Thursday 3 June 2021
Saints Charles Lwanga and his Companions, Martyrs
on Thursday of week 9 in Ordinary Time
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 martyrs living now with Christ
In suffering were tried,
Their anguish overcome by love
When on his cross they died.
Across the centuries they come,
In constancy unmoved,
Their loving hearts make no complaint,
In silence they are proved.
No man has ever measured love,
Or weighed it in his hand,
But God who knows the inmost heart
Gives them the promised land.
Praise Father, Son and Spirit blest,
Who guides us through the night
In ways that reach beyond the stars
To everlasting light.
Francis E. Mostyn (1860-1939)
________
Psalm 17 (18):31-35
Thanksgiving
“If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Rom 8:31).
The word of the Lord is a shield for all who make him their refuge.
As for God, his ways are perfect;
the word of the Lord, purest gold.
He indeed is the shield
of all who make him their refuge.
For who is God but the Lord?
Who is a rock but our God?
the God who girds me with strength
and makes the path safe before me.
My feet you made swift as the deer’s;
you have made me stand firm on the heights.
You have trained my hands for battle
and my arms to bend the heavy bow.
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.
The word of the Lord is a shield for all who make him their refuge.
________
Psalm 17 (18):36-46
Lord, your right hand upheld me.
You gave me your saving shield;
you upheld me, trained me with care.
You gave me freedom for my steps;
my feet have never slipped.
I pursued and overtook my foes,
never turning back till they were slain.
I smote them so they could not rise;
they fell beneath my feet.
You girded me with strength for battle;
you made my enemies fall beneath me,
you made my foes take flight;
those who hated me I destroyed.
They cried, but there was no one to save them;
they cried to the Lord, but in vain.
I crushed them fine as dust before the wind;
trod them down like dirt in the streets.
You saved me from the feuds of the people
and put me at the head of the nations.
People unknown to me served me:
when they heard of me they obeyed me.
Foreign nations came to me cringing:
foreign nations faded away.
They came trembling out of their strongholds.
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.
Lord, your right hand upheld me.
________
Psalm 17 (18):47-51
Long life to the Lord! Praised be the God who saves me.
Long life to the Lord, my rock!
Praised be the God who saves me,
the God who gives me redress
and subdues people under me.
You saved me from my furious foes.
You set me above my assailants.
You saved me from violent men,
so I will praise you, Lord, among the nations:
I will sing a psalm to your name.
He has given great victories to his king
and shown his love for his anointed,
for David and his sons for ever.
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.
Long life to the Lord! Praised be the God who saves me.
Psalm-prayer
To protect your people, Father, you opened a new passage through the sea. May you be both the road we travel and the peaceful reward at the end of our journey.
________
℣. Our soul is waiting for the Lord.
℟. The Lord is our help and our shield.
________
Readings (official one-year cycle)
First Reading
Job 38:1-30
Then from the heart of the tempest the Lord gave Job his answer. He said:
Who is this obscuring my designs
with his empty-headed words?
Brace yourself like a fighter;
now it is my turn to ask questions and yours to inform me.
Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundations?
Tell me, since you are so well-informed!
Who decided the dimensions of it, do you know?
Or who stretched the measuring line across it?
What supports its pillars at their bases?
Who laid its cornerstone
when all the stars of the morning were singing with joy,
and the Sons of God in chorus were chanting praise?
Who pent up the sea behind closed doors
when it leapt tumultuous out of the womb,
when I wrapped it in a robe of mist
and made black clouds its swaddling bands;
when I marked the bounds it was not to cross
and made it fast with a bolted gate?
Come thus far, I said, and no farther:
here your proud waves shall break.
Have you ever in your life given orders to the morning
or sent the dawn to its post,
telling it to grasp the earth by its edges
and shake the wicked out of it,
when it changes the earth to sealing clay
and dyes it as a man dyes clothes;
stealing the light from wicked men
and breaking the arm raised to strike?
Have you journeyed all the way to the sources of the sea,
or walked where the Abyss is deepest?
Have you been shown the gates of Death
or met the janitors of Shadowland?
Have you an inkling of the extent of the earth?
Tell me all about it if you have!
Which is the way to the home of the light,
and where does darkness live?
You could then show them the way to their proper places,
or put them on the path to where they live!
If you know all this, you must have been born with them,
you must be very old by now!
Have you ever visited the place where the snow is kept,
or seen where the hail is stored up,
which I keep for times of stress,
for days of battle and war?
From which direction does the lightning fork
when it scatters sparks over the earth?
Who carves a channel for the downpour,
and hacks a way for the rolling thunder,
so that rain may fall on lands where no one lives,
and the deserts void of human dwelling,
giving drink to the lonely wastes
and making grass spring where everything was dry?
Has the rain a father?
Who begets the dewdrops?
What womb brings forth the ice,
and gives birth to the frost of heaven,
when the waters grow hard as stone
and the surface of the deep congeals?
Responsory
℟. What right have you, a human being, to cross-examine God?* Has the pot any right to say to the potter, Why did you make me this shape?
℣. Gird up your loins now, like a man. I will question you, and you tell me the answers:* Has the pot any right to say to the potter, Why did you make me this shape?
________
Second Reading
A sermon by Pope Paul VI
The glory of the martyrs - a sign of rebirth
The African martyrs add another page to the martyrology – the Church’s roll of honour – an occasion both of mourning and of joy. This is a page worthy in every way to be added to the annals of that Africa of earlier times which we, living in this era and being men of little faith, never expected to be repeated.
In earlier times there occurred those famous deeds, so moving to the spirit, of the martyrs of Scilli, of Carthage, and of that “white robed army” of Utica commemorated by Saint Augustine and Prudentius; of the martyrs of Egypt so highly praised by Saint John Chrysostom, and of the martyrs of the Vandal persecution. Who would have thought that in our days we should have witnessed events as heroic and glorious?
Who could have predicted that to the famous African confessors and martyrs such as Cyprian, Felicity, Perpetua and – the greatest of all – Augustine, we would one day add names so dear to us as Charles Lwanga and Matthias Mulumba Kalemba and their 20 companions? Nor must we forget those members of the Anglican Church who also died for the name of Christ.
These African martyrs herald the dawn of a new age. If only the mind of man might be directed not towards persecutions and religious conflicts but towards a rebirth of Christianity and civilisation!
Africa has been washed by the blood of these latest martyrs, the first of this new age (and, God willing, let them be the last, although such a holocaust is precious indeed). Africa is reborn free and independent.
The infamous crime by which these young men were put to death was so unspeakable and so expressive of the times. It shows us clearly that a new people needs a moral foundation, needs new spiritual customs firmly planted, to be handed down to posterity. Symbolically, this crime also reveals that a simple and rough way of life – enriched by many fine human qualities yet enslaved by its own weakness and corruption – must give way to a more civilised life wherein the higher expressions of the mind and better social conditions prevail.
Responsory
℟. God looks on, his angels look on, Christ, too, looks on as we struggle and strive in the contest of faith.* What great dignity and glory are ours, what happiness to join battle in the presence of God and to be crowned by Christ, the Judge!
℣. Let us be armed with a great determination and be prepared to face the combat, pure in heart, sound in faith, and full of courage.* What great dignity and glory are ours, what happiness to join battle in the presence of God and to be crowned by Christ, the Judge!
________
Let us pray.
Lord God, you have made the blood of martyrs
become the seed of Christians.
In your love, grant that your Church,
the field that was moistened by the blood of Saint Charles and his companions,
may always yield a fertile harvest for you.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.
Amen.
________
Let us praise the Lord.
– Thanks be to God.
Copyright © 1996-2021 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.