Daily Mass Readings For Thursday, January 23, 2025
Thursday of the Second Week in Ordinary Time
Reading 1 :
Hebrews 7:25—8:6
Alleluia :
2 Timothy 1:10
Gospel :
Mark 3:7-12
Liturgical vestments: Green
Thursday, January 23, 2025: Readings & Responsorial Psalm & Gospel
Each day, the Mass readings invite us into a deeper encounter with God. Through Scripture, we hear His voice speaking to our hearts, guiding us, comforting us, and calling us to a life of holiness. The Word of God is not just a story from the past; it is alive, relevant, and transformative.
Every reading is an opportunity for grace. Some days, the words challenge us to grow; other days, they console us in our struggles. But always, they nourish our souls, strengthening our faith and drawing us closer to Christ.
Let us open our hearts to the Word of God daily. May we not just hear it but live it, allowing it to shape our actions and deepen our love for Him. Lord, speak to us today, and help us to follow You more faithfully. Amen.
Reading 1
Hebrews 7:25—8:6
Jesus is always able to save those who approach God through him,
since he lives forever to make intercession for them.
It was fitting that we should have such a high priest:
holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners,
higher than the heavens.
He has no need, as did the high priests,
to offer sacrifice day after day,
first for his own sins and then for those of the people;
he did that once for all when he offered himself.
For the law appoints men subject to weakness to be high priests,
but the word of the oath, which was taken after the law,
appoints a son, who has been made perfect forever.
The main point of what has been said is this:
we have such a high priest,
who has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne
of the Majesty in heaven, a minister of the sanctuary
and of the true tabernacle that the Lord, not man, set up.
Now every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices;
thus the necessity for this one also to have something to offer.
If then he were on earth, he would not be a priest,
since there are those who offer gifts according to the law.
They worship in a copy and shadow of the heavenly sanctuary,
as Moses was warned when he was about to erect the tabernacle.
For God says, “See that you make everything
according to the pattern shown you on the mountain.”
Now he has obtained so much more excellent a ministry
as he is mediator of a better covenant,
enacted on better promises.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Our Savior Jesus Christ has destroyed death
and brought life to light through the Gospel.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Jesus withdrew toward the sea with his disciples.
A large number of people followed from Galilee and from Judea.
Hearing what he was doing,
a large number of people came to him also from Jerusalem,
from Idumea, from beyond the Jordan,
and from the neighborhood of Tyre and Sidon.
He told his disciples to have a boat ready for him because of the crowd,
so that they would not crush him.
He had cured many and, as a result, those who had diseases
were pressing upon him to touch him.
And whenever unclean spirits saw him they would fall down before him
and shout, “You are the Son of God.”
He warned them sternly not to make him known.
Reflection
“This is the way in which we find our Saviour: Jesus Christ. By Him we look up to the heights of heaven. By Him we behold, as in a glass, His immaculate and most excellent visage.” (Saint Clement of Rome)
“His person [Jesus] is nothing but love. The signs he works, especially in favour of sinners, the poor, the marginalized, the sick, and the suffering, are all meant to teach mercy.” (Francis)
“By freeing some individuals from the earthly evils of hunger, injustice, illness and death, Jesus performed messianic signs. Nevertheless he did not come to abolish all evils here below, but to free men from the gravest slavery, sin.” (Catechism Of The Catholic Church, Nº 549)
The Father, through the Holy Spirit, draws people to Jesus. This, is precisely “the truth; this is the reality that every one of us feels when we approach Jesus” and what “the impure spirits try to impede; they wage war on us”. A Christian life without temptations is not Christian: it is ideological, it is gnostic, but it is not Christian”. In fact it happens that “when the Father draws people to Jesus, there is another who draws in the opposite way and wages war within you! (…) Therefore, all Christians must make this examination of conscience and ask themselves: “Do I feel this struggle in my heart?”. This conflict “between comfort or service to others, between having a little fun or praying and adoring the Father, between one thing and the other?”. Do I feel “the will to do good” or is there “something that stops me, turns me into an ascetic?”. And also, “do I believe that my life moves Jesus’ heart? If I don’t believe this, I must pray a lot to believe it, so that he may grant me this grace”. May the Lord give us the grace to know how to discern what is going on in our hearts and to choose the right path upon which the Father draws us to Jesus. (Santa Marta, 19 January 2017)