The 31st of August, 2023 is Thursday in the Twenty-First Week of Ordinary Time. The Holy Bible verses for the mass readings for this day came from the Liturgical Calendar Year 2023.
Reading 1: 1 THES 3:7-13
The first reading from the Letter of Saint Paul to the Thessalonians.
For this cause, brothers, we were comforted over you in all our distress and affliction through your faith.
For now we live, if you stand fast in the Lord.
For what thanksgiving can we render again to God for you, for all the joy with which we rejoice for your sakes before our God, night and day praying exceedinglythat we may see yourface and may perfect that which is lacking in your faith?
Now may our God and Father himself, and our Lord Jesus Christ, direct our way to you.
May the Lord make you to increase and abound in love toward one another and toward all men, even as we also do toward you, to the end he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.
Responsorial Psalm: PS 90:3-5A, 12-13, 14 and 17
Response: Satisfy us in the morning with your loving kindness, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.
You turn man to destruction, saying, “Return, you children of men.”
For a thousand years in your sight are just like yesterday when it is past, like a watch in the night.
You sweep them away as they sleep.
R: Satisfy us in the morning with your loving kindness, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.
So teach us to count our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
Relent, Yahweh! How long? Have compassion on your servants!
R: Satisfy us in the morning with your loving kindness, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.
Satisfy us in the morning with your loving kindness, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.
Let the favor of the Lord our God be on us. Establish the work of our hands for us. Yes, establish the work of our hands.
R: Satisfy us in the morning with your loving kindness, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.
Gospel of the Day: MT 24:42-51
From the gospel scripture according to Matthew.
“Watch therefore, for you don’t know in what hour your Lord comes.
But know this, that if the master of the house had known in what watch of the night the thief was coming, he would have watched, and would not have allowed his house to be broken into.
Therefore also be ready, for in an hour that you don’t expect, the Son of Man will come.”
“Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom his lord has set over his household, to give them their food in due season?
Blessed is that servant whom his lord finds doing so when he comes.
Most certainly I tell you that he will set him over all that he has.
But if that evil servant should say in his heart, ‘My lord is delaying his coming,’ and begins to beat his fellow servants, and eat and drink with the drunkards, the lord of that servant will come in a day when he doesn’t expect it and in an hour when he doesn’t know it, and will cut him in pieces and appoint his portion with the hypocrites. That is where the weeping and grinding of teeth will be.”
