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. Everyone, no one excepted,
can experience that joy by opening their hearts
to the healing power of God’s word.
Available every day.
Consideration
The letter of James belongs to the wisdom literature. Even though the thoughts are very loosely strung together, they are surprisingly rich and vividly formulated. The writer must have been a gifted man. He addresses his letter to the 12 tribes in the dispersion. The dispersion or diaspora, that is the scattered Jews outside Palestine. Thus, the letter could well have been meant for all the Jews in the Diaspora, who had converted to Christianity.
FIRST READING James 1, 1-11
Ye know that the testing of your faith produces constancy
bring forth, so that ye may be perfect and blameless.
Beginning of the letter of the holy apostle James
James,
servant of God and the Lord Jesus Christ,
greets the twelve tribes in the Scattering.
Brothers and sisters,
consider yourselves very fortunate,
when all kinds of trials befall you,
for ye know
that such testing of your faith
produces constancy;
and steadfastness must come to full fruition,
that ye may be perfect and blameless
and fall short in nothing.
If any of you fall short of wisdom
then he should ask God for it
and it will be given to him,
for God gives to all
without reservation and without reproach.
But he must pray with confidence,
without wavering.
He who wavers resembles the waves of the sea
which are tossed to and fro by the wind.
Such a person,
inwardly divided as he is and unsteady in all his behaviour,
should not think that he will obtain anything from the Lord.
The poor Christian should be proud of his high standing
and the rich on his littleness !
For the rich man will perish like a flower in the grass.
The sun rises with its scorching heat;
it makes the grass wither,
the flower falls off
and all its splendour is gone.
So shall the rich man perish :
in the midst of his undertakings he shall wither away.
INTERLUDIUM Ps 119(118), 67-68, 71-72, 75-76
By your mercy, Lord, may I live.
Before I was humbled, I was in error,
but now I cling to Your judgments.
Beneficent art Thou and good are Thy deeds ;
Let me only know what Thou dost dispose.
The torment was a benefit to me :
Thus I learned what Thou disposes.
The law from Thy mouth is worth more to me
than treasures of silver and gold.
Just is what Thou dost ordain, Lord, I know,
Thou hast punished me justly ;
but let thy mercy comfort me now,
as Thou didst once promise Thy servant.
ALLELUIA cf. Lk. 8, 15
Alleluia.
Blessed are those who keep the Word of God which they heard
Keep in a good and noble heart,
and bring forth fruit by their steadfastness.
Alleluia.
GOSPEL Mk 8:11-13
What sign does this generation desire?
From the holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Mark
In those days the Pharisees rose up
and began to argue with Jesus.
To test Him
they demanded of Him a sign from heaven.
He heaved a sigh from the depths of his heart and said :
“What does this generation desire a sign?
“Verily, I say unto you :
in no case shall a sign be given to this generation.”
He left them standing, got back into the boat
and returned to the other side.
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Laudato Si
Encyclic by
POPE FRANCIS
On caring for the common home
195. The principle of maximising profit, which tends to isolate itself from every other consideration, is a distortion of the concept of economics: if production increases, it is of little importance that it is produced at the expense of future resources or the health of the environment; if cutting down a forest increases production, no one in this calculation measures the loss that turning an area into a desert, destroying biodiversity or increasing pollution represents. That is, companies make profits by calculating and paying an extremely small proportion of the costs. One should only consider behaviour ethical where “the economic and social costs resulting from the use of common resources in the environment are transparently recognised and fully borne by those who benefit from them, and not by other peoples or by future generations”. 5 The instrumental rationality that merely offers a statistical analysis of reality in relation to the needs of the moment is present both, when the market allocates resources, and when that a state does planning, it does so.
To be continued
The Bible text in this issue 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
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