Invitation
May I hereby draw your attention to
the daily reading of the Gospel?
This invitation wants to share with you the joy of the Gospel.
of the Gospel. Everyone, no one excepted,
can experience that joy by opening their hearts
to the healing power of God’s word.
Available every day.
Opening word
In baptism we become children of God, bearers of light,
and God’s Spirit enters us as an inexhaustible source of life.
The Samaritan at the well may discover and experience
what it means to be fully known by God.
As God’s children, may we also be together today
to share word, bread and life with each other
and draw together from the well of living water.
FIRST READING Ex. 17,3-7
Give us water to drink.
From the book of Exodus
In those days
the Israelites suffered severe thirst during the desert journey.
They kept grumbling to Moses, saying:
“Why hast thou carried us away from Egypt
when yet we must die of thirst with children and cattle?”
Moses complained his distress to the Lord:
“What am I to do with this people anyway?
“They are about to stone me.”
The Lord answered Moses:
“Go out with some of Israel’s elders before the people,
take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile
and go forth.
“I will stand yonder, before your eyes,
on a rock, on the Horeb.
“Strike that rock:
Water will flow out of it so that the people may drink.”
Moses did so in the presence of Israel’s elders.
He called the place Massa and Meriba
because of the reproaches of the Israelites
and because they had challenged the Lord
by asking themselves: Is the Lord with us now or not?
Responsorial Ps. 95(94), 1-2, 6-7, 8-9
Refrain
Listen today to God’s voice:
Be not obstinate.
Come, let us greet the Lord with jubilation,
to the Rock of our salvation.
Let us appear before Him with a song of praise,
honour Him with songs.
Come, we prostrate ourselves adoringly,
we kneel down before Him who created us.
He is our God and we are his people,
He is the shepherd and we his flock.
So listen today to his voice:
Be not obstinate as once in Meriba,
as at Mass in the desert,
where your fathers wanted to defy Me
though they had seen my deeds.
SECOND READING Rom. 5, 1-2.5-8
Love has been poured out in us by the Holy Spirit, who was given to us.
From the letter of the holy apostle Paul to the Christians of Rome
Brothers and sisters,
Justified by faith,
we live in peace with God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
It is He
who through faith has opened to us the access
to that grace in which we stand;
through Him also we may boast
of our hope in the glory of God.
And that hope is not disappointed,
for God’s love has been poured out in our hearts
through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.
After all, Christ died for the wicked
at the appointed time,
when we ourselves were still completely helpless.
One will not easily find someone
who gives his life for a righteous person,
though perhaps someone
be able to obtain this from himself in a particular case.
God, however, proves his love for us precisely through this,
that Christ died for us
while we were still sinners.
Gospel verse John 4:42 and 15
Praise and honour be to Thee, Lord Jesus.
Lord, thou art truly the Saviour of the world.
Give me of living water,
that I may thirst no more.
Praise and honour be to Thee, Lord Jesus.
GOSPEL Jn 4: 5-42
A spring of water bubbling up to eternal life.
From the holy gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to John
In those days Jesus came to a city of Samaria,
called Sichar, near the piece of land
which Jacob had given to his son Joseph.
There was Jacob’s well there
and tired from the journey,
Jesus just sat down by this spring.
It was around noon.
When a woman from Samaria came to draw water,
Jesus said to her:
“Give Me a drink.”
Indeed, the disciples had gone to town
to buy groceries.
The Samaritan said to Him:
“How can Thou, as a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan, to drink?”
– For Jews do not maintain relations
with the Samaritans –
Jesus replied in reply:
“If thou hadst any understanding of the gift of God
and if you knew who it is who says to you:
Give Me to drink,
you would have asked Him
and He would have given you living water.”
Thereupon the woman said to Him:
“Lord, Thou hast not even a bucket
and the well is deep:
Where then dost thou get this living water from?
“Art Thou sometimes greater than our father Jacob who gave us the well
and drank from it with his sons and his cattle?”
Jesus answered her:
“Anyone who drinks of this water will thirst again,
but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him,
will not thirst again for eternity;
on the contrary, the water that I will give him ,
will become in him a spring of water,
bubbling up to eternal life.”
At this, the woman said to Him:
“Lord, give me of that water ,
so that I may thirst no more
and no longer have to come here to draw.”
Jesus told her:
“Go and call your husband and then come back here.”
“I have no husband!”
the woman replied.
Jesus told her:
“You say that rightly: I have no husband;
for five husbands thou hast had,
and the one you have now is not your husband.
“As for this, thou hast spoken the truth.”
“Lord, – said the woman –
I see that Thou art a prophet.
“Our fathers worshipped on that mountain there ,
and Thou, Jews, say
that in Jerusalem is the place of worship.”
“Believe Me, woman!
– Jesus told her, –
an hour is coming when neither on that mountain
nor in Jerusalem shall ye worship the Father.
“Ye worship what ye know not;
we worship what we know,
because salvation comes from the Jews.
“But there shall come an hour ,
yea it is already here,
when the true worshippers will worship the Father
in spirit and truth.
“Surely the Father
seeks people who so worship Him.
“God is spirit, and those who worship Him,
must worship Him in spirit and truth.”
The woman told Him:
“I know that the Messiah
– that is, the Anointed One –
is coming, and when He comes ,
He will proclaim everything to us.”
Jesus said to her:
“That is I , who am speaking to you.”
Just at that moment his disciples returned
and they stood amazed
that He was conversing with a woman.
None of them, however, asked:
“What dost thou want of her?” or “Why dost thou speak to her?”
The woman abandoned her pitcher,
walked back to the town and said to the people:
“Come and see a man ,
who has told me all that I have done!
“Could he sometimes be the Messiah?”
Then they left the city to go to Him.
Meanwhile, the disciples urged Him
with the words:
“Eat something anyway, Rabbi.”
But He said to them:
“I have a food to eat which ye know not.”
The disciples said to one another:
“Would anyone have brought Him food sometimes?”
Thereupon Jesus said to them:
“My food is
to do the will of Him who sent Me
and to accomplish His work.
“Do ye not say, another four months and then comes the harvest?
“Well, I say to you:
Lift up thine eyes and look at the fields;
they are white, ripe for harvest.
“Already the reaper receives his reward
and gathers fruit to everlasting life,
so that sower and reaper rejoice together.
“Thus is the saying true: One sows, the other reaps.
“I sent thee forth
to reap for which thou hast not toiled;
others have toiled
and ye reap the fruit of their toil.
Many Samaritans from the city believed in Him
to the word of the woman who testified:
“He has told me all that I have done.”
So when the Samaritans had come to Him,
they requested Him to stay with them.
So He stayed there for two days
and through his word many more came to faith.
To the woman they said:
“No longer do we believe for what thou hast said ,
for we have heard Him ourselves
and we know that This one is truly the Saviour of the world.”
________________________________________________________
Laudato Si
Encyclic by
POPE FRANCIS
On caring for the common home
107. Therefore, we can say that underlying the many difficulties of today’s world is above all the tendency, not always conscious, to shape the methodology and purposes of technical science according to a paradigm of understanding that conditions the lives of individuals and the functioning of society. One observes the effects of applying this model to the whole, human and social reality in the decay of the environment, but this is only a sign of the reductionism that affects human life and society in all their dimensions. One has to recognise that the products of technology are not neutral, as they form a framework that ultimately conditions lifestyles, steering social possibilities towards the interests of certain power groups. Some choices that seem purely instrumental are in reality choices that relate to a type of social life one wants to develop.
To be continued
The Bible text in this edition is taken from The New Translation of the Bible,
©Dutch Bible Society 2004/2007.
Considerations from Liturgical suggestions for weekdays and Sundays
Laudato Si Official English translation
_____________________________________________________________________________