
Mercy can be withheld a day. A daughter of Abraham cannot be rescheduled.
If none of the theology is yours, take the plain version. A rule that leaves a daughter of Abraham waiting eighteen years and then one more day is being read wrongly, and the test of any arrangement is the oldest case it has kept waiting.
What the fig tree was given
The fig tree shares a page with the daughter of Abraham for a reason. A man wants three barren years ended with an axe. The vine-dresser asks for one more, and not on the strength of a promise: let it alone this year also, until I dig about it, and dung it. Time and labour, and the labour is his.
There is a story sometimes told of a man who kept nine of the twelve appointments he was given in his first year of recovery, and kept them badly. He arrived late to most, left early from two, and once sat in the car park for the full hour and drove home.
His counsellor did not close the file. She held the same slot on the same afternoon all year, wrote attended or did not attend in a box, and said nothing about the pattern. He will tell you now that the year was not preparation for the treatment. The year was the treatment.
Nobody watched a fig tree produce for twelve months, and nobody in that office saw much fruit either. The daughter of Abraham in this Gospel had eighteen such years, and the only man in the room who read them as evidence about her was the one holding the calendar.
So take one thing out of a very long Mass. If you are the fig tree this morning rather than the daughter of Abraham, you are not on a last warning, and the ground round you is being dug by somebody who has not mentioned it. If you are anywhere near the calendar, look at who your arrangements keep deferring, and move the appointment rather than the person. A daughter of Abraham was not asked to wait until Sunday, and the whole of the Lord’s answer was a name she already had.
↑ The order resumes below.
XXIV
Secret
Grant, we beseech Thee, almighty God, that the gift offered in the sight of Thy majesty may obtain for us the grace of devout service and gain for us the reward of a blessed eternity. 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.
XXV
The Holding
May God untie this Saturday whatever has been tied around you for years. And if He does not untie it this Saturday, may you leave this Mass knowing that the name daughter of Abraham never depended on it. You are a daughter of Abraham bent or standing, and the argument that freed a daughter of Abraham was made before she was upright. May Almighty God bless you, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.
If that language is not yours, take the plain form. Your standing among your own people is not something you earn back by getting better, and an arrangement that keeps deferring you is the thing that needs changing.
XXVI
Frequently Asked Questions
Because it is an Ember Saturday. The Roman Church anciently conferred priesthood and diaconate on the Saturdays of Ember week, and the Ember formularies have long carried lessons from Scripture beyond the ordinary two; the 1962 Missal prints five here before the Epistle, with four Graduals and six Collects. September’s are the vintage set of the four Embertides, which is why the Lessons turn on holy days and on the gathering in of the fruits of the land.
No. Only seven vigils survived the reforms of 1955 into the 1962 Missal, and only three octaves, and none of them falls anywhere near this week. Ember days are not an octave and never were; they are three separate days of fast kept four times a year. So today is not the eve of anything, and neither is tomorrow.
It is a claim of kinship, and in this Gospel it is the whole argument. Calling her a daughter of Abraham says she is a member of the covenant family, with everything that family’s law was written to protect, and it says so before anything else about her is discussed. Christ uses it as a premise: because she is a daughter of Abraham, the sabbath cannot be read so as to keep her bound one more day.
No, and the text forbids that reading on its own terms. The case Christ makes depends entirely on the woman being a daughter of Abraham, a member of the same covenant people as the man objecting, and he argues from within the sabbath law rather than against it, using the ordinary permission to untie an animal. This is an argument inside a family about how that family’s law should be read. Christians who have used the scene to condemn a whole people have inverted it.
No. Nothing in this Gospel makes her standing depend on her being made straight. She is called a daughter of Abraham in the middle of the dispute, while the question of whether she should be healed at all is still open, so the belonging is the ground of the argument rather than its result. Nothing presents her being bound as her fault, or her being unbound as the price of her place.
Because every Ember Saturday of the year ends its Lessons in the same furnace, with Daniel and the three children, and closes with the same Collect asking that the flame of vice may not burn us. We printed both on the Ember Saturday of Advent last December and have linked that post at the Lesson itself. Reading them again is what the Missal does, and we will not pretend they are new.
They are commemorated together today, and this Cyprian is Cyprian of Antioch, a different man from the bishop of Carthage who bears the same name. The Catholic Encyclopedia is blunt about the rest: it calls the famous account of the magician and the Christian woman a “legend or allegory” carried in an unreliable source, and states flatly that no bishop of Antioch ever bore the name Cyprian. So we keep their commemoration and print their prayer, and we do not print the story as history.
No. The logic works with no theology attached. A rule that keeps producing the same deferred person is being read wrongly, and the honest test of any arrangement is the case it has kept waiting longest. In one plain sentence: nobody’s membership should depend on their condition improving, and a rota that can untie an animal on a Saturday can move an appointment for a person.
Faith in Bloom is the daily liturgical work of Bloom Ministries, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and it is free to read and always will be. If it has been worth something to you and you are able, you can give once or give monthly below. Sending a post to one person who needs it does real work too.
Propers for the Ember Saturday 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.
