Mass Readings
Catholic Ireland
Liturgical Readings for : Wednesday, 7th June, 2023Léachtaí Gaeilge
Next Sunday's Readings
Wednesday of Ninth Week of Ordinary Time, Year 1
Optional Memorial of St Colman, bishop
FIRST READING Tob 3:1-11. 16-17
The prayer of each of them found favour before the glory of God.
Sad at heart, I Tobit, sighed and wept, and began this prayer of lamentation:
‘You are just, O Lord, and just are all your works.
All your ways are grace and truth, and you are the Judge of the world.
‘Therefore, Lord, remember me, look on me. Do not punish me for my sins or for my heedless faults or for those of my fathers. ‘For we have sinned against you and broken your commandments; and you have given us over to be plundered,
to captivity and death, to be the talk, the laughing-stock and scorn of all the nations among whom you have dispersed us.
‘Whereas all your decrees are true
when you deal with me as my faults deserve, and those of my fathers,
since we have neither kept your commandments nor walked in truth before you;
so now, do with me as you will; be pleased to take my life from me;
I desire to be delivered from earth and to become earth again.
For death is better for me than life.
I have been reviled without a cause and I am distressed beyond measure.
‘Lord, I wait for the sentence you will give to deliver me from this affliction.
Let me go away to my everlasting home; do not turn your face from me, O Lord.
For it is better to die than still to live in the face of trouble that knows no pity;
I am weary of hearing myself traduced.’
It chanced on the same day that Sarah the daughter of Raguel, who lived in Media at Ecbatana, also heard insults from one of her father’s maids. You must know that she had been given in marriage seven times, and that Asmodeus, that worst of demons, had killed her bridegrooms one after another before ever they had slept with her as man with wife. The servant-girl said, ‘Yes, you kill your bridegrooms yourself. That makes seven already to whom you have been given, and you have not once been in luck yet. Just because your bridegrooms have died, that is no reason for punishing us. Go and join them, and may we be spared the sight of any child of yours!’
That day, she grieved, she sobbed, and went up to her father’s room intending to hang herself. But then she thought,
‘Suppose they blamed my father! They will say, “You had an only daughter whom you loved, and now she has hanged herself for grief”. I cannot cause my father a sorrow which would bring down his old age to the dwelling of the dead. I should do better not to hang myself, but to beg the Lord to let me die and not live to hear any more insults.’ And at this, by the window with outstretched arms she said this prayer: ‘You are blessed, O God of mercy! May your name be blessed for ever, and may all things you have made bless you everlastingly.
This time the prayer of each of them found favour before the glory of God, and Raphael was sent to bring remedy to them both.
The Word of the Lord Thanks be to God
Responsorial Psalm Ps 24
Response To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul.
1. I trust you, let me not be disappointed; do not let my enemies triumph.
Those who hope in you shall not be disappointed, but only those who wantonly break faith. Response
2. Lord, make me know your ways. Lord, teach me your paths.
Make me walk in your truth, and teach me: for you are God my saviour. Response
3. In you I hope all the day long because of your goodness, O Lord.
Remember your mercy, Lord, and the love you have shown from of old.
Do not remember the sins of my youth. In your love remember me. Response
4. The Lord is good and upright. He shows the path to those who stray,
He guides the humble in the right path; he teaches his way to the poor. Response
Gospel Acclamation Jn 17: 17
Alleluia, Alleluia!
Your word is truth, O Lord, consecrate us in the truth.
Alleluia!
Or Jn 11: 25. 26
Alleluia, Alleluia!
‘I am the resurrection and the life, says the Lord, whoever believes in me will never die.’
Alleluia!
GOSPEL
The Lord be with you And with your spirit.
A reading from the Gospel according to Mark 12:18-27 Glory to you, O Lord
He is God, not of the dead, but of the living.
Some Sadducees – who deny that there is a resurrection – came to Jesus and they put this question to him,
‘Master, we have it from Moses in writing, if a man’s brother dies leaving a wife but no child, the man must marry the widow to raise up children for his brother. Now there were seven brothers. The first married a wife and then died leaving no children. The second married the widow, and he too died leaving no children; with the third it was the same, and none of the seven left any children. Last of all the woman herself died. Now at the resurrection, when they rise again, whose wife will she be, since she had been married to all seven?’
Jesus said to them,
‘Is not the reason why you go wrong, that you understand neither the scriptures nor the power of God? For when they rise from the dead, men and women do not marry; no, they are like the angels in heaven. Now about the dead rising again, have you never read in the Book of Moses, in the passage about the Bush, how God spoke to him and said: I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob?
He is God, not of the dead, but of the living. You are very much mistaken.’
The Gospel of the Lord Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.
Gospel Reflection Wednesday, Ninth Week in Ordinary Time Mark 12:18-27
In the time of Jesus, not all faithful Jews agreed on what happened to believers when they died. The Sadducees who confront Jesus in today’s gospel reading did not believe in any resurrection of the dead. They challenge Jesus’ teaching on life beyond this earthly life by creating a scenario that they think reduces the teaching on resurrected life to absurdity. If a woman had seven husbands in this life, who died one after the other, whose wife will she be in the next life? In response, Jesus declares that resurrected life is not just an extension of this-worldly life into the heavenly world. It is a different kind of life that is brought into being by God. Jesus declares God to be the God of the living. The God who gave us life at birth will give us life beyond death, but it will be a different kind of life. Jesus often uses images drawn from this life to give a sense of this heavenly life, such as the image of the banquet and of God’s many roomed house. However, none of these images can be taken overly literally.
As Paul says in this first letter to the Corinthians, ‘eye has not seen nor ear heard not the human heart conceived what God has prepared for those who love him’. However, Jesus assures us that God’s faithful and life-giving presence to us will endure beyond the moment of physical death. What God has done for his Son, bringing him through death into a new, risen, life is the pattern of what God will do for us all.
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The Scripture Readings are taken from The Jerusalem Bible, published 1966 by Darton, Longman & Todd Ltd. and used with the permission of the publishers. http://dltbooks.com/
The Scripture Reflection is made available with our thanks from Reflections on the Weekday Readings 2022-2023: Your word is a lamp for my feet and light for my path by Martin Hogan and published by Messenger Publications 2022, c/f www.messenger.ie/bookshop/
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