SAINTS PERPETUA AND FELICITY

MARCH 7

538 SAINTS PERPETUA AND FELICITY, MARTYRS MEMORIAL

From the Common of Martyrs, p. 1794, OR

CCC Cross Reference:
Rom 8:31 2852; Rom 8:32 603, 706, 2572; Rom 8:34 1373, 2634
Ps 124:8 287
Mt 10:37 2232; Mt 10:38 1506

FIRST READING

Romans 8:31b-39

Brothers and sisters:
If God is for us, who can be against us?
He who did not spare his own Son
but handed him over for us all,
how will he not also give us everything else along with him?
Who will bring a charge against God's chosen ones?
It is God who acquits us.
Who will condemn?
It is Christ Jesus who died, rather, was raised,
who also is at the right hand of God,
who indeed intercedes for us.
What will separate us from the love of Christ?
Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine,
or nakedness, or peril, or the sword?
As it is written:

For your sake we are being slain all the day;
we are looked upon as sheep to be slaughtered.

No, in all these things we conquer overwhelmingly
through him who loved us.
For I am convinced that neither death, nor life,
nor angels, nor principalities,
nor present things, nor future things,
nor powers, nor height, nor depth,
nor any other creature will be able to separate us
from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

RESPONSORIAL PSALM
Psalm 124:2-3, 4-5, 7-8

R. (7) Our soul has escaped like a bird from the fowler's snare.
Had not the LORD been with us -
when men rose up against us,
Then would they have swallowed us alive,
when their fury was inflamed against us.
R. Our soul has escaped like a bird from the fowler's snare.
Then would the waters have overwhelmed us;
The torrent would have swept over us;
over us then would have swept
the raging waters.
R. Our soul has escaped like a bird from the fowler's snare.
Broken was the snare,
and we were freed.
Our help is in the name of the LORD,
who made heaven and earth.
R. Our soul has escaped like a bird from the fowler's snare.

GOSPEL
Matthew 10:34-39

Jesus said to his Apostles:
"Do not think that I have come to bring peace upon the earth.
I have come to bring not peace but the sword.
For I have come to set
a man 'against his father,
a daughter against her mother,
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;
and one's enemies will be those of his household.'
"Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me,
and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me;
and whoever does not take up his cross
and follow after me is not worthy of me.
Whoever finds his life will lose it,
and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it."

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