Thursday 7 July 2022
Thursday of week 14 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
Where true love is dwelling, God is dwelling there:
Love’s own loving Presence love does ever share.
Love of Christ has made us out of many one;
In our midst is dwelling God’s eternal Son.
Give him joyful welcome, love him and revere:
Cherish one another with a love sincere.
________
Psalm 43 (44):2-9
In time of defeat
“In all these trials, we triumph through the power of him who has shown his love for us” (Rom 8:37).
It was you who saved us, Lord: we will praise your name without ceasing.
We heard with our own ears, O God,
our fathers have told us the story
of the things you did in their days,
you yourself, in days long ago.
To plant them you uprooted the nations;
to let them spread you laid peoples low.
No sword of their own won the land;
no arm of their own brought them victory.
It was your right hand, your arm
and the light of your face; for you loved them.
It is you, my king, my God,
who granted victories to Jacob.
Through you we beat down our foes;
in your name we trampled down our aggressors.
For it was not in my bow that I trusted
nor yet was I saved by my sword:
it was you who saved us from our foes,
it was you who put our foes to shame.
All day long our boast was in God
and we praised your name without ceasing.
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.
It was you who saved us, Lord: we will praise your name without ceasing.
________
Psalm 43 (44):10-17
Spare us, Lord, do not let your people be put to shame.
Yet now you have rejected us, disgraced us;
you no longer go forth with our armies.
You make us retreat from the foe
and our enemies plunder us at will.
You make us like sheep for the slaughter
and scatter us among the nations.
You sell your own people for nothing
and make no profit by the sale.
You make us the taunt of our neighbours,
the laughing-stock of all who are near.
Among the nations, you make us a byword,
among the peoples a thing of derision.
All day long my disgrace is before me;
my face is covered with shame
at the voice of the taunter, the scoffer,
at the sight of the foe and avenger.
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.
Spare us, Lord, do not let your people be put to shame.
________
Psalm 43 (44):18-26
Arise, Lord! Redeem us because of your love.
This befell us though we had not forgotten you,
though we had not been false to your covenant,
though we had not withdrawn our hearts;
though our feet had not strayed from your path.
Yet you have crushed us in a place of sorrows
and covered us with the shadow of death.
Had we forgotten the name of our God
or stretched out hands to another god,
would not God have found this out,
he who knows the secrets of the heart?
It is for you we face death all day long
and are counted as sheep for the slaughter.
Awake, O Lord, why do you sleep?
Arise, do not reject us for ever!
Why do you hide your face from us
and forget our oppression and misery?
For we are brought down low to the dust;
our body lies prostrate on the earth.
Stand up and come to our help!
Redeem us because of your love!
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.
Arise, Lord! Redeem us because of your love.
Psalm-prayer
Lord, rise up and come to our aid; with your strong arm lead us to freedom, as you mightily delivered our forefathers. Since you are the king who knows the secrets of our hearts, fill them with the light of truth.
Or:
Lord Jesus, you foretold that we would share in the persecutions that brought you to a violent death. The Church formed at the cost of your precious blood is even now conformed to your Passion; may it be transformed, now and eternally, by the power of your resurrection.
________
℣. Lord, to whom shall we go?
℟. You have the words of eternal life.
________
Readings (official one-year cycle)
First Reading
1 Chronicles 22:5-19
The construction of the Temple prepared by David
Then David said, ‘My son Solomon is young, of tender years, and the house to be built for the Lord must be of great splendour, renowned for its magnificence in every country. I will make preparations for him.’ And so, before he died, David made ample preparations. He then summoned his son Solomon and instructed him to build a house for the Lord, the God of Israel. ‘My son,’ David said to Solomon ‘my heart was set on building a house for the name of the Lord my God. But the word of the Lord came to me, “You have shed much blood and fought great battles; it is not for you to build a house for my name, since you have shed so much blood on the earth in my presence. But now a son is born to you. He shall be a man of peace and I will give him peace from all the enemies that surround him; for Solomon is his name, and in his days I will give Israel peace and quiet. He shall build a house for my name; he shall be a son to me and I a father to him, and I will make his royal throne secure in Israel for ever.” Now, my son, may the Lord be with you and give you success in building a house for the Lord your God, as he has said concerning you. Yet may he give you discretion and discernment, may he give you his orders for Israel so that you may observe the Law of the Lord your God. Success will be yours if you carefully observe the statutes and the ordinances that the Lord has prescribed to Moses for Israel. Be strong and stand fast, be fearless, be dauntless. Poor as I am, I have set aside for the house of the Lord one hundred thousand talents of gold, a million talents of silver and more bronze and iron than can be weighed; I have stored up wood and stone too, to which you must add more. You will have many workmen, stonecutters, masons, carpenters, skilled artisans of every kind, while your gold and silver, bronze and iron, will be beyond reckoning. Set to work, then, and may the Lord be with you!’
David then ordered all the Israelite leaders to help his son Solomon. ‘Is not the Lord your God with you?’ he said. ‘He has given you peace on all sides, since he has put the inhabitants of the country into my power and the land has been subdued for the Lord and for his people. So now devote heart and soul to the search for the Lord your God. Set to and build the sanctuary of the Lord your God, so that you can bring the ark of the covenant of the Lord and the holy things of God to the house that is built for the name of the Lord.’
Responsory
1 Ch 22:19; Ps 132:7; Is 56:7
℟. Set your mind on building the sanctuary of the Lord God.* Let us go to his dwelling-place, let us worship at his footstool.
℣. Thus says the Lord: My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.* Let us go to his dwelling-place, let us worship at his footstool.
________
Second Reading
The Explanations of the Psalms by Saint Ambrose: Psalm 118
God's temple is holy, and you are his temple
My father and I will come to him and make our home with him. Open wide your door to the one who comes. Open your soul, throw open the depths of your heart to see the riches of simplicity, the treasures of peace, the sweetness of grace. Open your heart and run to meet the Sun of eternal light that illuminates all men. Indeed that true light shines on all; but if anyone closes his shutters against it then he will defraud himself of the eternal light. To close the doors of your mind is to exclude Christ. Of course he is capable of entering even so, but he does not want to force his way in or seize you against your will.
Born of the Virgin’s womb, he shone on the whole world to give light to all. It is received by those who desire the brightness of perpetual light that no night can obscure. For the sun that we see daily in the sky is followed by darkness and night; but the Sun of righteousness never sets, since evil cannot defeat wisdom.
Blessed is he, therefore, at whose door Christ comes knocking. Faith is the door of the soul, and if it is strong then it fortifies the whole house. Through this door Christ enters. Thus it is that the Church herself says, The voice of my brother is knocking on the door. Listen to him knocking, listen to him asking to be let in: Open to me, my sister, my beloved, my dove, my perfect one, for my head is wet with dew, my hair with the drops of night.
You see that when the Word of God knocks hardest on your door, it is when his hair is wet with the dew of the night. In fact he chooses to visit those who are in tribulation and trial, lest one of them be overwhelmed by distress. So his head is covered with dew, with drops, when his body is labouring hard. It is important to keep watch so that when the Bridegroom comes, he is not shut out. If you are asleep and your heart is not keeping watch, he will go away without knocking; but if your heart is alert for his coming, he knocks and asks for the door to be opened to him.
Thus you see that our soul has a door, but we have gates too, as the psalm says: Gates, raise your heads. Stand up, eternal doors, and let the king of glory enter. If you choose to raise your gates, the King of glory will come to you, celebrating the triumph of his own Passion. For righteousness has gates, as we see it written when the Lord Jesus speaks through his prophets: Open to me the gates of righteousness.
It is the soul that has its door, it is the soul that has its gates. To that door Christ comes and knocks, he knocks at the door. Open to him, therefore: he wishes to come in, the Bridegroom wishes to find you keeping watch.
Responsory
℟. Listen! I stand at the door and knock: if anyone hears my voice and opens the door,* I will come into his house and eat with him, and he will eat with me.
℣. How happy is that servant if his master finds him doing this when he comes home.* I will come into his house and eat with him, and he will eat with me.
________
Let us pray.
Lord God,
when our world lay in ruins,
you raised it up again on the foundation of your Son’s Passion and Death.
Give us grace to rejoice in the freedom from sin which he gained for us,
and bring us to everlasting joy.
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 © 1996-2022 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.