Mass Readings for August 30, 2023

1 Thessalonians 2:9-13
Psalms 139:7-12
Matthew 23:27-32

1 Thessalonians 2:9-13
(9) For you remember, brothers, our labor and travail; for working night and day, that we might not burden any of you, we preached to you the Good News of God. (10) You are witnesses with God, how holy, righteously, and blamelessly we behaved ourselves toward you who believe. (11) As you know, we exhorted, comforted, and implored every one of you, as a father does his own children, (12) to the end that you should walk worthily of God, who calls you into his own Kingdom and glory. (13) For this cause we also thank God without ceasing, that, when you received from us the word of the message of God, you accepted it not as the word of men, but, as it is in truth, the word of God, which also works in you who believe.

Psalms 139:7-12
(7) Where could I go from your Spirit? Or where could I flee from your presence? (8) If I ascend up into heaven, you are there. If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, you are there! (9) If I take the wings of the dawn, and settle in the uttermost parts of the sea; (10) Even there your hand will lead me, and your right hand will hold me. (11) If I say, “Surely the darkness will overwhelm me; the light around me will be night”; (12) even the darkness doesn’t hide from you, but the night shines as the day. The darkness is like light to you.

Matthew 23:27-32
(27) “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitened tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but inwardly are full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness. (28) Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. (29) “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets, and decorate the tombs of the righteous, (30) and say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we wouldn’t have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.’ (31) Therefore you testify to yourselves that you are children of those who killed the prophets. (32) Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers.