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. […]
Tag Archives: Bloom Ministries
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 […]
29
Nov
Nov
Opening Address Good morning, and welcome. Today is Saturday, the twenty-ninth of November, and it is the last day of the Church’s year. Tomorrow is the First Sunday of Advent and the whole calendar begins again. The final entry before it is a Saturday with no feast of its own, handed to Our Lady, with […]
26
Nov
Nov
Opening Address Peter asks the blunt question today, and he asks it out loud in front of everybody. Behold we have left all things, and have followed thee: what therefore shall we have? It is the question the pious part of us is embarrassed by, and there is no rebuke anywhere in the answer. Christ […]
25
Nov
Nov
Opening Address Good morning, and welcome. Today is Tuesday, the twenty-fifth of November, and the Church keeps St. Catherine of Alexandria, Virgin and Martyr, third class, in red. The Lesson she is given is a list of everything that nearly destroyed a man, and the clause sitting in the middle of that list is five […]
22
Nov
Nov
Opening Address Good morning, and welcome. Today is Saturday, the twenty-second of November, and the Church keeps St. Cecilia, Virgin and Martyr, third class. Before a single reading, before the saint is so much as described, the entrance chant hands us four words about somebody’s standing: I was not ashamed. The day the temporal calendar […]
21
Nov
Nov
Opening Address Good morning, and welcome. Today is Friday, the twenty-first of November, and the Church keeps the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, third class, in white. The day the temporal calendar names is the Friday after the Twenty-Third Sunday after Pentecost, and that feria is not commemorated at all. There is no other […]
17
Nov
Nov
Opening Address The mountain is the part everybody remembers. Three verses of Mark, a mountain thrown into the sea, and a promise about prayer so large that most of us have quietly filed it under things the Church says on a good day. What hardly anybody stops on is the sentence that arrives before any […]
12
Nov
Nov
Opening Address The Church has one instruction for a shepherd, and today it gives that instruction three times before the homily starts. Feed my lambs, feed my sheep, says the Introit. Feed the flock of God which is among you, says the Epistle, not by constraint, but willingly. Three imperatives and one adverb, and the […]
11
Nov
Nov
Opening Address Most of the Church’s prayers open by naming something true about God and then ask for something on the strength of it. Today’s opens by naming something true about us. O God, Who see that we cannot survive by any power of our own. That is the ground of the whole prayer, and […]