PRAYER OF THE DAY
Prayer to Seek God Continually
O Lord my God,
I believe in you,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Insofar as I can,
insofar as you have given me the power,
I have sought you.
I became weary and I labored.
O Lord my God,
my sole hope,
help me to believe and never to cease seeking you.
Grant that I may always and ardently seek out your countenance.
Give me the strength to seek you,
for you help me to find you and you have more and more given me the hope of finding you.
Here I am before you with my firmness and my infirmity.
Preserve the first and heal the second.
Here I am before you with my strength and my ignorance.
Where you have opened the door to me,
welcome me at the entrance;
where you have closed the door to me,
open to my cry;
enable me to remember you,
to understand you,
and to love you.
Amen.
(St. Augustine)
DAILY MASS READINGS
Memorial of Saint Augustine
Bishop and Doctor of the Church
Reading
1 COR 1:1-9
Paul, called to be an Apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God,
and Sosthenes our brother,
to the Church of God that is in Corinth,
to you who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be holy,
with all those everywhere who call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father
and the Lord Jesus Christ.
I give thanks to my God always on your account
for the grace of God bestowed on you in Christ Jesus,
that in him you were enriched in every way,
with all discourse and all knowledge,
as the testimony to Christ was confirmed among you,
so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift
as you wait for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ.
He will keep you firm to the end,
irreproachable on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.
God is faithful,
and by him you were called to fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
Responsorial Psalm
PS 145:2-3, 4-5, 6-7
R. I will praise your name forever, Lord.
Every day will I bless you,
and I will praise your name forever and ever.
Great is the LORD and highly to be praised;
his greatness is unsearchable.
R. I will praise your name forever, Lord.
Generation after generation praises your works
and proclaims your might.
They speak of the splendor of your glorious majesty
and tell of your wondrous works.
R. I will praise your name forever, Lord.
They discourse of the power of your terrible deeds
and declare your greatness.
They publish the fame of your abundant goodness
and joyfully sing of your justice.
R. I will praise your name forever, Lord.
Gospel
MT 24:42-51
Jesus said to his disciples:
“Stay awake!
For you do not know on which day your Lord will come.
Be sure of this:
if the master of the house
had known the hour of night when the thief was coming,
he would have stayed awake
and not let his house be broken into.
So too, you also must be prepared,
for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come.
“Who, then, is the faithful and prudent servant,
whom the master has put in charge of his household
to distribute to them their food at the proper time?
Blessed is that servant whom his master on his arrival finds doing so.
Amen, I say to you, he will put him in charge of all his property.
But if that wicked servant says to himself, ‘My master is long delayed,’
and begins to beat his fellow servants,
and eat and drink with drunkards,
the servant’s master will come on an unexpected day
and at an unknown hour and will punish him severely
and assign him a place with the hypocrites,
where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.”
SAINT OF THE DAY
August 28
St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430)
A Christian at 33, a priest at 36, a bishop at 41: Many people are familiar with the biographical sketch of Augustine of Hippo,
sinner turned saint. But really to get to know the man is a rewarding experience.
There quickly surfaces the intensity with which he lived his life, whether his path led away from or toward God. The tears of his mother (August 27), the instructions of Ambrose (December 7) and, most of all,
God himself speaking to him in the Scriptures redirected Augustine’s love of life to a life of love.
Having been so deeply immersed in creature-pride of life in his early days and having drunk deeply of its bitter dregs, it is not surprising that Augustine should have turned, with a holy fierceness, against the many demon-thrusts rampant in his day. His times were truly decadent—politically, socially, morally. He was both feared and loved, like the Master.
The perennial criticism leveled against him: a fundamental rigorism.
In his day, he providentially fulfilled the office of prophet. Like Jeremiah and other greats, he was hard-pressed but could not keep quiet. “I say to myself, I will not mention him,/I will speak in his name no more./But then it becomes like fire burning in my heart,/imprisoned in my bones;/I grow weary holding it in,/I cannot endure it” (Jeremiah 20:9).
OFFICE OF READINGS
O Lord, open my lips,
and my mouth will proclaim Your Praise!
Invitatory Psalm
Psalm 94 (95)
The Lord is the source of all wisdom:
come, let us adore him.
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.
The Lord is the source of all wisdom:
come, let us adore him.
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.
The Lord is the source of all wisdom:
come, let us adore him.
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.
The Lord is the source of all wisdom:
come, let us adore him.
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.”
The Lord is the source of all wisdom:
come, let us adore him.
“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.”
The Lord is the source of all wisdom:
come, let us adore him.
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.
The Lord is the source of all wisdom:
come, let us adore him.
Hymn
Eternal Father, through your Word
You gave new life to Adam’s race,
And call us now to live in light,
New creatures by your saving grace.
To you who stooped to all who sin
We render homage and give praise:
To Father, Son and Spirit blest
Whose loving gift is endless days.
Stanbrook Abbey Hymnal
Psalm 17 (18)
Thanksgiving
The word of the Lord is a shield
for all who make him their refuge.
The Lord’s ways are pure;
the words of the Lord are refined in the furnace;
the Lord protects all who hope in him.
For what God is there, but our Lord?
What help, but in the Lord our God?
God, who has wrapped me in his strength
and set me on the perfect path,
who has made my feet like those of the deer,
who has set me firm upon the heights,
who trains my hands for battle,
teaches my arms to bend a bow of bronze.
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.
The word of the Lord is a shield
for all who make him their refuge.
Psalm 17 (18)
Lord, your right hand upheld me.
You have given me the shield of your salvation;
your right hand holds me up;
by answering me, you give me greatness.
You have stretched the length of my stride,
my feet do not weaken.
I pursue my enemies and surround them;
I do not turn back until they are no more.
I smash them to pieces, they cannot stand,
they fall beneath my feet.
You have wrapped me round with strength for war,
and made my attackers fall under me.
You turned my enemies’ backs on me,
you destroyed those who hated me.
They cried out, but there was no-one to save them;
they cried to the Lord, but he did not hear.
I have ground them up until they are dust in the wind,
trodden them down like the mud of the street.
You have delivered me from the murmurings of the people
and placed me at the head of the nations.
A people I do not even know serves me –
at a mere rumor of my orders, they obey.
The children of strangers beg for my favor;
they hide away and tremble where they hide.
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.
Lord, your right hand upheld me.
Psalm 17 (18)
Long life to the Lord!
Praised be the God who saves me.
The Lord lives, my blessed Helper.
Let the God of my salvation be exalted.
God, you give me my revenge,
you subject peoples to my rule,
you free me from my enraged enemies.
You raise me up from those who attack me,
you snatch me from the grasp of the violent.
And so I will proclaim you among the nations, Lord,
and sing to your name.
Time and again you save your king,
you show your loving kindness to your anointed,
to David and his descendants forever.
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.
Long life to the Lord!
Praised be the God who saves me.
Uncover my eyes, Lord,
– and I will consider the wonders of your Law.
First Reading
Jeremiah 3:1-5,19-4:4
If a man divorces his wife
and she leaves him
to marry someone else,
may she still go back to him?
Has not that piece of land
been totally polluted?
And you, who have prostituted yourself with so many lovers,
you would come back to me? – it is the Lord who speaks.
Lift your eyes to the bare heights and look!
Is there a single place where you have not offered your body?
You waited by the roadside for clients
like an Arab in the desert.
You have polluted the country
with your prostitution and your vices:
this is why the showers have been withheld,
the late rains have not come.
And you maintained a prostitute’s bold front,
never thinking to blush.
Even then did you not cry to me, “My father!
You, the friend of my youth!
Will he keep his resentment for ever,
will he maintain his wrath to the end?”
That was what you said, and still you went on sinning,
you were so obstinate.
And I was thinking:
How I wanted to rank you with my sons,
and give you a country of delights,
the fairest heritage of all the nations!
I had thought you would call me: My father,
and would never cease to follow me.
But like a woman betraying her lover,
the House of Israel has betrayed me –
it is the Lord who speaks.
A noise is heard on the bare heights:
the weeping and entreaty of the sons of Israel,
because they have gone so wildly astray,
and forgotten the Lord their God.
‘Come back, disloyal sons,
I want to heal your disloyalty.’
‘We are here, we are coming to you,
for you are the Lord our God.
The heights are a delusion after all,
so is the tumult of the mountains.
‘The Lord our God is, after all,
the saving of Israel.
The Thing of Shame has devoured what our ancestors worked for
since our youth
(their flocks and herds, their sons and daughters).
Let us lie down in our shame, let our dishonour be our covering,
for we have sinned against the Lord our God
(we and our ancestors since our youth until today;
and we have not listened to the voice of the Lord our God).’
‘If you wish to come back, Israel – it is the Lord who speaks –
it is to me you must return.
Do away with your abominations
and you will have no need to avoid me.
If you swear, “As the Lord lives!”
truthfully, justly, honestly,
the nations will bless themselves by you,
and glory in you.
For thus speaks the Lord
to the men of Judah and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem:
Clean your ground thoroughly,
sow nothing among thorns.
Circumcise yourselves for the Lord; off with the foreskin of your hearts
(men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem),
lest my wrath should leap out like a fire,
and burn with no one to quench it,
in return for the wickedness of your deeds.’
Responsory
If our crimes are witness against us,
then, Lord, for your name’s sake, act!
Yes, our apostasies have been many, we have sinned against you.
If you, O Lord, should mark our guilt, Lord,
who would survive?
Yes, our apostasies have been many, we have sinned against you.
Second Reading
The Confessions of Saint Augustine, bishop
O Eternal Truth, true love and beloved eternity
Urged to reflect upon myself, I entered under your guidance the innermost places of my being; but only because you had become my helper was I able to do so. I entered, then, and with the vision of my spirit, such as it was, I saw the incommutable light far above my spiritual ken and transcending my mind: not this common light which every carnal eye can see, nor any light of the same order; but greater, as though this common light were shining much more powerfully, far more brightly, and so extensively as to fill the universe. The light I saw was not the common light at all, but something different, utterly different, from all those things. Nor was it higher than my mind in the sense that oil floats on water or the sky is above the earth; it was exalted because this very light made me, and I was below it because by it I was made. Anyone who knows truth knows this light.
O eternal Truth, true Love, and beloved Eternity, you are my God, and for you I sigh day and night. As I first began to know you, you lifted me up and showed me that, while that which I might see exists indeed, I was not yet capable of seeing it. Your rays beamed intensely on me, beating back my feeble gaze, and I trembled with love and dread. I knew myself to be far away from you in a region of unlikeness, and I seemed to hear your voice from on high: “I am the food of the mature: grow,
then, and you shall eat me. You will not change me into yourself like bodily food; but you will be changed into me”.
Accordingly I looked for a way to gain the strength I needed to enjoy you, but I did not find it until I embraced the mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, who is also God, supreme over all things and blessed for ever. He called out, proclaiming I am the Way and Truth and the Life, nor had I known him as the food which, though I was not yet strong enough to eat it, he had mingled with our flesh, for the Word became flesh so that your Wisdom, through whom you created all things,
might become for us the milk adapted to our infancy.
Late have I loved you, Beauty so ancient and so new, late have I loved you!
Lo, you were within,
but I outside, seeking there for you,
and upon the shapely things you have made
I rushed headlong – I, misshapen.
You were with me, but I was not with you.
They held me back far from you,
those things which would have no being,
were they not in you.
You called, shouted, broke through my deafness;
you flared, blazed, banished my blindness;
you lavished your fragrance, I gasped; and now I pant for you;
I tasted you, and now I hunger and thirst;
you touched me, and I burned for your peace.
Responsory
Let Truth,
the Light of my heart,
speak to me,
and not the voice of my own darkness.
I wandered far away,
yet I remembered you.
See, now I return to your fountain,
with longing and a burning thirst.
I myself am not the goal of my own existence.
Left to myself,
I lived in sin,
bringing death upon myself.
In you I have discovered life.
See, now I return to your fountain,
with longing and a burning thirst.
Let us pray.
Lord God, renew your Church
with the Spirit of wisdom and love
which you gave so fully to Saint Augustine.
Lead us by that same Spirit to seek you,
the only fountain of true wisdom
and the source of everlasting love.
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 praise the Lord.
– Thanks be to God.
