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 […]
Tag Archives: Ember Days
25
Sep
Sep
Opening Address Welcome to Bloom’s Daily Offering for Friday, September 25, 2026. Today is Ember Friday of September, second class, a fast day with its own complete Mass, and at the centre of its Lesson God says a sentence this ministry has never printed before: I will heal their breaches, I will love them freely. […]
23
Sep
Sep
Opening Address Welcome to Bloom’s Daily Offering for Wednesday, September 23, 2026, Ember Wednesday of September, second class, with a commemoration of St. Linus, Pope and Martyr. St. Thecla is displaced entirely today, and the joy of the Lord is our strength is the line this whole morning turns on. This is a fast day, […]
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 […]