DAILY READINGS & REFLECTION
OCTOBER 26, 2023
THURSDAY OF THE TWENTY-NINTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME
FIRST READING
ROMANS 6:19-23
19 I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once yielded your members to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now yield your members to righteousness for sanctification. 20 When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. 21 But then what return did you get from the things of which you are now ashamed? The end of those things is death. 22 But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the return you get is sanctification and its end, eternal life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
The Word of the Lord
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RESPONSORIAL PSALM
PSALMS 1:1-4, 6
Response: Blessed are they who hope in the Lord.
Blessed is the man
who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stands in the way of sinners,
nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
but his delight is in the law of the LORD,
and on his law he meditates day and night.
R. Blessed are they who hope in the Lord.
He is like a tree
planted by streams of water,
that yields its fruit in its season,
and its leaf does not wither.
In all that he does, he prospers.
R. Blessed are they who hope in the Lord.
The wicked are not so,
but are like chaff which the wind drives away.
for the LORD knows the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish.
GOSPEL
I came to cast fire upon the earth
LUKE 12:49-53
49 "I came to cast fire upon the earth; and would that it were already kindled! 50 I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how I am constrained until it is accomplished! 51 Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division; 52 for henceforth in one house there will be five divided, three against two and two against three; 53 they will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against her mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law."
The Gospel of the Lord
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REFLECTION
DAILY QUOTE FROM THE EARLY CHURCH FATHERS
The fire of the Gospel and being baptized in the Holy Spirit, by Cyril of Alexandria (376-444 AD)
"We affirm that the fire that Christ sent out is for humanity's salvation and profit. May God grant that all our hearts be full of this. The fire is the saving message of the Gospel and the power of its commandments. We were cold and dead because of sin and in ignorance of him who by nature is truly God. The gospel ignites all of us on earth to a life of piety and makes us fervent in spirit, according to the expression of blessed Paul (Romans 12:11). Besides this, we are also made partakers of the Holy Spirit, who is like fire within us. We have been baptized with fire and the Holy Spirit. We have learned the way from what Christ says to us. Listen to his words: 'Truly I say to you, that except a man be born of water and spirit, he cannot see the kingdom of God' (John 3:5). It is the divinely inspired Scripture's custom to give the name of fire sometimes to the divine and sacred words and to the efficacy and power which is by the Holy Spirit by which we are made fervent in spirit."
(excerpt from COMMENTARY ON LUKE, HOMILY 94)
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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.