Beloved: Who indeed is the victor over the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? This is the one who came through water and blood, Jesus Christ, not by water alone, but by water and blood. The Spirit is the one that testifies, and the Spirit is truth. So there are three that testify, the Spirit, the water, and the blood, and the three are of one accord. If we accept human testimony, the testimony of God is surely greater. Now the testimony of God is this, that he has testified on behalf of his Son. Whoever believes in the Son of God has this testimony within himself. Whoever does not believe God has made him a liar by not believing the testimony God has given about his Son. And this is the testimony: God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever possesses the Son has life; whoever does not possess the Son of God does not have life. I write these things to you so that you may know that you have eternal life, you who believe in the name of the Son of God.

Glorify the LORD, O Jerusalem; praise your God, O Zion. For he has strengthened the bars of your gates; he has blessed your children within you. He has granted peace in your borders; with the best of wheat he fills you. He sends forth his command to the earth; swiftly runs his word! He has proclaimed his word to Jacob, his statutes and his ordinances to Israel. He has not done thus for any other nation; his ordinances he has not made known to them. Alleluia

It happened that there was a man full of leprosy in one of the towns where Jesus was; and when he saw Jesus, he fell prostrate, pleaded with him, and said, “Lord, if you wish, you can make me clean.” Jesus stretched out his hand, touched him, and said, "I do will it. Be made clean." And the leprosy left him immediately. Then he ordered him not to tell anyone, but "Go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses prescribed; that will be proof for them." The report about him spread all the more, and great crowds assembled to listen to him and to be cured of their ailments, but he would withdraw to deserted places to pray.

O my Lord, how you are the true friend; and how powerful! When you desire you can love, and you never stop loving those who love you! All things praise you, Lord of the world! Oh, who will cry out for you, to tell everyone how faithful you are to your friends! All things fail; you, Lord of all, never fail! Little it is, that which you allow the one who loves you to suffer! O my Lord! How delicately and smoothly and delightfully you treat them! Would that no one ever pause to love anyone but you! It seems, Lord, you try with rigor the person who loves you so that in extreme trial he might understand the greatest extreme of your love. O my God, who has the understanding, the learning, and the new words with which to extol your works as my soul understands them? All fails me, my Lord; but if you do not abandon me, I will not fail you... I already have experience of the gain that comes from the way you rescue the one who trusts in you alone. While in [a] great affliction ... these words alone were enough to take it away and bring me complete quiet: "Do not fear, daughter; for I am, and I will not abandon you; do not fear"... And behold, by these words alone, I was given calm together with fortitude, courage, security, quietude and light, so that in one moment I saw my soul transformed.

Beloved, we love God because he first loved us. If anyone says, "I love God," but hates his brother, he is a liar; for whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. This is the commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother. Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is begotten by God, and everyone who loves the father loves (also) the one begotten by him. In this way we know that we love the children of God when we love God and obey his commandments. For the love of God is this, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome, for whoever is begotten by God conquers the world. And the victory that conquers the world is our faith.

O God, with your judgment endow the king, and with your justice, the king's son; He shall govern your people with justice and your afflicted ones with judgment. From fraud and violence he shall redeem them, and precious shall their blood be in his sight. May they be prayed for continually; day by day shall they bless him. May his name be blessed forever; As long as the sun his name shall remain. In him shall all the tribes of the earth be blessed; All the nations shall proclaim his happiness.  

Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news of him spread throughout the whole region. He taught in their synagogues and was praised by all. He came to Nazareth, where he had grown up, and went according to his custom into the synagogue on the sabbath day. He stood up to read and was handed a scroll of the prophet Isaiah. He unrolled the scroll and found the passage where it was written: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord." Rolling up the scroll, he handed it back to the attendant and sat down, and the eyes of all in the synagogue looked intently at him. He said to them, "Today this scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing." And all spoke highly of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.

Drink first of the Old Testament so as to drink afterward of the New. If you do not drink of the first you will not be able to quench your thirst at the second. Drink of the first to take your thirst away, of the second to staunch it completely... Drink of the cup of both the Old Testament and the New for in these two you drink Christ. Take away your thirst with Christ for he is the vine, he is the rock that caused water to gush forth, he is the spring of life. Drink Christ for he is “the stream whose runlets gladden the city of God”, he is peace and “from his breast flow rivers of living water”. Drink Christ to quench your thirst with the blood of your redemption and the Word of God. The Old Testament is his word and so is the New. We drink Holy Scripture and we eat it and then the eternal Word descends into the veins of the spirit and the life of the soul: “Not by bread alone does man live, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God”. Therefore, quench your thirst with this Word yet in its proper order: first drink it in the Old Testament and then, without delaying, in the New. He himself says almost insistently: “People who walk in darkness, see this great light; you who dwell in a land of death, a light has shone upon you”. So drink without delay and a great light will enlighten you: no longer the ordinary light of day, whether that of the sun or the moon, but the light that casts out the shadow of death. (Biblical references : Jn 15:1; 1 Co 10:4; Ps 36[37]:10; 45[46]:5; Eph 2:14; Jn 7:38; Dt 8:3; Mt 4:4; Is 9:1 LXX; Mt 4:16; Lk 1:79)

Beloved, if God so loved us, we also must love one another. No one has ever seen God. Yet, if we love one another, God remains in us, and his love is brought to perfection in us. This is how we know that we remain in him and he in us, that he has given us of his Spirit. Moreover, we have seen and testify that the Father sent his Son as savior of the world. Whoever acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God remains in him and he in God. We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us. God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God and God in him. In this is love brought to perfection among us, that we have confidence on the day of judgment because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment, and so one who fears is not yet perfect in love.

O God, with your judgment endow the king, and with your justice, the king's son; He shall govern your people with justice and your afflicted ones with judgment. The kings of Tarshish and the Isles shall offer gifts; the kings of Arabia and Seba shall bring tribute. For he shall rescue the poor when he cries out, And the afflicted when he has no one to help him. He shall have pity for the lowly and the poor; The lives of the poor he shall save.

After the five thousand had eaten and were satisfied, Jesus made his disciples get into the boat and precede him to the other side toward Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd. And when he had taken leave of them, he went off to the mountain to pray. When it was evening, the boat was far out on the sea and he was alone on shore. Then he saw that they were tossed about while rowing, for the wind was against them. About the fourth watch of the night, he came toward them walking on the sea. He meant to pass by them. But when they saw him walking on the sea, they thought it was a ghost and cried out. They had all seen him and were terrified. But at once he spoke with them, "Take courage, it is I, do not be afraid!" He got into the boat with them and the wind died down. They were (completely) astounded. They had not understood the incident of the loaves. On the contrary, their hearts were hardened.

The essential revelation of the Gospel is the dominant and pervasive presence of God. It is a call to meet God and God is only found in solitude. To those who live among men, it would seem that this solitude is denied. This would be to believe that we precede God in solitude: it is he who awaits us; to find Him is to find it, because true solitude is spirit and all our human solitudes are only relative journeys towards the perfect solitude which is in faith. True solitude is not the absence of men, it is the presence of God. To bring one's life face to face with God, to surrender one's life to the notion of God, is to leap into a region where we are made solitary. It is the height that makes the mountains lonely and not the place where their bases are placed. If the outpouring of the presence of God in us rises in silence and solitude, it leaves us seated, mixed, radically united with all men who are made of the same earth as us. “Blessed is he who receives the word of God and keeps it” (Lk 11:28). There is no solitude without silence. Silence sometimes means remaining silent, but silence always means listening. An absence of noise that would be empty of our attention to the word of God, would no longer be silence. A day full of noise and full of voices can be a day of silence if the noise becomes for us an echo of the presence of God.