Welcome to Bloom’s Daily Offering for Friday, September 18, 2026, the feast of St. Joseph of Cupertino, Confessor, a feast of the third class. The Lesson this morning is the chapter everybody knows, and its first sentence takes a man who can speak every language there is, human and otherwise, and says that without charity he is a tinkling cymbal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wherever you are, you are welcome here. If you have spent years being measured by a church against a list of things you were supposed to be able to do, the Lesson takes that list apart this morning, and it does not take it apart from the bottom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The vestments are white. No saint is commemorated alongside today’s, nothing is displaced by it, and the propers are the feast’s own from beginning to end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One thing before we begin, because regular readers will hear it. The psalm verse under the entrance chant stood here three weeks ago<\/a>, in a Sunday Mass, from the same psalm and the same opening line. A Daily Offering does not hold a verse back for having been sung recently, so it stands here again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ecclus. 1:14-15; Ps. 83:2.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n The love of God is honourable wisdom. And they to whom she shall shew herself love her by the sight, and by the knowledge of her great works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How lovely are thy tabernacles, O Lord of hosts!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n The psalm verse takes the opening clause of the second verse of Psalm 83, which is where the psalm’s own text begins, the first verse being its title line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen. The antiphon is repeated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The chant opens on wisdom and then immediately redefines it as love. That is the day’s whole argument arriving before the Lesson has been read.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let us pray.<\/p>\n\n\n\n O God, Who didst will that all things be drawn unto Thy Son when He was raised above the earth: mercifully grant, by the merits and example of Thy seraphic Confessor Joseph, that, having been raised above all earthly desires, we may be found worthy to come unto Him. Who livest and reignest with God the Father in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n The prayer asks by somebody else’s merits and by somebody else’s example, and the raising in it is done to us rather than by us. Neither verb is ours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 1 Cor 13:1-8<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Brethren: If I speak with the tongues of men, and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And if I should have prophecy and should know all mysteries, and all knowledge, and if I should have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And if I should distribute all my goods to feed the poor, and if I should deliver my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Charity is patient, is kind: charity envieth not, dealeth not perversely; is not puffed up; is not ambitious, seeketh not her own, is not provoked to anger, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth with the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Charity never falleth away: whether prophecies shall be made void, or tongues shall cease, or knowledge shall be destroyed.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n The chapter immediately before this one stood here in August<\/a>, where Paul ranks the gifts of the Spirit. This Lesson is the sentence he writes next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ps. 20:4-5<\/a>; Ecclus. 11:13.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For thou hast prevented him with blessings of sweetness: thou hast set on his head a crown of precious stones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2123. He asked life of thee: and thou hast given him length of days for ever and ever. Alleluia, alleluia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2123. Yet the eye of God hath looked upon him for good, and hath lifted him up from his low estate, and hath exalted his head. Alleluia.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n The Alleluia verse stops there and leaves the rest of its verse unsung.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Matt 22:1-14<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n At that time, Jesus spoke to the chief priests and the Pharisees in parables, saying: The kingdom of heaven is likened to a king, who made a marriage for his son. And he sent his servants, to call them that were invited to the marriage; and they would not come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Again he sent other servants, saying: Tell them that were invited, Behold, I have prepared my dinner; my calves and fatlings are killed, and all things are ready: come ye to the marriage. But they neglected, and went their own ways, one to his farm, and another to his merchandise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And the rest laid hands on his servants, and having treated them contumeliously, put them to death. But when the king had heard of it, he was angry, and sending his armies, he destroyed those murderers, and burnt their city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then he saith to his servants: The marriage indeed is ready; but they that were invited were not worthy. Go ye therefore into the highways; and as many as you shall find, call to the marriage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And his servants going forth into the ways, gathered together all that they found, both bad and good: and the marriage was filled with guests. And the king went in to see the guests: and he saw there a man who had not on a wedding garment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And he saith to him: Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment? But he was silent. Then the king said to the waiters: Bind his hands and feet, and cast him into the exterior darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. For many are called, but few are chosen.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n The Missal’s own opening names the audience, where the Douay says only that Jesus spoke again in parables to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read the Lesson’s first three verses again and look at what Paul is actually weighing, because the whole morning turns on it and most sermons on a tinkling cymbal get the direction wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Every language there is. All mysteries, and all knowledge.<\/em> All faith, so that I could remove mountains.<\/em> All my goods to feed the poor.<\/em> My body to be burned.<\/em> Every single item on that list is a maximum. Not one of them is a modest achievement, and not one is something an ordinary person is failing to manage. No one arrives at a tinkling cymbal from underneath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Paul is not describing a deficient believer who ought to try harder. He is describing the most accomplished person you could construct, and he is doing it on purpose. He builds the best possible case and then cancels it: without charity, sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That is worth saying slowly, because it reverses the usual direction of travel. A tinkling cymbal is not what you become by falling short. It is what the fullest possible life in the Spirit amounts to if one thing is absent, and the one thing is not on the list of accomplishments at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Count the cancellation three times, because he does. Verse one ends at a tinkling cymbal. Verse two ends I am nothing<\/em>. Verse three ends it profiteth me nothing<\/em>. Three enormous columns of credit, and three lines drawn straight through them, and it is the first of the three that gives us a tinkling cymbal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So the measure in this chapter is applied at the top of the scale and not at the bottom. That is a different thing from what it is usually made to say, and it changes who should be worried. A person with no gifts on that list to show is not the one this Lesson is warning, because none of the things it cancels were ever in their hands to begin with. You cannot become a tinkling cymbal by failing at things you were never given.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now the image itself, because it is exact and it is not an insult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A cymbal is not broken. It is not cheap, it is not faulty, and it has not failed at being a cymbal. It does the one thing it was made to do, loudly and well, and a tinkling cymbal is a perfectly good instrument doing its job. What Paul says is that a man with every gift and no charity has become one: functioning, audible, and carrying nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That is why the comparison lands where it does. He does not say such a person is worthless, or a fraud, or unwelcome. He says the output is noise, and noise is what an instrument makes when there is no music being played through it. A tinkling cymbal is a diagnosis of a sound and not a verdict on a soul, and the difference between those two things is most of what this chapter is for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And hold the pronoun, because Paul refuses to hide behind the third person. If I speak. If I should have prophecy. If I should distribute. If I deliver my body.<\/em> He is the one in the sentence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The man writing this puts himself in the position of a tinkling cymbal four times over before he describes charity at all. Whatever a tinkling cymbal is, it is first of all what the apostle says he would be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So the door this could open has to be shut now rather than later. Nothing here tells you that your faith is noise, that your years of turning up amounted to a tinkling cymbal, or that what you have managed does not count. The list Paul cancels is a list of things people are admired for, and he cancels them to say what they are worth without love, not to price anybody’s life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We were on this word five days ago, and the two claims are not the same claim. That Sunday<\/a> charity was the ground underneath a person, put there by somebody else while they stood still. Today it is the thing that makes everything above ground count for something, and a tinkling cymbal is what is left when it is missing. Ground on Sunday, current today, and a tinkling cymbal is what the wire carries when the current is off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And it differs from yesterday<\/a> too, which is worth saying plainly. Yesterday’s prayers asked on another man’s account, and the decisive move sat outside the person praying. Today the decisive thing is charity, and charity is not somebody else’s. It is the one item on this whole page that is actually yours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Verses four to seven are the definition, and there is a structural fact in them that does more work than any single phrase.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Count the negatives. Charity envieth not<\/em>, dealeth not perversely<\/em>, is not puffed up<\/em>, is not ambitious<\/em>, seeketh not her own<\/em>, is not provoked to anger<\/em>, thinketh no evil<\/em>, rejoiceth not in iniquity<\/em>. Eight things charity does not do, and every single one of them describes the person doing the loving. Not one describes the person being loved. The whole definition is a portrait of the lover, and it is unflattering in eight specific ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Which brings the fruit test onto our own record, where it belongs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One clause of that list gets lifted out and carried around on its own. Gay, lesbian and bisexual people<\/strong> have had rejoiceth not in iniquity<\/em> quoted at them, inside Christian rooms, for a very long time, and quoted in a particular way: as the proof that the loving thing and the welcoming thing are two different things, and that the refusal is itself the charity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Set that use beside the sentence it was taken from. It sits eighth in a list of eight, surrounded on every side by envieth not<\/em>, dealeth not perversely<\/em>, is not puffed up<\/em>, is not ambitious<\/em>, seeketh not her own<\/em>, is not provoked to anger<\/em>, thinketh no evil<\/em>. The clause is quoted alone; the seven it stands in the middle of are not. A room can keep the eighth perfectly and break the other seven, and by Paul’s own arithmetic that room is a tinkling cymbal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Apply the test to the fruit. It grows congregations where a person can be discussed for a decade and welcomed for an hour. It grows the careful sentence prepared in advance. It grows people who arrive knowing they will be the topic, and leave before the tea. And it grows rooms that are, by Paul’s own measure, a tinkling cymbal: correct, confident, audible and carrying nothing through.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We named this group three weeks ago<\/a> on the direction a hard sentence travels, and twelve days back<\/a> on who gets permanently assigned the correcting job. Today’s is narrower than either. It is about a refusal presented as the loving act, and about what Paul’s list says of the people making it. The charge is not that they are wrong about everything. It is that a tinkling cymbal can be right about the eighth item and still be a tinkling cymbal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now shut the second door, because an argument like this one can be misheard. Nothing here says a church should teach nothing, or that charity is a solvent that dissolves every question. A congregation with no convictions is not a kinder congregation, it is a vaguer one. Paul’s sentence is not that truth does not matter; he names truth in the middle of the list. It is that a truth delivered without charity produces a tinkling cymbal, and the person on the receiving end hears the cymbal and not the truth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Gospel puts the same claim in a room with a door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The invited guests do not come. The servants are sent out again, and the second instruction is the one to read slowly: Go ye therefore into the highways; and as many as you shall find, call to the marriage.<\/em> Then: gathered together all that they found, both bad and good: and the marriage was filled with guests.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Both bad and good. There is no sorting at the door, no interview, no account rendered on the way in. The hall is filled by servants going out and taking whoever is on the road, and the filling of it is the next thing the text records. A king who had waited for worthier guests would have kept a handsome empty room and a tinkling cymbal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That is the same argument as the Lesson’s, arriving from the other end. The Lesson strips the credentials off the qualified; the Gospel fills the room with people who never had any. Between them there is no version of this Mass in which a person’s standing is a tally of what they can do, and a hall that sorted at the door would be a tinkling cymbal with the tables laid.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIntroit<\/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
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Gradual<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Gospel<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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The Offering<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Every item on the list is a maximum<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
All eight describe the one who loves<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
The room filled from the open road<\/h3>\n\n\n\n