Daily Readings for October 26, 2017

1ST READING

The wages of sin is death. If we can imprint this truth in our minds and hearts, we will be more convinced to fight temptations when they come. The greatest threat to our humanity is our sinfulness — something that is uniquely human, with its origin in our choices. Sin threatens our existence through its destructiveness every time we succumb to it.

Romans 6:19-23

19 Brothers and sisters: I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your nature. For just as you presented the parts of your bodies as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness for lawlessness, so now present them as slaves to righteousness for sanctification. 20 For when you were slaves of sin, you were free from righteousness. 21 But what profit did you get then from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. 22 But now that you have been freed from in and have become slaves of God, the benefit that you have leads to sanctification, and its end is eternal life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

P S A L M

Psalm 1:1-2, 3, 4, 6

R: Blessed are they who hope in the Lord.

1 Blessed the man who follows not the counsel of the wicked nor walks in the way of sinners, nor sits in the company of the insolent, 2 but delights in the law of the Lord and meditates on his law day and night. (R) 3 He is like a tree planted near running water, that yields its fruit in due season, and whose leaves never fade. Whatever he does, prospers. (R) 4 Not so the wicked, not so; they are like chaff which the wind drives away. 6 For the Lord watches over the way of the just, but the way of the wicked vanishes. (R)

GOSPEL

Jesus knows that He will suffer in order to accomplish His Father’s will. In the Garden of Gethsemane, He showed abhorrence for the suffering ahead of Him. Yet, in all His dislike of what is to come, He allowed the Father’s will to be done. How do we respond to suffering as we grow in holiness? Let us have the same single-minded obedience to God, so that we do not fall short of the glory that He offers us.

GOSPEL ACCLAMATION

I consider all things so much rubbish that I may gain Christ and be found in him.

Luke 12:49-53

49 Jesus said to his disciples: “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing! 50 There is a baptism with which I must be baptized, and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished! 51 Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. 52 From now on a household of five will be divided, three against two and two against three; 53 a father will be divided against his son and a son against his father, a mother against her daughter and a daughter against her mother, a mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.”