Friday 18 December 2020
18 December
Office of Readings
Introduction (without Invitatory)
If this is the first Hour that you are reciting today, use the version with the Invitatory Psalm instead.
O God, come to our aid.
O Lord, make haste to help us.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit,
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be,
world without end.
Amen. Alleluia.
________
Hymn
The co-eternal Son
A maiden’s offspring see;
A servant’s form Christ putteth on,
To set his people free.
Daughter of Sion, rise
To greet thine infant King;
Nor let thy stubborn heart despise
The pardon he doth bring.
Let deeds of darkness fly
Before the approaching morn;
For unto sin ’tis ours to die
And serve the Virgin-born.
Our joyful praises sing,
To Christ, that set us free;
Like tribute to the Father bring,
And, Holy Ghost, to thee.
________
Psalm 68 (69)
I am consumed with zeal for your house
“They gave him wine to drink mixed with gall” (Mt 27:34).
I am wearied with all my crying as I await my God.
Save me, O God,
for the waters have risen to my neck.
I have sunk into the mud of the deep
and there is no foothold.
I have entered the waters of the deep
and the waves overwhelm me.
I am wearied with all my crying,
my throat is parched.
My eyes are wasted away
from looking for my God.
More numerous than the hairs on my head
are those who hate me without cause.
Those who attack me with lies
are too much for my strength.
How can I restore
what I have never stolen?
O God, you know my sinful folly;
my sins you can see.
Let those who hope in you not be put to shame
through me, Lord of hosts:
let not those who seek you be dismayed
through me, God of Israel.
It is for you that I suffer taunts,
that shame covers my face,
that I have become a stranger to my brothers,
an alien to my own mother’s sons.
I burn with zeal for your house
and taunts against you fall on me.
When I afflict my soul with fasting
they make it a taunt against me.
When I put on sackcloth in mourning
then they make me a byword,
the gossip of men at the gates,
the subject of drunkards’ songs.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit,
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be,
world without end.
Amen.
I am wearied with all my crying as I await my God.
________
Psalm 68 (69)
For food they gave me poison, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.
This is my prayer to you,
my prayer for your favour.
In your great love, answer me, O God,
with your help that never fails:
rescue me from sinking in the mud;
save me from my foes.
Save me from the waters of the deep
lest the waves overwhelm me.
Do not let the deep engulf me
nor death close its mouth on me.
Lord, answer, for your love is kind;
in your compassion, turn towards me.
Do not hide your face from your servant;
answer quickly for I am in distress.
Come close to my soul and redeem me;
ransom me pressed by my foes.
You know how they taunt and deride me;
my oppressors are all before you.
Taunts have broken my heart;
I have reached the end of my strength.
I looked in vain for compassion,
for consolers; not one could I find.
For food they gave me poison;
in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit,
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be,
world without end.
Amen.
For food they gave me poison, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.
________
Psalm 68 (69)
Seek the Lord, and he will give life to your soul.
As for me in my poverty and pain
let your help, O God, lift me up.
I will praise God’s name with a song;
I will glorify him with thanksgiving.
A gift pleasing God more than oxen,
more than beasts prepared for sacrifice.
The poor when they see it will be glad
and God-seeking hearts will revive;
for the Lord listens to the needy
and does not spurn his servants in their chains.
Let the heavens and the earth give him praise,
the sea and all its living creatures.
For God will bring help to Sion
and rebuild the cities of Judah
and men shall dwell there in possession.
The sons of his servants shall inherit it;
those who love his name shall dwell there.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit,
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be,
world without end.
Amen.
Seek the Lord, and he will give life to your soul.
Psalm-prayer
God our Father, to show the way of salvation, you chose that the standard of the cross should go before us, and you fulfilled the ancient prophecies in Christ’s passover from death to life. Do not let us rouse your burning indignation by sin, but rather, through the contemplation of his wounds, make us burn with zeal for the honour of your Church and with grateful love for you.
________
℣. Lift up your heads and see.
℟. Your redemption is at hand.
________
Readings (official one-year cycle)
First Reading
Isaiah 46:1-13
Babylonian idols are condemned by the Lord
Bel is crouching. Nebo cringing.
Their idols are being loaded on animals, on beasts of burden,
carried off like bundles on weary beasts.
They are cringing and crouching together,
powerless to save the ones who carry them,
as they themselves go off into captivity.
‘Listen to me, House of Jacob,
all you who remain of the House of Israel,
you who have been carried since birth,
whom I have carried since the time you were born.
‘In your old age I shall be still the same,
when your hair is grey I shall still support you.
I have already done so, I have carried you,
I shall still support and deliver you.’
To whom can you compare me, equate me,
to whom claim I am similar, or comparable?
These prodigals weigh out gold from their purses
and silver on the scales.
They engage a goldsmith to make a god
then worship and prostrate themselves before it.
They lift it on their shoulders and carry it,
and put it where it is meant to stand.
It never moves from the spot.
You may invoke it, it never replies,
It never saves anyone in trouble.
Remember this and be dismayed,
stir your memories again, you sinners,
remember things long past.
I am God unrivalled
God who has no like.
From the beginning I foretold the future,
and predicted beforehand what is to be.
I say: My purpose shall last;
I will do whatever I choose.
I call a bird of prey from the east,
my man of destiny from a far country.
No sooner is it said than done,
no sooner planned than performed.
Listen to me, faint hearts,
who feel far from victory.
I bring my victory near, already it is close,
my salvation will not be late.
I will give salvation to Zion,
my glory shall be for Israel.
Responsory
Is 46:12-13
℟. Listen to me, faint hearts, who feel far from victory.* I will give salvation to Zion, Israel shall have sight of my glory.
℣. I will bring my victory near, already it is close, my salvation will not be late.* I will give salvation to Zion, Israel shall have sight of my glory.
________
Second Reading
From the Letter to Diognetus
God showed his love through his Son
No man has ever seen God or known him, but God has revealed himself to us through faith, by which alone it is possible to see him. God, the Lord and maker of all things, who created the world and set it in order, not only loved man but was also patient with him. So he has always been, and is, and will be: kind, good, free from anger, truthful; indeed, he and he alone is good.
He devised a plan, a great and wonderful plan, and shared it only with his Son. As long as he preserved this secrecy and kept his own wise counsel he seemed to be neglecting us, to have no concern for us. But when through his beloved Son he revealed and made public what he had prepared from the very beginning, he gave us all at once gifts such as we could never have dreamt of, even sight and knowledge of himself.
When God had made all his plans in consultation with his Son, he waited until a later time, allowing us to follow our own whim, to be swept along by unruly passions, to be led astray by pleasure and desire. Not that he was pleased by our sins: he only tolerated them. Not that he approved of that time of sin: he was planning this era of holiness. When we had been shown to be undeserving of life, his goodness was to make us worthy of it. When we had made it clear that we could not enter God’s kingdom by our own power, we were to be enabled to do so by the power of God.
When our wickedness had reached its culmination, it became clear that retribution was at hand in the shape of suffering and death. The time came then for God to make known his kindness and power (how immeasurable is God’s generosity and love!). He did not show hatred for us or reject us or take vengeance; instead, he was patient with us, bore with us, and in compassion took our sins upon himself; he gave his own Son as the price of our redemption, the holy one to redeem the wicked, the sinless one to redeem sinners, the just one to redeem the unjust, the incorruptible one to redeem the corruptible, the immortal one to redeem mortals. For what else could have covered our sins but his sinlessness? Where else could we, wicked and sinful as we were, have found the means of holiness except in the Son of God alone?
How wonderful a transformation, how mysterious a design, how inconceivable a blessing! The wickedness of the many is covered up in the holy One, and the holiness of One sanctifies many sinners.
Responsory
℟. There is salvation in no-one else,* for there is no other name under heaven granted to men by which we may receive salvation.
℣. His name will be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace,* for there is no other name under heaven granted to men by which we may receive salvation.
________
Let us pray.
By the long-awaited coming of your new-born Son
deliver us, Lord,
from the age-old bondage of sin.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.
Amen.
________
Let us praise the Lord.
– Thanks be to God.
________
The week’s sequence of readings from Scripture has been interrupted today, because today’s feast has a First Reading of its own.
The reading you would otherwise have seen is shown below. It is perfectly reasonable (and encouraged) to join it on to yesterday’s or tomorrow’s First Reading, if it goes well with one of them and you think this is a sensible way of avoiding a gap.
Isaiah 33:7-24
Future salvation
Look, Ariel is lamenting in the streets,
the ambassadors of peace weep bitterly.
The highways are deserted,
no travellers use the roads.
Treaties are broken, witnesses despised,
there is respect for no one.
The land mourns, it pines away,
Lebanon is withered with shame,
Sharon is a desert,
Bashan and Carmel are stripped bare.
‘Now I stand up,’ says the Lord
‘now I rise to my full height.
You have conceived chaff, you will give birth to straw,
my breath shall devour you like fire.
‘The peoples will be reduced to lime,
like cut thorns they will be burnt in the fire.
You who are far away, listen to what I have done,
and you who are near, realise my strength.’
Sinners in Zion are struck with horror
and fear seizes on the godless.
Which of us can live with this devouring fire,
which of us exist in everlasting flames?
– He who acts with integrity,
who speaks sincerely
and rejects extortionate profit,
who waves away bribes from his hands,
shuts suggestions of murder out of his ears
and closes his eyes against crime;
this man will dwell in the heights,
he will find refuge in a citadel built on rock,
bread will be given him, he shall not want for water.
Your eyes are going to look on a king in his beauty,
they will see an immense country;
your heart will look back on its fears:
where is he who counted,
where is he who weighed out,
where is he who counted the precious stones?
You will no longer see the overweening people,
the people of obscure, unintelligible speech,
of barbarous, senseless tongue.
Look on Zion, city of our feasts,
your eyes will see Jerusalem
as a home that is secure,
a tent not to be moved:
its pegs not pulled out,
not one of its ropes broken.
There the Lord is princely to us,
on the banks of broad-spreading rivers,
where there rows no galley,
there passes no majestic ship:
its tackle hangs loose,
it supports the mast no longer,
it does not hoist the pennon.
For the Lord is our judge, the Lord our lawgiver,
the Lord our King and our saviour.
Then immense booty shall be shared out,
even the lame fall to plundering,
no one living there shall say, ‘I am sickly’;
the people who live there will be forgiven all their faults.
Copyright © 1996-2020 Universalis Publishing Limited: see www.universalis.com. Scripture readings from the Jerusalem Bible are published and copyright © 1966, 1967 and 1968 by Darton, Longman & Todd, Ltd and Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc, and used by permission of the publishers. Text of the Psalms: Copyright © 1963, The Grail (England). Used with permission of A.P. Watt Ltd. All rights reserved.