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ENTRANCE
ANTIPHON
Lord, be my rock of safety, the stronghold that
saves me. For the honour of your name, lead me
and guide me.
PENITENTIAL RITE
The Beatitudes are the guiding principles which
Jesus has laid down for us to help us reach our
goal. Let us ask ourselves: am I living a life
pleasing to God or do I try to please others and
earn their applause? Human as we are, we have
failed to live out the teachings of Christ, and
so, with contrite hearts let us ask mercy and
pardon from the Lord.
I confess…
Glory to God…
OPENING PRAYER
Let us pray: God our Father, you have promised
to remain for ever with those who do what is
just and right. Help us to live in your
presence. We ask this…
FIRST READING
(Prophet Jeremiah foretells the dire
consequences the people of Judah will undergo
because of their sins, and stresses the basis of
their religion—God is our sole refuge.)
A reading from the Book of
Jeremiah (17:5-8)
Thus says the Lord: “Cursed is the man who
trusts in man and makes flesh his arm, whose
heart turns away from the Lord. He is like a
shrub in the desert, and shall not see any good
come. He shall dwell in the parched places of
the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land.
Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose
trust is the Lord. He is like a tree planted by
water, that sends out its roots by the stream,
and does not fear when heat comes, for its
leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the
year of drought, for it does not cease to bear
fruit.”
This is the Word of the Lord
PSALM (1)
Response: Happy the man who has placed his trust
in the Lord.
Happy indeed is the man who follows not the
counsel of the wicked; nor lingers in the way of
sinners nor sits in the company of scorners, but
whose delight is the law of the Lord and who
ponders his law day and night. R./
He is like a tree that is planted beside the
flowing waters, that yields its fruit in due
season and whose leaves shall never fade; and
all that he does shall prosper. R./
Not so are the wicked, not so! For they like
winnowed chaff shall be driven away by the wind.
For the Lord guards the way of the just but the
way of the wicked leads to doom. R./
SECOND READING
(St Paul tells Corinthians that if Christ was
raised by God from the grave, then resurrection
of the dead is a reality; and it is a
contradiction to assert the opposite.)
A reading from the First Letter of St Paul to
the Corinthians (15:12,16-20)
If Christ is preached as raised from the dead,
how can some of you say that there is no
resurrection of the dead? For if the dead are
not raised, then Christ has not been raised. If
Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile
and you are still in your sins. Then those also
who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.
If for this life only we have hoped in Christ,
we are of all men most to be pitied. But in fact
Christ has been raised from the dead, the first
fruits of those who have fallen asleep.
This is the Word of the Lord
ACCLAMATION (Jn 6:51)
Alleluia, alleluia! I am the living bread which
has come down from heaven, says the Lord. Anyone
who eats this bread will live for ever.
Alleluia!
GOSPEL
(The evangelist Luke lists four Beatitudes and
four Woes. He enumerates the various grades of
opposition that the followers of Christ would
meet.)
A reading from the Holy Gospel according to St
Luke (6:17,20-26)
Jesus came down with them and stood on a level
place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a
great multitude of people from all Judea and
Jerusalem and the sea coast of Tyre and Sidon,
who came to hear him and to be healed of their
diseases. And he lifted up his eyes on his
disciples, and said: “Blessed are you poor, for
yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you
that hunger now, for you shall be satisfied.
Blessed are you that weep now, for you shall
laugh. Blessed are you when men hate you, and
when they exclude you and revile you, and cast
out your name as evil, on account of the Son of
man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for
behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so
their fathers did to the prophets.
“But woe to you that are rich, for you have
received your consolation. Woe to you that are
full now, for you shall hunger. Woe to you that
laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep. Woe to
you, when all men speak well of you, for so
their fathers did to the false prophets.”
This is the Gospel of the Lord
I believe in God,/the Father Almighty,/ Creator
of heaven and earth./I believe in Jesus
Christ,/his only Son, our Lord./He was conceived
by the power of the Holy Spirit/and born of the
Virgin Mary./He suffered under Pontius
Pilate,/was crucified, died, and was buried./He
descended to the dead./On the third day he rose
again./He ascended into Heaven,/and is seated at
the right hand of the Father./He will come again
to judge the living and the dead./I believe in
the Holy Spirit,/the Holy Catholic Church,/the
communion of saints,/the forgiveness of
sins,/the resurrection of the body,/and the life
everlasting./Amen.
PRAYER OF THE FAITHFUL
Cel: Beloved in Christ, let us thank God for the
many blessings and graces we have received from
His bounty. With gratitude and confidence, let
us bring our needs before HIm, saying:
Response: Lord God, in your love, teach us the
way to true happiness.
1. That our Pope and all the pastors of the
Church may have the courage to face the
challenges of the present-day world. Guide them
with your wisdom and love. R./
2. That Christians all over the world may
discover the riches of the Gospel and live a
life worthy of their vocation and become
witnesses of your eternal Kingdom. R./
3. That knowledge, wealth, power and comforts of
modern life may not blind and harden the minds
and hearts of rich people. May the Holy Spirit
move them to care for their less privileged
brothers and sisters. R./
4. That the Gospel values may be respected by
the leaders of all the nations. Teach all to
respect human life, and to love and care for one
another. R./
5. That “the Beatitudes” may become the guiding
principle of our lives. May all those who live
in pain and sorrow receive consolation and
strength. R./
(Pray for local and personal needs)
Cel: Merciful Father, your Son Jesus has shown
us the way to true happiness and eternal life.
Let not the tragedies and misfortunes of life
crush our spirit and hinder us in living out our
Christian faith. We ask this...
PRAYER OVER THE GIFTS
Lord, we make this offering in obedience to your
word. May it cleanse and renew us, and lead us
to our eternal reward. We ask this…
PREFACE (P 34)
Father, all-powerful and ever-living God, we do
well always and everywhere to give you thanks.
In you we live and move and have our being. Each
day you show us a Father’s love; your Holy
Spirit, dwelling within us, gives us on earth
the hope of unending joy.
Your gift of the Spirit, who raised Jesus from
the dead, is the foretaste and promise of the
paschal feast of heaven.
With thankful praise, in company with the
angels, we glorify the wonders of your power:
All: Holy, holy, holy…
COMMUNION ANTIPHON
They ate and were filled; the Lord gave them
what they wanted: they were not deprived of
their desire.
PRAYER AFTER COMMUNION
Lord, you give us food from heaven. May we
always hunger for the bread of life. We ask
this…
LITURGY AND
LIFE
In today’s Gospel passage we
are given St Luke’s version of the Beatitudes.
Jesus in his ‘beatitudes’ asserts that those who
choose God are blessed and the rest are as good
as cursed. Whatever we long for is in God, for
He is All-Good; whatever we want to love is in
God, for He is All-Love; whatever we want to
know is in God, for He is All-Knowledge;
whatever we want to possess is in God, for He is
All-Beauty.
We tend to relate to the poor in a condescending
way. Even when we love them we do it pityingly,
we call them ‘disadvantaged’ or ‘less
fortunate’, etc. Jesus knew that like many poor
people, they tended to look up to the ruling
elites, the superstars of his time, with awe,
perhaps with some envy, so he urged them not to
follow their false values and fall on the wrong
track. They must remain true to spiritual values
and then their hunger would be satisfied and
their weeping would become laughter and
celebration.
According to G. K. Chesterton, Jesus promised
his people three things: that they would be
absolutely fearless, greatly happy, and in
constant trouble. That master of paradox added
the thought, “I like getting into hot water—it
keeps me clean!” That’s close to the unworldly
inner peace Jesus is talking about—a happiness
that can’t be destroyed by changes in fortune,
or our current mood, or the circumstances that
touch our lives.
There’s an inner unhappiness from denying the
spiritual, the noble, and the meaningful only
for physical fulfilment. This is the state of
“woe” of which Jesus speaks. It describes the
smug who’ve climbed to the top after all kinds
of compromises, only to discover that there’s
nothing there.
The best commentary on Jesus’ sermon—the
Beatitudes—is Jesus’ own life. Jesus did not do
his will, but the Will of his Father. He lived
out his life in the constant awareness that God
the Father was always with him. In the course of
that life he experienced poverty, not only the
poverty of deprivation, but the poverty of
standing alone against the crowds, the poverty
of total reliance on his Father. He experienced
hunger, not just the hunger that can be answered
by bread, but the hunger that can only be
satisfied by doing what is right. He had reason
to weep and mourn not only at the loss of a dear
friend but also at the lost opportunities of his
own people. He was no stranger to being held up
as a clown for the amusement of all; he knew the
experience of rejection, betrayal and
abandonment.
All this was experienced by Jesus in the course
of his mission. It was the outcome of a life
dedicated to God.
In the Beatitudes, there is the promise that God
can handle poverty, hunger, tears and rejection.
The promise is that God handles all these
things, lifting his people out of them. That is
the Good News. The vision of God of the
Beatitudes is the vision of a generous God, one
who reverses the tragedy.
Why should we look for happiness in Christ’s way
rather than in the world’s? We get part of the
answer in today’s portion of St Paul’s First
Letter to the Corinthians, in which he speaks of
immortality, eternal life and resurrection.
—Fr Sebastian Kattackal, ssp
February 2010
READINGS OF
THE WEEK
Psalter Week
2
15 Mon (G) James 1:1-11; Ps
118:67,68,71,72,75,76; Mk 8:11-13
16 Tue (G) James 1:12-18; Ps
93:12-13a,14-15,18-19; Mk 8:14-21
17 Wed (V) ASH WEDNESDAY (Fast and Abstinence) –
Psalter Week 4
18 Thu (V) Deut 30:15-20; Ps 1:1-2,3,4.6; Lk
9:22-25
19 Fri (V) Is 58:1-9a; Ps 503-4,5-6a,18-19; Mt
9:14-15
20 Sat (V) Is 58:9b-14; Ps 85:1-2,3-4,5-6; Lk
5:27-32
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