Anno Domini 2025 December 9

Beloved of the Lord:

Today is Tuesday, 9 December, in the year of our Lord 2025. The scheduled services are as-follows:

• Tuesday (today): 5:30 PM, Mass, Octave of the Conception of the BVM.
  6:30 PM, Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, sung Evensong.
• Wednesday: 12:10 PM, Mass, Of the Octave.
• Thursday: 8:00 AM, men's Morning Prayer and breakfast.
  6:30 PM, sung Evensong, Holy Communion, Soup & Study.
• Friday: 9:00 AM, Mass, Of the Octave.
  Immediately following, Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.
• Saturday: 10:00 AM, Holy Communion.
• Sunday: 8:30 & 10:00 AM, Mass, Gaudete Sunday (Advent III).

The flight of time is astounding ... yesterday (seemingly) Advent began; Sunday this-coming will be third- of the four Sundays in Advent. Then onto Christ Masstide, and the following seasons in their due, and accelerating, course. I suspect that Heaven too will have her cycles, her rounds of times; thus, the Kalendar, as with many other aspects of the faith, will ultimately prove to be timeless.

Gaudete Sunday, as-with its Lenten Counterpart, Laetare, is that day in a penitential season that shows us there is always light behind the dark. In the dark, secular age in which we find ourselves, this is an important, and hopefully uplifting, revelation. Further, of-course, it applies to the very faith, as we struggle in what can seem the silence of God, in the face of the destruction of so much of Holy Church, and the ensuing corruption of those parts that are left.

Make time for silence in your day ~ every day. Fill that silence from the World with the sound of prayer. When we in Holy Orders say our 'Offices, we are forbidden to say them silently, to read them only. They must be audible; this custom limits the difficulties of silent prayer, keeping us focussed-upon our prayers, and the intentions with which we say them. I remain

in His praise,

The Rt. Rev'd T. L. Crowder

Pastor, Saint Matthew's Parish