Daily Reading for Thursday, September 22nd, 2022

Reading 1, Ecclesiastes 1:2-11

² Sheer futility, Qoheleth says. Sheer futility: everything is futile!

³ What profit can we show for all our toil, toiling under the sun?

⁴ A generation goes, a generation comes, yet the earth stands firm for ever.

⁵ The sun rises, the sun sets; then to its place it speeds and there it rises.

⁶ Southward goes the wind, then turns to the north; it turns and turns again; then back to its circling goes the wind.

⁷ Into the sea go all the rivers, and yet the sea is never filled, and still to their goal the rivers go.

⁸ All things are wearisome. No one can say that eyes have not had enough of seeing, ears their fill of hearing.

⁹ What was, will be again, what has been done, will be done again, and there is nothing new under the sun!

¹⁰ Take anything which people acclaim as being new: it existed in the centuries preceding us.

¹¹ No memory remains of the past, and so it will be for the centuries to come -- they will not be remembered by their successors.

Responsorial Psalm, Psalms 90:3-4, 5-6, 12-13, 14, 17

³ You bring human beings to the dust, by saying, 'Return, children of Adam.'

⁴ A thousand years are to you like a yesterday which has passed, like a watch of the night.

⁵ You flood them with sleep -- in the morning they will be like growing grass:

⁶ in the morning it is blossoming and growing, by evening it is withered and dry.

¹² Teach us to count up the days that are ours, and we shall come to the heart of wisdom.

¹³ Come back, Yahweh! How long must we wait? Take pity on your servants.

¹⁴ Each morning fill us with your faithful love, we shall sing and be happy all our days;

¹⁷ May the sweetness of the Lord be upon us, to confirm the work we have done!