Suggested Readings for the Celebration of the Sacrament of Reconciliation for the First Time Possible Readings from The Catholic Children’s Bible (referenced in Grow in Love) FIRST READING A Reading from the prophet Isaiah A Reading from the First Letter of St Paul to Isaiah 43:1-3 the Corinthians 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 Israel, the Lord who created you says, ‘Do not be afraid – I will save you. Love is patient and kind; it is not jealous or I have called you by name – you are mine. conceited or proud; love is not ill-mannered or selfish or irritable; love does not keep a record of When you pass through deep waters, I will be wrongs; love is not happy with evil, but is happy with you; with the truth. Love never gives up; and its faith, your troubles will not overwhelm you. hope, and patience never fail. When you pass through fire, you will not be burned; The Word of the Lord. the hard trials that come will not hurt you. For I am the Lord your God, the holy God of Israel, who saves you. The Word of the Lord. A Reading from the First Letter of John 1 John 4:7-8, 11-12 Dear friends, let us love one another, because love comes from God. Whoever loves is a child of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. Dear friends, if this is how God loved us, then we should love one another. No one has ever seen God, but if we love one another, God lives in union with us, and his love is made perfect in us. The Word of the Lord. Grow in Love | Liturgy Preparation Sheet | The Rite of Penance 1 GOSPEL READING John 13:34-35 Jesus went on into Jericho and was passing through. There was a chief tax collector there [Jesus said] ‘And now I give you a new named Zacchaeus, who was rich. He was trying commandment: love one another. As I have loved to see who Jesus was, but he was a little man and you, so you must love one another. If you have love could not see Jesus because of the crowd. So he for one another, then everyone will know that you ran ahead of the crowd and climbed up a sycamore are my disciples.’ tree to see Jesus, who was going to pass that way. When Jesus came to that place, he looked up Matthew 18:12-14 and said to Zacchaeus, ‘Hurry down, Zacchaeus, because I must stay in your house today.’ [Jesus said] ‘What do you think a man does who Zacchaeus hurried down and welcomed him has one hundred sheep and one of them gets lost? with great joy. All the people who saw it started He will leave the other ninety-nine grazing on the grumbling, ‘This man has gone as a guest to the hillside and go and look after the lost sheep. When house of a sinner!’ he finds it, I tell you, he feels far happier over At dinner, Zacchaeus stood up and said to Jesus, this one sheep than over the ninety-nine that did ‘Listen, sir! I will give half my belongings to the not get lost. In just the same way your Father in poor, and if I have cheated anyone, I will pay back heaven does not want any of these little ones to be four times as much.’ lost. Luke 19:1-9 Grow in Love | Liturgy Preparation Sheet | The Rite of Penance 2 Readings from the Catholic Lectionary The Rite of Penance The Rite of Penance includes a celebration of the Word. As this does not take place during Mass, the order of readings need not be as in the Liturgy of the Word at Mass. If there are several readings, a psalm or other appropriate song or a period of silence should intervene between them. If there is only one reading, it is preferable that it be from a Gospel. The following readings are proposed as a help for priests and others involved in the selection of readings. For diversity, and according to the pastoral needs of the group that is celebrating, other readings may be selected. Suggestions for presentation of the Word during the Rite of Penance will be found in the celebrant’s edition of the Rite. OLD TESTAMENT READING 1 ‘Be accursed beyond all cattle, all wild beasts. A reading from the book of Genesis You shall crawl on your belly and eat dust 3:1·19 every day of your life. She took some of its fruit and ate it. I will make you enemies of each other: you and the woman, The serpent was the most subtle of all the wild your offspring and her offspring. beasts that the Lord God had made. It asked the It will crush your head woman, ‘Did God really say you were not to eat and you will strike its heel.’ from any of the trees in the garden?’ The woman answered the serpent, ‘We may eat the fruit of To the woman he said: the trees in the garden. But of the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden God said, “You must ‘I will multiply your pains in childbearing, not eat it, nor touch it, under pain of death”.’ Then you shall give birth to your children in pain. the serpent said to the woman, ‘No! You will not Your yearning shall be for your husband die! God knows in fact that on the day you eat it yet he will lord it over you.’ your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil.’ The woman saw that the To the man he said, ‘Because you listened to the tree was good to eat and pleasing to the eye, and voice of your wife and ate from the tree of which I that it was desirable for the knowledge that it had forbidden you to eat, could give. So she took some of its fruit and ate it. She gave some also to her husband who was with ‘Accursed be the soil because of you. her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them With suffering shall you get your food from it were opened and they realised that they were every day of your life. naked. So they sewed fig-leaves together to make It shall yield you brambles and thistles themselves loin-cloths. and you shall eat wild plants. The man and his wife heard the sound of the With sweat on your brow Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the shall you eat your bread day, and they hid from the Lord God among the until you return to the soil trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to as you were taken from it. the man. ‘Where are you?’ he asked. ‘I heard the For dust you are, sound of you in the garden,’ he replied ‘I was afraid and to dust you shall return.’ because I was naked, so I hid.’ ‘Who told you that you were naked?’ he asked. ‘Have you been eating This is the word of the Lord. of the tree I forbade you to eat?’ The man replied, ‘It was the woman you put with me; she gave me the fruit, and I ate it’. Then the Lord God asked the woman, ‘What is this you have done?’ The woman replied, ‘The serpent tempted me and I ate.’ Then the Lord God said to the serpent, ‘Because you have done this, Grow in Love | Liturgy Preparation Sheet | The Rite of Penance 3 2 and his household after him to maintain the way of the Lord by just and upright living. In this way A reading from the book of Genesis the Lord will carry out for Abraham what he has 4:1·15 promised him.’ Then the Lord said, ‘How great an Cain set on his brother Abel and killed him. outcry there is against Sodom and Gomorrah! How grievous is their sin! I propose to go down and. See The man had intercourse with his wife Eve, and she whether or not they have done all that is alleged in conceived and gave birth to Cain. ‘I have acquired the outcry against them that has come up to me. I a man with the help of the Lord’ she said. She gave am determined to know.’ birth to a second child, Abel, the brother of Cain. The men left there and went to Sodom while Now Abel became a shepherd and kept flocks while Abraham remained standing before the Lord. Cain tilled the soil. Time passed and Cain brought Approaching him he said, ‘Are you really going some of the produce of the soil as an offering for to destroy the just man with the sinner? Perhaps the Lord, while Abel for his part brought the first- there are fifty just men in the town. Will you really born of his flock and some of their fat as well. The overwhelm them, will you not spare the place for Lord looked with favour on Abel and his offering. the fifty just men in it? Do not think of doing such a But he did not look with favour on Cain and his thing: to kill the just man with the sinner, treating offering and Cain was very angry and downcast.