Liturgical Readings for : Wednesday, 5th June, 2024
Wednesday of the Ninth Week in Ordinary Time, Year 2
Memorial of St Boniface, bishop and martyr
FIRST READING:
A reading from the second letter of St Timothy 1: 1-3. 6-12
Fan into a flame the gift that God gave you when I laid my hands on you.
From Paul, appointed by God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus in his design to promise life in Christ Jesus; to Timothy, dear child of mine, wishing you grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and from Christ Jesus our Lord.
Night and day I thank God, keeping my conscience clear and remembering my duty to him as my ancestors did, and always I remember you in my prayers.
This is why I am reminding you now to fan into a flame the gift that God gave you when I laid my hands on you. God’s gift was not a spirit of timidity, but the Spirit of power, and love, and self-control. So you are never to be ashamed of witnessing to the Lord, or ashamed of me for being his prisoner; but with me, bear the hardships for the sake of the Good News, relying on the power of God who has saved us and called us to be holy – not because of anything we ourselves have done but for his own purpose and by his own grace. This grace had already been granted to us, in Christ Jesus, before the beginning of time, but it has only been revealed by the Appearing of our saviour Christ Jesus. He abolished death, and he has proclaimed life and immortality through the Good News; and I have been named its herald, its apostle and its teacher. It is only on account of this that I am experiencing fresh hardships here now ; but I have not lost confidence, because I know who it is that I have put my trust in, and I have no doubt at all that he is able to take care of all that I have entrusted to him until that Day.
The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God
Responsorial Psalm Ps 122
Response To you, O Lord, I lift up my eyes.
1. To you have I lifted up my eyes, you who dwell in the heavens:
my eyes, like the eyes of slaves on the hand of their lord.. Response
2. Like the eyes of a servant on the hand of her mistress,
so our eyes are on the Lord our God till he show us his mercy. 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.
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Gospel Reflection Wednesday Ninth Week in Ordinary Time Mark 12:18-27
The question of the afterlife is one that has intrigued people from very earliest times. In today’s gospel reading, Jesus is approached by the members of a Jewish group, the Sadducees, who did not believe in life after death. They approach Jesus as someone whom they know has a different view on this issue to themselves. The question the Sadducees put to Jesus about the woman with seven husbands suggests that they understood life beyond death as simply an extension of this earthly life. However, Jesus’ reply suggests otherwise. ‘When they rise from the dead, men and women are like the angels in heaven’.
Life in heaven is not a mirror image of life on earth; it is qualitatively different. St Paul speaks about this life beyond death in terms of transformation. ‘We shall all be changed’, he says. For one thing, it will be a life with no trace of death in it. Today’s first reading declares that Christ has ‘abolished death and has proclaimed life and immortality through the Good News’. We would, of course, like to know more about this transformed life. In the Lord’s Prayer Jesus refers to heaven as the place where God’s will is done to the fullest possible extent. We are invited to pray, ‘Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven’. The transformation that awaits us is all that God wills for us, which according to Paul is our being fully conformed to the image of Christ himself.
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The Scripture Readings are taken from The Jerusalem Bible, published 1966 by Darton, Longman & Todd Ltd.
