Mass Readings for : Saturday, 23rd November, 2024

Liturgical Readings for : Saturday, 23rd November, 2024

Saturday of the Thirty-Third Week in Ordinary Time, Year 2

Memorial of St Columban, or Columbanus, missionary and founder of monasteries of strict Irish rule especially inBobbio where he died in 615 .

FIRST READING

A reading from the Book of the Apocalypse 11:4-12
These two prophets have been a plague to the people of the world.
I John, heard a voice saying:
These, my two witnesses, are the two olive trees and the two lamps that stand before the Lord of the world. Fire can come from their mouths and consume their enemies if anyone tries to harm them; and if anybody does try to harm them he will certainly be killed in this way. They are able to lock up the sky so that it does not rain as long as they are prophesying; they are able to turn water into blood and strike the whole world with any plague as often as they like. When they have completed their witnessing, the beast that comes out of the Abyss is going to make war on them and overcome them and kill them.

Their corpses will lie in the main street of the Great City known by the symbolic names Sodom and Egypt, in which their Lord was crucified. Men out of every people, race, language and nation will stare at their corpses, for three-and-a-half days, not letting them be buried, and the people of the world will be glad about it and celebrate the event by giving presents to each other, because these two prophets have been a plague to the people of the world.’

After the three-and-a-half days, God breathed life into them and they stood up, and everybody who saw it happen was terrified;
then they heard a loud voice from heaven say to them,
Come up here’, and while their enemies were watching, they went up to heaven in a cloud.

The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Responsorial Psalm Ps 143
Response Blessed be the Lord, my rock.

1. Blessed be the Lord, my rock who trains my arms for battle,
who prepares my hands for war. Response

2. He is my love, my fortress; he is my stronghold, my saviour,
my shield, my place of refuge. He brings peoples under my rule. Response

3. To you, O God, will I sing a new song; I will play on the ten-stringed lute
to you who give kings their victory, who set David your servant free. Response

Gospel Acclamation Lk 8: 15
Alleluia, Alleluia!
Blessed are those who, with a noble and generous heart,
take the word of God to themselves and yield a harvest through their perseverance.
Alleluia!

Or 2 Tim 1: 10
Alleluia, Alleluia!
Our saviour Christ Jesus abolished death,
and he has proclaimed life and immortality through the Good News.
Alleluia!

GOSPEL

The Lord be with you. And with your spirit
A reading from the holy Gospel according to Luke 18:35-43 Glory to you, O Lord
Now he is God, not of the dead, but of the living.

Some Sadducees-those who say that there is no resurrection-approached Jesus and they put this question to him,
‘Master, we have it from Moses in writing, that if a man’s married brother dies childless, the man must marry the widow to raise up children for his brother. Well then, there were seven brothers.
The first, having married a wife, died childless. The second and then the third married the widow. And the same with all seven, they died leaving no children. Finally the woman herself died.
Now, at the resurrection, to which of them will she be wife since she had been married to all seven?’

Jesus replied,
‘The children of this world take wives and husbands, but those who are judged worthy of a place in the other world and in’ the resurrection from the dead do not marry because they can no longer die, for they are the same as the angels, and being children of the resurrection they are sons of God. And Moses himself implies that the dead rise again, in the passage about the bush where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.
Now he is God, not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all men are in fact alive.’

Some scribes then spoke up. ‘Well put, Master‘ they said – because they would not dare to ask him any more questions.

The Gospel of the Lord. Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.

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Gospel Reflection Saturday Thirty Third Week in Ordinary Time Luke 20:27-40

The Sadducees who approach Jesus in today’s gospel reading did not believe in any kind of resurrection from the dead. This view distinguished the Sadducees from other groups within Judaism at the time, such as the Pharisees. In the gospel reading, they present a situation to Jesus which seeks to make belief in any kind of afterlife appear ridiculous. However, the situation they present to Jesus presupposes that life beyond death will simply be an extension of this earthly life. In his reply, Jesus makes clear that life in what he calls ‘the other world’ is qualitatively different from what he refers to as life in ‘this world’. In what does this qualitative difference consist?

According to Jesus, it consists in the fact that in this world everybody dies whereas in the other world ‘they can no longer die’. Whereas those Jesus calls ‘the children of this world’ all have to succumb to the experience of death, ‘the children of the resurrection’ can no longer die. They live with a life which is eternal. Such a life is the life of God, because God is eternal. Jesus is saying that beyond the life of this world, we come to share in God’s own life in a way that is not possible for us to do so in this earthly life. To that extent, our relationship with God and with his Son, Jesus, is significantly deepened in the next life. Saint Paul expresses this deepening relationship with God beyond this life very succinctly and powerfully when he says in one of his letters, ‘Now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known’ (1 Cor 13:12). Not only will our communion with God be raised to another level, so also will our communion with all we have known and loved in this life.