◀ All Reading Plans / Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary) / Psalm 104:24-34 35b (Renewing the face of the earth); Genesis 11:1-9 (The fragmenting of human tongues); 1 Corinthians 12:12-27 (Many members one body of Christ) (New Catholic Bible)

Prev Day

May 16, 1967

Next Day

Use the calendar to view readings from this devotional.

May 1967
Su	Mo	Tu	We	Th	Fr	Sa
	1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	29	30	31

Return to today's reading

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 104:24-34

²⁴^[a]How countless are your works, O Lord;
    by your wisdom you have made them all;
    the earth abounds with your creatures.
²⁵There is the sea, vast and broad,
    filled with numberless species,
    living creatures both great and small.
²⁶There the ships sail forth,
    and the Leviathan^[b] that you formed to play therein.
²⁷^[c]All of them look to you
    to give them their food at the appropriate time.^[d]
²⁸^[e]When you provide it for them,
    they gather it up;
when you open your hand,
    they are filled with good things.
²⁹When you turn away your face,^[f]
    they are dismayed;
when you take away their breath,
    they die and return to the dust.
³⁰When you send forth your Spirit,^[g]
    they are created,
    and you renew the face of the earth.
³¹^[h]May the glory of the Lord abide forever,
    and may the Lord rejoice in his works.^[i]
³²When he looks at the earth, it quakes;
    when he touches the mountains, they smoke.^[j]
³³I will sing to the Lord as long as I live;^[k]
    I will sing praise to my God while I have life.
³⁴May my meditation be pleasing to him,
    for I find my joy in the Lord.

Footnotes

Psalm 104:24 The psalmist now takes up God’s creation of the sea and everything in it on the fifth day (see Gen 1:20-23). He calls upon the people to worship the Lord’s wisdom and creative diversity. Here he emphasizes sea creatures to complement the wild and domesticated animals and humans mentioned in verses 10-18.
Psalm 104:26 See note on Ps 74:13-14. Here Leviathan is a whale or large cetacean. The name is that of a fabled dragon and is already found in Ugaritic poems of the 15th century B.C.
Psalm 104:27 On the sixth day, God enabled everything he had made to fructify (see Gen 1:24-31). All living things on earth and in the sea, whether wild or domesticated, birds, sea creatures, and human beings have some idea of the living Presence by whom they exist (see Pss 145:15f; 147:9). They have their being in God (see Acts 17:24f), and the Lord gives and sustains life by his Spirit. Indeed, God has supreme power over the universe, creating, preserving, and governing all. The lives of all creatures are in his hands.
Psalm 104:27 All nature depends on its Creator for provisions, and he has arranged for everyone to have enough food.
Psalm 104:28 Creatures are governed by the Lord; they are gladdened by his provisions, terrified by his absence, and encounter death by the withdrawal of his breath.
Psalm 104:29 Turn . . . face: see note on Ps 13:2. Return to dust: see note on Ps 90:3.
Psalm 104:30 Your Spirit: the Spirit or “Breath” of God is the divine creative power, source of all natural life (see Gen 1:2; 2:7). So also the Holy Spirit is the source of all supernatural life (see Jn 3:5f). Hence, this verse is applied by the Church to the third Person of the Blessed Trinity.
Psalm 104:31 The psalmist concludes the psalm the way it began—with praise (vv. 1-4). The Lord, who reveals himself in creation in all his splendor (vv. 1-4), has bestowed his glory on it (see Ps 19:2; Isa 6:3), and his handiwork will endure as long as he undergirds it. Hence, his faithful should respond with praise, devotion, and an intention to please the Lord (see Ps 19:15).
Psalm 104:31 Rejoice in his works: as he did at the end of creation (see Gen 1:31).
Psalm 104:32 The Lord is so much greater than his creation that even a mere look or touch on his part is enough to wreak havoc in it.
Psalm 104:33 I will . . . I live: a perpetual vow to praise the Lord (see note on Ps 7:18).

Psalm 104:35

³⁵May sinners be banished from the earth,
and may the wicked no longer exist.
Bless the Lord, O my soul.^[a]
Alleluia.

Genesis 11:1-9

Chapter 11

An Attempt at Unity.^[a] ¹The whole world had only one language, everyone using the same words. ²Migrating from the east, men came upon a plain in the land of Shinar where they settled.

³They said to each other, “Come, let us make bricks and bake them in a fire.” These bricks were what they used instead of stone, and bitumen in place of cement.^[b] ⁴Then they said, “Come, let us build a city and a tower so high that it touches the heavens.^[c] We shall make a name for ourselves and not be scattered all throughout the earth.”

⁵But the Lord came down and saw the city and the tower that these men were building. ⁶The Lord said, “Behold, they are a single people and they have only one language. This is only the beginning of what they will do. Now nothing that they think up will be impossible for them. ⁷Let us go down and confuse their language so that they will not understand each other when they speak.”

⁸The Lord scattered them over the whole earth^[d] and they ceased building their city. ⁹This is why it is called Babel,^[e] for there the Lord confused everyone’s language. It was also from there that the Lord scattered people over the whole earth.

Footnotes

Genesis 11:1 After having presented in the list of peoples what might be called the mission field of the People of God, the biblical narrative dwells on a fundamental aspect of this field, one that is always alive in the various human groups, namely, the insistent need for unity. The passage, from the Yahwist source, makes use of an ancient popular story that seems to copy in an ironic way Mesopotamian texts on the dedication of its well-known temple towers.
The story concerns a migrating people who come down from the mountains into a vast plain and feel the need of establishing a city center with a skyscraper tower that will guarantee the maintenance of their unity. Make a name for ourselves means to establish a power that will foster their cohesion and their own political identity. But, as happens in human undertakings, a moment comes in which intentions diverge, so that the unity of the people is broken, as if they were speaking different languages. The tradition sees in this occurrence an explicit manifestation of God, the author of human nature. The direction events take always depends on God.
Genesis 11:3 Bricks . . . instead of stone, and bitumen in place of cement: stone and cement were used as building materials in Canaan. Stone was scarce in Mesopotamia, however, so bricks and bitumen were used (as indicated by archaeological excavations).
Genesis 11:4 Tower so high that it touches the heavens: this is a direct reference to the most important temple tower (ziggurat) found in Babylon, which goes by the name of “the house that lifts high its head.” Scholars regard the ziggurats of Babylonia as the earliest skyscrapers.
Genesis 11:8 Scattered them over the whole earth: God countered their prideful rebellion at its very origin. They had chosen to settle, but he forced them to scatter. This account relates how it was that the families of the earth were separated, “each clan in the nations with their own language” (Gen 10:5) and were “divided up to become all the nations on the earth after the flood” (Gen 10:32).
Genesis 11:9 Babel (i.e., Babylonia), according to a popular etymology, meant “gate of god” or “gate of the gods.” The sacred writer, having told of the failure of the human undertaking (and the failure also of the gods who wanted to be worshiped on the Mesopotamian towers), asks us to read the name “Babel” as a reminder of that failure: he suggests a connection with the root bll, “to confuse,” from which the form balbel and then, by contraction, babel, would supposedly be derived.

1 Corinthians 12:12-27

¹²You Are the Body of Christ.^[a] The body is one, although it has many parts; and all the parts, though many, form one body. So it is with Christ. ¹³For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, Jews as well as Greeks, slaves as well as free men, and we were all given the same Spirit to drink.

¹⁴Now the body is one, although it has many parts. ¹⁵If the foot were to say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it nevertheless still belongs to the body. ¹⁶Or if an ear were to say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it nevertheless still belongs to the body.

¹⁷If the whole body were an eye, how would we be able to hear? If the whole body were an ear, how would we exercise a sense of smell? ¹⁸But God arranged each part in the body as he intended. ¹⁹If all the members were identical, where would the body be?

²⁰As it is, there are many members, but one body. ²¹The eye cannot say to the hand, “I do not need you,” any more than the head can say to the feet, “I do not need you.” ²²On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are in fact indispensable, ²³and those parts of the body that we regard as less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable parts are treated with greater propriety, ²⁴whereas our more respectable members have no need of this.

But God has so designed the body as to give greater honor to the more humble parts, ²⁵in order that there may be no dissension within the body and each part may have equal concern for all the others. ²⁶If one member suffers, all suffer together with it. If one member is honored, all the members rejoice together with it.

²⁷You therefore are the body of Christ, and each of you is a part of it.

New Catholic Bible (NCB)

Prev Day

Top

Next Day

Use the calendar to view readings from this devotional.

Log in to read this devotional and:

Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

Footnotes

Footnotes

Chapter 11

Footnotes

Footnotes