◀ All Reading Plans / Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous) / Psalm 131 (A child upon its mother’s breast); Isaiah 26:1-6 (Trust in God); Philippians 2:25-30 (Paul overcomes anxiety) (New Catholic Bible)

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Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

Daily Bible readings that follow the church liturgical year, with sequential stories told across multiple weeks.

Duration: 1245 days

Psalm 131

Psalm 131^[a]

Childlike Trust in God

¹A song of ascents. Of David.

O Lord, my heart^[b] is not proud,
    nor are my eyes raised too high.
I do not concern myself with great affairs
    or with things too sublime for me.
²Rather, I have stilled and calmed my soul,^[c]
    hushed it like a weaned child.
Like a weaned child held in its mother’s arms,
    so is my soul within me.
³O Israel, put your hope in the Lord
    both now and forevermore.^[d]

Footnotes

Psalm 131:1 Certainly the Prophets dared to state that God was like a mother for his people (see Isa 66:12f; Hos 11:4). But here is a man who has not fled from the experience of life; he lays bare the depth of his heart: the soul of a child before God. This psalm strikes us with great freshness and simplicity, and it is the most moving and evangelical of the psalms. A believer of the Old Testament has discovered the voice of spiritual childhood: “Unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Mt 18:3).
We can pray this psalm with the awareness that after practicing abandonment to God’s hands, Jesus offers it as an ideal for us also, for like him we are children of the heavenly Father: “Learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart” (Mt 11:29). We must flee from all desire to go beyond God and his help (see Mt 23:11; Jas 4:6f; 1 Pet 5:5f). The Father alone can make our labors fruitful through Christ (see Jn 15:1-17; 1 Cor 3:5-8); without Christ we can do nothing (see Jn 15:5).
Psalm 131:1 Heart: see note on Ps 4:8. The psalmist has completely submitted himself to God in all humility (see Mic 6:8). He is not like the proud who rely only on themselves (see note on Ps 31:24). He knows that true holiness begins in a heart bereft of pride (see Prov 18:12), with eyes that do not envy (see Pss 18:28; 101:5; Prov 16:5), and a manner of life that is not presumptuous, not preoccupied with great things (see Jer 45:5) and achievements that are too sublime, i.e., too difficult or arduous, beyond one’s powers (see Deut 17:8; 30:11).
Psalm 131:2 Soul: see note on Ps 6:4. The psalmist keeps a guard over his desires. He is like a weaned child, who no longer frets for what it used to find indispensable and walks trustingly by its mother or lies peacefully in its mother’s arms.
Psalm 131:3 Likewise all Israel, all God’s people, must hope only in the Lord. Weaned away from insubstantial ambitions, we must hanker for the sole solid fare: “My food is to do the will of the one who sent me, and to accomplish his work” (Jn 4:34).

Isaiah 26:1-6

Chapter 26

A Song of Victory. ¹On that day this song will be sung in the land of Judah:

We have a strongly fortified city,
    with walls and ramparts established to protect us.
²Open the gates
    to allow the upright nation to enter,
    the nation that keeps faith.
³O Lord, you grant peace to those who are steadfast
    because of their trust in you.
⁴Trust in the Lord forever,
    for the Lord is an eternal rock.
⁵He has brought low those in high places
    and leveled their citadel,
casting it down to the ground
    and flinging it down to the dust,
⁶to be trampled underfoot
    by the feet of the poor and the oppressed.

Philippians 2:25-30

²⁵Epaphroditus Praised. I have also decided that it is necessary to send you Epaphroditus, my brother and coworker and fellow soldier, who was your messenger and ministered to my needs. ²⁶He has missed all of you and been greatly distressed because you heard that he was ill. ²⁷And indeed he was dangerously ill and close to death. However, God had mercy on him—and not merely on him but on me as well, so that I would not have to endure one sorrow on top of another.

²⁸Therefore, I am all the more eager to send him in order that you may rejoice on seeing him again and I may thereby feel less anxious. ²⁹Receive him joyfully in the Lord, and value people like him very highly. ³⁰For he came perilously close to death for the work of Christ, risking his life to render me those services that you were unable to provide.

New Catholic Bible (NCB)