Daily Reading for Friday, September 23rd, 2016

Reading 1, Ecclesiastes 3:1-11

¹ Children, listen to me for I am your father: do what I tell you, and so be safe;

² for the Lord honours the father above his children and upholds the rights of a mother over her sons.

³ Whoever respects a father expiates sins,

⁴ whoever honours a mother is like someone amassing a fortune.

⁵ Whoever respects a father will in turn be happy with children, the day he prays for help, he will be heard.

⁶ Long life comes to anyone who honours a father, whoever obeys the Lord makes a mother happy.

⁷ Such a one serves parents as well as the Lord.

⁸ Respect your father in deed as well as word, so that blessing may come on you from him;

⁹ since a father's blessing makes his children's house firm, while a mother's curse tears up its foundations.

¹⁰ Do not make a boast of disgrace overtaking your father, your father's disgrace reflects no honour on you;

¹¹ for a person's own honour derives from the respect shown to his father, and a mother held in dishonour is a reproach to her children.

Responsorial Psalm, Psalms 144:1-2, 3-4

¹ [Of David] Blessed be Yahweh, my rock, who trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle,

² my faithful love, my bastion, my citadel, my Saviour; I shelter behind him, my shield, he makes the peoples submit to me.

³ Yahweh, what is a human being for you to notice, a child of Adam for you to think about?

⁴ Human life, a mere puff of wind, days as fleeting as a shadow.