Saturday Memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary

November 20, 2021

Saints

Daily Readings:

  • First Reading

    1 Maccabees 6:1-13

    1King Antiochus was going through the upper provinces when he heard that Elymais in Persia was a city famed for its wealth in silver and gold. 2Its temple was very rich, containing golden shields, breastplates, and weapons left there by Alexander, the son of Philip, the Macedonian king who first reigned over the Greeks. 3So he came and tried to take the city and plunder it, but he could not, because his plan became known to the men of the city 4and they withstood him in battle. So he fled and in great grief departed from there to return to Babylon. 5Then some one came to him in Persia and reported that the armies which had gone into the land of Judah had been routed; 6that Lysias had gone first with a strong force, but had turned and fled before the Jews; that the Jews had grown strong from the arms, supplies, and abundant spoils which they had taken from the armies they had cut down; 7that they had torn down the abomination which he had erected upon the altar in Jerusalem; and that they had surrounded the sanctuary with high walls as before, and also Beth-zur, his city. 8When the king heard this news, he was astounded and badly shaken. He took to his bed and became sick from grief, because things had not turned out for him as he had planned. 9He lay there for many days, because deep grief continually gripped him, and he concluded that he was dying. 10So he called all his friends and said to them, "Sleep departs from my eyes and I am downhearted with worry. 11I said to myself, `To what distress I have come! And into what a great flood I now am plunged! For I was kind and beloved in my power.' 12But now I remember the evils I did in Jerusalem. I seized all her vessels of silver and gold; and I sent to destroy the inhabitants of Judah without good reason. 13I know that it is because of this that these evils have come upon me; and behold, I am perishing of deep grief in a strange land."

  • Responsorial Psalm

    Psalms 9:2-4, 6, 16, 19

    1I will give thanks to the LORD with my whole heart; I will tell of all thy wonderful deeds. 2I will be glad and exult in thee, I will sing praise to thy name, O Most High. 3When my enemies turned back, they stumbled and perished before thee. 5Thou hast rebuked the nations, thou hast destroyed the wicked; thou hast blotted out their name for ever and ever. 15The nations have sunk in the pit which they made; in the net which they hid has their own foot been caught. 18For the needy shall not always be forgotten, and the hope of the poor shall not perish for ever.

  • Gospel

    Luke 20:27-40

    27There came to him some Sadducees, those who say that there is no resurrection, 28and they asked him a question, saying, "Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies, having a wife but no children, the man must take the wife and raise up children for his brother. 29Now there were seven brothers; the first took a wife, and died without children; 30and the second 31and the third took her, and likewise all seven left no children and died. 32Afterward the woman also died. 33In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had her as wife." 34And Jesus said to them, "The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage; 35but those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, 36for they cannot die any more, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection. 37But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed, in the passage about the bush, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. 38Now he is not God of the dead, but of the living; for all live to him." 39And some of the scribes answered, "Teacher, you have spoken well." 40For they no longer dared to ask him any question.