This Will Leave Your Head Whirling

By Anna Von Reitz

Many centuries ago kings and prelates and businessmen kept their own stables of messengers who hand-carried information back and forth, either verbally or by written means, and these physical communication systems gradually developed into the Postal Services we know today--- and to this day, a postal service may either be public or private in nature.  

Benjamin Franklin was the owner of one of the first private postal services serving the public in America.  For a stated fee, his company would take your letter or box over the rough roads from Boston, Massachusetts, to Charleston, South Carolina, and guarantee its safe passage (insure it) so that you didn't have to make the journey yourself or send someone in your direct employment on this arduous errand. 

Postal Service at that time was cheaper than doing it yourself and arguably safer and often faster than what people could afford to do for themselves, so the idea caught on and the economic advantages of being able to bundle mail going to a specific destination provided the profit needed to spur growth. 

Twenty-Fourth Sunday After Pentecost

Because there are more than 24 Sundays after Pentecost this year, the Mass for the 6th Sunday after the Epiphany is here inserted and next Sunday will be the last Sunday after Pentecost with the Mass for the 24th or last Sunday after Pentecost.

Rev. Fr. Leonard Goffine's The Church's Year

COLLECT Grant, we beseech Thee, Almighty God, that ever fixing our thoughts on such things as are reasonable, we may both in our words and works do what is pleasing in Thy sight. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, etc.

EPISTLE (I. Thess. I. 2-10.) Brethren, we give thanks to God for you all, making a remembrance of you in our prayers without ceasing; being mindful of the work of your faith, and labor, and charity, and of the enduring of the hope of our Lord Jesus Christ before God and our Father: knowing, brethren, beloved of God, your election: for our gospel hath not been unto you in word only, but in power also, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much fullness, as you know what manner of men we have been among you for your sakes. And you became followers of us and of the Lord, receiving the word in much tribulation, with joy of the Holy Ghost: so that you were made a pattern to all that believe, in Macedonia and in Achaia. For from you was spread abroad the word of the Lord, not only in Macedonia and in Achaia, but also in every place, your faith, which is towards God, is gone forth; so that we need not to speak anything. For they themselves relate of us what manner of entering in we had unto you; and how ye turned, to God from idols, to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven (whom he raised from the dead), Jesus, who both delivered us from the wrath to come.

EXPLANATION