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, […]
Tag Archives: Advent
06
Dec
Dec
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 […]
05
Dec
Dec
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 […]
04
Dec
Dec
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 […]
03
Dec
Dec
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 […]
02
Dec
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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. […]
01
Dec
Dec
Opening Address Advent’s first weekday does something the calendar rarely does out loud: it says yesterday again. The Mass of this Monday is the Mass of the First Sunday of Advent, unchanged, down to the last clause of the Secret, and the order standing in the middle of it is the same order it was […]
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