Thursday of the Twenty-fifth Week in Ordinary Time

What is Daily Mass Readings with Homily and Saint of the Day?

Hear the Mass readings of the day, followed by a homily grounded in the writings of the Church Fathers, Doctors, and master theologians. Every episode concludes with a brief reflection on the heroic virtue of the Saint of the Day and a practical spiritual resolution to carry into your daily life.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today is September the twenty-fourth. Qoheleth strips the world bare, and in that stripping, Christ stands revealed — the one eternal thing that does not pass away, the one answer to the relentless turning of the sun.

A reading from the Book of Ecclesiastes.

Vanity of vanities, says Qoheleth, vanity of vanities! All things are vanity! What profit has man from all the labor which he toils at under the sun? One generation passes and another comes, but the world forever stays. The sun rises and the sun goes down; then it presses on to the place where it rises. Blowing now toward the south, then toward the north, the wind turns again and again, resuming its rounds. All rivers go to the sea, yet never does the sea become full. To the place where they go, the rivers keep on going. All speech is labored; there is nothing one can say. The eye is not satisfied with seeing nor is the ear satisfied with hearing. What has been, that will be; what has been done, that will be done. Nothing is new under the sun. Even the thing of which we say, "See, this is new!" has already existed in the ages that preceded us. There is no remembrance of the men of old; nor of those to come will there be any remembrance among those who come after them.

The Word of the Lord.

Responsorial Psalm, Psalm ninety.

In every age, O Lord, you have been our refuge.

You turn man back to dust, saying, "Return, O children of men." For a thousand years in your sight are as yesterday, now that it is past, or as a watch of the night.

In every age, O Lord, you have been our refuge.

You make an end of them in their sleep; the next morning they are like the changing grass, which at dawn springs up anew, but by evening wilts and fades.

In every age, O Lord, you have been our refuge.

Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain wisdom of heart. Return, O LORD! How long? Have pity on your servants!

In every age, O Lord, you have been our refuge.

Fill us at daybreak with your kindness, that we may shout for joy and gladness all our days. Prosper the work of our hands for us! Prosper the work of our hands!

In every age, O Lord, you have been our refuge.

Alleluia. I am the way and the truth and the life, says the Lord; no one comes to the Father except through me. Alleluia.

A reading from the holy Gospel according to Luke.

Herod the tetrarch heard about all that was happening, and he was greatly perplexed because some were saying, "John has been raised from the dead"; others were saying, "Elijah has appeared"; still others, "One of the ancient prophets has arisen." But Herod said, "John I beheaded. Who then is this about whom I hear such things?" And he kept trying to see him.

The Gospel of the Lord.

Qoheleth opens his mouth and what pours out is not pessimism — it is diagnosis. He is a physician pressing his fingers against the pulse of a civilization and reporting exactly what he feels: the relentless, circular, exhausting rhythm of a world that cannot save itself. The sun rises. The sun sets. The rivers run. The sea remains unfilled. Generation follows generation into the same unmarked grave of forgetting. This is not despair. This is precision. And Saint Thomas Aquinas, meditating on this passage, notes that Qoheleth does not say all things are evil — he says all things are vanity. Vanity: hollow, insubstantial, like vapor exhaled on a cold morning, present for a breath and then gone. The created order, without reference to its Creator, cannot accumulate meaning. It only accumulates motion.

This is the radical teaching at the heart of the first reading. Human labor, human memory, human achievement — all of it runs on the great treadmill of time, producing nothing permanent. Cornelius a Lapide, the great Flemish exegete, observes that Qoheleth's repeated refrain functions as a liturgical hammer — striking the same nail again and again until the soul is finally loosened from its attachment to passing things. He is not asking us to abandon the world but to see through it, the way one sees through glass to the light beyond.

Psalm ninety then deepens this wound deliberately. Moses — and it is Moses who traditionally gives us this psalm — Moses, who stood at the burning bush and parted seas, confesses that a thousand years to God are as a watch of the night. Man returns to dust. Grass springs up and withers in a single day. And yet — here is the hinge — Moses does not stop at the withering. He cries out: Teach us to number our days aright. This is the existential turning point. The awareness of brevity, properly received, does not paralyze. It teaches. Saint Augustine, who knew better than most what it was to waste years on the great carousel of worldly vanity, writes that the restless heart finds its meaning not by escaping time, but by orienting time toward the eternal. "Our heart is restless," he says, "until it rests in Thee." Moses prays that God would prosper the work of our hands — but only after he has first prayed that we would gain wisdom of heart. Right order. Wisdom first, then work. Otherwise the work is vanity.

And then we arrive at Herod, and the Gospel passage is devastatingly brief. Three sentences, and in those three sentences we see a man who has the question right and the will wrong. Who then is this? That question is the question. It is the only question that matters in all of human history. Herod feels the pull — he keeps trying to see Jesus. He is not indifferent. He is perplexed, haunted, searching. Yet his perplexity does not become conversion. He has already beheaded the prophet who pointed to the truth. He remains in the posture of the curious spectator, not the penitent disciple. Pope Benedict the Sixteenth, reflecting on this encounter, observed that proximity to Christ is not the same as surrender to Christ. Herod wants to see a wonder. He does not want to be transformed. This is the tragic counterpoint to everything Qoheleth and Moses have been building. The very emptiness they describe — the vanity, the dust, the withering grass — is the emptiness that Christ alone fills. The Alleluia verse announces it plainly: I am the way and the truth and the life. Not a road, not an idea, not a tradition — I am. Present tense. Eternal tense. The one thing that does not circle back to where it started. The one river that fills the sea.

Name one thing today — one labor, one worry, one possession, one relationship — that you have been treating as though it were permanent. Bring it before God in prayer and consciously release it, asking Him to be your refuge as Psalm ninety promises He has always been. Let the vanity of that one thing become a doorway to the eternal.

May Almighty God bless you, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever. Amen.
EPISODE_TITLE: Nothing New Under The Sun
IMAGE_PROMPT: A solitary figure kneeling in prayer beneath a vast, turning sky of golden light, with rivers flowing toward a distant horizon where a radiant cross rises above the sun.