Thursday of the 29th week of Ordinary Time

19I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh; for as you presented your members as servants to uncleanness and to wickedness upon wickedness, even so now present your members as servants to righteousness for sanctification. 20For when you were servants of sin, you were free from righteousness. 21What fruit then did you have at that time in the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. 22But now, being made free from sin and having become servants of God, you have your fruit of sanctification and the result of eternal life. 23For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

1Blessed is the man who doesn’t walk in the counsel of the wicked,

nor stand on the path of sinners,

nor sit in the seat of scoffers;

2but his delight is in the LORD’s law.

On his law he meditates day and night.

3He will be like a tree planted by the streams of water,

that produces its fruit in its season,

whose leaf also does not wither.

Whatever he does shall prosper.

4The wicked are not so,

but are like the chaff which the wind drives away.

…

6For the LORD knows the way of the righteous,

but the way of the wicked shall perish.

49“I came to throw fire on the earth. I wish it were already kindled. 50But I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how distressed I am until it is accomplished! 51Do you think that I have come to give peace on the earth? I tell you, no, but rather division. 52For from now on, there will be five in one house divided, three against two, and two against three. 53They will be divided, father against son, and son against father; mother against daughter, and daughter against her mother; mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law, and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.”