Opening Prayer

Unchanging and ever-new God,
you want us to be your pilgrim people
on the march with Jesus your Son
toward a new future of justice and love.
Do not allow us to suffocate in being contented
with old habits and sluggish ways.
Help us to accept the pain
of leaving the familiar behind us
and open us to the challenge of the gospel
to become more like your Son
who guides our faltering steps,
Jesus Christ our Lord.

Liturgy of the Word

First Reading Introduction:

The reading from Samuel narrates the beginning of the disenchantment with King Saul. He kept the spoils of war that he was told not to keep.

First Reading: 1 Sm 15:16–23

Samuel said to Saul: “Stop! Let me tell you what the LORD
said to me last night.” Saul replied, “Speak!” Samuel then said:
“Though little in your own esteem, are you not leader of the
tribes of Israel? The LORD anointed you king of Israel and sent
you on a mission, saying, ‘Go and put the sinful Amalekites
under a ban of destruction. Fight against them until you have
exterminated them.’ Why then have you disobeyed the LORD?
You have pounced on the spoil, thus displeasing the LORD.”
Saul answered Samuel: “I did indeed obey the LORD and fulfill
the mission on which the LORD sent me. I have brought back
Agag, and I have destroyed Amalek under the ban. But from
the spoil the men took sheep and oxen, the best of what had
been banned, to sacrifice to the LORD their God in Gilgal.” But
Samuel said:
“Does the LORD so delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices
as in obedience to the command of the LORD?
Obedience is better than sacrifice,
and submission than the fat of rams.
For a sin like divination is rebellion,
and presumption is the crime of idolatry.
Because you have rejected the command of the LORD,
he, too, has rejected you as ruler.”

Responsorial Psalm: Ps 50:8 –9, 16bc–17, 21 and 23

R/  To the upright I will show the saving power of God.

“Not for your sacrifices do I rebuke you,
for your burnt offerings are before me always.
I take from your house no bullock,
no goats out of your fold.”
R/  To the upright I will show the saving power of God.

“Why do you recite my statutes,
and profess my covenant with your mouth,
Though you hate discipline
and cast my words behind you?”
R/  To the upright I will show the saving power of God.

“When you do these things, shall I be deaf to it?
Or do you think that I am like yourself?
I will correct you by drawing them up before your eyes.
He that offers praise as a sacrifice glorifies me;
and to him that goes the right way I will show the salvation of God.”
R/  To the upright I will show the saving power of God.

Gospel Introduction:

You know from experience that change is always a problem to us. It calls us away from the security of our ingrained habits and our certainties and it forces us to go unfamiliar ways. That is why, as if by nature, we resist change. It is an inherent law of Christianity to be always open to renewal and conversion. The trouble is that the old and the new are usually intolerant of one another.

Gospel Reading: Mk 2:18-22

One day, when the disciples of John the Baptist and the Pharisees were fasting, some people asked Jesus, "Why is it that both the disciples of John and of the Pharisees fast, but yours do not?" Jesus answered, "How can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. But the day will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them and on that day they will fast.

"No one sews a piece of new cloth on an old coat, because the new patch will shrink and tear away from the old cloth, making a worse tear. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins, for the wine would burst the skins and then both the wine and the skins would be lost. But new wine, new skins!"