Tuesday – HH Andreas Düng Lac, pr. and companions, Mar.

 

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
A pagan king who destroyed Israel and deported its people feels himself acting as part of God’s plan with the world. Even when he acts against God’s word, he seems to be executor of that plan. The kingdom of God is at hand: It is being built even now, on earth. Are we focused on the future that God promises us? Are we passively waiting for what is to come, or are we building God’s kingdom according to godliness and ability? We can, starting today, ask God to assist and guide us in that little piece of the world of ours that we have built: our family, our household, this community, our personal lives and those around us.

FIRST READING                    Dan. 2, 31-45

The God of heaven will establish a kingdom
which shall not perish for ever
and will not be handed over to another people.

In those days, Daniel spoke to King Nebuchadnezzar:
“King ,
in the vision you have had,
you have seen a very great
and bright shining image
standing before you ,
with a terrifying appearance.
The head of that statue was of pure gold,
its chest and arms of silver,
his belly and loins of bronze, his legs of iron,
his feet were partly of iron
and partly of pottery.
As you watched, a stone was cut loose
without a hand touching it;
that stone struck the statue
and shattered the feet of iron and pottery.
At the same time
then crushed the iron, bronze, silver and gold
and were carried away by the wind
like the chaff when one is threshing the wheat.
Nothing remained of the statue,
but the stone that had struck it
became a great mountain that filled all the earth.
That was your dream.
Now we will tell you what it means.
King, king of kings,
to whom the God of heaven has given the kingship,
power and strength and majesty,
wherever men dwell,
to whom He has given
the beasts of the field and the birds of the sky
into whose hands
and whom He made to rule over them all,
you are the head of gold.
But after you will come another kingdom,
which is lesser than thine,
after that a third kingdom of bronze,
which will rule over the whole earth,
and finally there will come a fourth empire, hard as iron.
Just like iron
that can crush everything and turn it into grit,
that empire will crush and shatter the previous empires.
That the feet and toes, as you have seen,
were partly of iron,
means that it will be a divided empire.
Yet it will have the firmness of iron,
for, as you have seen,
the iron was joined to the pottery, out of mud.
That the toes of the feet were partly of iron
and partly of pottery,
means that the kingdom will be hard on the one hand,
but on the other hand brittle.
And that, as you have seen,
the iron was connected with earthenware made of mud,
means that they will try to
to connect the parts of the empire by marriages.
But those parts will not unite with each other,
nor will iron with pottery.
But in the time of those kings
the God of heaven will establish a kingdom
which shall not perish for ever
and will not be handed over to another people.
It will crush all those empires
and put an end to them,
but it itself will last for eternity.
After all, you have seen how from the mountains ,
without a hand being involved,
a stone was cut loose,
which crushed the iron, the bronze, the pottery,
the silver and gold.
The great God revealed to the king
what will happen in the future.
The dream is true and the explanation reliable.”

INTERLUDIUM               Dan. 3, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61

Praise the Lord, praise and exalt Him forever.

Praise the Lord, all the creatures of God,
praise and exalt Him forever.

Praise the Lord, all the messengers of the Lord,
heavenly powers, praise Him.

Praise Him, waters above the heavens,
all His armies, praise Him.

ALLELUIA                   Lk 21.28

Alleluia.
Raise yourselves and lift up your heads
for your salvation comes near.
Alleluia.

GOSPEL                         Lk. 21, 5-11

No stone shall be left upon another.

In those days, when some noted
how the temple there adorned
with its fine stones and gifts of wisdom,
Jesus said :
“What ye see there:
A time will come
when no stone will be left on the other:
All shall be destroyed.”
The disciples now asked Him:
“Master, when will that happen?”
But He said:
“Beware lest ye be led astray.
“For many will act in my Name
and they shall say, It is I, and: The time is at hand.
“Do not run after them.
“And when ye hear of wars and disturbances ,
do not be put out of action.
“All that must happen first,
but the end does not immediately follow.”
Then He spoke to them:
“There will be strife of people against people
and of kingdom against kingdom;
there will be violent earthquakes ,
and famine and pestilence,
now here then there,
terrifying things
and in the sky terrific signs.”

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Laudato Si

Encyclical of

POPE FRANCISCUS

On caring for the common home

195. The principle of profit maximisation, which tends to
isolate itself from every other consideration, is a distortion of the
concept of economics: if production rises, it is of little consequence
that there will be an increase in production at the
at the expense of future resources or the health of the environment
is produced; if cutting down a forest increases production,
in this calculation, no one measures the loss that turning an area into a desert
transformation of an area, the destruction of biodiversity or the
increasing pollution implies. This is to say that companies
make profits by calculating and paying an extremely small proportion of the costs. One should only consider a behaviour to be ethical
when “the economic and social costs that
arise 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”. The instrumental rationality that merely
a statistical analysis of reality in relation to the
needs of the moment, is present both when the market
allocates resources, as well as in the case of a state with a planned economy.

To be continued
Every day at 1 am