Reading 1, Hos 6:1-6

¹ Come, let us return to Yahweh. He has rent us and he will heal us; he has struck us and he will bind up our wounds;

² after two days he will revive us, on the third day he will raise us up and we shall live in his presence.

³ Let us know, let us strive to know Yahweh; that he will come is as certain as the dawn. He will come to us like a shower, like the rain of springtime to the earth.

⁴ What am I to do with you, Ephraim? What am I to do with you, Judah? For your love is like morning mist, like the dew that quickly disappears.

⁵ This is why I have hacked them to pieces by means of the prophets, why I have killed them with words from my mouth, why my sentence will blaze forth like the dawn-

⁶ for faithful love is what pleases me, not sacrifice; knowledge of God, not burnt offerings.

Gospel, Lk 18:9-14

⁹ He spoke the following parable to some people who prided themselves on being upright and despised everyone else,

¹⁰ 'Two men went up to the Temple to pray, one a Pharisee, the other a tax collector.

¹¹ The Pharisee stood there and said this prayer to himself, "I thank you, God, that I am not grasping, unjust, adulterous like everyone else, and particularly that I am not like this tax collector here.

¹² I fast twice a week; I pay tithes on all I get."

¹³ The tax collector stood some distance away, not daring even to raise his eyes to heaven; but he beat his breast and said, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner."

¹⁴ This man, I tell you, went home again justified; the other did not. For everyone who raises himself up will be humbled, but anyone who humbles himself will be raised up.'

September 2010

October 2010