Sunday Readings: Eleventh (11th) Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B

ELEVENTH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR – B

You can find the reflection/homily here

ENTRANCE ANTIPHON : Lord hear my voice    when I call to you. You are my help; do not cast me off, do not desert me , my saviour God.

OPENING PRAYER : Almighty God, our hope and our strength, without you we falter. Help us to follow Christ and to live according to you will.

FIRST READING          EZKIEL 17: 22-24

            The lord says this: ‘From the top o the cedar, from the  highest branch  I will take a shoot and plant it myself on a very high mountain. I will plant it on the high mountain of Israel. It will sprout branches and bear fruit, and become a noble cedar. Evry kind of bird will beneath it, every winged creature rest in the shade of its branches. And very tree of the field will learn that I the Lord, am the one. Who stunts tall tress and makes the low ones grow. Who withers green trees and makes the withered green. I, the Lord, have spoken, and I will do it.”

THE WORD OF THE LORD

RESPONSORIAL PSALM                                 Psalm.  91.

R/ IT IS GOOD TO GIVE YOU THANKS, O LORD.

1. It is good to give thanks to the Lord to make music to your name, O Most High, to proclaim your love in the morning and your truth in the watches of the night.//
2. The just will flourish like the palm tree and grow like a Lebanon cedar.//
3. Planted in the house of the Lord they will flourish in the courts of our God, still bearing fruit when they are old, still full of sap, still green, to proclaim that the Lord is just. In him, my rock, there is no wrong..//

SECOND READING                                        II  CORINTHIANS 5: 6-10

            We are always full of confidence, then, when we remember that to live in the body means to be exiled from the Lord, going as we do by faith and not by sight – we are full of  confidence, I say, and actually want to be exiled from the body and make our home with the Lord. Whether we are living in the body or exiled from it, we are intent on pleasing him. For all the truth about us will be brought out in the law court of Christ, and each of us  will get what he deserves for the things he did in the body, good or bad.

THE WORD OF THE LORD.

GOSPEL ACCLAMATION

GOSEPL                                                         MARK 4:26-34.

            Jesus said, “This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man throws seed on the land. Night and day, while he sleeps, when he is awake, the  seed is sprouting and growing; how, he does not know. Of its own accord the land produces first the shoot, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. And when the crop is ready, he loses no time: he starts to reap because the harvest has come.”

            He also said, ‘what can say the kingdom of God is like? What parable can we find for it? It is a mustard seed which at the time of its sowing in the soil is the branches of all the seeds on earth; yet once it is sown it grows  into the biggest shrub of them all and puts out big branches so that the birds of the air can shelter in its shade.

            Using many parables like these, he spoke the word to them, so far as they were capable of understanding it. He would not speak to them except in parable, but he explained everything to his disciples when they were alone.

THE GOSPEL OF THE LORD.

PRAYER OVER THE GIFTS: Lord God in this bread and wine you give  us food for body and spirit. May the eucharist renew our

Strength and bring us health of mind and body.

COMMUNION ANTIPHON : One thing I seek: to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.

PRAYER AFTER COMMUNION : Lord may this Eucharist accomplish in your Church the unity and peace it signifies.