RELIGION AND ART

Thursday Week 30 in Ordinary Time ‘Blessings on him who comes in the name of the Lord!’ First Reading Ephesians 6:10-20  Put on God's armour and resist the devil Grow strong in the Lord, with the strength of his power. Put God’s armour on so as to be able to resist the devil’s tactics. For it is not against human enemies that we have to struggle, but against the Sovereignties and the Powers who originate the darkness in this world, the spiritual army of evil in the heavens. That is why you must rely on God’s armour, or you will not be able to put up any resistance when the worst happens, or have enough resources to hold your ground.   So stand your ground, with truth buckled round your waist, and integrity for a breastplate, wearing for shoes on your feet the eagerness to spread the gospel of peace and always carrying the shield of faith so that you can use it to put out the burning arrows of the evil one. And then you must accept salvation from God to be your helmet and r...

Feast of Saints Simon and Jude, Apostles 'You are no longer aliens or foreign visitors: you are citizens like all the saints' First Reading Ephesians 2:19-22  In Christ you are no longer aliens, but citizens like us You are no longer aliens or foreign visitors: you are citizens like all the saints, and part of God’s household. You are part of a building that has the apostles and prophets for its foundations, and Christ Jesus himself for its main cornerstone. As every structure is aligned on him, all grow into one holy temple in the Lord; and you too, in him, are being built into a house where God lives, in the Spirit. Responsorial Psalm: Their word goes forth through all the earth. Gospel Luke 6:12-19  Jesus chooses his twelve apostles Jesus went out into the hills to pray; and he spent the whole night in prayer to God. When day came he summoned his disciples and picked out twelve of them; he called them ‘apostles’: Simon whom he called Peter, and his brother Andrew; James, ...

Tuesday Week 30 in Ordinary Time ‘What is the kingdom of God like? What shall I compare it with?'  First Reading Ephsians 5:21-33  Give way to one another in obedience to Christ Give way to one another in obedience to Christ. Wives should regard their husbands as they regard the Lord, since as Christ is head of the Church and saves the whole body, so is a husband the head of his wife; and as the Church submits to Christ, so should wives to their husbands, in everything. Husbands should love their wives just as Christ loved the Church and sacrificed himself for her to make her holy. He made her clean by washing her in water with a form of words, so that when he took her to himself she would be glorious, with no speck or wrinkle or anything like that, but holy and faultless. In the same way, husbands must love their wives as they love their own bodies; for a man to love his wife is for him to love himself. A man never hates his own body, but he feeds it and looks after it; and ...

30th Sunday in Ordinary Time ‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.' First Reading Exoducs 22:20-26  If you are harsh with the widow and orphan, my anger will flare against you The Lord said to Moses, ‘Tell the sons of Israel this: ‘“You must not molest the stranger or oppress him, for you lived as strangers in the land of Egypt. You must not be harsh with the widow, or with the orphan; if you are harsh with them, they will surely cry out to me, and be sure I shall hear their cry; my anger will flare and I shall kill you with the sword, your own wives will be widows, your own children orphans. ‘“If you lend money to any of my people, to any poor man among you, you must not play the usurer with him: you must not demand interest from him. ‘“If you take another’s cloak as a pledge, you must give it back to him before sunset. It is all the covering he has; it is the cloak he wraps his body in; what else would he sleep in? If h...

Saturday Week 29 in Ordinary Time 'If we live by the truth and in love, we shall grow in all ways into Christ' First Reading Ephesian 4:7-16  By grace, we shall not be children any longer Each one of us has been given his own share of grace, given as Christ allotted it. It was said that he would: When he ascended to the height, he captured prisoners,  he gave gifts to men. When it says, ‘he ascended’, what can it mean if not that he descended right down to the lower regions of the earth? The one who rose higher than all the heavens to fill all things is none other than the one who descended. And to some, his gift was that they should be apostles; to some, prophets; to some, evangelists; to some, pastors and teachers; so that the saints together make a unity in the work of service, building up the body of Christ. In this way we are all to come to unity in our faith and in our knowledge of the Son of God, until we become the perfect Man, fully mature with the fullness of Chris...

Thursday Week 29 in Ordinary Time  - Saint John Paul II, Pope. May Christ live in my heart through fait First Reading Ephesians 3:14-21  A prayer that faithful may know the love of Christ This is what I pray, kneeling before the Father, from whom every family, whether spiritual or natural, takes its name: Out of his infinite glory, may he give you the power through his Spirit for your hidden self to grow strong, so that Christ may live in your hearts through faith, and then, planted in love and built on love, you will with all the saints have strength to grasp the breadth and the length, the height and the depth; until, knowing the love of Christ, which is beyond all knowledge, you are filled with the utter fullness of God. Glory be to him whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine; glory be to him from generation to generation in the Church and in Christ Jesus for ever and ever. Amen. Responsorial Psalm:  The Lord fills the earth wit...

Tuesday Weel 29 in Ordinary Time First Reading Ephesians 2:12-22  In Christ you are no longer aliens, but citizens like us Do not forget that you had no Christ and were excluded from membership of Israel, aliens with no part in the covenants with their Promise; you were immersed in this world, without hope and without God. But now in Christ Jesus, you that used to be so far apart from us have been brought very close, by the blood of Christ. For he is the peace between us, and has made the two into one and broken down the barrier which used to keep them apart, actually destroying in his own person the hostility caused by the rules and decrees of the Law. This was to create one single New Man in himself out of the two of them and by restoring peace through the cross, to unite them both in a single Body and reconcile them with God: in his own person he killed the hostility. Later he came to bring the good news of peace, peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near a...

Saint Ignatus of Antioch, Bishop, Martyr ‘If anyone openly declares himself for me, the Son of Man will declare himself for him in the presence of the angels. First Reading Ephesians 1:15-23  Paul’s prayer for the enlightenment of the faithful I, having once heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus, and the love that you show towards all the saints, have never failed to remember you in my prayers and to thank God for you. May the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, give you a spirit of wisdom and perception of what is revealed, to bring you to full knowledge of him. May he enlighten the eyes of your mind so that you can see what hope his call holds for you, what rich glories he has promised the saints will inherit and how infinitely great is the power that he has exercised for us believers. This you can tell from the strength of his power at work in Christ, when he used it to raise him from the dead and to make him sit at his right hand, in heaven, far above every S...

Wednesday Week 28 in Ordinary Time Anyone who follows you, O Lord, will have the light of life. First Reading Galatians 5:18-25  To belong to Christ, crucify all self-indulgence If you are led by the Spirit, no law can touch you. When self-indulgence is at work the results are obvious: fornication, gross indecency and sexual irresponsibility; idolatry and sorcery; feuds and wrangling, jealousy, bad temper and quarrels; disagreements, factions, envy; drunkenness, orgies and similar things. I warn you now, as I warned you before: those who behave like this will not inherit the kingdom of God. What the Spirit brings is very different: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness and self-control. There can be no law against things like that, of course. You cannot belong to Christ Jesus unless you crucify all self-indulgent passions and desires. Since the Spirit is our life, let us be directed by the Spirit. Responsorial Psalm:  Anyone who follows you...

Tuesday Week 28 in Ordinary Time 'Give alms from what you have and then indeed everything will be clean for you.’ First Reading Galatians 5:1-6  It is faith, not the Law, that justifies us When Christ freed us, he meant us to remain free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery. It is I, Paul, who tell you this: if you allow yourselves to be circumcised, Christ will be of no benefit to you at all. With all solemnity I repeat my warning: Everyone who accepts circumcision is obliged to keep the whole Law. But if you do look to the Law to make you justified, then you have separated yourselves from Christ, and have fallen from grace. Christians are told by the Spirit to look to faith for those rewards that righteousness hopes for, since in Christ Jesus whether you are circumcised or not makes no difference – what matters is faith that makes its power felt through love. Responsorial Psalm:  Lord, let your love come upon me. Gospel Luke 11:37-41...

Monday Week 28 in Ordinary Time ‘This is a wicked generation; it is asking for a sign' Saint Carlos Acutis First Reading Galatians 4:22-24,36-37,31-5:1  Christ freed us: do not submit again to slavery The Law says, if you remember, that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave-girl, and one by his free-born wife. The child of the slave-girl was born in the ordinary way; the child of the free woman was born as the result of a promise. This can be regarded as an allegory: the women stand for the two covenants. The first who comes from Mount Sinai, and whose children are slaves, is Hagar. The Jerusalem above, however, is free and is our mother, since scripture says: Shout for joy, you barren women who bore no children! Break into shouts of joy and gladness, you who were never in labour. For there are more sons of the forsaken one than sons of the wedded wife. So, my brothers, we are the children, not of the slave-girl, but of the free-born wife. When Christ freed us, he meant us t...