As the visions during the night continued, I saw One like a son of man coming, on the clouds of heaven; When he reached the Ancient One and was presented before him,
He received dominion, glory, and kingship; nations and peoples of every language serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not be taken away, his kingship shall not be destroyed.
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Some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection, came forward and put this question to Jesus,
saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us, ‘If someone’s brother dies leaving a wife but no child, his brother must take the wife and raise up descendants for his brother.’
Now there were seven brothers; the first married a woman but died childless.
Then the second
and the third married her, and likewise all the seven died childless.
Finally the woman also died.
Now at the resurrection whose wife will that woman be? For all seven had been married to her.”
Jesus said to them, “The children of this age marry and remarry;
but those who are deemed worthy to attain to the coming age and to the resurrection of the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage.
They can no longer die, for they are like angels; and they are the children of God because they are the ones who will rise.
That the dead will rise even Moses made known in the passage about the bush, when he called ‘Lord’ the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob;
and he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.”
Some of the scribes said in reply, “Teacher, you have answered well.”
And they no longer dared to ask him anything.
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We die no more. For even if we are dissolved in this earthly life, we will live in Christ, as he himself has assured us: “Whoever believes in me, even if he die, shall live” (Jn 11:25). In a word, we are assured, on God’s word, that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and all the saints of God live. For God says concerning them: “Now he is not the God of the dead, but the living, for all live to him”. And the apostle Paul says of himself: “For me to live is Christ and to die is gain. I desire to depart and to be with Christ” (Phil 1:21-23)… This, dearly beloved, is the burden of our faith: “If with this life only in view we have had hope in Christ, we are of all men the most to be pitied” (1 Cor 15:19). Earthly life, as you yourselves see, for beasts, domestic animals, and the birds of the air is of the same span or longer than ours. What is special to man is what Christ has given him through his Spirit—that is, life everlasting, on condition, however, that we sin no more. For just as death is the penalty of sin and virtue the way to avoid it, so life is conserved by virtue and lost by vice. “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is life everlasting in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rm 6:23).
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As King Antiochus was traversing the inland provinces, he heard that in Persia there was a city called Elymais, famous for its wealth in silver and gold,
and that its temple was very rich, containing gold helmets, breastplates, and weapons left there by Alexander, son of Philip, king of Macedon, the first king of the Greeks.
He went therefore and tried to capture and pillage the city. But he could not do so, because his plan became known to the people of the city
who rose up in battle against him. So he retreated and in great dismay withdrew from there to return to Babylon.
While he was in Persia, a messenger brought him news that the armies sent into the land of Judah had been put to flight;
that Lysias had gone at first with a strong army and been driven back by the Israelites; that they had grown strong by reason of the arms, men, and abundant possessions taken from the armies they had destroyed;
that they had pulled down the Abomination which he had built upon the altar in Jerusalem; and that they had surrounded with high walls both the sanctuary, as it had been before, and his city of Beth-zur.
When the king heard this news, he was struck with fear and very much shaken. Sick with grief because his designs had failed, he took to his bed.
There he remained many days, overwhelmed with sorrow, for he knew he was going to die.
So he called in all his Friends and said to them: “Sleep has departed from my eyes, for my heart is sinking with anxiety.
I said to myself: ‘Into what tribulation have I come, and in what floods of sorrow am I now!
Yet I was kindly and beloved in my rule.’ But I now recall the evils I did in Jerusalem, when I carried away all the vessels of gold and silver that were in it, and for no cause gave orders that the inhabitants of Judah be destroyed.
I know that this is why these evils have overtaken me; and now I am dying, in bitter grief, in a foreign land.”
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I will give thanks to you, LORD, with all my heart; I will declare all your wondrous deeds.
I will delight and exult in your name; I will sing hymns to your name, Most High. For my enemies turn back; they stumble and perish before you.
You rebuked the nations and destroyed the wicked; their name you blotted out forever and ever. The nations are sunk in the pit they have made; in the snare they set, their foot is caught.
The needy will never be forgotten, nor will the hope of the afflicted ever fade.
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“Blessed may you be, O LORD, God of Israel our father, from eternity to eternity.” “Yours, O LORD, are grandeur and power,
majesty, splendor, and glory.
For all in heaven and on earth is yours.” “LORD, you are exalted over all. Yours, O LORD, is the sovereignty;
you are exalted as head over all. Riches and honor are from you.” “You have dominion over all,
In your hand are power and might;
it is yours to give grandeur and strength to all.”
Roman Catholic Ordinary Calendar – rosary,team
Jesus entered the temple area and proceeded to drive out those who were selling things,
saying to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves.'”
And every day he was teaching in the temple area. The chief priests, the scribes, and the leaders of the people, meanwhile, were seeking to put him to death,
but they could find no way to accomplish their purpose because all the people were hanging on his words.
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We pray in God’s temple when we pray in the peace of the Church, in the unity of Christ’s body, because the Body of Christ is made up of the great mass of believers scattered throughout the world. (…) It is in this temple, and not in the material Temple at Jerusalem, that we must pray “in spirit and truth” (Jn 4:23) if we are to be answered. The latter was “a shadow of things to come” (Col 2:17), which is why it fell to ruin (…) The temple that fell could not be the house of prayer of which it was said that: “My house will be called a house of prayer for all peoples” (Mk 11:17; Is 56:7; Jer 7:11). Was it indeed the case that those who wanted to make of it “a den of thieves” were the cause of its fall? In the same way, neither do those leading a disordered life in the Church and seeking, so far as they might, to make the house of God a den of thieves, neither do those overthrow this temple. The time will come when they will be cast out beneath the blows of their sins. This gathering of the faithful, the temple of God and Body of Christ, has but one voice and sings as one person (…) If we want, this voice is ours; if we want, when we hear them singing we, too, will sing in our hearts.
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Judas and his brothers said, “Now that our enemies have been crushed, let us go up to purify the sanctuary and rededicate it.”
So the whole army assembled, and went up to Mount Zion.
Early in the morning on the twenty-fifth day of the ninth month, that is, the month of Chislev, in the year one hundred and forty-eight,
they arose and offered sacrifice according to the law on the new altar of holocausts that they had made.
On the anniversary of the day on which the Gentiles had defiled it, on that very day it was reconsecrated with songs, harps, flutes, and cymbals.
All the people prostrated themselves and adored and praised Heaven, who had given them success.
For eight days they celebrated the dedication of the altar and joyfully offered holocausts and sacrifices of deliverance and praise.
They ornamented the facade of the temple with gold crowns and shields; they repaired the gates and the priests’ chambers and furnished them with doors.
There was great joy among the people now that the disgrace of the Gentiles was removed.
Then Judas and his brothers and the entire congregation of Israel decreed that the days of the dedication of the altar should be observed with joy and gladness on the anniversary every year for eight days, from the twenty-fifth day of the month Chislev.
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Do not despise sinners because we are all guilty. If you rise up against him for love of God, weep for him, rather. Why despise him? Despise his sins and pray for him if you would be like Christ, who was not angered at sinners but prayed for them (cf. Lk 23:24). Don’t you see how he wept over Jerusalem? For we too have been played around with by the devil more than once. Why despise someone just like ourselves, who has been a plaything of the devil who taunts us all? You who are merely a man, why despise the sinner? Is it because he is not righteous like you? But where is your righteousness so long as you have no love? Why did you not weep over him? To the contrary, you persecute him. It is because of their ignorance that some people are annoyed with others – those who think they have discernment into the works of sinners.
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