Daily Bible Reading

Source: Vaticannews.va

A reading from the Book of Ezekiel
37:1-14

The hand of the LORD came upon me,
and led me out in the Spirit of the LORD
and set me in the center of the plain,
which was now filled with bones.
He made me walk among the bones in every direction
so that I saw how many they were on the surface of the plain.
How dry they were!
He asked me:
Son of man, can these bones come to life?
I answered, “Lord GOD, you alone know that.”
Then he said to me:
Prophesy over these bones, and say to them:
Dry bones, hear the word of the LORD!
Thus says the Lord GOD to these bones:
See! I will bring spirit into you, that you may come to life.
I will put sinews upon you, make flesh grow over you,
cover you with skin, and put spirit in you
so that you may come to life and know that I am the LORD.
I prophesied as I had been told,
and even as I was prophesying I heard a noise;
it was a rattling as the bones came together, bone joining bone.
I saw the sinews and the flesh come upon them,
and the skin cover them, but there was no spirit in them.
Then the LORD said to me:
Prophesy to the spirit, prophesy, son of man,
and say to the spirit:  Thus says the Lord GOD
From the four winds come, O spirit,
and breathe into these slain that they may come to life.
I prophesied as he told me, and the spirit came into them;
they came alive and stood upright, a vast army.
Then he said to me:
Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel.
They have been saying,
“Our bones are dried up,
our hope is lost, and we are cut off.”
Therefore, prophesy and say to them: Thus says the Lord GOD:
O my people, I will open your graves
and have you rise from them,
and bring you back to the land of Israel.
Then you shall know that I am the LORD,
when I open your graves and have you rise from them,
O my people!
I will put my spirit in you that you may live,
and I will settle you upon your land;
thus you shall know that I am the LORD.
I have promised, and I will do it, says the LORD.

GOSPEL OF THE DAY

From the Gospel according to Matthew
22:34-40

When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees,
they gathered together, and one of them,
a scholar of the law, tested him by asking,
“Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”
He said to him,
“You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart,
with all your soul, and with all your mind.
This is the greatest and the first commandment.
The second is like it:
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.”

THE WORDS OF THE POPES

Jesus’ filial union with the Father is expressed in the perfect love which He also made the primary commandment of the Gospel: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first of the commandments’ (Mt 22:37ff). As is well known, Jesus adds a second commandment to this one, ‘like the first’, that of love for one’s neighbour (cf. Mt 22:39). And He offers himself as an example of this love: “I give you a new commandment: that you love one another, just as I have loved you” (Jn 13:34). He teaches and entrusts to His followers a love modelled on His own. To this love the virtues of charity listed by Saint Paul can truly be applied: “Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful, it is not arrogant … Love does not insist on its own way … It does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things … endures all things” (1 Cor 13:4–7). When, in his letter, the Apostle presented this image of evangelical charity to his readers in Corinth, his mind and heart were undoubtedly filled with the thought of Christ’s love, towards which he wished to direct the lives of the Christian communities; thus, his hymn to charity may be regarded as a commentary on the commandment to love one another following the example of Christ, who is love (as Saint Catherine of Siena would say many centuries later): “(As) I have loved you” (Jn 13:34). (Saint John Paul II, General Audience, 31 August 1988)