Daily Reading for Sunday, September 18th, 2011

Reading 1, Is 55:6-9

⁶ Seek out Yahweh while he is still to be found, call to him while he is still near.

⁷ Let the wicked abandon his way and the evil one his thoughts. Let him turn back to Yahweh who will take pity on him, to our God, for he is rich in forgiveness;

⁸ for my thoughts are not your thoughts and your ways are not my ways, declares Yahweh.

⁹ For the heavens are as high above earth as my ways are above your ways, my thoughts above your thoughts.

Responsorial Psalm, Psalms 145:2-3, 8-9, 17-18

² Day after day I shall bless you, I shall praise your name for ever and ever.

³ Great is Yahweh and worthy of all praise, his greatness beyond all reckoning.

⁸ Yahweh is tenderness and pity, slow to anger, full of faithful love.

⁹ Yahweh is generous to all, his tenderness embraces all his creatures.

¹⁷ Upright in all that he does, Yahweh acts only in faithful love.

¹⁸ He is close to all who call upon him, all who call on him from the heart.

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Gospel, Mt 20:1-16a

¹ 'Now the kingdom of Heaven is like a landowner going out at daybreak to hire workers for his vineyard.

² He made an agreement with the workers for one denarius a day and sent them to his vineyard.

³ Going out at about the third hour he saw others standing idle in the market place

⁴ and said to them, "You go to my vineyard too and I will give you a fair wage."

⁵ So they went. At about the sixth hour and again at about the ninth hour, he went out and did the same.

⁶ Then at about the eleventh hour he went out and found more men standing around, and he said to them, "Why have you been standing here idle all day?"

⁷ "Because no one has hired us," they answered. He said to them, "You go into my vineyard too."

⁸ In the evening, the owner of the vineyard said to his bailiff, "Call the workers and pay them their wages, starting with the last arrivals and ending with the first."

⁹ So those who were hired at about the eleventh hour came forward and received one denarius each.

¹⁰ When the first came, they expected to get more, but they too received one denarius each.

¹¹ They took it, but grumbled at the landowner saying,

¹² "The men who came last have done only one hour, and you have treated them the same as us, though we have done a heavy day's work in all the heat."

¹³ He answered one of them and said, "My friend, I am not being unjust to you; did we not agree on one denarius?

¹⁴ Take your earnings and go. I choose to pay the lastcomer as much as I pay you.

¹⁵ Have I no right to do what I like with my own? Why should you be envious because I am generous?"

¹⁶ Thus the last will be first, and the first, last.'

Reading 2, Phil 1:20c-24, 27a

²⁰ all in accordance with my most confident hope and trust that I shall never have to admit defeat, but with complete fearlessness I shall go on, so that now, as always, Christ will be glorified in my body, whether by my life or my death.

²¹ Life to me, of course, is Christ, but then death would be a positive gain.

²² On the other hand again, if to be alive in the body gives me an opportunity for fruitful work, I do not know which I should choose.

²³ I am caught in this dilemma: I want to be gone and to be with Christ, and this is by far the stronger desire-

²⁴ and yet for your sake to stay alive in this body is a more urgent need.

²⁷ But you must always behave in a way that is worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come to you and see for myself or whether I only hear all about you from a distance, I shall find that you are standing firm and united in spirit, battling, as a team with a single aim, for the faith of the gospel.

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