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, […]
Tag Archives: 1962 Roman Rite
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 […]