Mass Readings
First Reading – Is 65:17-21
Thus says the LORD:
Lo, I am about to create new heavens
and a new earth;
The things of the past shall not be remembered
or come to mind.
Instead, there shall always be rejoicing and happiness
in what I create;
For I create Jerusalem to be a joy
and its people to be a delight;
I will rejoice in Jerusalem
and exult in my people.
No longer shall the sound of weeping be heard there,
or the sound of crying;
No longer shall there be in it
an infant who lives but a few days,
or an old man who does not round out his full lifetime;
He dies a mere youth who reaches but a hundred years,
and he who fails of a hundred shall be thought accursed.
They shall live in the houses they build,
and eat the fruit of the vineyards they plant.
Responsorial Psalm – 30:2 and 4, 5-6, 11-12a and 13b (R.2a)
I will praise you, Lord, for you have rescued me.
I will extol you, O LORD, for you drew me clear
and did not let my enemies rejoice over me.
O LORD, you brought me up from the nether world;
you preserved me from among those going down into the pit. R.
Sing praise to the LORD, you his faithful ones,
and give thanks to his holy name.
For his anger lasts but a moment;
a lifetime, his good will.
At nightfall, weeping enters in,
but with the dawn, rejoicing. R.
“Hear, O LORD, and have pity on me;
O LORD, be my helper.”
You changed my mourning into dancing;
O LORD, my God, forever will I give you thanks. R.
Gospel – Jn 4:43-54
At that time Jesus left [Samaria] for Galilee.
For Jesus himself testified
that a prophet has no honor in his native place.
When he came into Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him,
since they had seen all he had done in Jerusalem at the feast;
for they themselves had gone to the feast.
Then he returned to Cana in Galilee,
where he had made the water wine.
Now there was a royal official whose son was ill in Capernaum.
When he heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judea,
he went to him and asked him to come down
and heal his son, who was near death.
Jesus said to him,
“Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will not believe.”
The royal official said to him,
“Sir, come down before my child dies.”
Jesus said to him, “You may go; your son will live.”
The man believed what Jesus said to him and left.
While the man was on his way back,
his slaves met him and told him that his boy would live.
He asked them when he began to recover.
They told him,
“The fever left him yesterday, about one in the afternoon.”
The father realized that just at that time Jesus had said to him,
“Your son will live,”
and he and his whole household came to believe.
Now this was the second sign Jesus did
when he came to Galilee from Judea.
Featured Saints
St. Joseph Sebastian Pelczar, bishop (†1924). Founder of the Congregation of the Handmaids of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, he was Bishop of Przemyśl (Poland) and a distinguished master of the spiritual life.
St. Cyril, deacon and martyr (†c. 362). He was martyred during the reign of Emperor Julian the Apostate, in Heliopolis, Lebanon.
St. Hilary, abbot (eighth century). He governed the monastery of Pelecete, situated in present-day Greece. He was persecuted for opposing the iconoclast customs.
St. Stephen Harding, abbot (†1134). One of the founders of the Monastery of Citeaux, France, of which he was abbot and in which he received St. Bernard of Clairvaux with his thirty companions. He founded twelve monasteries.
St. Conon of Naso, monk (†1236). Son of the governor of Naso, Sicily, he became a Basilian monk. After his parents’ death, he distributed his inheritance among the poor and embraced the hermetic life.
St. Guntram, king (†593). King of the Francs, he governed wisely, founded monasteries and shared his wealth between the Church and the poor
Blessed Renée-Marie Feillatreau, martyr (†1794). Catholic laywoman guillotined during the French Revolution.
Blessed Jeanne-Marie de Maillé, widow (†1414). After her husband’s death at war, she was reduced to misery and expelled from her own home; she lived as a solitary in a cell near the Franciscan convent in Tours, France.
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