• Friday, August 7 : Book of Nahum 2,1.3.3,1-3.6-7.
    See, upon the mountains there advances the bearer of good news, announcing peace! Celebrate your feasts, O Judah, fulfill your vows! For nevermore shall you be invaded by the scoundrel; he is completely destroyed. The LORD will restore the vine of Jacob, the pride of Israel, Though ravagers have ravaged them and ruined the tendrils. Woe to the bloody city, all lies, full of plunder, whose looting never stops! The crack of the whip, the rumbling sounds of wheels; horses a-gallop, chariots bounding, Cavalry charging, The flame of the sword, the flash of the spear, the many slain, the heaping corpses, the endless bodies to stumble upon! I will cast filth upon you, disgrace you and put you to shame; Till everyone who sees you runs from you, saying, “Nineveh is destroyed; who can pity her? Where can one find any to console her?”
  • Friday, August 7 : Book of Deuteronomy 32,35cd-36ab.39abcd.41.
    Close at hand is the day of their disaster and their doom is rushing upon them! Surely, the LORD shall do justice for his people; on his servants he shall have pity. “Learn then that I, I alone, am God, and there is no god besides me. It is I who bring both death and life, I who inflict wounds and heal them. I will sharpen my flashing sword, and my hand shall lay hold of my quiver. “With vengeance I will repay my foes and requite those who hate me.”
  • Friday, August 7 : Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Matthew 16,24-28.
    Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? Or what can one give in exchange for his life? For the Son of Man will come with his angels in his Father’s glory, and then he will repay everyone according to his conduct.” Amen, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”
  • Friday, August 7 : Saint Augustine
    What the Lord has commanded us: “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself” seems hard and difficult. Yet it isn’t either hard or difficult because the one who commands it is the one who helps us to fulfill what he commands. For if that saying of the psalm is true, that: “according to the words of your lips I have pursued difficult paths” (Ps 17[16],4), so also is true the saying spoken by Jesus: “my yoke is easy and my burden light,” (Mt 11,30). For anything hard in the command, love turns to sweetness. We know well of what marvels love is capable. There are times when love is of doubtful worth and is depraved. Yet how many difficulties will not men endure, what humiliating and unendurable treatment will they not suffer if only they might attain to what they love!… Since life’s great enterprise must be to choose well what one should love, is it surprising that anyone who loves Jesus Christ and desires to follow him denies himself in order to love him?… What is the meaning of what follows: “Let him take up his cross”? Let him endure what is painful and so let him follow me. For when a man begins to follow me by acting according to my precepts, there will be plenty of people to disagree with him, oppose him, discourage him. And that on the part of people who claim to be Christ’s friends. Those who stopped the blind men from crying out (Mt 20,31) were walking in Christ’s company. So whether it is a matter of threats, flattery, prohibitions, if you want to follow Christ, turn it all into the cross; endure it, bear it, don’t let yourself be overcome… You love the world, but you should rather love him who made the world… We live in a world that is holy, that is good, reconciled, saved or, rather, that is to be saved but which is saved now in hope. “For in hope we were saved,” (Rom 8,24). In this world, therefore, that is to say in the Church, which wholly follows Christ, he said to all: “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself.”