January 20, 2015

Reading

The Letter to the Hebrews   6: 10-20

6:10 For God is not unjust, such that he would forget your work and the love that you have shown in his name. For you have ministered, and you continue to minister, to the saints.

6:11 Yet we desire that each one of you display the same solicitude toward the fulfillment of hope, even unto the end,

6:12 so that you may not be slow to act, but instead may be imitators of those who, through faith and patience, shall inherit the promises.

6:13 For God, in making promises to Abraham, swore by himself, (because he had no one greater by whom he might swear),

6:14 saying: “Blessing, I shall bless you, and multiplying, I shall multiply you.”

6:15 And in this way, by enduring patiently, he secured the promise.

6:16 For men swear by what is greater than themselves, and an oath as confirmation is the end of all their controversy.

6:17 In this matter, God, wanting to reveal more thoroughly the immutability of his counsel to the heirs of the promise, interposed an oath,

6:18 so that by two immutable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we may have the strongest solace: we who have fled together so as to hold fast to the hope set before us.

6:19 This we have as an anchor of the soul, safe and sound, which advances even to the interior of the veil,

6:20 to the place where the forerunner Jesus has entered on our behalf, so as to become the High Priest for eternity, according to the order of Melchizedek.

Gospel

The Holy Gospel According to Mark   2: 23-28

2:23	And again, while the Lord was walking through the ripe grain on the Sabbath, his disciples, as they advanced, began to separate the ears of grains.
2:24	But the Pharisees said to him, “Behold, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbaths?”
2:25	And he said to them: “Have you never read what David did, when he had need and was hungry, both he and those who were with him?
2:26	How he went into the house of God, under the high priest Abiathar, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful to eat, except for the priests, and how he gave it to those who were with him?”
2:27	And he said to them: “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.
2:28	And so, the Son of man is Lord, even of the Sabbath.”