Churches of the Day

Second Week of Lent: Monday

Daniel sees the goodness and generous love of God and contrasts that with the wickedness and betrayal of the people. He understands well that only God can heal them, only God could have such mercy .

FIRST READING

A reading from the prophet Daniel       9:4-10
We have sinned, we have done wrong.

"O Lord God great and to be feared, you keep the covenant and have kindness for those who love you and keep your commandments:
we have sinned, we have done wrong, we have acted wickedly, we have betrayed your commandments and your ordinances and turned away from them. We have not listened to your servants the prophets, who spoke in your name to our kings, our princes, our ancestors, and to all the people of the land.

Integrity, Lord, is yours; ours the look of shame we wear today, we, the people of Judah, the citizens of Jerusalem, the whole of Israel, near and far away, in every country to which you have dispersed us because of the treason we have committed against you.

To us, O Lord, the look of shame belongs, to our kings, our princes, our ancestors, because we have sinned against you. To the Lord our God mercy and pardon belong, because we have betrayed him, and have not listened to the voice of the Lord our God nor followed the laws he has given us through his servants the prophets."

The Word of the Lord.                   Thanks be to God


Responsorial Psalm                 Ps 78: 8-9. 11. 13  R/ v Ps 102:10
Response                                     Do not treat us according to our sins, O Lord.

1. Do not hold the guilt of our fathers against us. Let your compassion hasten to meet us
for we are in the depths of distress.                                                                                       Response

2. O God our saviour, come to our help, come for the sake of the glory of your name.
O Lord our God, forgive us our sins; rescue us for the sake of your name.                  Response

3. Let the groans of the prisoners come before you; let your strong arm reprieve those condemned to die.
But we, your people, the flock of your pasture, will give you thanks for ever and ever.
We will tell your praise from age to age.                                                                             Response

Gospel  Acclamation 
Praise and honour to you, Lord Jesus!
The seed is the word of God, Christ the sower;
whoever finds this seed will remain forever.
Praise and honour to you, Lord Jesus!

Or                                                Jn 6:63, 68
Praise and honour to you, Lord Jesus!
Your words are spirit, Lord, and they are life;
you have the message of eternal life.
Praise and honour to you, Lord Jesus!

Gospel   

The Lord be with you.                        And with your spirit
A reading from the holy Gospel according to  Luke  6:36-38          Glory to you, O Lord
Grant pardon, and you will be pardoned.

Jesus said to his disciples:
'Be compassionate as your Father is compassionate.
Do not judge, and you will not be judged yourselves;
do not condemn, and you will not be condemned yourselves;
grant pardon, and you will be pardoned.

Give, and there will be gifts for you: a full measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over, will be poured into your lap; because the amount you measure out is the amount you will be given back.' 

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




Gospel Reflection        Monday,     Second Week of Lent        Luke 6:36-38

There is a striking image of God in today’s first reading, which is a prayer asking God for forgiveness, ‘Integrity, Lord, is yours… To the Lord, our God, mercy and pardon belong’. It is because the one praying believes so strongly that it is in the nature of God to be merciful and forgiving that he can be so honest about his own failings and those of the people, ‘We have sinned, we have done wrong, we have acted wickedly’. We can be totally honest about our failings only with those we know will accept us and love us as we are, without judging us. The Lord accepts and loves us as we are, which is why we can be totally honest with him about our failings. The Lord, who loves us as we are, also loves us enough to keep calling us beyond where we are, to live in ways that are true to what is best and deepest in us. The Lord wants us to be holy, as God is holy, to be loving, as God as loving, or, in the opening words of today’s gospel reading, to be compassionate as God is compassionate. We are made in the image of God and only a life that, in some way, reflects the life of God is worthy of us and will bring us true joy.

Jesus reveals the life of God to be a life of self-giving love. To live a life that reflects the life of God is to be giving as God is giving. In the gospel reading, Jesus assures us that in living in this self-giving way, we will receive more than we give, ‘Give, and there will be gifts for you: a full measure, pressed down, shaken together, will be poured into your lap’. I like that expression, ‘full measure’. When we give of ourselves as fully as we can in loving service of the Lord and his people, in return we will receive a full measure from the Lord. We pray for the grace to live in such a way that we come to experience the Lord’s full measure.

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The Scripture Readings are taken from The Jerusalem Bible, published 1966 by Darton, Longman & 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/

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Third Sunday of Lent, Year A

Through the Spirit of God the gift of love is poured into our hearts, a gift bought by the blood of Christ.
This is true for all Christians, new and old. But it needs to be constantly prayed for.

First Scrutiny of Catechumens is celebrated today 

FIRST READING

A reading from the Book of Exodus          17:3-7
Give us water to drink.

  Tormented by thirst, the people complained against Moses. 'Why did you bring us out of Egypt?' they said. 'Was it so that I should die of thirst, my children too, and my cattle?' Moses appealed to the Lord. 'How am I to deal with this people? he said. 'A little more and they will stone me!'
The Lord said to Moses,
'Take with you some of the elders of Israel and move on to the forefront of the people; take in your hand the staff with which you struck the river, and go. I shall be standing before you there on the rock, at Horeb. You must strike the rock, and water will flow from it for the people to drink.'
This is what Moses did, in the sight of the elders of Israel. The place was named Massah and Meribah because of the grumbling of the sons of Israel and because they put the Lord to the test by saying, 'Is the Lord with us, or not?'

The Word of the Lord              Thanks be to God.

Responsorual Psalm         Ps 94:1-2, 6-9, R/v8
Response                              O that today you would listen to his voice,
harden not your hearts.


1. Come, ring out our joy to the Lord; hail the rock who saves us.
    Let us come before him, giving thanks, with songs let us hail the Lord.                       Response

2. Come in; let us bow and bend low; let us kneel before the God who made us
    for he is our God and we  the people who belong to his pasture,
    the flock that is led by his hand.                                                                                             Response

3. O that today you would listen to his voice! 'Harden not your hearts as at Meribah,
    as on that day at Massah in the desert when your fathers put me to the test;
    when they tried me, though they saw my work.'                                                                Response

SECOND READING

 A reading from the first letter of St Paul to the  Romans          5:1-2. 5-8 
The love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit which has been given us.

Through our Lord Jesus Christ, by faith we are judged righteous and at peace with God, since it is by faith and through Jesus that we have entered this state of grace in which we can boast about looking forward to God's glory and this hope is not deceptive, because the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit which has been given us. We were still helpless when at his appointed moment Christ died for sinful men. It is not easy to die even for a good man - though of course for someone really worthy, a man might be prepared to die - but what proves that God loves us is that Christ died for us while we were still sinners.

The Word of the Lord                        Thanks be to God.

Gospel  Acclamation                  Jn 4: 42.15
Glory and praise to you, O Christ !
Lord, you are really the saviour of the world;
give me the living water, so that I may never get thirsty.
Glory and praise to you, O Christ !

GOSPEL     

The Lord be with you.                    And with your spirit
A reading from the Gospel according to John         4:5-42            Glory to you, O Lord
A spring inside him, welling up to eternal life'

Jesus came to the Samaritan town called Sychar, near the land that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Jacob's well is there and Jesus, tired by the journey, sat straight down by the well. It was about the sixth hour When a Samaritan woman came to draw water,
Jesus said to her, 'Give me a drink'.
His disciples had gone into the town to buy food. The Samaritan woman said to him,
'What? You are a Jew and you ask me, a Samaritan, for a drink?' - Jews, in fact, do not associate with Samaritans.
Jesus replied: If you only knew what God is offering and who it is that is saying to you: Give me a drink, you would have been the one to ask, and he would have given you living water'.

'You have no bucket, sir,' she answered 'and the well is deep: how could you get this living water? Are you a greater man than our father Jacob who gave us this well and drank from it himself with his sons and his cattle?'
Jesus replied 'Whoever drinks this water will get thirsty again;
but anyone who drinks the water that I shall give will never be thirsty again: the water that I shall give will turn into a spring inside him, welling up to eternal life'.

'Sir,' said the woman 'give me some of that water, so that I may never get thirsty and never have to come here again to draw water.'
'Go and call your husband' said Jesus to her 'and come back here.'
The woman answered, 'I have no husband'.
He said to her, You are right to say, "I have no husband"; for although you have had five, the one you have now is not your husband. You spoke the truth there.'
'I see you are a prophet, sir' said the woman.
'Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, while you say that Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship.'
Jesus said: 'Believe me, woman, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know: for salvation comes from the Jews.
But the hour will come - in fact it is here already – when true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth: that is the kind of worshipper the Father wants. God is spirit, and those who worship must worship in spirit and truth.'

The woman said to him, 'I know that Messiah - that is, Christ - is coming; and when he comes he will tell us everything'.
'I who am speaking to you,' said Jesus 'I am he.'

At this point his disciples returned, and were surprised to find him speaking to a woman, though none of them asked, 'What do you want from her?' or, 'Why are you talking to her?'
The woman put down her water jar and hurried back to the town to tell the people.
'Come and see a man who has told me everything I ever did; I wonder if he is the Christ?' This brought people out of the town and they started walking towards him.

Meanwhile, the disciples were urging him, 'Rabbi, do have something to eat; but he said,
'I have food to eat that you do not know about'.
So the disciples asked one another, 'Has someone been bringing him food?'
But Jesus said: 'My food is to do the will of the one who sent me, and to complete his work.
Have you not got a saying: 'Four months and then the harvest?'
Well, I tell you: Look around you, look at the fields; already they are white, ready for harvest!
Already the reaper is being paid his wages, already he is bringing in the grain for eternal life,
and thus sower and reaper rejoice together.
For here the proverb holds good: one sows, another reaps; I sent you to reap a harvest you had not worked for. Others worked for it; and you have come into the rewards of their trouble.'

Many Samaritans of that town had believed in him on the strength of the woman's testimony when she said, 'He told me all I have ever done', so, when the Samaritans came up to him, they begged him to stay with them. He stayed for two days, and when he spoke to them many more came to believe; and they said to the woman, 'Now we no longer believe because of what you told us; we have heard him ourselves and we know that he really is the saviour of the world'.

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

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



The scripture readings are taken from THE JERUSALEM BIBLE, published in 1966 by Darton, Longman and Todd Ltd and used with permission of the publishers.