◀ All Reading Plans / Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary) / Psalm 118:1-2 19-29 (Blessed is the one who comes); Jeremiah 33:1-9 (God will restore and cleanse from sin); Philippians 2:12-18 (Shine like stars in the world) (New Catholic Bible)

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March 17, 1967

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Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

Daily Bible readings that follow the church liturgical year, with thematically matched Old and New Testament readings.

Duration: 1245 days

Psalm 118:1-2

Psalm 118^[a]

Thanksgiving for Salvation

¹^[b]Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;
his kindness^[c] endures forever.
²Let Israel say,
“His kindness endures forever.”

Footnotes

Psalm 118:1 This psalm brings to a close the Egyptian Hallel. As the procession of pilgrims goes up to Jerusalem for the Feast of Tabernacles (vv. 15, 27; see Lev 23:39-43), the celebrants and the crowd conduct a dialogue, the rhythm of which is determined by the stages of the journey. The procession starts out with a familiar refrain (vv. 1-4) and proceeds while singing a hymn of thanksgiving (vv. 5-18); it arrives at the gates of the temple that has been rebuilt (v. 19) and has become the sign of Israel’s renewal after the Exile (vv. 22-24) where the priests respond to the acclamations of the people by blessing them (vv. 25-27). Finally, with palms in hand the procession reaches the sanctuary, whose courts are illumined, and the liturgy takes place with the most solemn thanksgiving (vv. 28-29).
Songs of thanksgiving such as this one called to mind the entire history of Israel, from past to present. Israel is ceaselessly put to the test, humbled, and then delivered, and in this very experience, it discovers its calling to be a people that bears witness to God in the midst of the nations and to be the capstone of the world (v. 22).
Jesus makes this calling his own (see Mt 21:42), and the apostles speak of it in their preaching (see Acts 4:11; 1 Pet 2:4-7). For them this psalm expresses in advance the mystery of Christ who is rejected and then exalted and who is the foundation stone of the new People of God (see 1 Cor 3:11; Eph 2:20). This festal song soon became popular; we find the crowd spontaneously singing it on Palm Sunday to greet Jesus as the envoy promised by God (v. 26; see Mt 21:9; Jn 12:13). We find this same acclamation in the Sanctus of the Mass; in all the liturgical families, the psalm has become an Easter song.
Psalm 118:1 The liturgical call to praise that begins the procession. All Israel had benefited from God’s goodness and kindness, i.e., the congregation of Israel, the priests (house of Aaron), and those who fear the Lord (see note on Ps 115:9-11). Now the people of God’s kingdom (Ps 114:1; Ex 19:5-6) and the priests, the descendants of Aaron, are called to profess that the Lord is King and that he is good and kind in standing behind his covenant.
Psalm 118:1 A conventional call to praise (see Pss 105–107). Kindness: see note on Ps 6:5.

Psalm 118:19-29

¹⁹^[a]Open to me the gates of righteousness
    so that I may enter them and praise the Lord.
²⁰This is the gate of the Lord
    through which the righteous enter.
²¹I thank you for having answered me;
    you have become my salvation.
²²^[b]The stone that the builders rejected
    has become the cornerstone.
²³This is the Lord’s doing,
    and it is marvelous in our eyes.
²⁴This is the day that the Lord has made;^[c]
    let us exult and rejoice in it.
²⁵O Lord, grant us salvation.^[d]
    O Lord, grant us success.
²⁶Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.^[e]
    We bless you from the house of the Lord.
²⁷The Lord is God,
    and he has given us light.
Holding leafy branches, join in the festal procession
    up to the horns of the altar.^[f]
²⁸^[g]You are my God, and I will offer thanks to you;
    you are my God, and I will extol you.
²⁹Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;
    his kindness endures forever.

Psalm 119^[h]

Praise of God’s Law

Aleph

Footnotes

Psalm 118:19 The procession has arrived at the gates of the rebuilt temple; all the righteous may enter and give thanks.
Psalm 118:22 The community of the righteous join in with thanksgiving. They praise the Lord because he has given prominence to his suffering servant Israel like a cornerstone. It was rejected by the worldly powers but has been made the cornerstone for God’s salvation of the world in the Messiah. These verses allude to Isa 8:14; 28:16; Jer 51:26; Zec 3:9; 4:7, passages that are interpreted in a Messianic sense. Israel is here a type of Christ, in whom these words have been most eminently fulfilled (see Mt 21:42 par; Acts 4:11; Rom 9:33; 1 Cor 3:11; Eph 2:20; 1 Pet 2:7).
Psalm 118:24 This is the day that the Lord has made: the day given by the Lord in which joy and jubilation are appropriate, the day of thanksgiving and rejoicing because of the wondrous deed of the Lord (vv. 22-23; see Ps 71:17; Jer 32:17, 27), the day of salvation. Used by the Liturgy as an antiphon for the Easter Season, this phrase identifies the “day” as that of Christ’s Resurrection.
Psalm 118:25 O Lord, grant us salvation: the Hebrew for this cry has come into English as “Hosanna.” The crowd takes it up on Palm Sunday (see Mt 21:9; 23:39; Mk 11:9; Jn 12:13). It has become part of the Sanctus at Mass.
Psalm 118:26 Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord: words used in the Gospels to welcome Jesus entering the temple on Palm Sunday (see Mk 11:9 par).
Psalm 118:27 The people respond to the blessing by confessing that the Lord alone is God. He has made his light shine upon them, protecting them from the darkness of great trials (e.g., famine, war, and exile; Ps 43:3). Accordingly, they are here renewing their commitment to the Lord in a formal liturgical celebration. The horns of the altar: the four corners of the altar of burnt offerings (see Ex 27:2; 38:2; Lev 4:25, 30, 34).
Psalm 118:28 The psalm concludes with the community’s affirmation that the Lord alone is God, similar to the confession of Moses (see Ex 15:2). Kindness: see note on Ps 6:5.
Psalm 118:29 This longest of the psalms is a monumental literary piece consisting of twenty-two strophes, each containing eight verses (sixteen lines) and each beginning with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet that is repeated at the beginning of each pair of verses. Each strophe is a unit, but does not have a close connection with the strophe that precedes or follows. The whole is a free-flowing meditation, now sad, now joyous, now peaceful, now passionate. It is a reflection and a prayer in which the author, a sage and a mystic who draws his inspiration from the Prophets and Deuteronomy, converses with God and voices his deepest feelings: love of true wisdom, attachment and fidelity to the word of God in spite of weakness and obstacles; desire to better understand and live the truth; joy of outdoing oneself to follow the will of God manifested in the law.
In practically every verse, there is the word “law” or some equivalent. We can point to eight such terms—four with a more juridic nuance (statutes, precepts, decrees, commands or commandments) and four with a more religious nuance (law, promise, word, laws, or judgments). These terms introduce us into the heart of the psalm, for they signify less an ensemble of laws to observe than the word of God, which sometimes ordains and judges and sometimes reveals and promises. It is a psalm of spiritual intimacy, of love for God (which means doing his will). In meditating on the law, believers contemplate above all the visage of God and let themselves be transformed in the very depths of their hearts. Such observance becomes liberty. Understood in this fashion, the law proclaims to us Jesus Christ, the living revelation of God, given to human beings to lead them to the Father: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (Jn 14:6).

Jeremiah 33:1-9

Chapter 33

Jerusalem Restored. ¹While Jeremiah was still imprisoned in the courtyard of the guard, the word of the Lord came to him a second time: ²Thus says the Lord who made the earth, who formed and established it—the Lord is his name: ³Call to me and I will answer you and reveal to you great and mysterious secrets about which you are unaware. ⁴For thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, about the houses of this city and the palaces of the kings of Judah which are in the process of being destroyed by siege-works and the sword ⁵in the battle against the Chaldeans: The houses will be filled with the corpses of those whom I will strike down in my anger and rage, those whose wickedness has caused me to hide my face from this city.

⁶Nevertheless, I intend to treat and assuage the wounds of this city. I will heal the people and grant them an abundance of peace and prosperity. ⁷I will restore the fortunes of Judah and Israel and rebuild them as they were formerly. ⁸I will cleanse them of all the guilt they incurred by their sins against me, and I will forgive them for their offenses by which they sinned and rebelled against me. ⁹Then Jerusalem will become for me a name of joy and praise and pride for all the nations of the earth to behold. When they learn of all the good that I will do for her, they will be overcome with fear and trembling because of all the peace and prosperity I have provided.

Philippians 2:12-18

¹²Innocence of the Children of God.^[a] Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always been obedient when I am present, you must be so all the more now when I am absent, as you work out your salvation in fear and trembling.^[b] ¹³For it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to desire and to act for his chosen purpose.

¹⁴Do everything without grumbling or arguing, ¹⁵so that you may show yourselves blameless and beyond reproach, children of God without spot in the midst of an evil and depraved generation, among which you shine like lights in the world ¹⁶as you hold fast tenaciously to the word of life. Then I will have cause to boast of you on the day of Christ that I did not run in vain or labor to no purpose.

¹⁷But even if my blood is to be poured out as a libation upon the sacrifice and the offering of your faith, I rejoice, and I share my joy with all of you. ¹⁸In the same way, you too must rejoice and share your joy with me.

New Catholic Bible (NCB)

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Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

Psalm 118[a]

Thanksgiving for Salvation

Footnotes

Psalm 119[h]

Praise of God’s Law

Footnotes

Chapter 33

Footnotes

Psalm 118^[a]

Psalm 119^[h]