First Reading

Reading from the book of Wisdom

Wisdom 2:1, 12-22

The wicked said among themselves, thinking wrongly:
«Let us set a trap for the just one,
because he is a nuisance to us and opposes what we do;
he reproaches us for our violations of the law,
he rebukes us for our faults against the principles in which we were educated.
He boasts of knowing God
and calls himself a child of the Lord.

He has become a living reproach
to our way of thinking
and his very presence is unbearable,
because he lives differently from the others
and his conduct is strange.
He considers us counterfeit coins
and avoids our way of life as if it were filth.
He declares blessed the final lot of the just
and boasts of having God as his father.

Let us see if what he says is true,
let us find out what happens to him in his death.
If the just man is a child of God,
he will help him and deliver him from the hands of his enemies.
Let us subject him to humiliation and torture
to test his temper and his mettle.
Let us condemn him to a shameful death,
because he claims that someone will look after him».

Thus the wicked reason, but they are mistaken;
their malice blinds them.
They do not know the hidden designs of God,
they do not hope for the reward of holiness,
nor do they believe in the recompense for a blameless life.

Gospel

Reading from the holy Gospel according to Saint John 

John 7:1-2, 10, 25-30

At that time, Jesus was going about in Galilee. He did not want to go about in Judea because the Jews were looking for an opportunity to kill him. The Jewish feast of Tabernacles was near.

But once his brothers had gone to the feast, then he too went up, not in public, but as if to go unnoticed. At that time, some people who lived in Jerusalem were saying, «Is this not the man they are looking to kill? And look, he is speaking freely, and they say nothing to him. Could it be that the authorities have decided that he is the Christ? Yet we know where this man is from; but when the Christ comes, no one will know where he is from.»

Then Jesus, who was teaching in the temple, cried out, «So you know me, and you know where I am from? Yet I have not come on my own, but the one who sent me is true, and you do not know him. But I know him, because I am from him, and he sent me.» So they tried to arrest him, but no one laid hands on him, because his hour had not yet come.