by Faith Central & Steve Welsh
Catholic televised Mass Readings and Homily for Wednesday of the Second Week in Ordinary Time, Jan. 23, 2019, from EWTN in Alabama. [Click here for Mass Readings]
[The Divine Office, or Liturgy of the Hours, begins the Liturgical Day with “A Call to Praise God” in the form of the Invitatory Psalm, usually Psalm 95, in stanzas, or strophes, interspersed with an antiphon. For Wednesday of Week II in the Four-Week Psalter, such as Wednesday of the Second Week in Ordinary Time, the antiphon is “Cry out with joy to the Lord, all the earth; serve the Lord with gladness.” As can be seen, that antiphon draws upon the text of one of the middle stanzas of the psalm itself.]
[Prior to the Psalm is an introductory phrase taken from Psalm 51 and a quote from the Letter to the Hebrews]
Lord, open my lips.
— And my mouth will proclaim Your Praise.
Encourage each other daily, while it is still today (Hebrews 3:13)
Cry out with joy to the Lord, all the earth; serve the Lord with gladness.
Come, let us sing to the Lord
and shout with joy to the Rock Who Saves us.
Let us approach Him with Praise and Thanksgiving
and sing joyful songs to the Lord.
Cry out with joy to the Lord, all the earth; serve the Lord with gladness.
The Lord is God, the Mighty God,
the Great King over all the gods,
He holds in His Hands the depths of the earth
and the highest mountains as well.
He made the sea; it belongs to Him,
the dry land, too, for it was formed by His Hands.
Cry out with joy to the Lord, all the earth; serve the Lord with gladness.
Come then, let us bow down and worship,
bending the knee before the Lord, our Maker.
For He is our God, and we are His People,
the Flock He Shepherds.
Today, listen to the Voice of the Lord:
Do not grow stubborn, as your fathers did
in the wilderness,
when at Meribah and Massah
they challenged me and provoked me,
Although they had seen all of my works.
Cry out with joy to the Lord, all the earth; serve the Lord with gladness.
Forty years I endured that generation.
I said, “They are a People whose hearts go astray
and they do not know My Ways.”
So I swore in my anger,
“The shall not enter into my rest.”
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be for ever.
Amen.
Cry out with joy to the Lord, all the earth; serve the Lord with gladness.
[The Divine Office also indicates that Psalm 100, Psalm 67 or Psalm 24 may be used, and indicates that the psalm may be omitted when the Invitatory precedes Morning Prayer. An added note provides that, in individual recitation, the antiphon may be said once, at the beginning, rather than with each strophe.]
[As can be seen, the psalm presents a a wide-ranging encounter with God’s Greatness and our Relationship to Him. We are exhorted to approach God, to sing and shout with joy, praise and thanksgiving. God is Almighty and our Creator, indeed holding creation in His Hands.
We are to worship and follow Him in His Greatness. Yet He also is a Person Whose Voice we are to listen to and follow, Who Shepherds us as His Flock. At times, there are those who stubbornly failed to follow him, challenging Him and provoking His Wrath. In particular, with the reference to Meribah and Massah, the psalm recalls the Israelites grumbling and challenging God at points during their exodus in the desert.]
Catholic televised Mass for Wednesday of the Second Week in Ordinary Time, Jan. 23, 2019, from Loretto Abbey in the Archdiocese of Toronto. [Click here for Mass Readings]
[featured image adapted from image at Creative Commons Wikimedia Commons Pjposullivan,
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Loretto_Abbey_chapel_interior,_Toronto.JPG, with additional conditions stated at that link and in the alt-tag here]
“Jesus entered the synagogue. There was a man … who had a withered hand. … [Jesus] said to the Pharisees, ‘Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath rather than to do evil, to save life rather than to destroy it?’ … grieved at their hardness of heart, Jesus said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ … and his hand was restored. The Pharisees … immediately took counsel with the Herodians … to put Him to death.”
“… We need to build a culture of life year-round! …”
Catholic televised Mass for the Memorial of Saint Agnes, Virgin and Martyr, Monday, Jan. 21, 2019, from Loretto Abbey in the Archdiocese of Toronto. [Click here for Mass Readings]
[featured image adapted from image at Creative Commons Wikimedia Commons Pjposullivan,
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Loretto_Abbey_chapel_interior,_Toronto.JPG, with additional conditions stated at that link and in the alt-tag here]
“Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? … the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away …then they will fast …. No one sews a piece of unshrunken cloth on an old cloak. … Likewise, no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the skins are ruined. Rather, new wine is poured into fresh wineskins.”
[featured image is file photo from another time and location]
“In this Sunday’s Gospel passage of the wedding feast at Cana, there is a theological portrait of both Mother Mary and prayer. …”
“… ‘Today the Bridegroom claims his bride, the Church, since Christ has washed her sins away in Jordan’s waters; the Magi hasten with their gifts to the royal wedding; and the wedding guests rejoice, for Christ has changed water into wine, alleluia.’ The full manifestation of our Savior includes also His baptism (last Sunday), which is presented as His acquisition of the Church as His bride. But there was also Jesus first miracle; and John
concludes this account by declaring, “Jesus did this as the beginning of his signs at Cana in Galilee and so revealed his glory, and his disciples began to believe in him.’ It is well worth looking in more detail at this gospel, so closely related to the Epiphany theme and so instructive about Our Lady as intercessor. …”