DAILY READINGS & REFLECTION

AUGUST 30, 2023

WEDNESDAY OF THE TWENTY-FIRST WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME

(MEMORIAL OF SAINT EUPHRASIA ELUVATHINGAL, VIRGIN - IN INDIA)

FIRST READING

1 THESSALONIANS 2:9-13 OR (IN INDIA - GALATIANS 2:19-20)

9 For you remember our labor and toil, brethren; we worked night and day, that we might not burden any of you, while we preached to you the gospel of God. 10 You are witnesses, and God also, how holy and righteous and blameless was our behavior to you believers; 11 for you know how, like a father with his children, we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you 12 to lead a life worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory. 13 And we also thank God constantly for this, that when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers.

The Word of the Lord
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RESPONSORIAL PSALM

PSALMS 138(139):7-12 OR (IN INDIA - PSALMS 16:1-2, 5, 7-8, 11)

Response: Thou have searched me and thou know me, Lord.

Whither shall I go from thy Spirit?
Or whither shall I flee from thy presence?
If I ascend to heaven, thou art there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, thou art there!

R. Thou have searched me and thou know me, Lord.

If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
even there thy hand shall lead me,
and thy right hand shall hold me.

R. Thou have searched me and thou know me, Lord.

If I say, “Let only darkness cover me,
and the light about me be night,”
even the darkness is not dark to thee,
the night is bright as the day;
for darkness is as light with thee.

R. Thou have searched me and thou know me, Lord.
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GOSPEL

True beauty and goodness come from within

MATTHEW 23:27-32 OR (IN INDIA - MATTHEW 16:24-27)

27 "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you are like white washed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within they are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness. 28 So you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but within you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. 29 "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, 30 saying, `If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.' 31 Thus you witness against yourselves, that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. 32 Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers.

The Gospel of the Lord
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REFLECTION

DAILY QUOTE FROM THE EARLY CHURCH FATHERS

Good deeds done for God, author unknown, from the 5th century A.D.

"Every good deed that is done for God is universally good for everything and everyone. Deeds that are not seen to benefit everything and everyone, however, are done on account of man, as the present matter itself demonstrates. For example, those who build reliquaries and adorn churches seem to be doing good. If they imitate the justice of God, if the poor benefit from their goods and if they do not acquire their goods through violence against others, it is clear that they are building for the glory of God. If they fail to observe God's justice... and if the poor never benefit from their goods and if they acquire their goods from others by means of violence or fraud, who is so foolish not to understand that they are building for human respect rather than for the glory of God? Those who build reliquaries in a just manner ensure that the poor do not suffer as a result of it. For the martyrs do not rejoice when they are honored by gifts for which the poor paid with their tears. What kind of justice is it to give gifts to the dead and to despoil the living or to drain blood from the poor and offer it to God? To do such things is not to offer sacrifice to God but to attempt to make God an accomplice in violence, since whoever knowingly accepts a gift which was acquired by sinful means participates in the sin."

(excerpt from an incomplete Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, HOMILY 45)
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Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (RSVCE)
The Revised Standard Version of the Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright © 1965, 1966 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.