O Lord, open my lips.
And my mouth will proclaim your praise.
Invitatory Psalm
Psalm 94 (95)
Come, let us worship the Lord, the King of martyrs.
– Come, let us worship the Lord, the King of martyrs.
Come, let us rejoice in the Lord,
let us acclaim God our salvation.
Let us come before him proclaiming our thanks,
let us acclaim him with songs.
– Come, let us worship the Lord, the King of martyrs.
For the Lord is a great God,
a king above all gods.
For he holds the depths of the earth in his hands,
and the peaks of the mountains are his.
For the sea is his: he made it;
and his hands formed the dry land.
– Come, let us worship the Lord, the King of martyrs.
Come, let us worship and bow down,
bend the knee before the Lord who made us;
for he himself is our God and we are his flock,
the sheep that follow his hand.
– Come, let us worship the Lord, the King of martyrs.
If only, today, you would listen to his voice:
“Do not harden your hearts
as you did at Meribah,
on the day of Massah in the desert,
when your fathers tested me –
they put me to the test,
although they had seen my works.”
– Come, let us worship the Lord, the King of martyrs.
“For forty years they wearied me,
that generation.
I said: their hearts are wandering,
they do not know my paths.
I swore in my anger:
they will never enter my place of rest.”
– Come, let us worship the Lord, the King of martyrs.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit,
as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,
world without end.
Amen.
– Come, let us worship the Lord, the King of martyrs.
Hymn
O God of truth and Lord of power,
whose word their course to things assigns,
whose splendour lights the morning hour,
whose fiery sun at noonday shines:
Within us quench the flames of strife,
the harmful heat of passion quell;
give health of body to our life
and give true peace of soul as well.
In this, most loving Father, hear,
and Christ, co-equal Son, our prayer:
with Holy Ghost, one Trinity,
you reign for all eternity.
Psalm 101 (102)
Prayers and vows of an exile
Let my cry come to you, Lord:
do not hide your face from me.
Lord, listen to my prayer
and let my cry come to you.
Do not hide your face from me:
whenever I am troubled,
turn to me and hear me.
Whenever I call on you,
hurry to answer me.
For my days vanish like smoke,
and my bones are dry as tinder.
My heart is cut down like grass, it is dry –
I cannot remember to eat.
The sound of my groaning
makes my bones stick to my flesh.
I am lonely as a pelican in the wilderness,
as an owl in the ruins,
as a sparrow alone on a rooftop:
I do not sleep.
All day long my enemies taunt me,
they burn with anger and use my name as a curse.
I make ashes my bread,
I mix tears with my drink,
because of your anger and reproach –
you, who raised me up, have dashed me to the ground.
My days fade away like a shadow:
I wither like grass.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit,
as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,
world without end.
Amen.
Let my cry come to you, Lord:
do not hide your face from me.
Psalm 101 (102)
Turn, Lord, to the prayers of the helpless.
But you, Lord, remain for ever
and your name lasts from generation to generation.
You will rise up and take pity on Zion,
for it is time that you pitied it,
indeed it is time:
for your servants love its very stones
and pity even its dust.
Then, Lord, the peoples will fear your name.
All the kings of the earth will fear your glory,
when the Lord has rebuilt Zion
and appeared there in his glory;
when he has listened to the prayer of the destitute
and not rejected their pleading.
These things shall be written for the next generation
and a people yet to be born shall praise the Lord:
because he has looked down from his high sanctuary,
– the Lord has looked down from heaven to earth –
and heard the groans of prisoners
and freed the children of death
so that they could proclaim the Lord’s name in Zion
and sing his praises in Jerusalem,
where people and kingdoms gather together
to serve the Lord.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit,
as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,
world without end.
Amen.
Turn, Lord, to the prayers of the helpless.
Psalm 101 (102)
You founded the earth, Lord,
and the heavens are the work of your hands.
He has brought down my strength in the midst of my journey;
he has shortened my days.
I will say, “My God, do not take me away
half way through the days of my life.
Your years last from generation to generation:
in the beginning you founded the earth,
and the heavens are the work of your hands.
They will pass away but you will remain;
all will grow old, like clothing,
and like a cloak you will change them, and they will be changed.
“But you are always the same,
your years will never run out.
The children of your servants shall live in peace,
their descendants will endure in your sight.”
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit,
as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,
world without end.
Amen.
You founded the earth, Lord,
and the heavens are the work of your hands.
Listen, my people, to my teaching;
– open your ears to the words of my mouth.
Reading
1 Thessalonians 4:1-18
Finally, brothers, we urge you and appeal to you in the Lord Jesus to make more and more progress in the kind of life that you are meant to live: the life that God wants, as you learnt from us, and as you are already living it.
You have not forgotten the instructions we gave you on the authority of the Lord Jesus.
What God wants is for you all to be holy. He wants you to keep away from fornication, and each one of you to know how to use the body that belongs to him in a way that is holy and honourable, not giving way to selfish lust like the pagans who do not know God. He wants nobody at all ever to sin by taking advantage of a brother in these matters; the Lord always punishes sins of that sort, as we told you before and assured you. We have been called by God to be holy, not to be immoral; in other words, anyone who objects is not objecting to a human authority,
but to God, who gives you his Holy Spirit.
As for loving our brothers, there is no need for anyone to write to you about that, since you have learnt from God yourselves to love one another, and in fact this is what you are doing with all the brothers throughout the whole of Macedonia. However, we do urge you, brothers, to go on making even greater progress and to make a point of living quietly, attending to your own business and earning your living, just as we told you to,
so that you are seen to be respectable by those outside the Church, though you do not have to depend on them.
We want you to be quite certain, brothers, about those who have died, to make sure that you do not grieve about them, like the other people who have no hope. We believe that Jesus died and rose again, and that it will be the same for those who have died in Jesus: God will bring them with him. We can tell you this from the Lord’s own teaching, that any of us who are left alive until the Lord’s coming will not have any advantage over those who have died. At the trumpet of God, the voice of the archangel will call out the command and the Lord himself will come down from heaven; those who have died in Christ will be the first to rise, and then those of us who are still alive will be taken up in the clouds, together with them;
to meet the Lord in the air. So we shall stay with the Lord for ever. With such thoughts as these you should comfort one another.
Responsory
At the trumpet of God,
the voice of the archangel will call out the command and the Lord himself will come down from heaven,
and he will gather his elect from the four winds,
from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.
When the Son of Man comes,
he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call,
and he will gather his elect from the four winds,
from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.
Reading
From a homily on Saint Agatha
by Saint Methodius of Sicily, bishop
The gift of God, the source of all goodness
My fellow Christians, our annual celebration of a martyr’s feast has brought us together.
She achieved renown in the early Church for her noble victory; she is well known now as well,
for she continues to triumph through her divine miracles, which occur daily and continue to bring glory to her name.
She is indeed a virgin, for she was born of the divine Word, God’s only Son, who also experienced death for our sake.
John, a master of God’s word, speaks of this: He gave the power to become children of God to everyone who received him.
The woman who invites us to this banquet is both a wife and virgin.
To use the analogy of Paul, she is the bride who has been betrothed to one husband, Christ.
A true virgin, she wore the glow of pure conscience and the crimson of the Lamb’s blood for her cosmetics.
Again and again she meditated on the death of her eager lover.
For her, Christ’s death was recent, his blood was still moist.
Her robe is the mark of her faithful witness to Christ.
It bears the indelible marks of his crimson blood and the shining threads of her eloquence.
She offers to all who come after her these treasures of her eloquent confession.
Agatha, the name of our saint, means “good.”
She was truly good, for she lived as a child of God.
She was also given as the gift of God, the source of all goodness to her bridegroom, Christ, and to us.
For she grants us a share in her goodness.
What can give greater good than the Sovereign Good? Whom could anyone find more worthy of celebration with hymns of praise than Agatha?
Agatha, her goodness coincides with her name and way of life.
She won a good name by her noble deeds, and by her name she points to the nobility of those deeds.
Agatha, her mere name wins all men over to her company.
She teaches them by her example to hasten with her to the true Good. God alone.
Responsory
The Lord has saved and strengthened me;
with his help I will profess my loyalty to him to the end.
In his loving-kindness the sinless Lord has consecrated to himself a spotless handmaid;
with his help I will profess my loyalty to him to the end.
Let us pray.
Lord God, let Saint Agatha,
who became precious in your sight through her pure life and valiant martyrdom,
plead for our forgiveness.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.
Amen.
Let us bless the Lord.
– Thanks be to God.
