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: […]
Tag Archives: Advent
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 […]
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 […]
17
Dec
Dec
Opening Address Advent has been running one formulary for days at a time, and this morning it stops and does something it does not do in any ordinary week. Two Lessons are read instead of one, each with its own Collect and its own Gradual, and the second of them ends with a sentence the […]
16
Dec
Dec
Opening Address Advent goes violet for most of a month, and this morning a martyr’s red is laid across it for one day. The Church keeps St. Eusebius of Vercelli, a bishop who spent years of his life in exile a long way from the city he was given, and the Lesson it hands him […]
13
Dec
Dec
Oppening Address Today the Church keeps St. Lucy, and the first thing worth saying about her Mass is that almost none of it is hers. The Introit is a psalm written for a king. The Lesson is Paul writing to Corinth about his own credentials. The Gospel is the one the Church reads over half […]
11
Dec
Dec
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 […]
10
Dec
Dec
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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