Churches of the Day

Monday of the Twenty Third Week of Ordinary Time, Year 2

FIRST READING 

A reading from the letter of St Paul to the Corinthians            5:1-8
Get rid of all the old yeast, Christ our Passover has been sacrificed.

I have been told as an undoubted fact that one of you is living with his father's wife. This is a case of sexual immorality among you that must be unparalleled even among pagans. How can you be so proud of yourselves? You should be in mourning.
A man who does a thing like that ought to have been expelled from the community. Though I am far away in body, I am with you in spirit, and have already condemned the man who did this thing as if I were actually present. When you are assembled together in the name of the Lord Jesus, and I am spiritually present with you, then with the power of our Lord Jesus he is to be handed over to Satan so that his sensual body may be destroyed and his spirit saved on the day of the Lord.


The pride that you take in yourselves is hardly to your credit. You must know how even a small amount of yeast is enough to leaven all the dough, so get rid of all the old yeast, and make yourselves into a completely new batch of bread, unleavened as you are meant to be. Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed; let us celebrate the feast, then, by getting rid of all the old yeast of evil and wickedness, having only the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

The Word of the Lord.            Thanks be to God.

Responsorial Psalm           Ps 5:5-7, 12. R/v 9
Response                                Lead me, Lord, in your justice.

1. You are no God who loves evil; no sinner is your guest.
The boastful shall not stand their ground before your face.               Response

2. You hate all who do evil: you destroy all who lie.
The deceitful and bloodthirsty man the Lord detests.                         Response

3. All those you protect shall be glad and ring out their joy.
You shelter them; in you they rejoice, those who love your name.   Response

Gospel Acclamation                 Ps 118: 105
Alleluia, alleluia!
Your word is a lamp for my steps and a light for my path.
Alleluia !

or                                                      Jn 10: 27
Alleluia, alleluia!
The sheep that belong to me listen to my voice, says the Lord,
I know them and they follow me.
Alleluia!

GOSPEL

The Lord be with you.                 And with your spirit
A reading from the holy Gospel according to Luke 6:6-11              Glory to you, O Lord
They were watching Jesus to see if he would cure a man on the sabbath.

On the sabbath Jesus went into the synagogue and began to teach, and a man was there whose right hand was withered. The scribes and the Pharisees were watching him to see if he would cure a man on the sabbath, hoping to find something to use against him. But he knew their thoughts; and he said to the man with the withered hand,
'Stand up! Come out into the middle.'
And he came out and stood there. Then Jesus said to them,
'I put it to you: is it against the law on the sabbath to do good, or to do evil; to save life, or to destroy it?'
Then he looked round at them all and said to the man,
'Stretch out your hand'. He did so, and his hand was better.

But they were furious, and began to discuss the best way of dealing with Jesus.

The Gospel of the Lord.          Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.

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Gospel Reflection         Monday        Twenty Third Week in Ordinary Time     Luke 6:6-11

In today’s gospel reading we are told that when Jesus went into the synagogue on the Sabbath the Pharisees were watching him to see if he would cure a partly paralyzed man, hoping to find something to use against Jesus. In other words, even though Jesus was clearly doing good, the Pharisees were on the lookout for the negative in him; they were suspicious of him. Because they were predisposed to seeing the negative, they couldn’t see the good that God was doing through Jesus on that particular Sabbath day in the synagogue.

Sometimes how we see someone or some situation determines what we see. If we look at people through suspicious lens, negative lens, we will see the negative and miss the good. We always have to be cleaning our lens, as it were, so that we can see clearly, so that we can see not just the problems which may be there, but the much greater good which is often there as well. On this occasion, the problem for the Pharisees of the Sabbath law being broken should have been far outweighed by the greater good of a broken man being healed. The gospels are always calling us to see the good work that God is doing even when things are not happening quite as we might expect or want them to happen.

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The Scripture Readings are taken from The Jerusalem Bible, published by Darton, Longman and Todd Ltd and used with the permission of the publishers. http://dltbooks.com/
The Scripture Reflection is made available with our thanks from his book Reflections on the Weekday Readings: The Word is near to you, on your lips and in your heart by Martin Hogan and published by Messenger Publications , c/f www.messenger.ie/bookshop/



 

Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

FIRST READING

A reading from the Book of  Sirach (Ecclesiasticus )        27:30-28:7
Forgive your neighbour the hurt he does you, and when you pray, your sins will be forgiven.

Resentment and anger, these are foul things, and both are found with the sinner. He who exacts vengeance will experience the vengeance of the Lord, who keeps strict account of sin. Forgive your neighbour the hurt he does you, and when you pray, your sins will be forgiven.

If a man nurses anger against another, can he then demand compassion from the Lord? Showing no pity for a man like himself, can he then plead for his own sins? Mere creature of flesh, he cherishes resentment; who will forgive him his sins?

Remember the last things, and stop hating,
remember dissolution and death, and live by the commandments.
Remember the commandments, and do not bear your neighbour ill-will;
remember the covenant of the Most High, and overlook the offence.

The Word of the Lord             Thanks be to God.

Responsorial Psalm          Ps 102: 1-4. 9-12. R/ v 8
Response                               The Lord is compassion and love,
slow to anger and rich in mercy.

1. My soul, give thanks to the Lord, all my being, bless his holy name.
My soul, give thanks to the Lord and never forget all his blessings.                                         Response

2. It is he who forgives all your guilt, who heals everyone of your ills,
who redeems your life from the grave, who crowns you with love and compassion.            Response

3. His wrath will come to an end; he will not be angry for ever.
He does not treat us according to our sins nor repay us according to our faults.                   Response

4. For as the heavens are high above the earth so strong is his love for those who fear him.
As far as the east is from the west so far does he remove our sins.                                           Response

SECOND READING

A reading from the letter of St Paul to the Romans           14:7-9
Alive or dead we belong to the Lord.

The life and death of each of us has its influence on others; if we live, we live for the Lord;
and if we die, we die for the Lord, so that alive or dead we belong to the Lord.
This explains why Christ both died and came to life, it was so that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living.

The Word of the Lord.            Thanks be to God.

Gospel Acclamation          1 Sam 3:9
Alleluia, alleluia!
Speak, Lord, your servant is listening: you have the message of eternal life.
Alleluia!

Or                                             Jn 13: 34
Alleluia, alleluia!
I give you a new commandment: love one another,
just as I have loved you, says the Lord.
Alleluia!

GOSPEL

A reading from the Gospel according to Matthew      18:21-35
I tell you, not seven, but seventy-seven times.

Peter went up to Jesus and said,
'Lord, how often must I forgive my brother if he wrongs me? As often as seven times?'
Jesus answered, 'Not seven, I tell you, but seventy-seven times.

'And so the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who decided to settle his accounts with his servants. When the reckoning began, they brought him a man who owed ten thousand talents; but he had no means of paying, so his master gave orders that he should be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions, to meet the debt. At this, the servant threw himself down at his master's feet. "Give me time" he said "and I will pay the whole sum."
And the servant's master felt so sorry for him that he let him go and cancelled the debt.

Now as this servant went out, he happened to meet a fellow servant who owed him one hundred denarii; and he seized him by the throat and began to throttle him.
"Pay what you owe me" he said. His fellow servant fell at his feet and implored him, saying, "Give me time and I will pay you". But the other would not agree; on the contrary, he had him thrown into prison till he should pay the debt.

His fellow servants were deeply distressed when they saw what had happened, and they went to their master and reported the whole affair to him. Then the master sent for him.
"You wicked servant," he said "I cancelled all that debt of yours when you appealed to me. Were you not bound, then, to have pity on your fellow servant just as I had pity on you?" And in his anger the master handed him over to the torturers till he should pay all his debt.

And that is how my heavenly Father will deal with you unless
you each forgive your brother from your heart.'

The Gospel of the Lord          Glory to you, O Lord

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For homily resources for this Sunday's Gospel click here: https://www.catholicireland.net/sunday-homily/



Taken from THE JERUSALEM BIBLE, published and copyright 1966 by Darton, Longman and Todd Ltd and Doubleday, a division of Random House Inc, and used by permission of the publishers.