Friday in the twenty-second week through the year

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

Today we read a Christological hymn that perhaps dates back to the oldest layers of the Christian liturgy. It sings of the universal greatness of Christ – the Firstborn of creation and first in resurrection – and centralises that greatness in the cross. It is good to take a moment to recall the dynamic that lives in creation. This is not about a world of living beings that God created once and for all, in the distant past, at the beginning of time. It is about the relationship between man and God, today, here, now. Creation is future that is already there. The world moving towards its completion is the relational unity in Christ, the brothers and sisters who form his Body and ceaselessly build that Body.

FIRST READING          Col. 1, 15-20

Brothers and sisters,

Christ Jesus is the image of the invisible God,
the firstborn of all creation.
For in Him all things were created
in the heavens and on the earth,
the visible and the invisible,
thrones and highs,
dominions and powers.
The universe was created by Him and for Him.
He exists before everything and everything exists in Him.
He is also the head of the Body that is the church.
He is the origin,
the first to rise from the dead
to be supreme in all things,
He alone.
For in Him God has willed to dwell in all His fullness,
to reconcile the universe to Himself through Him
and to make peace through the blood, shed on the cross,
to reconcile all things in heaven and on earth,
through Him alone.

INTERLUDIUM           Ps. 100(99), 2, 3, 4, 5

Enter unconcerned before God’s Face.

Rejoice before the Lord, all nations,
serve the Lord with gladness.
Enter unconcerned before His Face ;
verily, the Lord is God.

He is the Creator and Master,
we are his flock, his people.
Pass through his gates with song,
come into His courts with song.

Bless His Name and honour Him,
He is good to us.
Endless is His mercy,
faithful from generation to generation.

ALLELUIA          Ps 119(118) 36a, 29b

Alleluia.
My heart be set on what You ordain, Lord ;
give me Thy law as my guide.
Alleluia.

GOSPEL          Lk. 5, 33-39

At that time, the scribes and Pharisees said to Jesus:
“The disciples of John
often fast and perform prayers;
those of the Pharisees do likewise,
but yours eat and drink.”
Jesus replied:
“Can you sometimes make the friends of the bridegroom fast
while the bridegroom is with them?
However, days will come ,
when the bridegroom is taken away from them
and then, at that time, they will fast.”

He also gave them another parable:
“No one tears a piece of a new garment
to change with it an old one;
for otherwise he not only tears the new garment ,
but moreover the cloth from the new does not fit the old.
And no one puts young wine into old sacks;
else the young wine makes the sacks burst,
it runs out and the sacks go to waste.
But young wine must be put into new sacks.
And no one who has drunk old wine desires young:
he shall say: the old is best.”
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Laudato Si

Encyclical of

POPE FRANCISCUS

On caring for the common home

104. However, we cannot deny that atomic energy, biotechnology,
computing, the knowledge of our own DNA and other talents
that we have developed give us terrifying power. What
more, they give those who have the knowledge and especially the economic power
to harness them, an impressive power over the whole
of the human race and the entire world. Never has humanity
had so much power over itself and nothing guarantees that it will use it well,
especially if one looks at the way it is using this power
current use of it. It is enough to recall the atomic bombs
thrown in the middle of the 20th century, as well as the great
use of technology exhibited by Nazism, communism and other
totalitarian regimes displayed in order to slaughter millions of people
slaughter, without forgetting that today for war there are increasingly deadly
tools at our disposal. In what hands is so much
power and in which can it get? It is terribly dangerous that it lies with
a small part of humanity.

Every day at 1 am