Invitatory
Lord, open thou my lips.
— And my mouth shall declare thy praise.
Antiphon: Christ the Lord was tempted and suffered for us: come, let us adore him.
Psalm 94 (95) — Douay-Rheims
Come let us praise the Lord with joy: let us joyfully sing to God our saviour.
Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving; and make a joyful noise to him with psalms.
For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods.
For in his hand are all the ends of the earth: and the heights of the mountains are his.
For the sea is his, and he made it: and his hands formed the dry land.
Come let us adore and fall down: and weep before the Lord that made us.
For he is the Lord our God: and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand.
Today if you shall hear his voice, harden not your hearts:
As in the provocation, according to the day of temptation in the wilderness:
Where your fathers tempted me, they proved me, and saw my works.
Forty years long was I offended with that generation, and I said: These always err in heart.
And these men have not known my ways:
So I swore in my wrath that they shall not enter into my rest.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.
Antiphon: Christ the Lord was tempted and suffered for us: come, let us adore him.
Hymn
(Public-domain hymn cycle — Week II)
Forty Days and Forty Nights
Forty days and forty nights
Thou wast fasting in the wild;
Forty days and forty nights
Tempted, and yet undefiled.
Shall not we thy sorrow share
And from earthly joys abstain,
Fasting with unceasing prayer,
Strong with thee to suffer pain?
Then if Satan on us press,
Flesh or spirit to assail,
Victor in the wilderness,
Grant we may not faint nor fail.
So shall we have peace divine:
Holier gladness ours shall be;
Round us too shall angels shine,
Such as ministered to thee.
Psalm 42 (43)
Give judgment for me, O God, and distinguish my cause from the nation that is not holy: deliver me from the unjust and deceitful man.
For thou art God my strength: why hast thou cast me off? and why go I sorrowful whilst the enemy afflicteth me?
Send forth thy light and thy truth: they have conducted me, and brought me unto thy holy hill, and into thy tabernacles.
And I will go in to the altar of God: to God who giveth joy to my youth.
To thee, O God my God, I will give praise upon the harp: why art thou sad, O my soul? and why dost thou disquiet me?
Hope in God, for I will still give praise to him: the salvation of my countenance, and my God.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.
Canticle — Judith 16:13-15
I will sing to the Lord a new hymn:
O Lord, thou art great and glorious, wonderful in power, and invincible.
Let all thy creatures serve thee:
because thou hast spoken and they were made:
thou didst send forth thy spirit and they were created,
and there is no one that can resist thy voice.
The mountains shall be moved from the foundations with the waters:
the rocks shall melt as wax before thy face.
But they that fear thee shall be great with thee in all things.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.
Short Reading — Isaiah 55:6-7 (Douay-Rheims)
Seek ye the Lord, while he may be found: call upon him, while he is near.
Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unjust man his thoughts, and let him return to the Lord, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God: for he is bountiful to forgive.
Responsory
The Lord is compassionate and merciful.
— He forgives all our sins.
He heals all our infirmities.
— He forgives all our sins.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.
— He forgives all our sins.
Benedictus — Luke 1:68-79
Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; because he hath visited and wrought the redemption of his people:
And hath raised up an horn of salvation to us, in the house of David his servant:
As he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets, who are from the beginning:
Salvation from our enemies, and from the hand of all that hate us:
To perform mercy to our fathers, and to remember his holy testament,
The oath, which he swore to Abraham our father, that he would grant to us,
That being delivered from the hand of our enemies, we may serve him without fear,
In holiness and justice before him, all our days.
And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest: for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways:
To give knowledge of salvation to his people, unto the remission of their sins:
Through the bowels of the mercy of our God, in which the Orient from on high hath visited us:
To enlighten them that sit in darkness, and in the shadow of death: to direct our feet into the way of peace.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.
Intercessions
Let us bless our Saviour, who by his cross redeemed the world.
Lord, have mercy on us.
Grant that we may begin this day with the sign of your cross
— and live it throughout the day in your service.
Teach us to turn away from sin
— and to walk in the path of mercy.
Help us to forgive those who offend us
— just as you forgive us.
Give us a heart that seeks justice and charity
— and a spirit that rejoices in the truth.
The Lord’s Prayer
Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil. Amen.
Concluding Prayer
O God, who seest that we have no strength of ourselves to stand:
grant us thy grace, that by thy protection we may be defended from all adversities, and kept safe from all evil thoughts; through our Lord Jesus Christ thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen.
Paradox of the Day
The man who kneels to ask forgiveness stands taller than the man who refuses to bend.
G.K. Chesterton
“Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.”
A Chestertonian Reflection
One of the great absurdities of modern man is that he refuses forgiveness with the same stubborn pride with which a child refuses medicine. The child does not doubt the existence of the medicine; he simply objects to the taste.
So it is with mercy.
The prophet Isaiah tells us to seek the Lord while he may be found. That sentence contains a strange urgency, as if God were some fleeting opportunity rather than the everlasting ground of all things. Yet the urgency is real—not because God is far away, but because our pride is.
Sin is not merely wickedness; it is forgetfulness. We forget who we are. We forget who God is. We forget that the entire drama of salvation is God running toward the prodigal while the prodigal is still rehearsing his apology.
Lent exists to remind us of something simple and scandalous: forgiveness is closer than we think.
The modern world imagines repentance as humiliation. Christianity calls it homecoming.
The man who kneels in confession is not shrinking. He is rising. For there is something wonderfully rebellious about admitting one’s sins in a world that insists it has none.
And the truly astonishing thing is this: heaven does not merely tolerate the repentant sinner.
Heaven celebrates him.
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