FRIDAY - WEEK VI
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:
Sing praise to our Creator,
O sons of Adam’s race;
God’s children by adoption,
Baptized into His grace.
Refrain:
Praise the Holy Trinity,
Undivided Unity;
Holy God, Mighty God,
God Immortal, be adored.
To Jesus Christ give glory,
God’s co-eternal Son;
As members of His Body
we live in Him as one.
Refrain
Now praise the Holy Spirit,
poured forth upon the earth;
Who sanctifies and guides us,
Confirmed in our rebirth.
Refrain
Melody: Mainz 76.76 with Refrain
Antiphon 1: Lord, in your anger, do not punish me, alleluia.
I
O Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger;
do not punish me, Lord, in your rage.
Your arrows have sunk deep in me;
your hand has come down upon me.
Through your anger all my body is sick:
through my sin, there is no health in my limbs.
My guilt towers higher than my head;
it is a weight too heavy to bear.
Glory...
Antiphon 1 Lord, in your anger, do not punish me, alleluia.
Antiphon 2 Lord, you know all my longings, alleluia.
II
My wounds are foul and festering,
the result of my own folly.
I am bowed and brought to my knees.
I go mourning all the day long.
All my frame burns with fever;
all my body is sick.
Spent and utterly crushed,
I cry aloud in anguish of heart.
O Lord, you know all my longing:
my groans are not hidden from you.
My heart throbs, my strength is spent;
the very light has gone from my eyes.
My friends avoid me like a leper;
those closest to me stand afar off.
Those who plot against my life lay snares;
those who seek my ruin speak of harm,
planning treachery all the day long. Glory...
Antiphon 2
Lord, you know all my longings, alleluia.
Antiphon 3
I will confess my guilt to you, Lord; do not abandon me, for you are my Savior, alleluia.
III
But I am like the deaf who cannot hear,
like the dumb unable to speak.
I am like a man who hears nothing
in whose mouth is no defense.
I count on you, O Lord:
it is you, Lord God, who will answer.
I pray: "Do not let them mock me,
those who triumph if my foot should slip."
For I am on the point of falling
and my pain is always before me.
I confess that I am guilty
and my sin fills me with dismay.
My wanton enemies are numberless
and my lying foes are many.
They repay me evil for good
and attack me for seeking what is right.
O Lord, do not forsake me!
My God, do not stay afar off!
Make haste and come to my help,
O Lord, my God, my savior! Glory...
Antiphon 3
I will confess my guilt to you, Lord; do not abandon me, for you are my Savior, alleluia.
Antiphon 3
Save your people, Lord; bring us together from among the nations, alleluia.
III
They failed to destroy the peoples
as the Lord had given command,
but instead they mingled with the nations
and learned to act as they did.
They worshipped the idols of the nations
and these became a snare to entrap them.
They even offered their own sons
and their daughters in sacrifice to demons.
They shed the blood of the innocent,
the blood of their sons and daughters
whom they offered to the idols of Canaan.
The land was polluted with blood.
So they defiled themselves by their deeds
and broke their marriage bond with the Lord
till his anger blazed against his people;
he was filled with horror at his chosen ones.
So he gave them into the hand of the nations
and their foes became their rulers.
Their enemies became their oppressors;
they were subdued beneath their hand.
Time after time God rescued them,
but in their malice they dared to defy him
and sank low through their guilt.
In spite of this he paid heed to their distress,
so often as he heard their cry.
For their sake he remembered his covenant.
In the greatness of his love he relented
and he let them be treated with mercy
by all who held them captive.
O Lord, our God, save us!
Bring us together from among the nations
that we may thank your holy name
and make it our glory to praise you.
Blessed be the Lord, God of Israel,
for ever, from age to age.
Let all the people cry out:
Amen! Amen! Glory...
Antiphon 3
Save your people, Lord; bring us together from among the nations, alleluia.
God has given us a new birth into living hope, alleluia,
- through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, alleluia.
FIRST READING
From the first letter of the apostle John 3:11-17
Love one another
For this is the message you have heard from the beginning: we should love one another, unlike Cain who belonged to the evil one and slaughtered his brother. Why did he slaughter him? Because his own works were evil, and those of his brother righteous.
Do not be amazed, then, brothers, if the world hates you. We know that we have passed from death to life because we love our brothers. Whoever does not love remains in death. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life remaining in him.
The way we came to know love was that he laid down his life for us; so we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If someone who has worldly means sees a brother in need and refuses him compassion, how can the love of God remain in him?
RESPONSORY 1 John 3:16,14
By this we have come to know the meaning of God's love:
Christ laid down his life for us,
- and we should lay down our lives for our brothers, alleluia.
We know that we have passed from death to life,
because we love our brothers.
- And we should lay down our lives for our brothers, alleluia.
SECOND READING
From the treatise on John by Saint Augustine, bishop
(Tract. 124, 5, 7: CCL 36, 685-687)
Two kinds of life
The Church recognizes two kinds of life as having been commended to her by God. One is a life of faith, the other a life of vision; one is a life passed on pilgrimage in time, the other in a dwelling place in eternity; one is a life of toil, the other of repose; one is spent on the road, the other in our homeland; one is active, involving labor, the other contemplative, the reward of labor.
The first kind of life is symbolized by the apostle Peter, the second by John. All of the first life is lived in this world, and it will come to an end with this world. The second life will be imperfect till the end of this world, but it will have no end in the next world. And so Christ says to Peter: Follow me; but of John he says: If I wish him to remain until I come, what is that to you? Your duty is to follow me.
You are to follow me by imitating my endurance of transient evils; John is to remain until my coming, when I will bring eternal blessings. A way of saying this more clearly might be: Your active life will be perfect if you follow the example of my passion, but to attain its full perfection John's life of contemplation must wait until I come.
Perfect patience is to follow Christ faithfully, even to death, but for perfect knowledge we must await his coming. Here, in the land of the dying, the sufferings of the world must be endured; there, in the land of the living, shall be seen the good things of the Lord.
Christ's words, I wish him to remain until I come, should not be taken to imply that John was to remain on earth until Christ's coming, but rather that he was to wait because it is not now but only when Christ comes that the life he symbolizes will find fulfillment. On the other hand, Christ says to Peter: Your duty is to follow me, because the life Peter symbolizes can attain its goal only by action here and now.
Yet we should make no mental separation between these great apostles. Both lived the life symbolized by Peter; both were to attain the life symbolized by John. Symbolically, one followed, the other remained, but living by faith they both endured the sufferings of this present life of sorrow and they both longed for the joys of the future life of happiness.
Nor were they alone in this. They were one with the whole Church, the bride of Christ, which will in time be delivered from the trials of this life and live for ever in the joy of the next. These two kinds of life were represented respectively by Peter and John, yet both apostles lived by faith in this present, passing life and in eternal life both have the joy of vision.
And so for the sake of all the saints inseparably united to the body of Christ, to guide them through the storms of this life, Peter, the chief of the apostles, received the keys of the kingdom of heaven with the power to bind and loose sins; and for the sake of those same saints, to plumb the depths of that other, hidden life, John the evangelist reclined on the breast of Christ.
For it is not only Peter but the whole Church that binds and looses from sin; and as for the sublime teaching of John about the Word, who in the beginning was God with God, and everything else he told us about Christ's divinity, and about the trinity and unity of the Godhead, which now, until the Lord comes, is all like a faint reflection in a mirror, but which will be seen face to face in the kingdom of heaven - it was not only John who drank in this teaching that came forth from the Lord's breast as from a fountain. All who belong to the Lord are to drink it in, each according to his capacity, and this is why the Lord himself has spread John's gospel throughout the world.
RESPONSORY 1 Peter 5:10; 2 Corinthians 4:14
The God of all grace has called us to glory in Christ Jesus.
- He will restore, support and strengthen us
after we have suffered for a little while, alleluia.
He who raised Jesus from the dead
will also raise us up with Jesus.
- He will restore, support and strengthen us
after we have suffered for a little while, alleluia.
PRAYER
Lord,
hear our prayer
that your gospel may reach all men
and that we who receive salvation through your Word
may be your children in deed as well as in name.
We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.
Let us praise the Lord.
- And give him thanks.
The English translation of Psalm Responses, Alleluia Verses, Gospel Verses from Lectionary for Mass © 1969, 1981, 1997, International Commission on English in the Liturgy Corporation (ICEL); the English translation of Antiphons, Invitatories, Responsories, Intercessions, Psalm 95, the Canticle of the Lamb, Psalm Prayers, Non-Biblical Readings from The Liturgy of the Hours © 1973, 1974, 1975, ICEL; excerpts from the English translation of The Roman Missal © 2010, ICEL. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
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