Monday 27 January 2020
Monday of week 3 in Ordinary Time
or Saint Angela Merici, Virgin
Office of Readings
Introduction (without Invitatory)
If this is the first Hour that you are reciting today, use the version with the Invitatory Psalm instead.
O God, come to our aid.
O Lord, make haste to help us.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit,
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be,
world without end.
Amen. Alleluia.
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Hymn
O God of truth, prepare our minds
To hear and heed your holy word;
Fill every heart that longs for you
With your mysterious presence, Lord.
Almighty Father, with your Son
And blessed Spirit, hear our prayer:
Teach us to love eternal truth
And seek its freedom everywhere.
Stanbrook Abbey Hymnal
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Psalm 49 (50)
True reverence for the Lord
“I have not come to abolish the Law but to bring it to perfection” (cf Mt 5:17).
Our God comes openly, he keeps silence no longer.
The God of gods, the Lord,
has spoken and summoned the earth,
from the rising of the sun to its setting.
Out of Sion’s perfect beauty he shines.
Our God comes, he keeps silence no longer.
Before him fire devours,
around him tempest rages.
He calls on the heavens and the earth
to witness his judgement of his people.
‘Summon before me my people
who made covenant with me by sacrifice.’
The heavens proclaim his justice,
for he, God, is the judge.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit,
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be,
world without end.
Amen.
Our God comes openly, he keeps silence no longer.
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Psalm 49 (50)
Pay your sacrifice of thanksgiving to God.
‘Listen, my people, I will speak;
Israel, I will testify against you,
for I am God, your God.
I accuse you, lay the charge before you.
‘I find no fault with your sacrifices,
your offerings are always before me.
I do not ask more bullocks from your farms,
nor goats from among your herds.
‘For I own all the beasts of the forest,
beasts in their thousands on my hills.
I know all the birds in the sky,
all that moves in the field belongs to me.
‘Were I hungry, I would not tell you,
for I own the world and all it holds.
Do you think I eat the flesh of bulls,
or drink the blood of goats?
‘Pay your sacrifice of thanksgiving to God
and render him your votive offerings.
Call on me in the day of distress.
I will free you and you shall honour me.’
Glory be to the Father and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit,
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be,
world without end.
Amen.
Pay your sacrifice of thanksgiving to God.
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Psalm 49 (50)
I want love, not sacrifice; knowledge of God, not holocausts.
But God says to the wicked:
‘But how can you recite my commandments
and take my covenant on your lips,
you who despise my law
and throw my words to the winds?
‘You who see a thief and go with him;
who throw in your lot with adulterers,
who unbridle your mouth for evil
and whose tongue is plotting crime,
‘you who sit and malign your brother
and slander your own mother’s son.
You do this, and should I keep silence?
Do you think that I am like you?
‘Mark this, you who never think of God,
lest I seize you and you cannot escape;
a sacrifice of thanksgiving honours me
and I will show God’s salvation to the upright.’
Glory be to the Father and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit,
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be,
world without end.
Amen.
I want love, not sacrifice; knowledge of God, not holocausts.
Psalm-prayer
Father, accept us as a sacrifice of praise, so that we may go through life unburdened by sin, walking in the way of salvation, and always giving thanks to you.
Or:
Father, because Jesus, your servant, became obedient even unto death, his sacrifice was greater than all holocausts of old. Accept the sacrifice of praise we offer you through him, and may we show the effects of it in our lives by striving to do your will until our whole life becomes adoration in spirit and truth.
________
℣. Listen, my people: I will speak.
℟. I am God, your God.
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First Reading
Deuteronomy 24:1-25:4
Relations with one's neighbour
Supposing a man has taken a wife and consummated the marriage; but she has not pleased him and he has found some impropriety of which to accuse her; so he has made out a writ of divorce for her and handed it to her and then dismissed her from his house; she leaves his home and goes away to become the wife of another man. If this other man takes a dislike to her and makes out a writ of divorce for her and hands it to her and dismisses her from his house (or if this other man who took her as his wife happens to die), her first husband, who has repudiated her, may not take her back as his wife now that she has been defiled in this way. For that is detestable in the sight of the Lord, and you must not bring guilt on the land that the Lord your God gives for your inheritance.
If a man is newly married, he shall not join the army nor is he to be pestered at home; he shall be left at home free of all obligations for one year to bring joy to the wife he has taken.
No man may take a mill or a millstone in pledge; that would be to take life itself in pledge.
If anyone is found kidnapping one of his brothers, one of the sons of Israel, whether he makes him his slave or sells him, that thief must die. You must banish this evil from your midst.
In a case of leprosy, take care you faithfully observe and follow exactly all that the levitical priests direct you to do. You are to keep and observe all that I have commanded them. Remember what the Lord your God did to Miriam when you were on your way out of Egypt.
If you are making your fellow a loan on pledge, you are not to go into his house and seize the pledge, whatever it may be. You must stay outside, and the man to whom you are making the loan shall bring the pledge out to you. And if the man is poor, you are not to go to bed with his pledge in your possession; you must return it to him at sunset so that he can sleep in his cloak and bless you; and it will be a good action on your part in the sight of the Lord your God.
You are not to exploit the hired servant who is poor and destitute, whether he is one of your brothers or a stranger who lives in your towns. You must pay him his wage each day, not allowing the sun to set before you do, for he is poor and is anxious for it; otherwise he may appeal to the Lord against you, and it would be a sin for you.
Fathers may not be put to death for their sons, nor sons for fathers. Each is to be put to death for his own sin.
You must not pervert justice in dealing with a stranger or an orphan, nor take a widow’s garment in pledge. Remember that you were a slave in Egypt and that the Lord your God redeemed you from there. That is why I lay this charge on you.
When reaping the harvest in your field, if you have overlooked a sheaf in that field, do not go back for it. Leave it for the stranger, the orphan and the widow, so that the Lord your God may bless you in all your undertakings.
When you beat your olive trees you must not go over the branches twice. Let anything left be for the stranger, the orphan and the widow.
When you harvest your vineyard you must not pick it over a second time. Let anything left be for the stranger, the orphan and the widow.
Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt. That is why I lay this charge on you.
If men have any dispute they must go to court for the judges to decide between them; these must declare the one who is right to be in the right, the one who is wrong to be in the wrong. If the one who is in the wrong deserves a flogging, the judge shall make him lie down and have him flogged in his presence with the number of strokes proportionate to his offence. He may impose forty strokes but no more, lest the flogging be too severe and your brother be degraded in your eyes.
You must not muzzle an ox when it is treading out the corn.
Responsory
Mk 12:32-33; Si 35:2-3
℟. Master, you have truly said that God is one;* and to love him with all our heart and to love our neighbour as ourselves is far more than any burnt offerings or sacrifices.
℣. A kindness repaid is an offering of flour; the way to please the Lord is to renounce evil,* and to love him with all our heart and to love our neighbour as ourselves is far more than any burnt offerings or sacrifices.
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Second Reading
From the Second Vatican Council's pastoral constitution "Gaudium et spes" on the Church in the modern world
The holiness of married life and family life
A man and a woman, who by the marriage covenant of conjugal love ‘are no longer two, but one flesh’, render mutual help and service to each other through an intimate union of their persons and of their actions.
Through this union they experience the meaning of their oneness and attain to it with growing perfection day by day. As a mutual gift of two persons, this intimate union, as well as the good of the children, imposes total fidelity on the spouses and argues for an unbreakable oneness between them.
Christ the Lord abundantly blessed this many-faceted love, welling up as it does from the fountain of divine love and structured as it is on the model of his union with the Church.
As God of old made himself present to his people through a covenant of love and fidelity, so now the Saviour of men and the spouse of the Church comes into the lives of married Christians through the sacrament of matrimony. He abides with them thereafter so that, just as he loved the Church and handed himself over on her behalf, the spouses may love each other with perpetual fidelity through mutual self-bestowal.
Authentic married love is caught up into divine love and is governed and enriched by Christ’s redeeming power and the saving activity of the Church. Thus this love can lead the spouses to God with powerful effect and can aid and strengthen them in the sublime office of being a father or a mother.
For this reason, Christian spouses have a special sacrament by which they are fortified and receive a kind of consecration in the duties and dignity of their state. By virtue of this sacrament, as spouses fulfil their conjugal and family obligations, they are penetrated with the spirit of Christ. This spirit suffuses their whole lives with faith, hope, and charity. Thus they increasingly advance their own perfection, as well as their mutual sanctification, and hence contribute jointly to the glory of God.
As a result, with their parents leading the way by example and family prayer, children and indeed everyone gathered around the family hearth will find a readier path to human maturity, salvation, and holiness. Graced with the dignity and office of fatherhood and motherhood, parents will energetically acquit themselves of a duty which devolves primarily on them, namely education, and especially religious education.
As living members of the family, children contribute in their own way to making their parents holy. For they will respond to the kindness of their parents with sentiments of gratitude, with love and trust. They will stand by them as children should when hardships overtake their parents and old age brings its loneliness.
Responsory
℟. This is a great mystery, concerning Christ and the Church.* Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her.
℣. Let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.* Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her.
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Let us pray.
All-powerful, ever-living God,
direct our steps in the way of your love,
so that our whole life may be fragrant
with all we do in the name of Jesus, your beloved Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.
Amen.
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Let us praise the Lord.
– Thanks be to God.
Copyright © 1996-2020 Universalis Publishing Limited: see www.universalis.com. Scripture readings from the Jerusalem Bible are published and copyright © 1966, 1967 and 1968 by Darton, Longman & Todd, Ltd and Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc, and used by permission of the publishers. Text of the Psalms: Copyright © 1963, The Grail (England). Used with permission of A.P. Watt Ltd. All rights reserved.