Daily Reading for Saturday, November 23rd, 2024

Reading 1, Revelation 11:4-12

⁴ These are the two olive trees and the two lamps in attendance on the Lord of the world.

⁵ Fire comes from their mouths and consumes their enemies if anyone tries to harm them; and anyone who tries to harm them will certainly be killed in this way.

⁶ They have the power to lock up the sky so that it does not rain as long as they are prophesying; they have the power to turn water into blood and strike the whole world with any plague as often as they like.

⁷ When they have completed their witnessing, the beast that comes out of the Abyss is going to make war on them and overcome them and kill them.

⁸ Their corpses lie in the main street of the great city known by the symbolic names Sodom and Egypt, in which their Lord was crucified.

⁹ People of every race, tribe, language and nation stare at their corpses, for three-and-a-half days, not letting them be buried,

¹⁰ and the people of the world are glad about it and celebrate the event by giving presents to each other, because these two prophets have been a plague to the people of the world.'

¹¹ After the three-and-a-half days, God breathed life into them and they stood up on their feet, and everybody who saw it happen was terrified;

¹² then I heard a loud voice from heaven say to them, 'Come up here,' and while their enemies were watching, they went up to heaven in a cloud.

Responsorial Psalm, Psalms 144:1, 2, 9-10

¹ [Of David] Blessed be Yahweh, my rock, who trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle,

² my faithful love, my bastion, my citadel, my Saviour; I shelter behind him, my shield, he makes the peoples submit to me.

⁹ God, I sing to you a new song, I play to you on the ten-stringed lyre,

¹⁰ for you give kings their victories, you rescue your servant David. From the sword of evil