Fri 15 December

Friday of the 2nd week of Advent

First reading

Isaiah 48:17-19

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.

Psalm or canticle

Psalm 1:1-4,6

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.

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.

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.

Gospel

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.’

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Scripture readings taken from The Jerusalem Bible, 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. For on-line information about other Random House, Inc. books and authors, see the Internet web site at http://www.randomhouse.com.

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