Readings at Mass
Liturgical Colour: Violet. Year: A(II).
| First reading | Isaiah 48:17-19 |
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If you had been alert to my commandments, your happiness would have been like a river
Thus says the Lord, your redeemer, the Holy One of Israel:
I, the Lord, your God, teach you what is good for you,
I lead you in the way that you must go.
If only you had been alert to my commandments,
your happiness would have been like a river,
your integrity like the waves of the sea.
Your children would have been numbered like the sand,
your descendants as many as its grains.
Never would your name have been cut off or blotted out before me.
| Responsorial Psalm | Psalm 1:1-4,6 |
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Anyone who follows you, O Lord, will have the light of life.
Happy indeed is the man
who follows not the counsel of the wicked;
nor lingers in the way of sinners
nor sits in the company of scorners,
but whose delight is the law of the Lord
and who ponders his law day and night.
Anyone who follows you, O Lord, will have the light of life.
He is like a tree that is planted
beside the flowing waters,
that yields its fruit in due season
and whose leaves shall never fade;
and all that he does shall prosper.
Anyone who follows you, O Lord, will have the light of life.
Not so are the wicked, not so!
For they like winnowed chaff
shall be driven away by the wind:
for the Lord guards the way of the just
but the way of the wicked leads to doom.
Anyone who follows you, O Lord, will have the light of life.
| Gospel Acclamation |
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Alleluia, alleluia!
See, the king, the Lord of the world, will come.
He will free us from the yoke of our bondage.
Alleluia!
| Or: |
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Alleluia, alleluia!
The Lord will come, go out to meet him.
Great is his beginning and his reign will have no end.
Alleluia!
| Gospel |
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| Matthew 11:16-19 |
They heed neither John nor the Son of Man
Jesus spoke to the crowds: ‘What description can I find for this generation? It is like children shouting to each other as they sit in the market place:
“We played the pipes for you,
and you wouldn’t dance;
we sang dirges,
and you wouldn’t be mourners.”
‘For John came, neither eating nor drinking, and they say, “He is possessed.” The Son of Man came, eating and drinking, and they say, “Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.” Yet wisdom has been proved right by her actions.’
You can also view this page with the New Testament in Greek and English.
Universalis podcast: The week ahead – from 14 to 20 December
The rose vestments on the 3rd Sunday of Advent. The beginning of the final countdown to Christmas. The ancient O Antiphons. The Latin hymns, and our project to record them. (15 minutes)
Episode notes.
The readings on this page are from the Jerusalem Bible, which is used at Mass in much of the English-speaking world. The English Standard Version, which is used at Mass in Great Britain, will be shown here if you set this page to use a calendar for Great Britain. The New American Bible readings, which are used at Mass in the United States, are available in the Universalis apps, programs and downloads.
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Office of Readings
If this is the first Hour that you are reciting today, you should precede it with the Invitatory Psalm.| INTRODUCTION |
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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 |
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The Advent of our God
With eager prayers we greet
And singing haste upon the road
His glorious gift to meet.
The everlasting Son
Scorns not a Virgin’s womb;
That we from bondage may be won
He bears a bondsman’s doom.
Daughter of Zion, rise
To meet thy lowly King;
Let not thy stubborn heart despise
The peace he deigns to bring.
In clouds of awful light,
As Judge he comes again,
His scattered people to unite,
With them in heaven to reign.
Let evil flee away
Ere that dread hour shall dawn.
Let this old Adam day by day
God’s image still put on.
Praise to the Incarnate Son,
Who comes to set us free,
With God the Father, ever One,
To all eternity.
Psalm 37 (38)
The plea of a sinner in great peril
Do not punish me, Lord, in your rage.
Lord, do not rebuke me in your wrath,
do not ruin me in your anger:
for I am pierced by your arrows
and crushed beneath your hand.
In the face of your anger
there is no health in my body.
There is no peace for my bones,
no rest from my sins.
My transgressions rise higher than my head:
a heavy burden, they weigh me down.
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.
Do not punish me, Lord, in your rage.
Psalm 37 (38)
O Lord, you know all my longing.
My wounds are corruption and decay
because of my foolishness.
I am bowed down and bent,
bent under grief all day long.
For a fire burns up my loins,
and there is no health in my body.
I am afflicted, utterly cast down,
I cry out from the sadness of my heart.
Lord, all that I desire is known to you;
my sighs are not hidden from you.
My heart grows weak, my strength leaves me,
and the light of my eyes – even that has gone.
My friends and my neighbours
keep far from my wounds.
Those closest to me keep far away,
while those who would kill me set traps,
those who would harm me make their plots:
they plan mischief all through the day.
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.
O Lord, you know all my longing.
Psalm 37 (38)
I confess my guilt to you, Lord; do not forsake me, my saviour.
But I, like a deaf man, do not hear;
like one who is dumb, I do not open my mouth.
I am like someone who cannot hear,
in whose mouth there is no reply.
For in you, Lord, I put my trust:
you will listen to me, Lord, my God.
For I have said, “Let them never triumph over me:
if my feet stumble, they will gloat.”
For I am ready to fall:
my suffering is before me always.
For I shall proclaim my wrongdoing:
I am anxious because of my sins.
All the time my enemies live and grow stronger;
they are so many, those who hate me without cause.
Returning evil for good they dragged me down,
because I followed the way of goodness.
Do not abandon me, Lord:
my God, do not leave me.
Hurry to my aid,
O Lord, my saviour.
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 confess my guilt to you, Lord; do not forsake me, my saviour.
℣. Lord, let your love come upon me.
℟. Grant me the saving help of your promise.
| First Reading | Isaiah 27:1-13 |
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The Lord’s vine cultivated anew
That day,
sing of the delightful vineyard!
I, the Lord, am its keeper;
every moment I water it
for fear its leaves should fall;
night and day I watch over it.
I am angry no longer.
If thorns and briars come
I will declare war on them,
I will burn them, every one.
Or if they would shelter under my protection,
let them make their peace with me,
let them make their peace with me.
In the days to come, Jacob will put out shoots,
Israel will bud and blossom
and fill the whole world with fruit.
Has he beaten her as he beat those who beat her?
Has he murdered her as he murdered those who murdered her?
You have punished it with expulsion and exile;
he pursued it with a blast as fierce as the wind from the east.
Now here is how Jacob’s guilt will be atoned for,
here is the ransom for its sin:
he treats all the altar stones
like lumps of chalk that are ground to powder.
Sacred poles and solar pillars stand no longer,
for the fortified city is abandoned now,
it lies deserted,
forsaken as a wilderness.
There the herd grazes,
there it rests and browses on the branches.
The boughs are dry and broken,
women come and use them for firewood;
for this is a nation without understanding
and so its Maker will have no pity for it,
he that shaped it will show it no favour.
That day, the Lord will start his threshing
from the course of the River to the wadi of Egypt,
and you will be gathered one by one,
sons of Israel.
That day, the great trumpet will be sounded,
and those lost in the land of Assyria will come,
and those exiled to the land of Egypt,
and they will worship the Lord
on the holy mountain, in Jerusalem.
| Responsory |
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| Cf. Mt 24:31; Is 27:13 |
℟. The Lord will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call,* and the angels will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.
℣. They will come and worship the Lord on the holy mountain at Jerusalem,* and the angels will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.
| Second Reading |
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| From the treatise "Against the Heresies" by St Irenaeus |
Eve and Mary
The Lord, coming into his own creation in visible form, was sustained by his own creation which he himself sustains in being. His obedience on the tree of the cross reversed the disobedience at the tree in Eden; the good news of the truth announced by an angel to Mary, a virgin subject to a husband, undid the evil lie that seduced Eve, a virgin espoused to a husband.
As Eve was seduced by the word of an angel and so fled from God after disobeying his word, Mary in her turn was given the good news by the word of an angel, and bore God in obedience to his word. As Eve was seduced into disobedience to God, so Mary was persuaded into obedience to God; thus the Virgin Mary became the advocate of the virgin Eve.
Christ gathered all things into one, by gathering them into himself. He declared war against our enemy, crushed him who at the beginning had taken us captive in Adam, and trampled on his head, in accordance with God’s words to the serpent in Genesis: I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall lie in wait for your head, and you shall lie in wait for his heel.
The one lying in wait for the serpent’s head is the one who was born in the likeness of Adam from the woman, the Virgin. This is the seed spoken of by Paul in the letter to the Galatians: The law of works was in force until the seed should come to whom the promise was made.
He shows this even more clearly in the same letter when he says: When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman. The enemy would not have been defeated fairly if his vanquisher had not been born of a woman, because it was through a woman that he had gained mastery over man in the beginning, and set himself up as man’s adversary.
That is why the Lord proclaims himself the Son of Man, the one who renews in himself that first man from whom the race born of woman was formed; as by a man’s defeat our race fell into the bondage of death, so by a man’s victory we were to rise again to life.
| Responsory |
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℟. The angel Gabriel was sent to announce the word to Mary, a virgin betrothed to Joseph, and she began to fear the light. ‘Mary, do not be afraid you have won the Lord’s favour:* You are to conceive and bear a son: he shall be called Son of the Most High.’
℣. ‘The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David: he will rule over the house of Jacob for ever.* You are to conceive and bear a son: he shall be called Son of the Most High.’
Let us pray.
Lord, keep us ever alert and watchful
as we await the coming of your Son,
so that, faithful to his teaching,
we may hasten to meet our Saviour with lamps alight.
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.
The psalms and canticles here are our own translation from the Latin. The Grail translation of the psalms, which is used liturgically in most of the English-speaking world, cannot be displayed on the Web for copyright reasons. The Universalis apps and programs do contain the Grail translation of the psalms.
You can also view this page in Latin and English.
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