October 5th : First Reading In dust and in ashes I repent. A Reading from the Book of Job 42: 1-3,5-6,12-17

 October 5th  : First Reading

In dust and in ashes I repent.

A Reading from the Book of Job 42: 1-3,5-6,12-17 

This was the answer Job gave to the Lord:

I know that you are all-powerful:

  what you conceive, you can perform.

I am the man who obscured your designs

  with my empty-headed words.

I have been holding forth on matters I cannot understand,

  on marvels beyond me and my knowledge.

I knew you then only by hearsay;

  but now, having seen you with my own eyes,

I retract all I have said,

  and in dust and ashes I repent.

The Lord blessed Job’s new fortune even more than his first one. He came to own fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen and a thousand she-donkeys. He had seven sons and three daughters; his first daughter he called ‘Turtledove’, the second ‘Cassia’ and the third ‘Mascara.’ Throughout the land there were no women as beautiful as the daughters of Job. And their father gave them inheritance rights like their brothers.

  After his trials, Job lived on until he was a hundred and forty years old, and saw his children and his children’s children up to the fourth generation. Then Job died, an old man and full of days.

The Word of the Lord.