Saturday 23 May 2020
Saturday before Ascension Sunday
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.
________
Hymn
Love’s redeeming work is done,
fought the fight, the battle won.
Lo, our Sun’s eclipse is o’er!
Lo, he sets in blood no more!
Vain the stone, the watch, the seal!
Christ has burst the gates of hell;
death in vain forbids him rise;
Christ has opened paradise.
Lives again our victor King;
where, O death, is now thy sting?
Dying once, he all doth save;
where thy victory, O grave?
Soar we now where Christ has led,
following our exalted Head;
made like him, like him we rise,
ours the cross, the grave, the skies.
Hail the Lord of earth and heaven!
Praise to thee by both be given:
thee we greet triumphant now;
hail, the Resurrection thou!
________
Psalm 105 (106)
The Lord's goodness and his people's infidelity
“These things were written down to be a lesson for us who are living at the end of the age” (1 Cor 10:11).
O Lord, remember us: come to us with your help. Alleluia.
O give thanks to the Lord for he is good;
for his love endures for ever.
Who can tell the Lord’s mighty deeds?
Who can recount all his praise?
They are happy who do what is right,
who at all times do what is just.
O Lord, remember me
out of the love you have for your people.
Come to me, Lord, with your help
that I may see the joy of your chosen ones
and may rejoice in the gladness of your nation
and share the glory of your people.
Our sin is the sin of our fathers;
we have done wrong, our deeds have been evil.
Our fathers when they were in Egypt
paid no heed to your wonderful deeds.
They forgot the greatness of your love,
at the Red Sea defied the Most High.
Yet he saved them for the sake of his name,
in order to make known his power.
He threatened the Red Sea; it dried up
and he led them through the deep as through the desert.
He saved them from the hand of the foe;
he saved them from the grip of the enemy.
The waters covered their oppressors;
not one of them was left alive.
Then they believed in his words:
then they sang his praises.
But they soon forgot his deeds
and would not wait upon his will.
They yielded to their cravings in the desert
and put God to the test in the wilderness.
He granted them the favour they asked
and sent disease among them.
Then they rebelled, envious of Moses
and of Aaron, who was holy to the Lord.
The earth opened and swallowed up Dathan
and buried the clan of Abiram.
Fire blazed up against their clan
and flames devoured the rebels.
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.
O Lord, remember us: come to us with your help. Alleluia.
________
Psalm 105 (106)
Take care you do not forget the covenant the Lord your God has made with you.
They fashioned a calf at Horeb
and worshipped an image of metal,
exchanging the God who was their glory
for the image of a bull that eats grass.
They forgot the God who was their saviour,
who had done such great things in Egypt,
such portents in the land of Ham,
such marvels at the Red Sea.
For this he said he would destroy them,
but Moses, the man he had chosen,
stood in the breach before him,
to turn back his anger from destruction.
Then they scorned the land of promise:
they had no faith in his word.
They complained inside their tents
and would not listen to the voice of the Lord.
So he raised his hand to swear an oath
that he would lay them low in the desert;
would scatter their sons among the nations
and disperse them throughout the lands.
They bowed before the Baal of Peor;
ate offerings made to lifeless gods.
They roused him to anger with their deeds
and a plague broke out among them.
Then Phinehas stood up and intervened.
Thus the plague was ended
and this was counted in his favour
from age to age for ever.
They provoked him at the waters of Meribah.
Through their fault it went ill with Moses;
for they made his heart grow bitter
and he uttered words that were rash.
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.
Take care you do not forget the covenant the Lord your God has made with you.
________
Psalm 105 (106)
O Lord, save us; gather us from among the nations. Alleluia.
They failed to destroy the peoples
as the Lord had given command,
but instead they mingled with the nations
and learned to act as they did.
They worshipped the idols of the nations
and these became a snare to entrap them.
They even offered their own sons
and their daughters in sacrifice to demons.
They shed the blood of the innocent,
the blood of their sons and daughters
whom they offered to the idols of Canaan.
The land was polluted with blood.
So they defiled themselves by their deeds
and broke their marriage bond with the Lord
till his anger blazed against his people;
he was filled with horror at his chosen ones.
So he gave them into the hand of the nations
and their foes became their rulers.
Their enemies became their oppressors;
they were subdued beneath their hand.
Time after time he rescued them,
but in their malice they dared to defy him
and sank low through their guilt.
In spite of this he paid heed to their distress,
so often as he heard their cry.
For their sake he remembered his covenant.
In the greatness of his love he relented
and he let them be treated with mercy
by all who held them captive.
O Lord, our God, save us!
Bring us together from among the nations
that we may thank your holy name
and make it our glory to praise you.
Blessed be the Lord, God of Israel,
for ever, from age to age.
Let all the people cry out:
‘Amen! Amen! Alleluia!’
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.
O Lord, save us; gather us from among the nations. Alleluia.
Psalm-prayer
God, our Creator, how wonderfully you made man. You transformed dust into your own image, and gave it a share in your own nature; yet you are more wonderful in pardoning the man who has rebelled against you. Grant that where sin has abounded, grace may more abound, so that we can become holier through forgiveness and be more grateful to you.
________
℣. My heart rejoices, my body is glad, alleluia.
℟. I will praise him with my whole being, alleluia.
________
Readings (official one-year cycle)
First Reading
1 John 3:18-24
The commandment of faith and love
My children,
our love is not to be just words or mere talk,
but something real and active;
only by this can we be certain
that we are children of the truth
and be able to quieten our conscience in his presence,
whatever accusations it may raise against us,
because God is greater than our conscience and he knows everything.
My dear people,
if we cannot be condemned by our own conscience,
we need not be afraid in God’s presence,
and whatever we ask him,
we shall receive,
because we keep his commandments
and live the kind of life that he wants.
His commandments are these:
that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ
and that we love one another
as he told us to.
Whoever keeps his commandments
lives in God and God lives in him.
We know that he lives in us
by the Spirit that he has given us.
Responsory
1 Jn 3:24; Si 1:9-10
℟. Whoever keeps his commandments lives in God and God lives in him;* and we know that he lives in us by the Spirit that he has given us, alleluia.
℣. God created Wisdom in the Holy Spirit, and poured her out on all mankind;* and we know that he lives in us by the Spirit that he has given us, alleluia.
________
Second Reading
From a homily on the Song of Songs by Saint Gregory of Nyssa, bishop
The glory you gave to me, I have given to them
When love has entirely cast out fear, and fear has been transformed into love, then the unity brought us by our saviour will be fully realised, for all men will be united with one another through their union with the one supreme Good. They will possess the perfection ascribed to the dove, according to our interpretation of the text: One alone is my dove, my perfect one. She is the only child of her mother, her chosen one.
Our Lord’s words in the gospel bring out the meaning of this text more clearly. After having conferred all power on his disciples by his blessing, he obtained many other gifts for them by his prayer to the Father. Among these was included the greatest gift of all, which was that they were no longer to be divided in their judgement of what was right and good, for they were all to be united to the one supreme Good. As the Apostle says, they were to be bound together with the bonds of peace in the unity that comes from the Holy Spirit. They were to be made one body and one spirit by the one hope to which they were all called. We shall do better, however, to quote the sacred words of the gospel itself. I pray, the Lord says, that they all may be one; that as you, Father, are in me and I am in you, so they also may be one in us.
Now the bond that creates this unity is glory. That the Holy Spirit is called glory no one can deny if he thinks carefully about the Lord’s words: The glory you gave to me, I have given to them. In fact, he gave this glory to his disciples when he said to them: Receive the Holy Spirit. Although he had always possessed it, even before the world existed, he himself received this glory when he put on human nature. Then, when his human nature had been glorified by the Spirit, the glory of the Spirit was passed on to all his kin, beginning with his disciples. This is why he said: The glory you gave to me, I have given to them, so that they may be one as we are one. With me in them and you in me, I want them to be perfectly one.
Whoever has grown from infancy to manhood and attained to spiritual maturity possesses the mastery over his passions and the purity that makes it possible for him to receive the glory of the Spirit. He is that perfect dove upon whom the eyes of the bridegroom rest when he says: One alone is my dove, my perfect one.
Responsory
℟. I do not call you servants any longer. Instead, I call you friends, because you have seen all the mighty works I did among you.* Receive the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, whom the Father will send you, alleluia.
℣. You are my friends if you do what I command you.* Receive the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, whom the Father will send you, alleluia.
________
Let us pray.
Mould our minds, we pray you, Lord,
by the works of your law.
Always striving after what is best,
may we make our lives a constant sharing
in Christ’s death and resurrection.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.
Amen.
________
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.