Liturgical Readings for : Monday, 15th April, 2024
Monday, Third Week of Easter
Stephen, witnesses to Christ is seen as a threat to the future of the synagogue and is arrested.
Jesus calls to us to look beyond the gift of the bread to the mystery of his eternal life.
FIRST READING
A reading from the Book Acts of the Apostles 6:8-15
They could not get the better of Stephen because of his wisdom, and because it was the Spirit that prompted what he said.
Stephen was filled with grace and power and began to work miracles and great signs among the people. But then certain people came forward to debate with Stephen, some from Cyrene and Alexandria who were members of the synagogue called the Synagogue of Freedmen, and others from Cilicia and Asia. They found they could not get the better of him because of his wisdom, and because it was the Spirit that prompted what he said. So they procured some men to say,
‘We heard him using blasphemous language against Moses and against God.‘
Having in this way turned the people against him as well as the elders and scribes, they took Stephen by surprise, and arrested him and brought him before the Sanhedrin. There they put up false witnesses to say,
‘This man is always making speeches against this Holy Place and the Law. We have heard him say that Jesus the Nazarene is going to destroy this place and alter the traditions that Moses handed down to us.‘
The members of the Sanhedrin all looked intently at Stephen, and his face appeared to them like the face of an angel.
The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God
Responsorial Psalm Ps 118
Response They are happy whose life is blameless.
Or Alleluia!
1. Though princes sit plotting against me, I ponder on your statutes.
Your will is my delight; your statutes are my counsellors. Response
2. I declared my ways and you answered: teach me your statutes.
Make me grasp the way of your precepts and I will muse on your wonders. Response
3. Keep me from the way of error and teach me your law.
I have chosen the way of truth with your decrees before me. Response
Gospel Acclamation Jn 20: 29
Alleluia, Alleluia!
Jesus said: ‘You believe, Thomas, because you can see me.
Happy are those who have not seen and yet believe.’
Alleluia!
or Mt 4:4
Alleluia, Alleluia!
Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.
Alleluia!
GOSPEL
The Lord be with you. And with your spirit
A reading from the Gospel according to John 6:22-29 Glory to you, O Lord
Do not work for food that cannot last, but work for food that endures to eternal life.
After Jesus had fed the five thousand, his disciples saw him walking on the water.
Next day, the crowd that had stayed on the other side saw that only one boat had been there, and that Jesus had not got into the boat with his disciples, but that the disciples had set off by themselves. Other boats had put in from Tiberias, near the place where the bread had been eaten. When the people saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they got into those boats and crossed to Capernaum to look for Jesus. When they found him on the other side, they said to him,
‘Rabbi, when did you come here?’
Jesus answered:
‘I tell you most solemnly, You are not looking for me because you have seen the signs but because you had all the bread you wanted to eat.
Do not work for food that cannot last, but work for food that endures to eternal life, the kind of food the Son of Man is offering you, for on him the Father, God himself, has set his seal.’
Then they said to him,
‘What must we do if we are to do the works that God wants?’
Jesus gave them this answer,
‘This is working for God: you must believe in the one he has sent.’
The Gospel of the Lord. Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ
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Gospel Reflection Monday Third Week of Easter John 6:22-29
In times of conflict and war, truth is often the first casualty. The aggressor in particular will often bend the truth to try and justify what they are attempting to do. The Jewish religious leaders who were hostile to Jesus were equally hostile to his followers who were proclaiming that God had raised Jesus from the dead. In today’s first reading, we hear of their antagonism to Stephen, a gifted preacher. They procured people to falsify what Stephen had said, ‘We heard him using blasphemous language against Moses and against God… This man is always making speeches against this Holy Place and the Law. We heard him say that Jesus the Nazarene is going to destroy this Place’. Although such accusations were essentially false, they would be a significant factor in the eventual death of Stephen by stoning.
Jesus once said of himself, ‘I am the truth’. He revealed to us the truth about God, about what it is to be human, about creation. His followers are to be people of truth, who live by the truth that Jesus proclaimed and lived. Because he is the truth, he can satisfy the deep hunger in our hearts for truth.
In the gospel reading, Jesus challenges the crowd to come to him not just as someone who can satisfy their physical hunger, which he had recently done, but as someone who can satisfy their deeper hungers, their hunger for truth, for a love that is faithful, for a life that is eternal. ‘Do not work for food that cannot last, but for food that endures to eternal life’. Jesus offers himself to them, and to us all, as one who can satisfy the deepest hungers of our heart. Such hungers will only be fully satisfied at the banquet of eternal life, but in so far as we keep coming to the Lord and opening our hearts to him, our deepest hungers will begin to be satisfied in the course of our earthly lives.
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The Scripture Readings are taken from The Jerusalem Bible, published 1966 by Darton, Longman and Todd Ltd
