Liturgical Readings for : Monday, 9th September, 2024
Monday of the Twenty Third Week of Ordinary Time, Year 2
Memorial of St Ciaran, abbot
FIRST READING
A reading from the letter of St Paul to the Corinthians 5:1-8
Get rid of all the old yeast, Christ our Passover has been sacrificed.
I have been told as an undoubted fact that one of you is living with his father’s wife. This is a case of sexual immorality among you that must be unparalleled even among pagans. How can you be so proud of yourselves? You should be in mourning. A man who does a thing like that ought to have been expelled from the community. Though I am far away in body, I am with you in spirit, and have already condemned the man who did this thing as if I were actually present. When you are assembled together in the name of the Lord Jesus, and I am spiritually present with you, then with the power of our Lord Jesus he is to be handed over to Satan so that his sensual body may be destroyed and his spirit saved on the day of the Lord.
The pride that you take in yourselves is hardly to your credit. You must know how even a small amount of yeast is enough to leaven all the dough, so get rid of all the old yeast, and make yourselves into a completely new batch of bread, unleavened as you are meant to be. Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed; let us celebrate the feast, then, by getting rid of all the old yeast of evil and wickedness, having only the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Responsorial Psalm Ps 5
Response Lead me, Lord, in your justice.
1. You are no God who loves evil; no sinner is your guest.
The boastful shall not stand their ground before your face. Response
2. You hate all who do evil: you destroy all who lie.
The deceitful and bloodthirsty man the Lord detests. Response
3. All those you protect shall be glad and ring out their joy.
You shelter them; in you they rejoice, those who love your name. Response
Gospel Acclamation Ps 118: 105
Alleluia, Alleluia!
Your word is a lamp for my steps and a light for my path.
Alleluia !
or Jn 10: 27
Alleluia, Alleluia!
The sheep that belong to me listen to my voice, says the Lord,
I know them and they follow me.
Alleluia!
GOSPEL
The Lord be with you. And with your spirit
A reading from the holy Gospel according to Luke 6:6-11 Glory to you, O Lord
They were watching Jesus to see if he would cure a man on the sabbath.
On the sabbath Jesus went into the synagogue and began to teach, and a man was there whose right hand was withered. The scribes and the Pharisees were watching him to see if he would cure a man on the sabbath, hoping to find something to use against him. But he knew their thoughts; and he said to the man with the withered hand,
‘Stand up! Come out into the middle.‘
And he came out and stood there. Then Jesus said to them,
‘I put it to you: is it against the law on the sabbath to do good,
or to do evil; to save life, or to destroy it?‘
Then he looked round at them all and said to the man,
‘Stretch out your hand’.
He did so, and his hand was better.
But they were furious, and began to discuss the best way of dealing with Jesus.
The Gospel of the Lord. Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.
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Gospel Reflection Monday Twenty Third Week in Ordinary Time Luke 6:6-11
In today’s gospel reading we are told that when Jesus went into the synagogue on the Sabbath the Pharisees were watching him to see if he would cure a partly paralyzed man, hoping to find something to use against Jesus. In other words, even though Jesus was clearly doing good, the Pharisees were on the lookout for the negative in him; they were suspicious of him. Because they were predisposed to seeing the negative, they couldn’t see the good that God was doing through Jesus on that particular Sabbath day in the synagogue.
Sometimes how we see someone or some situation determines what we see. If we look at people through suspicious lens, negative lens, we will see the negative and miss the good. We always have to be cleaning our lens, as it were, so that we can see clearly, so that we can see not just the problems which may be there, but the much greater good which is often there as well. On this occasion, the problem for the Pharisees of the Sabbath law being broken should have been far outweighed by the greater good of a broken man being healed. The gospels are always calling us to see the good work that God is doing even when things are not happening quite as we might expect or want them to happen.
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The Scripture Readings are taken from The Jerusalem Bible, published by Darton, Longman and Todd Ltd
