FIRST READING

A reading from the letter to the Hebrews       12:18-19. 21-24
What you have come to is Mount Zion and the city of the living God.

What you have come to is nothing known to the senses: not a blazing fire, or a gloom turning to total darkness, or a storm; or trumpeting thunder or the great voice speaking which made everyone that heard it beg that no more should be said to them. The whole scene was so terrible that Moses said: “I am afraid”, and was trembling with fright. But what you have come to is Mount Zion and the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem where the millions of angels have gathered for the festival, with the whole Church in which everyone is a ‘first-born son’ and a citizen of heaven. You have come to God himself, the supreme Judge, and been placed with spirits of the saints who have been made perfect; and to Jesus, the mediator who brings a new covenant and a blood for purification which pleads more insistently than Abel’s.

Responsorial Psalm         Ps 47:2-4, 911
Response                              O God, we ponder your love within your temple

1.The Lord is great and worthy to be praised
in the city of our god.
His holy mountain rises in beauty,
the joy of all the earth.                        Response

2. Mount Zion, true pole of the earth,
the Great King’s city!
God, in the midst of its citadels,
has shown himself its stronghold.    Response

3. As we have heard, so we have seen
in the city of our God,
in the city of the Lord of hosts
which God upholds for ever.              Response

4. O God, we ponder your love
within your temple.
Your praise, 0 God, like your name
reaches to the ends of the earth.
With justice, your right hand is filled.Response

Gospel  Acclamation      Jn 15: 15
Alleluia, alleluia!
I call you friends, says the Lord,
because I have made known to you everything I have learnt from my Father.
Alleluia!

GOSPEL
A reading from the holy Gospel according to Mark        6:7-13


Glory to you, O Lord
He began to send them out in pairs.

Jesus made a tour around the villages, teaching. Then he summoned the Twelve and began to send them out in pairs giving them authority over the unclean spirits. And he instructed them to take nothing for the journey except a staff – no bread, no haversack, no coppers for their purses. They were to wear sandals but, he added, ‘Do not take a spare tunic’. And he said to them, ‘If you enter a house anywhere, stay there until you leave the district. And if any place does not welcome you and people refuse to listen to you, as you walk away shake off the dust from under your feet as a sign to them.’

So they set off to preach repentance, and they cast out many devils, and anointed many sick people with oil and cured them.