.jpg)
Good luck and great success in the coming New Year
祝来年好运，并取得更大的成就。
Friday, January 31st,
2014
Chinese New Year of
the Horse
9:00 am Lunar New Year Mass
All are welcome to
join the celebration
First Reading
2 SAMUEL 11:1-5, 10,
13-17
1 At the turn of the
year, at the time when kings go campaigning, David sent Joab and with him his
guards and all Israel. They massacred the Ammonites and laid siege to
Rabbah-of-the-Ammonites. David, however, remained in Jerusalem.
2 It happened towards
evening when David had got up from resting and was strolling on the palace
roof, that from the roof he saw a woman bathing; the woman was very beautiful.
3 David made enquiries
about this woman and was told, 'Why, that is Bathsheba daughter of Eliam and
wife of Uriah the Hittite.'
4 David then sent
messengers to fetch her. She came to him, and he lay with her, just after she
had purified herself from her period. She then went home again.
5 The woman conceived
and sent word to David, 'I am pregnant.'
10 This was reported to
David; 'Uriah', they said 'has not gone down to his house.' So David asked
Uriah, 'Haven't you just arrived from the journey? Why didn't you go down to
your house?'
13 The next day, David
invited him to eat and drink in his presence and made him drunk. In the
evening, Uriah went out and bedded down with his master's bodyguard, but did
not go down to his house.
14 Next morning David
wrote a letter to Joab and sent it by Uriah.
15 In the letter he
wrote, 'Put Uriah out in front where the fighting is fiercest and then fall
back, so that he gets wounded and killed.'
16 Joab, then besieging
the city, stationed Uriah at a point where he knew that there would be tough
fighters.
17 The people of the
city sallied out and engaged Joab; there were casualties in the army, among
David's guards, and Uriah the Hittite was killed as well.
“The
Word of the Lord”
PSALMS 50:3-7, 10-11
3 he is coming, our
God, and will not be silent. Devouring fire ahead of him, raging tempest around
him,
4 he summons the
heavens from on high, and the earth to judge his people.
5 'Gather to me my
faithful, who sealed my covenant by sacrifice.'
6 The heavens proclaim
his saving justice, 'God himself is judge.'Pause
7 'Listen, my people, I
am speaking, Israel, I am giving evidence against you, I, God, your God.
10 'For all forest
creatures are mine already, the animals on the mountains in their thousands.
11 I know every bird in
the air, whatever moves in the fields is mine.
Gospel Reading
MARK 4:26-34
26 He also said, 'This
is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the land.
27 Night and day, while
he sleeps, when he is awake, the seed is sprouting and growing; how, he does
not know.
28 Of its own accord the
land produces first the shoot, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear.
29 And when the crop is
ready, at once he starts to reap because the harvest has come.'
30 He also said, 'What
can we say that the kingdom is like? What parable can we find for it?
31 It is like a mustard
seed which, at the time of its sowing, is the smallest of all the seeds on
earth.
32 Yet once it is sown
it grows into the biggest shrub of them all and puts out big branches so that
the birds of the air can shelter in its shade.'
33 Using many parables
like these, he spoke the word to them, so far as they were capable of
understanding it.
34 He would not speak to
them except in parables, but he explained everything to his disciples when they
were by themselves.
“The
Gospel of the Lord”
