Daily Reading

First Reading

Hebrews 8:6-13

But Jesus has now obtained a more excellent ministry, and to that degree he is the mediator of a better covenant, which has been enacted through better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no need to look for a second one.

God finds fault with them when he says:

“The days are surely coming, says the Lord,
    when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel
    and with the house of Judah;
not like the covenant that I made with their ancestors,
    on the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt;
for they did not continue in my covenant,
    and so I had no concern for them, says the Lord.
This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel
    after those days, says the Lord:
I will put my laws in their minds,
    and write them on their hearts,
and I will be their God,
    and they shall be my people.
And they shall not teach one another
    or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord,’
for they shall all know me,
    from the least of them to the greatest.
For I will be merciful toward their iniquities,
    and I will remember their sins no more.”

In speaking of “a new covenant,” he has made the first one obsolete. And what is obsolete and growing old will soon disappear.

Psalm

Psalm 85:8, 10, 11-12, 13-14

Let me hear what God the Lord will speak,
    for he will speak peace to his people,
    to his faithful, to those who turn to him in their hearts.

Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet;
    righteousness and peace will kiss each other.

Faithfulness will spring up from the ground,
    and righteousness will look down from the sky.
The Lord will give what is good,
    and our land will yield its increase.

Righteousness will go before him,
    and will make a path for his steps.

Gospel Reading

Mark 3:13-19

He went up the mountain and called to him those whom he wanted, and they came to him. And he appointed twelve, whom he also named apostles, to be with him, and to be sent out to proclaim the message, and to have authority to cast out demons. So he appointed the twelve: Simon (to whom he gave the name Peter); James son of Zebedee and John the brother of James (to whom he gave the name Boanerges, that is, Sons of Thunder); and Andrew, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus, and Simon the Cananaean, and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.

Reflection

Friends, today in the Gospel, Jesus appoints twelve Apostles “that they might be with him and he might send them forth to preach.”

St. Thérèse of Lisieux tells us that she endeavored to write down her spiritual memoir at the prompting of her sister, who was also her religious superior to whom she was bound in obedience. After praying that she say nothing displeasing to Christ, she took up the Gospel of Mark, and her eyes fell on these words: “Jesus went up the mountain and summoned those whom he wanted and they came to him.”

This verse, she says, is the interpretive key to her life, for it describes the way Christ has worked in her soul: “He does not call those who are worthy, but those whom he pleases.” Hers was a story of a divine love, graciously willing the good of the other, that awakens an imitative reaction in the one who is loved.

It is not a narrative of economic exchange—rewards for worthiness—but of the loop of grace, unmerited love engendering disinterested love, the divine life propagating itself in what is other.