How wonderful it is to belong to the family of God, our Heavenly Father, for we are all brothers and sisters here on Earth and united with all the saints and angels in Heaven. We are one in Holy Communion.
And like the apostles who are sent in this Gospel, we likewise are sent to share the Good news and the joy of the Gospel with everyone we meet, so that those who come to believe in Jesus Christ, our Lord, will enter into the same family that we belong to. All are welcome. Amen.
Saints Simon and Jude, Apostles – pray for us…
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First reading
Ephesians 2:19-22 ·
In Christ you are no longer aliens, but citizens like us
You are no longer aliens or foreign visitors: you are citizens like all the saints, and part of God’s household. You are part of a building that has the apostles and prophets for its foundations, and Christ Jesus himself for its main cornerstone. As every structure is aligned on him, all grow into one holy temple in the Lord; and you too, in him, are being built into a house where God lives, in the Spirit.
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Gospel
Luke 6:12-19
Jesus chooses his twelve apostles
Jesus went out into the hills to pray; and he spent the whole night in prayer to God. When day came he summoned his disciples and picked out twelve of them; he called them ‘apostles’: Simon whom he called Peter, and his brother Andrew; James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James son of Alphaeus, Simon called the Zealot, Judas son of James, and Judas Iscariot who became a traitor.
He then came down with them and stopped at a piece of level ground where there was a large gathering of his disciples with a great crowd of people from all parts of Judaea and from Jerusalem and from the coastal region of Tyre and Sidon who had come to hear him and to be cured of their diseases. People tormented by unclean spirits were also cured, and everyone in the crowd was trying to touch him because power came out of him that cured them all.
