Bloom’s Daily Offering<\/strong> for Friday, and the psalm sung between the readings this morning opens with a finished sentence: thou hast saved us<\/em>. Not save us<\/em>. Not thou wilt save us<\/em> one day when the paperwork is done. Today is a fourth-class feria in green, with no saint, no feast and no commemoration on it, and it is the last Friday of the Church’s year. Beloved, grace and peace to you, wherever this finds you and however the week has gone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One thing should be clear before we begin. Every text of this Mass belongs to Sunday the twenty-third, and every text of it was also sung yesterday. The Church has now said this Mass three times in six days and has not altered a word of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So the sentence arrives for the third time in the same condition it arrived in the first. Thou hast saved us.<\/strong> Nobody updated the tense on Thursday when nothing had happened, and nobody updated it this morning either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You do not need to believe any of this for the next quarter of an hour to be worth your time. If you have ever been told you had no right to say a thing about yourself until you could produce the evidence for it, today’s Gradual is about you, and the theology comes off cleanly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Today is a genuine repeat twice over, and it is worth saying so plainly at the top.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Mass of this Friday is the Mass of my words shall not pass<\/a>, offered here on Sunday the twenty-third, and it is also the Mass of i will hear you<\/a>, offered yesterday. The same Introit, the same Collect, the same Lesson from Colossians, the same Gradual, the same Gospel from Matthew, the same Secret. The readings are therefore not reprinted below<\/strong>. Their citations are given and linked, and both earlier offerings carry them in full.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Against yesterday, nothing whatever has moved. Ten propers, ten matches, and the Preface is the Common one on both days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Against Sunday, two things moved, and both moved on Thursday rather than today. The Preface is the Common one where Sunday’s was the Preface of the Most Holy Trinity, and the Alleluia is not sung, its verse from the hundred and twenty-ninth psalm standing inside the Gradual with the alleluias taken off it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (Jeremias 29:11-12; 29:14; Ps. 84:2)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n (The antiphon is the Missal’s own arrangement, drawn from three places in the twenty-ninth chapter of Jeremias and joined into a single sentence.)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Lord saith: I think thoughts of peace, and not of affliction<\/a>: you shall call upon me, and I will hear you; and I will bring back your captivity from all places.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n \u2123. Lord, thou hast blessed thy land: thou hast turned away the captivity of Jacob. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hear the psalm verse under it. Thou hast blessed. Thou hast turned away.<\/em> The chant that opens this Mass is already in the perfect tense before the Gradual gets anywhere near it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Stir up, we beseech Thee, O Lord, the wills of Thy faithful people: that, seeking more earnestly the fruit of Thy divine work, they may receive more abundantly the healing effects of Thy goodness. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n The prayer asks for more of something and does not suggest that what came before it was insufficient. It is the same request the Church made on Sunday and again yesterday, word for word.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (Colossians 1:9-14<\/a>, Douay-Rheims)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n (Today’s Lesson is Sunday’s Lesson entire, and is not reprinted here. It is printed in full in the offering for November 23.)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n (Ps. 43:8-9, with the verse of Ps. 129:1-2; the address “O Lord” belongs to the Missal’s arrangement rather than to either verse)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Thou hast saved us, O Lord, from them that afflict us<\/a>: and hast put them to shame that hate us.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n \u2123. In God shall we glory all the day long: and in thy name we will give praise for ever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2123. Out of the depths<\/a> I have cried to thee, O Lord: Lord, hear my voice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (Matthew 24:15-35<\/a>, Douay-Rheims)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n (Today’s Gospel is Sunday’s Gospel entire, twenty-one verses, and is not reprinted here. It is printed in full in the offering for November 23.)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Read the Gradual again, slowly, and count the tenses in it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thou hast saved us<\/em>\u2014finished. In God shall we glory<\/em>\u2014not yet. Out of the depths I have cried<\/em>\u2014now, this morning, from the bottom of something. Three tenses in nine lines of text, and the Church has printed them in that order and left them there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Church begins where a person would end. Thou hast saved us<\/strong> is the first thing out of anybody’s mouth this morning, and it is not the order a person would put them in. A reasonable arrangement runs bottom to top: cry from the depths first, then rescue, then praise. What the Missal actually sings is rescue first, praise second, and the cry from the bottom last of all, as the final thing in your ear before the Gospel starts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Start with the grammar, because everything follows from it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The line reads thou hast saved us, O Lord, from them that afflict us: and hast put them to shame that hate us.<\/em> Perfect tense, both verbs. Not a hope, not a petition, not a forecast. A report on something the singer treats as having already happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thou hast saved us.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It is also the first thing said. Before the psalm has admitted to any trouble, before the Gospel has said a word about wars or false prophets or the sky coming apart, the Church puts thou hast saved us<\/strong> at the top of the block and asks a room to sing it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is a version of religion that would find this dishonest, and it is worth naming what makes it feel that way. Nothing in the room has changed when thou hast saved us<\/strong> is sung. The people singing it went out afterwards to the same week they came in from, and by any measure available to them the afflicting was still going on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is sung anyway, thou hast saved us<\/strong>, in the past tense, on an ordinary Friday morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Look closely at the second verb, because it is doing something careful. Hast put them to shame that hate us<\/em>\u2014not removed them, not abolished them, not taken them off the earth. The afflicters are still in the sentence and still in the world; what has changed is their standing, not their existence. Thou hast saved us<\/strong> is therefore a narrower claim than the triumphant reading of it, and a much more usable one, because it does not require your circumstances to be empty of trouble before it can be said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The same holds with the theology taken out. Human beings say finished sentences about unfinished situations all the time, and it is not usually lying\u2014it is a way of naming which thing you are going to treat as settled so that you can get on with the rest. I got out.<\/em> You can say that on a morning when nothing is fixed and it is still true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now the second line, and it is doing the opposite work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In God shall we glory all the day long: and in thy name we will give praise for ever.<\/em> Future, twice. The glorying has not started and the praise is not yet given, and the psalm is content to leave both of them out ahead where you cannot reach them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So the deliverance named in thou hast saved us<\/strong> is behind, and the celebration is in front. That already tells you where the singer is standing: in between, on the ordinary ground, with the good news in the past tense and the party not yet begun. Most of a life is spent exactly there, and thou hast saved us<\/strong> is what the Church hands you to sing while you are in it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And then the third line, which is where the whole thing would fall over if the Church had wanted a tidy morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Out of the depths I have cried to thee, O Lord: Lord, hear my voice.<\/em> One voice, singular, still down there, still asking. Nothing in the Gradual reconciles it with the sentence at the top, and nothing apologises for the gap. Thou hast saved us<\/strong> stands three lines above it, unretracted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Look at what is not said. There is no although<\/em>. There is no but we forgot<\/em>. There is no line explaining that the rescue was spiritual and the depths are only temporal, which is the standard patch and is not in the text.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thou hast saved us<\/strong>, and out of the depths I have cried, in the same nine lines, and the Church made no attempt to sort them out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here is the plain reading, and it is worth stopping on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The first line says us<\/em>. Plural, corporate, the whole room. The third line says I<\/em>. Singular, one person, at the bottom. And the same congregation sings both, which means the person crying from the depths is standing inside the us<\/em> that has already been saved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thou hast saved us.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n That is a stronger claim than the sentimental version of it. It does not say the saved will come back for you later. It says you are already counted in the sentence, this morning, while you are still down there and still asking, and the counting was not held back until you improved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Including the one who cannot see it: thou hast saved us<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Put thou hast saved us<\/strong> in plain terms and it survives intact. Belonging that waits for you to be alright is not belonging, it is a waiting list. A group that says we came through<\/em> while one of its people is plainly not through yet is either being careless or is making a deliberate decision about who is in the sentence, and this one is deliberate, because it printed both halves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now the arrangement itself, which is the ground under all of this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This Gradual was sung on Sunday the twenty-third. It was sung again yesterday. It is sung again this morning, and the tense has not been adjusted once in six days, though nothing in those six days delivered anybody from anything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That is the part I find hardest to argue with. A tense that meant to be provisional would have been revised by now. Three mornings is enough for anybody to lose their nerve, and the Missal simply hands the same finished sentence to the same room and lets it stand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A provisional sentence would also have been softened, and this one has not been. There is no in some sense<\/em>, no in a manner of speaking<\/em>, no qualifying clause anywhere in the line. Thou hast saved us<\/strong>, flat, three mornings running, from a Church that had every opportunity to hedge it and did not take one of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On the eighth of this month we prayed a Collect asking to be delivered from present sorrow<\/a>, and set that beside this. There the sorrow is admitted as present, with no end date on it. Here the deliverance is stated as past. Both are said by the same Church, and neither is asked to give way to the other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The sorrow is still present tense and thou hast saved us<\/strong> is still perfect. Both sentences are true at once, or the Church has been singing a contradiction it never troubled to settle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are two days left in the year of the Church, and thou hast saved us<\/strong> is what carries it out. Sunday is the first Sunday of Advent, violet, a first-class day, the whole thing beginning again. The old year goes out on a green Friday singing a rescue in the perfect tense, with no summary, no accounting and nothing asked of anybody.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now the harm, and the arrangement of this morning is what dismantles it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A teaching goes round, rarely stated outright and constantly implied, that prayer only counts when it is fresh. That the real thing is spontaneous, in your own words, different each time, and that saying the same words in the same order is a lower form of it\u2014going through the motions, a recitation rather than a prayer, something to be grown out of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thou hast saved us.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Church’s own practice this morning is the flat refutation of it. Identical text, third morning running, not one syllable varied, and the third saying is treated as a complete act of worship rather than as a rehearsal of the first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I am naming who this teaching lands on hardest. Autistic people, for whom the same words in the same order are very often not a shortcut but the reason participation is possible at all\u2014and who are told, in a hundred small ways, that a person who needs the form is not really praying, only performing it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The whole Church said thou hast saved us<\/strong> the same way three times, on purpose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The fruit test belongs on our own record and nobody else’s, so put it there and ask what such a teaching produces. Congregations that sing thou hast saved us<\/strong> in unison and then quietly rank the people who need a fixed shape below the people who can improvise one. Adults who have stopped coming altogether, because the unscripted parts were unbearable and the scripted parts were the only reason they could be in the room. And a working assumption that God prefers novelty to being spoken to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A further cost is quieter than all of those, and it should be said. A person taught that their prayer is second-rate does not usually argue about it; they simply stop offering it where anybody can hear, and then stop offering it at all, and the congregation concludes they were never very devout. The Gradual this morning was written for exactly that person, and thou hast saved us<\/strong> is handed to them in the same words as everybody else.<\/p>\n\n\n\nA Word on Today’s Propers<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Introit<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Collect<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Epistle<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Gradual<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Gospel<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The Offering<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The rescue is put first, and it is already over<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
What comes second, and what comes last<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
The one in the depths is inside the “us”<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Nothing was updated on the third morning<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
What gets taught about saying the same words<\/h3>\n\n\n\n