Daily Readings for Friday July 09, 2010

Reading 1, Hos 14:2-10

² Israel, come back to Yahweh your God your guilt was the cause of your downfall.

³ Provide yourself with words and come back to Yahweh. Say to him, 'Take all guilt away and give us what is good, instead of bulls we will dedicate to you our lips.

⁴ Assyria cannot save us, we will not ride horses any more, or say, "Our God!" to our own handiwork, for you are the one in whom orphans find compassion.'

⁵ I shall cure them of their disloyalty, I shall love them with all my heart, for my anger has turned away from them.

⁶ I shall fall like dew on Israel, he will bloom like the lily and thrust out roots like the cedar of Lebanon;

⁷ he will put out new shoots, he will have the beauty of the olive tree and the fragrance of Lebanon.

⁸ They will come back to live in my shade; they will grow wheat again, they will make the vine flourish, their wine will be as famous as Lebanon's.

⁹ What has Ephraim to do with idols any more when I hear him and watch over him? I am like an evergreen cypress, you owe your fruitfulness to me.

¹⁰ Let the wise understand these words, let the intelligent grasp their meaning, for Yahweh's ways are straight and the upright will walk in them, but sinners will stumble.

Gospel, Mt 10:16-23

¹⁶ Look, I am sending you out like sheep among wolves; so be cunning as snakes and yet innocent as doves.

¹⁷ 'Be prepared for people to hand you over to sanhedrins and scourge you in their synagogues.

¹⁸ You will be brought before governors and kings for my sake, as evidence to them and to the gentiles.

¹⁹ But when you are handed over, do not worry about how to speak or what to say; what you are to say will be given to you when the time comes,

²⁰ because it is not you who will be speaking; the Spirit of your Father will be speaking in you.

²¹ 'Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; children will come forward against their parents and have them put to death.

²² You will be universally hated on account of my name; but anyone who stands firm to the end will be saved.

²³ If they persecute you in one town, take refuge in the next; and if they persecute you in that, take refuge in another. In truth I tell you, you will not have gone the round of the towns of Israel before the Son of man comes.