FIRST
READING: Amos
5: 14 - 15, 21 - 24
14
Seek good and shun evil, that you may live. Then Yahweh, the God of
hosts, as you have claimed, will be with you.
15
Hate wickedness and love virtue, and let justice prevail in the
courts; perhaps Yahweh, the God of hosts, will take pity on the
remnant of Joseph.
21
"I hate, I reject your feasts, I take no pleasure when you
assemble
22
to offer me your burnt offerings. Your cereal offerings, I will not
accept! Your offerings of fattened beasts, I will not look upon!
23
Away with the noise of your chanting, away with your strumming on
harps.
24
But let justice run its course like water, and righteousness be like
an ever-flowing river.
PSALM:
Psalms 50:
7 - 13, 16 - 17
7
"Hear, O my people, for I am speaking. I will accuse you, O
Israel, I am God, your God!
8
Not for your sacrifices do I reprove you, for your burnt offerings
are ever before me.
9
I need no bull from your stalls, nor he-goat from your pens.
10
For I own all the beasts of the forest and the animals of my thousand
hills.
11
All the birds of the air I know; all that move in the fields are
mine.
12
I need not tell you if I were hungry, for mine is the world and all
that it contains.
13
Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats?
16
But God says this to the wicked: "What right have you to mouth
my laws, or to talk about my covenant?
17
You hate my commands and cast my words behind you.
GOSPEL:
Matthew 8:
28 - 34
28
When Jesus reached Gadara on the other side, he was met by two
demoniacs who came out from the tombs. They were so fierce that no
one dared to pass that way.
29
Suddenly they shouted, "What do you want with us, you, Son of
God? Have you come to torture us before the time?"
30
At some distance away there was a large herd of pigs feeding.
31
So the demons begged him, "If you drive us out, send us into
that herd of pigs."
32
Jesus ordered them, "Go." So they left and went into the
pigs. The whole herd rushed down the cliff into the lake and drowned.
33
The men in charge of them ran off to the town, where they told the
whole story, also what had happened to the men possessed with the
demons.
34
Then the whole town went out to meet Jesus; and when they saw him,
they begged him to leave their area.
