Ribbon Placement:
Liturgy of the Hours Vol. II:
Ordinary: 1045
Proper of Seasons: 726
Psalter: Thursday, Week III, 1435
*Concluding Prayer: Collect Prayer

Office of Readings for Thursday in Week 3 of Easter

God, come to my assistance.
— Lord, make haste to help me.

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit:
— as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be for ever. Amen. Alleluia.

PSALMODY

Ant. 1 Look on us, Lord, and see how we are despised, alleluia.

Psalm 89:39-53
Lament for the fall of David’s dynasty
He has raised up for us a mighty Savior born of the house of David his servant (Luke 1:69).

IV

And yet you Lord have rejected and spurned
and are angry with the one you have anointed.
You have broken your covenant with your servant
and dishonored his crown in the dust.

You have broken down all his walls
and reduced his fortresses to ruins.
He is despoiled by all who pass by;
he has become the taunt of his neighbors.

You have exalted the right hand of his foes;
you have made all his enemies rejoice.
You have made his sword give way,
you have not upheld him in battle.

You have brought his glory to an end;
you have hurled his throne to the ground.
You have cut short the years of his youth;
you have heaped disgrace upon him.

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit:
— as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be for ever. Amen.

Ant. Look on us, Lord, and see how we are despised, alleluia.

Ant. 2 I am the root and stock of David; I am the morning star, alleluia.

V

How long, O Lord? Will you hide yourself for ever?

How long will your anger burn like a fire?
Remember, Lord, the shortness of my life
and how frail you have made the sons of men.
What man can live and never see death?
Who can save himself from the grasp of the grave?

Where are the mercies of the past, O Lord,
which you have sworn in your faithfulness to David?
Remember, Lord, how your servant is taunted,
how I have to bear all the insults of the peoples.

Thus your enemies taunt me, O Lord,
mocking your anointed at every step.

Blessed be the Lord for ever.
Amen, amen!

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit:
— as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be for ever. Amen.

Psalm-prayer

Lord, God of mercy and fidelity, you made a new and lasting pact with men and sealed it in the blood of your Son. Forgive the folly of our disloyalty and make us keep your commandments, so that in your new covenant we may be witnesses and heralds of your faithfulness and love on earth, and sharers of your glory in heaven.

Ant. I am the root and stock of David; I am the morning star, alleluia.

Ant. 3 Our years wither away like grass, but you, Lord God, are eternal, alleluia.

Psalm 90
May we live in the radiance of God
There is no time with God: a thousand years, a single day: it is all one (2 Peter 3:8).

O Lord, you have been our refuge
from one generation to the next.
Before the mountains were born
or the earth or the world brought forth,
you are God, without beginning or end.

You turn men back into dust
and say: “Go back, sons of men.”
To your eyes a thousand years
are like yesterday, come and gone,
no more than a watch in the night.

You sweep men away like a dream,
like the grass which springs up in the morning.
In the morning it springs up and flowers:
by evening it withers and fades.

So we are destroyed in your anger,
struck with terror in your fury.
Our guilt lies open before you;
our secrets in the light of your face.

All our days pass away in your anger.
Our life is over like a sigh.
Our span is seventy years,
or eighty for those who are strong.

And most of these are emptiness and pain.
They pass swiftly and we are gone.
Who understands the power of your anger
and fears the strength of your fury?

Make us know the shortness of our life
that we may gain wisdom of heart.
Lord, relent! Is your anger for ever?
Show pity to your servants.

In the morning, fill us with your love;
we shall exult and rejoice all our days.
Give us joy to balance our affliction
for the years when we knew misfortune.

Show forth your work to your servants;
let your glory shine on their children.
Let the favor of the Lord be upon us:
give success to the work of our hands.
give success to the work of our hands.

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit:
— as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be for ever. Amen.

Psalm-prayer

Eternal Father, you give us life despite our guilt and even add days and years to our lives in order to bring us wisdom. Make us love and obey you, so that the works of our hands may always display what your hands have done, until the day we gaze upon the beauty of your face.

Ant. Our years wither away like grass, but you, Lord God, are eternal, 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.

God has raised the Lord to life, alleluia.
— Through his power he will also raise us up, alleluia.

READINGS

First reading
From the Book of Revelation
9:13-21
The plague of war

I, John, watched and the sixth angel blew his trumpet, and I heard a voice coming from between the horns of the altar of gold in God’s presence. It said to the sixth angel, who was still holding his trumpet, “Release the four angels who are tied up on the banks of the great river Euphrates!”

So the four angels were released; this was precisely the hour, the day, the month, and the year for which they had been prepared, to kill a third of mankind. Their cavalry troops, whose count I heard, were two hundred million in number—a number I heard myself. Now, in my vision, this is how I saw the horses and their riders. The breastplates they wore were fiery red, deep blue, and pale yellow. The horses’ heads were like heads of lions, and out of their mouths came fire and sulphur and smoke. By these three plagues—the smoke and sulphur and fire which shot out of their mouths—a third of mankind was slain. The deadly power of the horses was not only in their mouths but in their tails; for their tails were like snakes with heads poised to strike.

That part of mankind which escaped the plagues did not repent of the idols they had made. They did not give up the worship of demons, or of gods made from gold and silver, from bronze and stone and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk. Neither did they repent of their murders or their sorcery, their fornication or their thefts.

RESPONSORY Acts 17:30, 31; Joel 1:13, 14

God calls upon all men to repent,
— for he has fixed the day on which he will judge the world with justice, alleluia.

Ministers of God, gather together all the inhabitants of the land and cry out to the Lord.
— For he has fixed the day on which he will judge the world with justice, alleluia.

Second Reading
From the treatise Against Heresies by Saint Irenaeus, bishop
The eucharist, pledge of our resurrection

If our flesh is not saved, then the Lord has not redeemed us with his blood, the eucharistic chalice does not make us sharers in his blood, and the bread we break does not make us sharers in his body. There can be no blood without veins, flesh and the rest of the human substance, and this the Word of God actually became: it was with his own blood that he redeemed us. As the Apostle says: In him, through his blood, we have been redeemed, our sins have been forgiven.

We are his members and we are nourished by creation, which is his gift to us, for it is he who causes the sun to rise and the rain to fall. He declared that the chalice, which comes from his creation, was his blood, and he makes it the nourishment of our blood. He affirmed that the bread, which comes from his creation, was his body, and he makes it the nourishment of our body. When the chalice we mix and the bread we bake receive the word of God, the eucharistic elements become the body and blood of Christ, by which our bodies live and grow. How then can it be said that flesh belonging to the Lord’s own body and nourished by his body and blood is incapable of receiving God’s gift of eternal life? Saint Paul says in his letter to the Ephesians that we are members of his body, of his flesh and bones. He is not speaking of some spiritual and incorporeal kind of man, for spirits do not have flesh and bones. He is speaking of a real human body composed of flesh, sinews and bones, nourished by the chalice of Christ’s blood and receiving growth from the bread which is his body.

The slip of a vine planted in the ground bears fruit at the proper time. The grain of wheat falls into the ground and decays only to be raised up again and multiplied by the Spirit of God who sustains all things. The Wisdom of God places these things at the service of man and when they receive God’s word they become the eucharist, which is the body and blood of Christ. In the same way our bodies, which have been nourished by the eucharist, will be buried in the earth and will decay, but they will rise again at the appointed time, for the Word of God will raise them up to the glory of God the Father. Then the Father will clothe our mortal nature in immortality and freely endow our corruptible nature with incorruptibility, for God’s power is shown most perfectly in weakness.

RESPONSORY John 6:48-52

I am the bread of life. Your forefathers ate manna in the desert, and they died.
— This is the bread that comes down from heaven; anyone who eats this bread will never die, alleluia.

I am the living bread come down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will live for ever.
— This is the bread that comes down from heaven; anyone who eats this bread will never die, alleluia.

CONCLUDING PRAYER
*Note: The audio file uses the Collect Prayer

Almighty ever-living God,
let us feel your compassion
more readily during these days when,
by your gift, we have known it more fully,
so that those you have freed from the darkness of error
may cling more firmly to the teachings of your truth.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.
— Amen.

ACCLAMATION (at least in the communal celebration)

Let us praise the Lord.
— And give him thanks.