DAY 45: JAN 16: PRISCILLA'S BDAY!

SORRY THIS IS LATE... SPENT THE DAY WITH MY LITTLEST SWEETIE AS SHE TURNED 2!

EXODUS 22-23

Laws of Restitution

22 ^[a] When someone steals an ox or a sheep, and slaughters it or sells it, the thief shall pay five oxen for an ox, and four sheep for a sheep.^[b] The thief shall make restitution, but if unable to do so, shall be sold for the theft. ⁴ When the animal, whether ox or donkey or sheep, is found alive in the thief’s possession, the thief shall pay double.

^2 [c] If a thief is found breaking in, and is beaten to death, no bloodguilt is incurred; ³ but if it happens after sunrise, bloodguilt is incurred.

⁵ When someone causes a field or vineyard to be grazed over, or lets livestock loose to graze in someone else’s field, restitution shall be made from the best in the owner’s field or vineyard.

⁶ When fire breaks out and catches in thorns so that the stacked grain or the standing grain or the field is consumed, the one who started the fire shall make full restitution.

⁷ When someone delivers to a neighbor money or goods for safekeeping, and they are stolen from the neighbor’s house, then the thief, if caught, shall pay double. ⁸ If the thief is not caught, the owner of the house shall be brought before God,^[d] to determine whether or not the owner had laid hands on the neighbor’s goods.

⁹ In any case of disputed ownership involving ox, donkey, sheep, clothing, or any other loss, of which one party says, “This is mine,” the case of both parties shall come before God;^[e] the one whom God condemns^[f] shall pay double to the other.

¹⁰ When someone delivers to another a donkey, ox, sheep, or any other animal for safekeeping, and it dies or is injured or is carried off, without anyone seeing it, ¹¹ an oath before the Lord shall decide between the two of them that the one has not laid hands on the property of the other; the owner shall accept the oath, and no restitution shall be made.¹² But if it was stolen, restitution shall be made to its owner. ¹³ If it was mangled by beasts, let it be brought as evidence; restitution shall not be made for the mangled remains.

¹⁴ When someone borrows an animal from another and it is injured or dies, the owner not being present, full restitution shall be made. ¹⁵ If the owner was present, there shall be no restitution; if it was hired, only the hiring fee is due.

Social and Religious Laws

¹⁶ When a man seduces a virgin who is not engaged to be married, and lies with her, he shall give the bride-price for her and make her his wife. ¹⁷ But if her father refuses to give her to him, he shall pay an amount equal to the bride-price for virgins.

¹⁸ You shall not permit a female sorcerer to live.

¹⁹ Whoever lies with an animal shall be put to death.

²⁰ Whoever sacrifices to any god, other than the Lord alone, shall be devoted to destruction.

²¹ You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt. ²² You shall not abuse any widow or orphan. ²³ If you do abuse them, when they cry out to me, I will surely heed their cry; ²⁴ my wrath will burn, and I will kill you with the sword, and your wives shall become widows and your children orphans.

²⁵ If you lend money to my people, to the poor among you, you shall not deal with them as a creditor; you shall not exact interest from them. ²⁶ If you take your neighbor’s cloak in pawn, you shall restore it before the sun goes down;²⁷ for it may be your neighbor’s only clothing to use as cover; in what else shall that person sleep? And if your neighbor cries out to me, I will listen, for I am compassionate.

²⁸ You shall not revile God, or curse a leader of your people.

²⁹ You shall not delay to make offerings from the fullness of your harvest and from the outflow of your presses.^[g]

The firstborn of your sons you shall give to me. ³⁰ You shall do the same with your oxen and with your sheep: seven days it shall remain with its mother; on the eighth day you shall give it to me.

³¹ You shall be people consecrated to me; therefore you shall not eat any meat that is mangled by beasts in the field; you shall throw it to the dogs.

Justice for All

23 You shall not spread a false report. You shall not join hands with the wicked to act as a malicious witness. ² You shall not follow a majority in wrongdoing; when you bear witness in a lawsuit, you shall not side with the majority so as to pervert justice; ³ nor shall you be partial to the poor in a lawsuit.

⁴ When you come upon your enemy’s ox or donkey going astray, you shall bring it back.

⁵ When you see the donkey of one who hates you lying under its burden and you would hold back from setting it free, you must help to set it free.^[h]

⁶ You shall not pervert the justice due to your poor in their lawsuits. ⁷ Keep far from a false charge, and do not kill the innocent and those in the right, for I will not acquit the guilty. ⁸ You shall take no bribe, for a bribe blinds the officials, and subverts the cause of those who are in the right.

⁹ You shall not oppress a resident alien; you know the heart of an alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.

Sabbatical Year and Sabbath

¹⁰ For six years you shall sow your land and gather in its yield; ¹¹ but the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow, so that the poor of your people may eat; and what they leave the wild animals may eat. You shall do the same with your vineyard, and with your olive orchard.

¹² Six days you shall do your work, but on the seventh day you shall rest, so that your ox and your donkey may have relief, and your homeborn slave and the resident alien may be refreshed. ¹³ Be attentive to all that I have said to you. Do not invoke the names of other gods; do not let them be heard on your lips.

The Annual Festivals

¹⁴ Three times in the year you shall hold a festival for me. ¹⁵ You shall observe the festival of unleavened bread; as I commanded you, you shall eat unleavened bread for seven days at the appointed time in the month of Abib, for in it you came out of Egypt.

No one shall appear before me empty-handed.

¹⁶ You shall observe the festival of harvest, of the first fruits of your labor, of what you sow in the field. You shall observe the festival of ingathering at the end of the year, when you gather in from the field the fruit of your labor.¹⁷ Three times in the year all your males shall appear before the Lord God.

¹⁸ You shall not offer the blood of my sacrifice with anything leavened, or let the fat of my festival remain until the morning.

¹⁹ The choicest of the first fruits of your ground you shall bring into the house of the Lord your God.

You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.

The Conquest of Canaan Promised

²⁰ I am going to send an angel in front of you, to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place that I have prepared. ²¹ Be attentive to him and listen to his voice; do not rebel against him, for he will not pardon your transgression; for my name is in him.

²² But if you listen attentively to his voice and do all that I say, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and a foe to your foes.

²³ When my angel goes in front of you, and brings you to the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, and I blot them out, ²⁴ you shall not bow down to their gods, or worship them, or follow their practices, but you shall utterly demolish them and break their pillars in pieces. ²⁵ You shall worship the Lord your God, and I^[i] will bless your bread and your water; and I will take sickness away from among you. ²⁶ No one shall miscarry or be barren in your land; I will fulfill the number of your days. ²⁷ I will send my terror in front of you, and will throw into confusion all the people against whom you shall come, and I will make all your enemies turn their backs to you. ²⁸ And I will send the pestilence^[j] in front of you, which shall drive out the Hivites, the Canaanites, and the Hittites from before you. ²⁹ I will not drive them out from before you in one year, or the land would become desolate and the wild animals would multiply against you. ³⁰ Little by little I will drive them out from before you, until you have increased and possess the land. ³¹ I will set your borders from the Red Sea^[k] to the sea of the Philistines, and from the wilderness to the Euphrates; for I will hand over to you the inhabitants of the land, and you shall drive them out before you. ³² You shall make no covenant with them and their gods. ³³ They shall not live in your land, or they will make you sin against me; for if you worship their gods, it will surely be a snare to you.

PSALM 45

Psalm 45

Ode for a Royal Wedding

To the leader: according to Lilies. Of the Korahites. A Maskil. A love song.

¹ My heart overflows with a goodly theme;
    I address my verses to the king;
    my tongue is like the pen of a ready scribe.

² You are the most handsome of men;
    grace is poured upon your lips;
    therefore God has blessed you forever.
³ Gird your sword on your thigh, O mighty one,
    in your glory and majesty.

⁴ In your majesty ride on victoriously
    for the cause of truth and to defend^[a] the right;
    let your right hand teach you dread deeds.
⁵ Your arrows are sharp
    in the heart of the king’s enemies;
    the peoples fall under you.

⁶ Your throne, O God,^[b] endures forever and ever.
    Your royal scepter is a scepter of equity;
⁷     you love righteousness and hate wickedness.
Therefore God, your God, has anointed you
    with the oil of gladness beyond your companions;
⁸     your robes are all fragrant with myrrh and aloes and cassia.
From ivory palaces stringed instruments make you glad;
⁹     daughters of kings are among your ladies of honor;
    at your right hand stands the queen in gold of Ophir.

¹⁰ Hear, O daughter, consider and incline your ear;
    forget your people and your father’s house,
¹¹     and the king will desire your beauty.
Since he is your lord, bow to him;
¹²     the people^[c] of Tyre will seek your favor with gifts,
    the richest of the people ¹³ with all kinds of wealth.

The princess is decked in her chamber with gold-woven robes;^[d]
14     in many-colored robes she is led to the king;
    behind her the virgins, her companions, follow.
¹⁵ With joy and gladness they are led along
    as they enter the palace of the king.

¹⁶ In the place of ancestors you, O king,^[e] shall have sons;
    you will make them princes in all the earth.
¹⁷ I will cause your name to be celebrated in all generations;
    therefore the peoples will praise you forever and ever.

MATTHEW 24:23-44

²³ Then if anyone says to you, ‘Look! Here is the Messiah!’^[a] or ‘There he is!’—do not believe it. ²⁴ For false messiahs^[b]and false prophets will appear and produce great signs and omens, to lead astray, if possible, even the elect. ²⁵ Take note, I have told you beforehand. ²⁶ So, if they say to you, ‘Look! He is in the wilderness,’ do not go out. If they say, ‘Look! He is in the inner rooms,’ do not believe it. ²⁷ For as the lightning comes from the east and flashes as far as the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. ²⁸ Wherever the corpse is, there the vultures will gather.

The Coming of the Son of Man

²⁹ “Immediately after the suffering of those days

the sun will be darkened,
    and the moon will not give its light;
the stars will fall from heaven,
    and the powers of heaven will be shaken.

³⁰ Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see ‘the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven’ with power and great glory. ³¹ And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.

The Lesson of the Fig Tree

³² “From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. ³³ So also, when you see all these things, you know that he^[c] is near, at the very gates. ³⁴ Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. ³⁵ Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

The Necessity for Watchfulness

³⁶ “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son,^[d] but only the Father. ³⁷ For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. ³⁸ For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, ³⁹ and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man. ⁴⁰ Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. ⁴¹ Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left. ⁴² Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day^[e] your Lord is coming. ⁴³ But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. ⁴⁴ Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.

CATECHISM 362-368

II. "BODY AND SOUL BUT TRULY ONE"

362 The human person, created in the image of God, is a being at once corporeal and spiritual. the biblical account expresses this reality in symbolic language when it affirms that "then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being."²²⁹ Man, whole and entire, is therefore willed by God.

363 In Sacred Scripture the term "soul" often refers to human life or the entire human person.²³⁰ But "soul" also refers to the innermost aspect of man, that which is of greatest value in him,²³¹ that by which he is most especially in God's image: "soul" signifies the spiritual principle in man.

364 The human body shares in the dignity of "the image of God": it is a human body precisely because it is animated by a spiritual soul, and it is the whole human person that is intended to become, in the body of Christ, a temple of the Spirit:²³²

Man, though made of body and soul, is a unity. Through his very bodily condition he sums up in himself the elements of the material world. Through him they are thus brought to their highest perfection and can raise their voice in praise freely given to the Creator. For this reason man may not despise his bodily life. Rather he is obliged to regard his body as good and to hold it in honour since God has created it and will raise it up on the last day ²³³

365 The unity of soul and body is so profound that one has to consider the soul to be the "form" of the body:²³⁴ i.e., it is because of its spiritual soul that the body made of matter becomes a living, human body; spirit and matter, in man, are not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature.

366 The Church teaches that every spiritual soul is created immediately by God - it is not "produced" by the parents - and also that it is immortal: it does not perish when it separates from the body at death, and it will be reunited with the body at the final Resurrection.²³⁵

367 Sometimes the soul is distinguished from the spirit: St. Paul for instance prays that God may sanctify his people "wholly", with "spirit and soul and body" kept sound and blameless at the Lord's coming.²³⁶ The Church teaches that this distinction does not introduce a duality into the soul.²³⁷ "Spirit" signifies that from creation man is ordered to a supernatural end and that his soul can gratuitously be raised beyond all it deserves to communion with God.²³⁸

368 The spiritual tradition of the Church also emphasizes the heart, in the biblical sense of the depths of one's being, where the person decides for or against God.²³⁹