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
This is a very important part of the letter. First, there is the reason: The Christians of Thessalonica do not know what will happen to those who have already died. Like Paul, they expect a speedy return of the Lord. Paul reassures them. But this occasion leads him to an important Christological statement.
The word ‘coming’ in the reading is seemingly a banal Dutch word. In Greek it reads ‘parousia’, which is a very special word used in the Middle East for the inauguration of a ruler. So Jesus is given a very high function here. He is ‘coming back’ to be Lord and Saviour. This comes out even more strongly here than in the other epistles.
FIRST READING I Thess. 4, 13-18
God will take those who have fallen asleep in Jesus
alive with Him.
Brothers and sisters,
We do not wish to leave you in ignorance
about the fate of those who have fallen asleep;
ye must not be grieved like other people
who have no hope.
For we believe that Jesus died and rose again;
likewise God will take those who have fallen asleep in Jesus
alive with Him.
And this we can communicate to you according to a word from the Lord:
We who remain alive until the coming of the Lord,
we shall by no means precede the dead.
For when the command is given,
when the voice of the archangel resounds and the trumpet of God,
then the Lord himself will descend from heaven,
and first the dead who are in Christ will rise;
after that, we who are still alive
together with them
be carried away on clouds in the sky in an instant,
to meet the Lord.
And so we will be together with the Lord forever.
Comfort each other then with these words.
INTERLUDIUM Ps 96(95), 1, 3, 4-5, 11-12, 13
Justly will God rule the world,
the people fairly and faithfully.
Sing to the Lord a new song,
sing to the Lord, all nations.
Report to the nations his glory,
his wondrous deeds to all nations.
For mighty and unprecedented is He
and more to be feared than all gods.
The gods of the nations are makings of men,
but He is the creator of the universe.
Then the heavens shine and the earth rejoices,
the sea hums along with all that lives there;
the fields sway with all their crops,
the forest giants bow their crown.
They cheer the Lord because He is coming,
He is coming as King of the Earth.
Righteously He will rule the world,
the people fair and faithful.
ALLELUIA Ps. 111(110), 8ab
Alleluia.
The Lord’s work is good and trustworthy,
all that He decides stands immovable.
Alleluia.
GOSPEL Lk. 4, 16-30
The Lord has sent me
to bring the Good News to the poor.
No prophet is accepted in his own father city.
At that time Jesus came to Nazareth,
where He had been brought up.
He went according to his custom
to the synagogue on the Sabbath day
and stood up to read aloud.
They handed Him the scroll of the prophet Isaiah.
He opened the scroll
and found the place where it was written:
“The spirit of the Lord has come upon me ,
because He has anointed me.
He has sent me
to bring to the poor the Good News,
to make known to prisoners their release,
and to the blind that they may see;
to make the oppressed go free,
to proclaim a year of grace from the Lord.”
Thereupon He rolled the book closed,
handed it back to the servant and sat down.
In the synagogue, all eyes were tense on Him.
Then He began to address them:
“The Scripture word that you have just heard
is now fulfilled.”
All expressed their assent to Him
and marvelled
that words, so full of grace flowed from His mouth.
They said:
“Is that not Joseph’s son then?”
He said to them:
“Of course you will present Me with this proverb:
Physician, heal thyself;
do all that, as we heard, happened in Capernaum,
now also here in your father city.”
But He gave this answer to it:
“Verily, I say to you:
No prophet is accepted in his own father city.
And it is true what I tell you:
After all, in the time of Elijah ,
when the heavens remained closed for three years and six months
and a great famine broke out over all the land ,
there were many widows in Israel;
yet Elijah was not sent to any of them
than to a widow at Sarepta, in the region of Sidon.
And in the time of the prophet Elisha
there were many lepers in Israel;
yet none of them was cleansed,
except the Syrian Naaman.”
When they heard this
all who were in the synagogue became enraged.
They jumped up,
chased Him out of the city
and drove Him on
to the steep edge of the mountain on which their city was built,
to plunge Him there into the abyss.
But He passed in the midst of them and left.
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Laudato Si
Encyclical of
POPE FRANCISCUS
On caring for the common home
100. The New Testament speaks to us not only of the earthly Jesus
and His so concrete and loving relationship with the world. It shows us Him
as risen and glorified, present in all creation with
his universal dominion: “For in him God has willed to dwell in all
his fullness, that through him he might reconcile the universe to himself and
establish peace through the blood shed on the cross, to reconcile all things in the heavens and
on earth, through Him alone” (Col 1:19-20). This points us towards
the end of time, when the Son will put everything into the Father’s hands
so that “God is all in all” (1 Cor. 15:28). Thus the creatures of this
no longer present themselves to us as a purely natural reality,
because the risen Lord mysteriously surrounds and directs them towards a
destination of fullness. The same flowers in the field and the birds that
He saw with wonder with His human eyes, are now full of His luminous
presence.
To be continued
Every day at 1 am
The Bible text in this edition is taken from The New Bible Translation,
©Dutch Bible Society 2004/2007.
Considerations from Liturgical suggestions for weekdays and Sundays
Laudato Si Official English translation
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