Lord, open my lips.
 - And my mouth shall proclaim your praise.

Psalm 95 is the traditional Invitatory Psalm. Psalm 24, 67, or 100 may be substituted.

Antiphon: Christ has appeared to us; Come let us adore him.

Psalm 95

Psalm 24

Psalm 67

Psalm 100

God, come to my assistance.
 - Lord, make haste to help me.
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit:
 -  as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be for ever.
Amen. Alleluia.


HYMN

O God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Our shelter from the stormy blast,
And our eternal home.

Beneath the shadow of your throne
Your saints have dwelt secure;
Sufficient is your arm alone,
And our defense is sure.

Before the hills in order stood,
Or earth received her frame,
From everlasting you are God,
To endless years the same.

A thousand ages in your sight
Are like an evening gone,
Short as the watch that ends the night
Before the rising sun.

Time, like an ever-rolling stream,
Bears all our lives away;
They fly, forgotten, as a dream
Dies at the opening day.

O God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Be now our guide while life shall last,
And our eternal home.
Text: Isaac Watts; Melody: St. Anne C. M.


PSALMODY

Antiphon 1: Lord, you are our Savior; we will praise you for ever.

                    I
We heard with our own ears, O God,
our fathers have told us the story
of the things you did in their days,
you yourself, in days long ago.

To plant them you uprooted the nations;
to let them spread you laid peoples low.
No sword of their own won the land;
no arm of their own brought them victory.
It was your right hand, your arm
and the light of your face; for you loved them.

It is you, my king, my God,
who granted victories to Jacob.
Through you we beat down our foes;
in your name we trampled down our aggressors.

For it was not in my bow that I trusted
nor yet was I saved by my sword:
it was you who saved us from our foes,
it was you who put our foes to shame.
All day long our boast was in God
and we praised your name without ceasing. Glory...

Antiphon 1 Lord, you are our Savior; we will praise you for ever.


Antiphon 2 Spare us, O Lord; do not bring your own people into contempt.

                        II
Yet now you have rejected us, disgraced us;
you no longer go forth with our armies.
You make us retreat from the foe
and our enemies plunder us at will.

You make us like sheep for the slaughter
and scatter us among the nations.
You sell your own people for nothing
and make no profit by the sale.

You make us the taunt of our neighbors,
the laughing stock of all who are near.
Among the nations, you make us a byword,
among the peoples a thing of derision.

All day long my disgrace is before me;
my face is covered with shame
at the voice of the taunter, the scoffer,
at the sight of the foe and avenger. Glory...

Antiphon 2 Spare us, O Lord; do not bring your own people into contempt.


Antiphon 3 Rise up, O Lord, and save us, for you are merciful.

                       III
This befell us though we had not forgotten you,
though we had not been false to your covenant,
though we had not withdrawn our hearts;
though our feet had not strayed from your path.
Yet you have crushed us in a place of sorrows
and covered us with the shadow of death.

Had we forgotten the name of our God,
or stretched out our hands to another god
would not God have found this out,
he who knows the secrets of the heart?
It is for you that we face death all day long
and are counted as sheep for the slaughter.

Awake, O Lord, why do you sleep?
Arise, do not reject us for ever!
Why do you hide your face
and forget our oppression and misery?

For we are brought down low to the dust;
our body lies prostrate on the earth.
Stand up and come to our help!
Redeem us because of your love! Glory...

Antiphon 3 Rise up, O Lord, and save us, for you are merciful.


The Son of God has come to give us understanding.
     - That we might know the true God.


FIRST READING

From the book of the prophet Isaiah           63:19b-64:11

God's people plead for his coming

Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down,
  with the mountains quaking before you,
As when brushwood is set ablaze,
  or fire makes the water boil!
Thus your name would be made known to your enemies
  and the nations would tremble before you,
While you wrought awesome deeds we could not hope for,
  such as they had not heard of from of old.

No ear has ever heard, no eye ever seen,
  any God but you
  doing such deeds for those who wait for him.

Would that you might meet us doing right,
  that we were mindful of you in our ways!
Behold, you are angry, and we are sinful;
  all of us have become like unclean men,
  all our good deeds are like polluted rags;
We have all withered like leaves,
  and our guilt carries us away like the wind.
There is none who calls upon your name,
  who rouses himself to cling to you;
For you have hidden your face from us
  and have delivered us up to our guilt.

Yet, O Lord, you are our father;
  we are the clay and you the potter:
  we are all the work of your hands.
Be not so very angry, Lord,
  keep not our guilt forever in mind;
  look upon us, who are all your people.
Your holy cities have become a desert,
  Zion is a desert, Jerusalem a waste.

Our holy and glorious temple
  in which our fathers praised you
Has been burned with fire;
  all that was dear to us is laid waste.
Can you hold back, O Lord, after all this?
  Can you remain silent, and afflict us so severely?


RESPONSORY          See Isaiah 56:1; Micah 4:9; Isaiah 43:3
Jerusalm, your salvation comes quickly:
why are you consumed by sorrow?
Has your pain returned since you have no counselors?
- I will save and deliver you, have no fear.

For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Redeemer.
- I will save and deliver you, have no fear.


SECOND READING

From a letter by Saint Cyril of Alexandria, bishop
(Lib. 5, Cap. 2: PG 73, 751-754)

The gift of the Holy Spirit to all mankind

In a plan of surpassing beauty the Creator of the universe decreed the renewal of all things in Christ. In his design for restoring human nature to its original condition, he gave a promise that he would pour out on it the Holy Spirit along with his other gifts, for otherwise our nature could not enter once more into the peaceful and secure possession of those gifts.

He therefore appointed a time for the Holy Spirit to come upon us: this was the time of Christ’s coming. He gave this promise when he said: In those days, that is, the days of the Savior, I will pour out a share of my Spirit on all mankind.

When the time came for this great act of unforced generosity, which revealed in our midst the only-begotten Son, clothed with flesh on this earth, a man born of woman, in accordance with Holy Scripture, God the Father gave the Spirit once again. Christ, as the first fruits of our restored nature, was the first to receive the Spirit. John the Baptist bore witness to this when he said: I saw the Spirit coming down from heaven, and it rested on him.

Christ “received the Spirit” in so far as he was man, and in so far as man could receive the Spirit. He did so in such a way that, though he is the Son of God the Father, begotten of his substance, even before the incarnation, indeed before all ages, yet he was not offended at hearing the Father say to him after he had become man: You are my Son; today I have begotten you.

The Father says of Christ, who was God, begotten of him before the ages, that he has been “begotten today,” for the Father is to accept us in Christ as his adopted children. The whole of our nature is present in Christ, in so far as he is man. So the Father can be said to give the Spirit again to the Son, though the Son possesses the Spirit as his own, in order that we may receive the Spirit in Christ. The Son therefore took to himself the seed of Abraham, as Scripture says, and became like his brothers in all things.

The only-begotten Son received the Spirit, but not for his own advantage, for the Spirit in his, and is given in him and through him, as we have already said. He receives it to renew our nature in its entirety and to make it whole again, for in becoming man he took our entire nature to himself. If we reason correctly, and use also the testimony of Scripture, we can see that Christ did not receive the Spirit for himself, but rather for us in him; for it is also through Christ that all gifts come down to us.


RESPONSORY          Ezekiel 37:27-28; Hebrews 8:8
I will be their God and they shall be my people.
- The nations shall know that I am the Lord, the Sanctifier of Israel,
when my holiness will be established in their midst for all eternity.

I shall bring to fulfillment my new covenant
with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.
when my holiness will be established in their midst for all eternity.


COLLECT
O God, who through your Son raised up your eternal light for all nations,
grant that your people may come to acknowledge
the full splendor of their Redeemer,
that, bathed ever more in his radiance,
they may reach everlasting glory.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.


Let us praise the Lord.
- And give him thanks.