Mass Readings for : Friday, 26th April, 2024

Liturgical Readings for : Friday, 26th April, 2024

Friday, Fourth Week of Easter

FIRST READING

A reading from the Acts of the Apostles 13:26-33
God has fulfilled his promise by raising Jesus from the dead.

Paul stood up in the synagogue at Antioch in Pisidia, held up a hand for silence and began to speak:
‘My brothers, sons of Abraham’s race, and all you who fear God, this message of salvation is meant for you.
What the people of Jerusalem and their rulers did, though they did not realise it, was in fact to fulfil the prophecies read on every sabbath. Though they found nothing to justify his death, they condemned him and asked Pilate to have him executed.

When they had carried out everything that scripture foretells about him they took him down from the tree and buried him in a tomb. But God raised him from the dead, and for many days he appeared to those who had accompanied him from Galilee to Jerusalem: and it is these same companions of his who are now his witnesses before our people.

‘We have come here to tell you the Good News. It was to our ancestors that God made the promise but it is to us, their children, that he has fulfilled it, by raising Jesus from the dead. As scripture says in the first psalm: You are my son: today I have become your father.’

The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God

Responsorial Psalm Ps 2
Response You are my Son. It is I who have begotten you this day.
Or Alleluia!

1. ‘It is I who have set up my king on Zion, my holy mountain.’
I will announce the decree of the Lord: The Lord said to me: ‘You are my Son.
It is I who have begotten you this day.’ Response

2. ‘Ask and I shall bequeath you the nations, Put the ends of the earth in your possession.
With a rod of iron you will break them, shatter them like a potter’s jar.’ Response

3. Now, O kings, understand, take warning rulers of the earth;
serve the Lord with awe and trembling, pay him your homage. Response

Gospel Acclamation Apoc 1:5
Alleluia, Alleluia!
I am the Way, the Truth and the Life, says the Lord; no one can come to the Father except through me.
Alleluia!

GOSPEL

The Lord be with you. And with your spirit
A reading from the holy Gospel according to John 14 1-6 Glory to you, O Lord
I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.

Jesus said to his disciples:
‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God still, and trust in me.
There are many rooms in my Father’s house; if there were not, I should have told you.

I am going now to prepare a place for you, and after I have gone and prepared you a place, I shall return to take you with me;
so that where I am you may be too.
You know the way to the place where I am going.’
Thomas said,
‘Lord, we do not know where you are going, so how can we know the way?’
Jesus said:
‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one can come to the Father except through me.’

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

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Gospel Reflection Friday Fourth Week of Easter John 14:1-6

Many of us find departures difficulty, especially when the person departing from us is significant for us in some way. The words Jesus speaks in today’s gospel reading are set by the evangelist within the context of the last supper on the evening before Jesus was crucified. Jesus is about to leave his disciples. Yet, in leaving them he also assures them that he is not abandoning them. He will in fact come back to them. That is the promise of Jesus to the disciples in today’s gospel reading, ‘I shall return to take you with me’. That promise is generally heard as a promise that at the end of our earthly lives Jesus will come and take us to the many roomed house of his Father, which is why this reading is so often chosen for the funeral liturgy.

However, Jesus goes on to assure his disciples that we don’t have to wait to the end of our lives to experience his coming. He will come to us in and through the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, ‘whom the Father will send in my name’ and who ‘will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you’. Through the Spirit, the Lord comes to us here and now, today, and his coming through the Spirit is a foretaste, an anticipation, of his coming to us at the end of our lives. That is why Saint Paul refers to the Spirit as the first fruit of the final harvest, eternal life. Our present calling is to allow the first fruit of the Spirit to bear the rich fruit of love in our lives.