Thursday 24 September 2020
Thursday of week 25 in Ordinary Time
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
Eternal Father, through your Word
You gave new life to Adam’s race,
And call us now to live in light,
New creatures by your saving grace.
To you who stooped to all who sin
We render homage and give praise:
To Father, Son and Spirit blest
Whose loving gift is endless days.
Stanbrook Abbey Hymnal
________
Psalm 17 (18)
Thanksgiving
“If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Rom 8:31).
The word of the Lord is a shield for all who make him their refuge.
As for God, his ways are perfect;
the word of the Lord, purest gold.
He indeed is the shield
of all who make him their refuge.
For who is God but the Lord?
Who is a rock but our God?
the God who girds me with strength
and makes the path safe before me.
My feet you made swift as the deer’s;
you have made me stand firm on the heights.
You have trained my hands for battle
and my arms to bend the heavy bow.
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.
The word of the Lord is a shield for all who make him their refuge.
________
Psalm 17 (18)
Lord, your right hand upheld me.
You gave me your saving shield;
you upheld me, trained me with care.
You gave me freedom for my steps;
my feet have never slipped.
I pursued and overtook my foes,
never turning back till they were slain.
I smote them so they could not rise;
they fell beneath my feet.
You girded me with strength for battle;
you made my enemies fall beneath me,
you made my foes take flight;
those who hated me I destroyed.
They cried, but there was no one to save them;
they cried to the Lord, but in vain.
I crushed them fine as dust before the wind;
trod them down like dirt in the streets.
You saved me from the feuds of the people
and put me at the head of the nations.
People unknown to me served me:
when they heard of me they obeyed me.
Foreign nations came to me cringing:
foreign nations faded away.
They came trembling out of their strongholds.
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.
Lord, your right hand upheld me.
________
Psalm 17 (18)
Long life to the Lord! Praised be the God who saves me.
Long life to the Lord, my rock!
Praised be the God who saves me,
the God who gives me redress
and subdues people under me.
You saved me from my furious foes.
You set me above my assailants.
You saved me from violent men,
so I will praise you, Lord, among the nations:
I will sing a psalm to your name.
He has given great victories to his king
and shown his love for his anointed,
for David and his sons for ever.
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.
Long life to the Lord! Praised be the God who saves me.
Psalm-prayer
To protect your people, Father, you opened a new passage through the sea. May you be both the road we travel and the peaceful reward at the end of our journey.
________
℣. Lord, open my eyes.
℟. Let me consider the wonders of your law.
________
Readings (official one-year cycle)
First Reading
Ezekiel 37:15-28
The union of Israel and Judah prefigured
The word of the Lord was addressed to me as follows, ‘Son of man, take a stick and write on it, “Judah and those Israelites loyal to him.” Take another stick and write on it, “Joseph, the wood of Ephraim, and all the House of Israel loyal to him.”
‘Join one to the other to make a single piece of wood, a single stick in your hand. And when the members of your nation say, “Tell us what you mean,” say, “The Lord says this: I am taking the stick of Joseph, now in the hand of Ephraim, and those tribes of Israel loyal to him, and I am going to put the stick of Judah with them. I shall make one stick out of the two, and I shall hold them as one.”
‘Keep the pieces of wood you have written on in your hand where they can see, and say, “The Lord says this: I am going to take the sons of Israel from the nations where they have gone. I shall gather them together from everywhere and bring them home to their own soil. I shall make them into one nation in my own land and on the mountains of Israel, and one king is to be king of them all; they will no longer form two nations, nor be two separate kingdoms. They will no longer defile themselves with their idols and their filthy practices and all their sins. I shall rescue them from all the betrayals they have been guilty of; I shall cleanse them; they shall be my people and I will be their God. My servant David will reign over them, one shepherd for all; they will follow my observances, respect my laws and practise them. They will live in the land that I gave my servant Jacob, the land in which your ancestors lived. They will live in it, they, their children, their children’s children, for ever. David my servant is to be their prince for ever. I shall make a covenant of peace with them, an eternal covenant with them. I shall resettle them and increase them; I shall settle my sanctuary among them for ever. I shall make my home above them; I will be their God, they shall be my people. And the nations will learn that I am the Lord, the sanctifier of Israel, when my sanctuary is with them for ever.”’
Responsory
Ezk 37:21-22; Jn 10:16,11
℟. I am going to take the sons of Israel and gather them together from far and wide, and I shall make them into one nation.* Then shall there be one flock and one shepherd.
℣. The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep.* Then shall there be one flock and one shepherd.
________
Second Reading
St Augustine's sermon On Pastors
I shall feed my sheep on good pasture
I shall gather them together from foreign nations and bring them back to their own land. I shall pasture them on the mountains of Israel… As the mountains of Israel, he has set up the authors of the holy Scriptures. Feed on these and you will feed in safety. Whatever you hear from them will do you good; whatever you hear from elsewhere, spit it out. Listen to the voice of your shepherd lest you lose your way and wander into the mist. Gather together on the mountains of holy Scripture. There you will find the delight of your heart: nothing poisonous, nothing strange – the richest of pastures. Simply come in good health, and feed in good health on the mountains of Israel.
…In the ravines and in every inhabited place in the land. From these mountains of Scripture flow the streams of the gospel preaching, whose sound has gone forth into all the earth so that every inhabited place of the earth has become a rich and fertile pasture for the sheep.
I shall feed them in good pasturage; the high mountains of Israel will be their grazing ground. There will they rest. That is, where they will say, “It is good here,” where they will say, “It is true, it is clear, we are not deceived.” They will take their rest in the glory of God as in their own shelters. They will sleep and take their rest in the midst of delight.
They will browse in rich pastures on the mountains of Israel. I have already spoken of the mountains of Israel, the good mountains, the mountains to which we lift up our eyes so that help will come to us from them. But remember, our help is from the Lord, who made heaven and earth. So to prevent us putting our hope in the mountains, as soon as he had said I shall pasture them on the mountains of Israel he added at once I shall feed my sheep. Yes, lift your eyes up to the mountains from which your help will come; but wait for him to say I shall feed. For your help is from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.
And finally he says I shall feed them with judgement. Note that it is he alone who feeds them with judgement. For what man can judge another man? Wherever you look, you see rash judgements. Someone we have despaired of suddenly turns round and becomes the best of people. Someone of whom we have had high expectations suddenly fails and sinks into uselessness. There is no certainty in our foreboding, there is no certainty in our love.
Take any man. What is he today? He hardly knows himself. He has some slight idea, perhaps, of what he is today, but as for tomorrow – nothing. So the Lord feeds us all with judgement, distributing what is appropriate to each of us: this to one person, that to others, to each what they ought to have, one thing to one and another to another. For he knows what he is doing. He feeds us with judgement, us whom he redeemed after he had himself been judged. So he feeds us all with judgement.
Responsory
℟. I am the good shepherd.* I know my sheep and my sheep know me.
℣. I myself will search for my sheep, find them for myself. I shall rescue them from every kingdom, recover them from every land, and bring them back to their own country where they will find pasture.* I know my sheep and my sheep know me.
________
Let us pray.
Father,
you summed up the whole law
as love of you and of our neighbour.
Grant that by keeping this commandment of love,
we may come to eternal life.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
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.