Daily Reading for Tuesday, October 1st, 2024

Reading 1, Job 3:1-3, 11-17, 20-23

¹ In the end it was Job who broke the silence and cursed the day of his birth.

² This is what he said:

³ Perish the day on which I was born and the night that told of a boy conceived.

¹¹ Why was I not still-born, or why did I not perish as I left the womb?

¹² Why were there knees to receive me, breasts for me to suck?

¹³ Now I should be lying in peace, wrapped in a restful slumber,

¹⁴ with the kings and high viziers of earth who have built their dwellings in desolate places,

¹⁵ or with princes who have quantities of gold and silver cramming their tombs;

¹⁶ or, put away like an abortive child, I should not have existed, like little ones that never see the light.

¹⁷ Down there, the wicked bustle no more, there the weary rest.

²⁰ Why give light to a man of grief? Why give life to those bitter of heart,

²¹ who long for a death that never comes, and hunt for it more than for buried treasure?

²² They would be glad to see the grave-mound and shout with joy if they reached the tomb.

²³ Why give light to one who does not see his way, whom God shuts in all alone?

Responsorial Psalm, Psalms 88:2-3, 4-5, 6, 7-8

² may my prayer reach your presence, hear my cry for help.

³ For I am filled with misery, my life is on the brink of Sheol;

⁴ already numbered among those who sink into oblivion, I am as one bereft of strength,

⁵ left alone among the dead, like the slaughtered lying in the grave, whom you remember no more, cut off as they are from your protection.

⁶ You have plunged me to the bottom of the grave, in the darkness, in the depths;

⁷ weighted down by your anger, kept low by your waves.

⁸ You have deprived me of my friends, made me repulsive to them, imprisoned, with no escape;

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