Daily Reading for Thursday, July 18th, 2024

Reading 1, Isaiah 26:7-9, 12, 16-19

⁷ The path of the Upright One is honesty; you smooth the honest way of the upright.

⁸ Following the path of your judgements, Yahweh, we set our hopes in you, your name, your memory are all our soul desires.

⁹ At night my soul longs for you and my spirit within me seeks you out; for when your judgements appear on earth the inhabitants of the world learn what saving justice is.

¹² Yahweh, you will grant us peace, having completed all our undertakings for us.

¹⁶ Yahweh, in distress they had recourse to you, they expended themselves in prayer, since your punishment was on them.

¹⁷ As a pregnant woman near her time of delivery writhes and cries out in her pangs, so have we been, Yahweh, in your eyes:

¹⁸ we have been pregnant, we have writhed, but we have given birth only to wind: we have not given salvation to the earth, no inhabitants for the world have been brought to birth.

¹⁹ Your dead will come back to life, your corpses will rise again. Wake up and sing, you dwellers in the dust, for your dew will be a radiant dew, but the earth will give birth to the shades.

Responsorial Psalm, Psalms 102:13-14, 15, 16-18, 19-21

¹³ Rise up, take pity on Zion! the time has come to have mercy on her, the moment has come;

¹⁴ for your servants love her very stones, are moved to pity by her dust.

¹⁵ Then will the nations revere the name of Yahweh, and all the kings of the earth your glory;

¹⁶ when Yahweh builds Zion anew, he will be seen in his glory;

¹⁷ he will turn to hear the prayer of the destitute, and will not treat their prayer with scorn.

¹⁸ This shall be put on record for a future generation, and a people yet to be born shall praise God:

¹⁹ Yahweh has leaned down from the heights of his sanctuary, has looked down from heaven to earth,

²⁰ to listen to the sighing of the captive, and set free those condemned to death,

²¹ to proclaim the name of Yahweh in Zion, his praise in Jerusalem;

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