Catholic Daily Reading 13 February 2020
Daily Reading for Thursday February 13, 2020
Reading 1: First Kings 11:4-13
Responsorial Psalm: Psalms 106:3-4, 35-36, 37, 40
Gospel: Mark 7:24-30
Reading 1: First Kings 11:4-13
4 When Solomon grew old his wives swayed his heart to other gods; and his heart was not wholly with Yahweh his God as his father David’s had been.
5 Solomon became a follower of Astarte, the goddess of the Sidonians, and of Milcom, the Ammonite abomination.
6 He did what was displeasing to Yahweh, and was not a wholehearted follower of Yahweh, as his father David had been.
7 Then it was that Solomon built a high place for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, on the mountain to the east of Jerusalem, and to Milcom, the abomination of the Ammonites.
8 He did the same for all his foreign wives, who offered incense and sacrifice to their gods.
9 Yahweh was angry with Solomon because his heart had turned away from Yahweh, God of Israel, who had twice appeared to him
10 and had forbidden him to follow other gods; but he did not carry out Yahweh’s order.
11 Yahweh therefore said to Solomon, ‘Since you have behaved like this and have not kept my covenant or the laws which I laid down for you, I shall tear the kingdom away from you and give it to one of your servants.
12 For your father David’s sake, however, I shall not do this during your lifetime, but shall tear it out of your son’s hands.
13 Even so, I shall not tear the whole kingdom from him. For the sake of my servant David, and for the sake of Jerusalem which I have chosen, I shall leave your son one tribe.’
Catholic Daily Reading 13 February 2020
Responsorial Psalm, Psalms 106:3-4, 35-36, 37, 40
3 How blessed are those who keep to what is just, whose conduct is always upright!
4 Remember me, Yahweh, in your love for your people. Come near to me with your saving power,
35 but intermarried with them, and adopted their ways.
36 They worshipped those nations’ false gods, till they found themselves entrapped,
37 and sacrificed their own sons and their daughters to demons.
40 Yahweh’s anger blazed out at his people, his own heritage filled him with disgust.
Gospel, Mark 7:24-30
24 He left that place and set out for the territory of Tyre. There he went into a house and did not want anyone to know he was there; but he could not pass unrecognised.
25 At once a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit heard about him and came and fell at his feet.
26 Now this woman was a gentile, by birth a Syro-Phoenician, and she begged him to drive the devil out of her daughter.
27 And he said to her, ‘The children should be fed first, because it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to little dogs.’
28 But she spoke up, ‘Ah yes, sir,’ she replied, ‘but little dogs under the table eat the scraps from the children.’
29 And he said to her, ‘For saying this you may go home happy; the devil has gone out of your daughter.’
30 So she went off home and found the child lying on the bed and the devil gone.
Catholic Daily Devotional 13 February 2020 Below
TOPIC: ‘The Daily Review’
KEY VERSE: …his heart was not entirely with the LORD, his God… – 1 Kings 11:4
MESSAGE: In his elder years, Solomon slipped from his spiritual practices. He became careless in his devotion to God. “He did not follow him unreservedly” (verse 6). It doesn’t take old age to cause integrity and good habits to slip aside. What we know to be of worth and value can diminish at any time, leaving us forgetful or negligent in our relationship with God.
I am appalled at how easily something like impatience and judgmentalism can become more than an exceptional occurrence. If behaviors like this are not watched and kept in check, they quickly become a daily pattern. That is why I value the Ignatian Examen of Consciousness. This spiritual practice encourages a prayerful review of one’s day, taking time to reflect on how aware (or unaware) I have been of God’s presence and how I have responded. This simple, valuable reflection helps to keep behaviors like Solomon’s from taking over.
– Sr. Joyce Rupp, O.S.M.
