Ribbon Placement:

Office of Readings for Monday in Week 4 of Easter

God, come to my assistance.

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit:

HYMN

Most ancient of all mysteries,

When heaven and earth were still unmade,

You were not born; there was no source

How wonderful creation is,

Most ancient of all mysteries,

PSALMODY

Ant. 1 How good is the God of Israel to the pure of heart, alleluia.

Psalm 73

I

How good God is to Israel,

For them there are no pains;

So they wear their pride like a necklace,

They scoff; they speak with malice;

So the people turn to follow them

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit:

Ant. How good is the God of Israel to the pure of heart, alleluia.

Ant. 2 Their laughter will turn to weeping, their merriment to grief, alleluia.

II

How useless to keep my heart pure

Then I said: “If I should speak like that,

I strove to fathom this problem,

How slippery the paths on which you set them;

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit:

Ant. Their laughter will turn to weeping, their merriment to grief, alleluia.

Ant. 3 Those who depart from you will perish; my joy is to remain with you, my God, alleluia.

III

And so when my heart grew embittered

Yet I was always in your presence;

What else have I in heaven but you?

All those who abandon you shall perish;

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit:

Psalm-prayer

It is good to be with you, Father; in you is fullness of life for your faithful people; in you all hope resides. May you lead us to everlasting happiness.

Ant. Those who depart from you will perish; my joy is to remain with you, my God, alleluia.

Sacred Silence (indicated by a bell) A moment to reflect and receive in our hearts the full resonance of the voice of the Holy Spirit and to unite our personal prayer more closely with the word of God and public voice of the Church.

My heart and my flesh, alleluia.

READINGS

First reading

I, John, saw a wild beast come out of the sea with ten horns and seven heads; on its horns were ten diadems and on its heads blasphemous names. The beast I saw was like a leopard, but it had paws like a bear and the mouth of a lion. The dragon gave it his own power and throne, together with great authority.

I noticed that one of the beast’s heads seemed to have been mortally wounded, but this mortal wound was healed. In wonderment, the whole world followed after the beast. Men worshiped the dragon for giving his authority to the beast; they also worshiped the beast and said, “Who can compare with the beast, or come forward to fight against it?”

The beast was given a mouth for uttering proud boasts and blasphemies, but the authority it was given was to last only forty-two months. It began to hurl blasphemies against God, reviling him and the members of his heavenly household as well. The beast was allowed to wage war against God’s people and conquer them. It was likewise granted authority over every race and people, language and nation. The beast will be worshiped by all those inhabitants of earth who did not have their names written at the world’s beginning in the book of the living, which belongs to the Lamb who was slain.

Let him who has ears heed these words! If one is destined for captivity, into captivity he goes! If one is destined to be slain by the sword, by the sword he will be slain! Such is the faithful endurance that distinguishes God’s holy people.

Then I saw another wild beast come up out of the earth; it had two horns like a ram and it spoke like a dragon. It used the authority of the first beast to promote its interests by making the world and all its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose mortal wound had been healed.

It performed great prodigies; it could even make fire come down from heaven to earth as men looked on. Because of the prodigies it was allowed to perform by authority of the first beast, it led astray the earth’s inhabitants, telling them to make an idol in honor of the beast that had been wounded by the sword and yet lived. The second wild beast was then permitted to give life to the beast’s image, so that the image had the power of speech and of putting to death anyone who refused to worship it. It forced all men, small and great, rich and poor, slave and free, to accept a stamped image on their right hand or their forehead. Moreover, it did not allow a man to buy or sell anything unless he was first marked with the name of the beast or with the number that stood for its name.

A certain wisdom is needed here; with a little ingenuity anyone can calculate the number of the beast, for it is a number that stands for a certain man. The man’s number is six hundred sixty-six.

RESPONSORY Revelation 3:5; Matthew 10:22

Whoever is victorious will be clothed in white robes.

Whoever stands firm until the end will be saved.

Second reading

Our Lord made a covenant with us through baptism in order to give us eternal life. There is in baptism an image both of death and of life, the water being the symbol of death, the Spirit giving the pledge of life. The association of water and the Spirit is explained by the twofold purpose for which baptism was instituted, namely, to destroy the sin in us so that it could never again give birth to death, and to enable us to live by the Spirit and so win the reward of holiness. The water into which the body enters as into a tomb symbolizes death; the Spirit instills into us his life-giving power, awakening our souls from the death of sin to the life that they had in the beginning. This then is what it means to be born again of water and the Spirit: we die in the water, and we come to life again through the Spirit.

To signify this death and to enlighten the baptized by transmitting to them knowledge of God, the great sacrament of baptism is administered by means of a triple immersion and the invocation of each of the three divine Persons. Whatever grace there is in the water comes not from its own nature but from the presence of the Spirit, since baptism is not a cleansing of the body, but a pledge made to God from a clear conscience.

As a preparation for our life after the resurrection, our Lord tells us in the gospel how we should live here and now. He teaches us to be peaceable, long-suffering, undefiled by desire for pleasure, and detached from worldly wealth. In this way we can achieve, by our own free choice, the kind of life that will be natural in the world to come.

Through the Holy Spirit we are restored to paradise, we ascend to the kingdom of heaven, and we are reinstated as adopted sons. Thanks to the Spirit we obtain the right to call God our Father, we become sharers in the grace of Christ, we are called children of light, and we share in everlasting glory. In a word, every blessing is showered upon us, both in this world and in the world to come. As we contemplate them even now, like a reflection in a mirror, it is as though we already possessed the good things our faith tells us that we shall one day enjoy. If this is the pledge, what will the perfection be? If these are the first fruits, what will the full harvest be?

RESPONSORY

As we rise up from the baptismal waters, our sins are washed away,

The blessed waters of the sacrament of baptism free us for eternal life.

CONCLUDING PRAYER

O God,

ACCLAMATION (at least in the communal celebration)

Let us praise the Lord.