Reading 1, Hebrews 10:11-18

¹¹ Every priest stands at his duties every day, offering over and over again the same sacrifices which are quite incapable of taking away sins.

¹² He, on the other hand, has offered one single sacrifice for sins, and then taken his seat for ever, at the right hand of God,

¹³ where he is now waiting till his enemies are made his footstool.

¹⁴ By virtue of that one single offering, he has achieved the eternal perfection of all who are sanctified.

¹⁵ The Holy Spirit attests this to us, for after saying:

¹⁶ No, this is the covenant I will make with them, when those days have come. the Lord says: In their minds I will plant my Laws writing them on their hearts,

¹⁷ and I shall never more call their sins to mind, or their offences.

¹⁸ When these have been forgiven, there can be no more sin offerings.

Responsorial Psalm, Psalms 110:1, 2, 3, 4

¹ [Of David Psalm] Yahweh declared to my Lord, 'Take your seat at my right hand, till I have made your enemies your footstool.'

² Yahweh will stretch out the sceptre of your power; from Zion you will rule your foes all around you.

³ Royal dignity has been yours from the day of your birth, sacred honour from the womb, from the dawn of your youth.

⁴ Yahweh has sworn an oath he will never retract, you are a priest for ever of the order of Melchizedek.

Gospel, Mark 4:1-20

¹ Again he began to teach them by the lakeside, but such a huge crowd gathered round him that he got into a boat on the water and sat there. The whole crowd were at the lakeside on land.

² He taught them many things in parables, and in the course of his teaching he said to them,

³ 'Listen! Imagine a sower going out to sow.

⁴ Now it happened that, as he sowed, some of the seed fell on the edge of the path, and the birds came and ate it up.

⁵ Some seed fell on rocky ground where it found little soil and at once sprang up, because there was no depth of earth;

⁶ and when the sun came up it was scorched and, not having any roots, it withered away.

⁷ Some seed fell into thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it produced no crop.

⁸ And some seeds fell into rich soil, grew tall and strong, and produced a good crop; the yield was thirty, sixty, even a hundredfold.'

⁹ And he said, 'Anyone who has ears for listening should listen!'

¹⁰ When he was alone, the Twelve, together with the others who formed his company, asked what the parables meant.

¹¹ He told them, 'To you is granted the secret of the kingdom of God, but to those who are outside everything comes in parables,

¹² so that they may look and look, but never perceive; listen and listen, but never understand; to avoid changing their ways and being healed.'

¹³ He said to them, 'Do you not understand this parable? Then how will you understand any of the parables?

¹⁴ What the sower is sowing is the word.

¹⁵ Those on the edge of the path where the word is sown are people who have no sooner heard it than Satan at once comes and carries away the word that was sown in them.

¹⁶ Similarly, those who are sown on patches of rock are people who, when first they hear the word, welcome it at once with joy.

¹⁷ But they have no root deep down and do not last; should some trial come, or some persecution on account of the word, at once they fall away.

¹⁸ Then there are others who are sown in thorns. These have heard the word,

¹⁹ but the worries of the world, the lure of riches and all the other passions come in to choke the word, and so it produces nothing.

²⁰ And there are those who have been sown in rich soil; they hear the word and accept it and yield a harvest, thirty and sixty and a hundredfold.'

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The New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) is a Catholic translation of the Bible published in 1985. The New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) has become the most widely used Roman Catholic Bible outside of the United States. It has the imprimatur of Cardinal George Basil Hume.

Like its predecessor, the Jerusalem Bible, the New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) version is translated "directly from the Hebrew, Greek or Aramaic." The 1973 French translation, the Bible de Jerusalem, is followed only "where the text admits to more than one interpretation." Introductions and notes, with some modifications, are taken from the Bible de Jerusalem.

Source: The Very Reverend Dom (Joseph) Henry Wansbrough, OSB, MA (Oxon), STL (Fribourg), LSS (Rome), a monk of Ampleforth Abbey and a biblical scholar. He was General Editor of the New Jerusalem Bible. "New Jerusalem Bible, Regular Edition", pg. v.

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