Daily Reading for Wednesday, January 8th, 2025

Reading 1, First John 4:7-10

⁷ My dear friends, let us love one another, since love is from God and everyone who loves is a child of God and knows God.

⁸ Whoever fails to love does not know God, because God is love.

⁹ This is the revelation of God's love for us, that God sent his only Son into the world that we might have life through him.

¹⁰ Love consists in this: it is not we who loved God, but God loved us and sent his Son to expiate our sins.

Responsorial Psalm, Psalms 72:1-2, 3-4, 7-8

¹ [Of Solomon] God, endow the king with your own fair judgement, the son of the king with your own saving justice,

² that he may rule your people with justice, and your poor with fair judgement.

³ Mountains and hills, bring peace to the people! With justice

⁴ he will judge the poor of the people, he will save the children of the needy and crush their oppressors.

⁷ In his days uprightness shall flourish, and peace in plenty till the moon is no more.

⁸ His empire shall stretch from sea to sea, from the river to the limits of the earth.

Find the best Christmas presents at Catholic Online Shopping

Gospel, Mark 6:34-44

³⁴ So as he stepped ashore he saw a large crowd; and he took pity on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd, and he set himself to teach them at some length.

³⁵ By now it was getting very late, and his disciples came up to him and said, 'This is a lonely place and it is getting very late,

³⁶ so send them away, and they can go to the farms and villages round about, to buy themselves something to eat.'

³⁷ He replied, 'Give them something to eat yourselves.' They answered, 'Are we to go and spend two hundred denarii on bread for them to eat?'

³⁸ He asked, 'How many loaves have you? Go and see.' And when they had found out they said, 'Five, and two fish.'

³⁹ Then he ordered them to get all the people to sit down in groups on the green grass,

⁴⁰ and they sat down on the ground in squares of hundreds and fifties.

⁴¹ Then he took the five loaves and the two fish, raised his eyes to heaven and said the blessing; then he broke the loaves and began handing them to his disciples to distribute among the people. He also shared out the two fish among them all.

⁴² They all ate as much as they wanted.

⁴³ They collected twelve basketfuls of scraps of bread and pieces of fish.

⁴⁴ Those who had eaten the loaves numbered five thousand men.

Enjoy Daily Readings? Pay it Forward