Monday of the Third Week of Lent

Official Translation

Reading 1 – 2 Kings 5.1-15ab

Naaman, captain of the army of the king of Aram,
was a great man with his master and honorable,
because by him the Lord had given victory to Aram.
He was a mighty man of valor, but also a leper.
The Arameans had gone out in bands,
and had brought away captive
out of the land of Israel
a little girl and she waited on Naaman's wife.
She said to her mistress,
“Would that my master
were with the prophet who is in Samaria!
Then he would recover from his leprosy.
Naaman went in, and told his master, saying,
“‘Thus and so’ said the maiden who is of the land of Israel.
The king of Aram said,
“Go now, and I will send a letter to the king of Israel.”
He departed and took with him
ten talents of silver
and six thousand pieces of gold,
and ten changes of clothing.
He brought the letter to the king of Israel, saying,
“Now when this letter is come to you,
behold, I have sent Naaman my servant to you,
that you may cure him of his leprosy.”

When the king of Israel had read the letter,
he tore his clothes and said,
“Am I God, to kill and to make alive,
that this man sends a man to me to cure him of his leprosy?
Consider, I ask you, and see how he seeks a quarrel against me.”
When Elisha the man of God heard
that the king of Israel had torn his clothes,
he sent to the king, saying,
“Why have you torn your clothes?
Let him come now to me,
and he shall know that there is a prophet in Israel.”

So Naaman came with his horses and with his chariots
and stood at the door of the house of Elisha.
Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying,
“Go and wash in the Jordan seven times,
and your flesh shall return to you,
and you shall be clean.”
But Naaman was angry, and went away, and said,
“Behold, I thought, ‘He will surely come out to me,
and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God,
and wave his hand over the place
and cure the leprosy.’
Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus,
better than all the waters of Israel?
May I not wash in them and be clean?”
So he turned and went away in a rage.

His servants came near,
and spoke to him and said,
“My father, if the prophet had asked you
to do some great thing, would you not have done it?
How much more then, when he says to you, ‘Wash, and be clean?’”
So he went down, and dipped himself seven times in the Jordan,
according to the saying of the man of God;
and his flesh returned like the flesh of a little child,
and he was clean.

He returned to the man of God,
he and all his company,
and came, and stood before him;
and he said, “Now I know that there is no God in all the earth, except in Israel.”

Responsorial – Psalm 42.2, 3; 43.3, 4 Resp. 42.3

R. My soul thirsts for the living God. When shall I come to see the face of God?

As the deer pants for the water brooks,
so my soul pants after you, God.

R. My soul thirsts for the living God. When shall I come to see the face of God?

My soul thirsts for God, the living God.
When shall I come to see the face of God?

R. My soul thirsts for the living God. When shall I come to see the face of God?

O send out your light and your truth.
Let them lead me.
Let them bring me to your holy mountain,
to your dwelling.

R. My soul thirsts for the living God. When shall I come to see the face of God?

Then I will go to the altar of God,
to God, my exceeding joy.
I will praise you on the harp,
O God, my God.

R. My soul thirsts for the living God. When shall I come to see the face of God?


Gospel – Luke 4.24-30

Jesus said to the people in the synagogue at Nazareth:
“Amen I say to you,
no prophet is acceptable in his hometown.
Truly I tell you,
there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah,
when the sky was shut up three and a half years,
when a great famine came over all the land.
Elijah was sent to none of them, but rather to Zarephath,
in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow.
And there were many lepers in Israel
in the time of Elisha the prophet,
yet not one of them was cleansed,
but rather Naaman, the Syrian.”

Those in the synagogue were all filled with wrath
when they heard these things.
They rose up, threw him out of the city
and led him to the brow of the hill
that their city was built on,
that they might throw him off the cliff.
But he, passing through the midst of them, went his way.