DAILY READINGS & REFLECTION
MAY 21, 2024
TUESDAY OF THE SEVENTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME
(OPTIONAL MEMORIAL OF SAINT CHRISTOPHER MAGALLANES, PRIEST, AND COMPANIONS, MARTYRS)
FIRST READING
JAMES 4:1-10 OR (REVELATION 7:9-17)
1 What causes wars, and what causes fightings among you? Is it not your passions that are at war in your members? 2 You desire and do not have; so you kill. And you covet and cannot obtain; so you fight and wage war. You do not have, because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. 4 Unfaithful creatures! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. 5 Or do you suppose it is in vain that the scripture says, "He yearns jealously over the spirit which he has made to dwell in us"? 6 But he gives more grace; therefore it says, "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble." 7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. 8 Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you men of double mind. 9 Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to dejection. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you.
The Word of the Lord
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RESPONSORIAL PSALM
PSALMS 54(55):7-11, 23 OR (PSALMS 34:2-9)
Response: Throw your cares on the Lord, and he will support you.
And I say, “O that I had wings like a dove!
I would fly away and be at rest;
yea, I would wander afar,
I would lodge in the wilderness."
R. Throw your cares on the Lord, and he will support you.
"I would haste to find me a shelter
from the raging wind and tempest.”
Destroy their plans, O LORD, confuse their tongues.
R. Throw your cares on the Lord, and he will support you.
For I see violence and strife in the city.
Day and night they go around it
on its walls;
and mischief and trouble are within it.
R. Throw your cares on the Lord, and he will support you.
Cast your burden on the LORD,
and he will sustain you;
he will never permit
the righteous to be moved.
R. Throw your cares on the Lord, and he will support you.
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GOSPEL
"Who is the greatest in God's kingdom?"
MARK 9:30-37 OR (JOHN 12:24-26)
30 They went on from there and passed through Galilee. And he would not have any one know it; 31 for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, "The Son of man will be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him; and when he is killed, after three days he will rise." 32 But they did not understand the saying, and they were afraid to ask him. 33 And they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, "What were you discussing on the way?" 34 But they were silent; for on the way they had discussed with one another who was the greatest. 35 And he sat down and called the twelve; and he said to them, "If any one would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all." 36 And he took a child, and put him in the midst of them; and taking him in his arms, he said to them, 37 "Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me; and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me."
The Gospel of the Lord
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REFLECTION
DAILY QUOTE FROM THE EARLY CHURCH FATHERS
Downward roots enable upward growth, by Augustine of Hippo, 354-430 A.D.
"Observe a tree, how it first tends downwards, that it may then shoot forth upwards. It fastens its root low in the ground, that it may send forth its top towards heaven. Is it not from humility that it endeavors to rise? But without humility it will not attain to higher things (Proverbs 18:12). You are wanting to grow up into the air without a root. Such is not growth, but a collapse."
(excerpt from THE GOSPEL OF JOHN, SERMON 38.2)
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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.