Liturgical Readings for : Tuesday, 16th July, 2024
Tuesday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time, Cycle 2
Optional memorial of Our Lady of Mount Carmel
FIRST READING
A reading from the book of the Prophet Isaiah 7:1-9
If you do not stand by me, you will not stand at all.
In the reign of Ahaz son of Jotham, son of Uzziah, king of Judah, Razon the king of Aram went up against Jerusalem with Pekah, son of Remaliah, king of Israel, to lay siege to it; but he was unable to capture it.
The news was brought to the House of David. ‘Aram’ they said ‘has reached Ephraim.‘
Then the heart of the king and the hearts of the people shuddered as the trees of the forest shudder in front of the wind.
The Lord said to Isaiah,
‘Go with your son Shear-jashub, and meet Ahaz at the end of the conduit of the upper pool on the Fuller’s Field road,
and say to him:
“Pay attention, keep calm, have no fear, do not let your heart sink
because of these two smouldering stumps of firebrands,
or because Aram, Ephraim and the son of Remaliah have plotted to ruin you, and have said: Let us invade Judah and terrorise it and seize it for ourselves, and set up a king there, the son of Tabeel.
The Lord God says this:
It shall not come true; it shall not be.
The capital of Aram is Damascus, the head of Damascus, Razon;
the capital of Ephraim, Samaria, the head of Samaria, the son of Remaliah.
Six or five years more and a shattered Ephraim shall no longer be a people.
But if you do not stand by me, you will not stand at all.”‘
The Word of the Lord Thanks be to God.
Responsorial Psalm Ps 47
Response God upholds his city for ever.
1. The Lord is great and worthy to be praised in the city of our God.
His holy mountain rises in beauty, the joy of all the earth. Response
2. Mount Zion, true pole of the earth, the Great King’s city!
God, in the midst of its citadels, has shown himself its stronghold. Response
3. For the kings assembled together, together they advanced.
They saw; at once they were astounded; dismayed, they fled in fear. Response
4. A trembling seized them there, like the pangs of birth,
or as the east wind destroys the ships of Tarshish. Response
Gospel Acclamation Ps 118: 34
Alleluia, Alleluia!
Train me to observe your law, to keep it with all my heart.
Alleluia!
Or Ps 94: 8
Alleluia, Alleluia!
Harden not your hearts today, but listen to the voice of the Lord.
Alleluia
GOSPEL
The Lord be with you. And with your spirit
A reading from the holy Gospel according to Matthew 11:20-24 Glory to you, O Lord
It will not go as hard with the land of Sodom on Judgement day as with you.
Jesus began to reproach the towns in which most of his miracles had been worked, because they refused to repent.
‘Alas for you, Chorazin! Alas for you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. And still, I tell you that it will not go as hard on Judgement day with Tyre and Sidon as with you.
And as for you, Capernaum, did you want to be exalted as high as heaven? You shall be thrown down to hell. For if the miracles done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have been standing yet. And still, I tell you that it will not go as hard with the land of Sodom on Judgement day as with you.’
The Gospel of the Lord. Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.
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Gospel Reflection Tuesday Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time Matthew 11:20-24
According to today’s first reading at a time of national crisis, the Lord, speaking through the prophet Isaiah, says to the king of Judah, ‘If you do not stand by me, you will not stand at all’. Faced with a coalition of enemy nations, Ahaz was tempted to seek refuge by relying on one of the great empires of the day, Assyria. The message of Isaiah to him was that he needed to rely on the Lord, rather than on any human power, if he and the people were to remain secure. The preaching of Jesus to the towns of Galilee called on them to rely on God, present and active in the ministry of Jesus.
According to the gospel reading, the towns of Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum failed to do so. In spite of the ways God was powerfully at work through the ministry of Jesus, they didn’t respond to him in a trusting, faithful, way. Behind Jesus’ oracle of judgement addressed to these towns lies a heart that is broken at their failure to respond to his life-giving message. In Luke’s gospel Jesus weeps over Jerusalem because of their failure to recognize the time of God’s visitation through Jesus. Today’s readings invite us to ask ourselves, ‘To whom or what do we turn and on whom or on what do we rely?’ In the words of today’s responsorial psalm, ‘God… has shown himself its stronghold’. Jesus as Emmanuel, God with us, offers himself to us as the stronghold of our lives, the rock on which we can build our lives, the one on whom we can rely when all else fails.
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The Scripture Readings are taken from The Jerusalem Bible, published 1966 by Darton, Longman & Todd Ltd.
