THURSDAY - WEEK III
Office of Readings
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: The Lord is risen, alleluia.
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.
HYMN
Christ the Lord is Risen Today
The Day of Resurrection
Or:
Eternal Father, through your Word
You gave new life to Adam's race,
Transformed them into sons of light,
New creatures by your saving grace.
To you who stooped to sinful man
We render homage and all praise:
To Father, Son and Spirit blest
Whose gift to man is endless days.
Text: Stanbrook Abbey; Melody Erhalt uns, Herr L.M.; Midi: Cyberhymnal.
PSALMODY
Antiphon 1:
Look on us, Lord, and see how we are despised, alleluia.
Psalm 89:39-53
Lament for the fall of David's dynasty
He has raised up for us a mighty Savior, born of the house of David his servant. (Luke 1:69)
I
And yet you have spurned, rejected,
you are angry with the one you have anointed.
You have broken your covenant with your servant
and dishonored his crown in the dust.
You have broken down all his walls
and reduced his fortresses to ruins.
He is despoiled by all who pass by;
he has become the taunt of his neighbors.
You have exalted the right hand of his foes;
you have made all his enemies rejoice.
You have made his sword give way,
you have not upheld him in battle.
You have brought his glory to an end;
you have hurled his throne to the ground.
You have cut short the years of his youth;
you have heaped disgrace upon him. Glory...
Antiphon 1
Look on us, Lord, and see how we are despised, alleluia.
Antiphon 2
I am the root and stock of David; I am the morning star, alleluia.
How long will your anger burn like a fire?
Remember, Lord, the shortness of my life
and how frail you have made the sons of men.
What man can live and never see death?
Who can save himself from the grasp of the grave?
Where are the mercies of the past, O Lord,
which you have sworn in your faithfulness to David?
Remember, Lord, how your servant is taunted,
how I have to bear all the insults of the peoples.
Thus your enemies taunt me, O Lord,
mocking your anointed at every step.
Blessed be the Lord for ever.
Amen, amen! Glory...
Antiphon 2 I am the root and stock of David; I am the morning star, alleluia.
Antiphon 3
Our years wither away like grass, but you, Lord God, are eternal, alleluia.
Psalm 90
May we live in the radiance of God
There is no time with God; a thousand years, a single day: it is all one. (2 Peter 3:8)
O Lord, you have been our refuge
from one generation to the next.
Before the mountains were born
or the earth or the world brought forth,
you are God, without beginning or end.
You turn men back to dust
and say: Go back, sons of men.
To your eyes a thousand years
are like yesterday, come and gone,
no more than a watch in the night.
You sweep men away like a dream,
like the grass which springs up in the morning.
In the morning it springs up and flowers:
by evening it withers and fades.
So we are destroyed in your anger,
struck with terror in your fury.
Our guilt lies open before you;
our secrets in the light of your face.
All our days pass away in your anger.
Our life is over like a sigh.
Our span is seventy years,
or eighty for those who are strong.
And most of these are emptiness and pain.
They pass swiftly and we are gone.
Who understands the power of your anger
and fears the strength of your fury?
Make us know the shortness of our life
that we may gain wisdom of heart.
Lord, relent! Is your anger for ever?
Show pity to your servants.
In the morning, fill us with your love;
we shall exult and rejoice all our days.
Give us joy to balance our affliction
for the years when we knew misfortune.
Show forth your work to your servants;
let your glory shine on their children.
Let the favor of the Lord be upon us:
give success to the work of our hands.
give success to the work of our hands. Glory...
Psalm Prayer: Eternal Father, you give us life despite our guilt and even add days and years to our lives in order to bring us wisdom. Make us love and obey you, that the work of our hands may always display what your hands have done, until the day we gaze upon the beauty of your face.
Antiphon 3
Our years wither away like grass, but you, Lord God, are eternal, alleluia.
God raised the Lord to life, alleluia,
- Through his power he will also raise us up, alleluia.
FIRST READING
From the book of Revelation 9:13-21
The plague of war
I, John, watched and the sixth angel blew his trumpet, and I heard a voice coming from the horns of the gold altar before God, telling the sixth angel who held the trumpet, "Release the four angels who are bound at the banks of the great river Euphrates."
So the four angels were released, who were prepared for this hour, day, month, and year to kill a third of the human race. The number of cavalry troops was two hundred million; I heard their number. Now in my vision this is how I saw the horses and their riders. They wore red, blue, and yellow breastplates, and the horses' heads were like heads of lions, and out of their mouths came fire, smoke, and sulfur. By these three plagues of fire, smoke, and sulfur that came out of their mouths a third of the human race was killed. For the power of the horses is in their mouths and in their tails; for their tails are like snakes, with heads that inflict harm.
The rest of the human race, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands, to give up the worship of demons and idols made from gold, silver, bronze, stone, and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk. Nor did they repent of their murders, their magic potions, their unchastity, or their robberies.
RESPONSORY Acts 17:30,31; Joel 1:13,14
God calls upon all men to repent,
- for he has fixed the day
on which he will judge the world with justice, alleluia.
Ministers of God, gather together all the inhabitants of the land and cry out to the Lord.
- for he has fixed the day
on which he will judge the world with justice, alleluia.
SECOND READING
From the treatise Against Heresies by Saint Irenaeus, bishop
(Lib. 5:2,2-3: SC 153, 30-38)
The eucharist, pledge of our resurrection
If our flesh is not saved, then the Lord has not redeemed us with his blood, the eucharistic chalice does not make us sharers in his blood, and the bread we break does not make us sharers in his body. There can be no blood without veins, flesh and the rest of the human substance, and this the Word of God actually became: it was with his own blood that he redeemed us. As the Apostle says: In him, through his blood, we have been redeemed, our sins have been forgiven.
We are his members and we are nourished by creatures, which is his gift to us, for it is he who causes the sun to rise and the rain to fall. He declared that the chalice, which comes from his creation, was his blood, and he makes it the nourishment of our blood. He affirmed that the bread, which comes from his creation, was his body, and he makes it the nourishment of our body. When the chalice we mix and the bread we bake receive the word of God, the eucharistic elements become the body and blood of Christ, by which our bodies live and grow. How then can it be said that flesh belonging to the Lord’s own body and nourished by his body and blood is incapable of receiving God’s gift of eternal life? Saint Paul says in his letter to the Ephesians that we are members of his body, of his flesh and bones. He is not speaking of some spiritual and incorporeal kind of man, for spirits do not have flesh and bones. He is speaking of a real human body composed of flesh, sinews and bones, nourished by the chalice of Christ’s blood and receiving growth from the bread which is his body.
The slip of a vine planted in the ground bears fruit at the proper time. The grain of wheat falls into the ground and decays only to be raised up again and multiplied by the Spirit of God who sustains all things. The Wisdom of God places these things at the service of man and when they receive God’s word they become the eucharist, which is the body and blood of Christ. In the same way our bodies, which have been nourished by the eucharist, will be buried in the earth and will decay, but they will rise again at the appointed time, for the Word of God will raise them up to the glory of God the Father. Then the Father will clothe our mortal nature in immortality and freely endow our corruptible nature with incorruptibility, for God’s power is shown most perfectly in weakness.
RESPONSORY John 6:48-52
I am the bread of life.
Your forefathers ate manna is the desert,
and they died.
- This is the bread that comes down from heaven;
anyone who eats this bread will never die, alleluia.
I am the living bread come down from heaven.
Anyone who eats this bread will live for ever.
- This is the bread that comes down from heaven;
anyone who eats this bread will never die, alleluia.
COLLECT
Almighty ever-living God,
let us feel your compassion more readily
during these days when, by your gift,
we have known it more fully,
so that those you have freed from the darkness of error
may cling more firmly to the teachings of your truth.
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.
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