Liturgical Bible Study Guide: 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time Cycle A

17th Sunday in Ordinary Time

1st Reading – 1 Kings 3:5, 7-12 The books of Kings are the fourth part of what tradition calls the Former Prophets (Joshua, Judges, 1st & 2nd Samuel, 1st & 2nd Kings). The division between the books of Samuel and the books of Kings is arbitrary and varies in ancient manuscripts. The division;between 1st and […]

Liturgical Bible Study Guide: 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time Cycle A

16th Sunday in Ordinary Time

1st Reading – Wisdom 12:13, 16-19 The Book of Wisdom, also called the Wisdom of Solomon, is believed to have been written in the first century before Christ by a Greek-speaking Jew of Alexandria in Egypt. The Egyptian rulers from Ptolamy VIII (116 B.C.) to Cleopatra (30 B.C.) were not well-disposed toward their Jewish subjects. The Jewish […]

Liturgical Bible Study Guide: 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time Cycle A

15th Sunday in Ordinary Time

1st Reading – Isaiah 55:10-11 Until the eighteenth century it was presumed that Isaiah of Jerusalem wrote all 66 chapters of the book under his name. At that time scholars maintained that chapters 40 through 66 were written by a different author who lived some 150 years after Isaiah, during the Babylonian exile. In the late nineteenth century […]

Liturgical Bible Study Guide: 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time Cycle A

14th Sunday in Ordinary Time

1st Reading – Zechariah 9:9-10 The Book of Zechariah, the name means “Yahweh remembers,” comes chronologically after that of Haggai. The prophet Zechariah belonged to a priestly family which had returned from exile in Babylon. Like Haggai, he was called by God in 520 B.C., the second year of the reign of Darius. He probably lived until […]

Liturgical Bible Study Guide: 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time Cycle A

13th Sunday in Ordinary Time

1st Reading – 2 Kings 4:8-11, 14-16a Second Kings deals mainly with the wars between Judah and Israel and the attacks on them from outside. The situation became even more critical when the Assyrians invaded, first in the 9th century B.C. and more vigorously in the 8th. Samaria, the capital of the Northern Kingdom (Israel), fell in 721, […]