Daily Readings - 31/12/2025

^2:18 Children, these are the last days; you were told that an Antichrist must come, and now several antichrists have already appeared; we know from this that these are the last days.

^2:19 Those rivals of Christ came out of our own number, but they had never really belonged; if they had belonged, they would have stayed with us; but they left us, to prove that not one of them ever belonged to us.

^2:20 But you have been anointed by the Holy One, and have all received the knowledge.

^2:21 It is not because you do not know the truth that I am writing to you but rather because you know it already and know that no lie can come from the truth.

^95:1 Come, let us praise Yahweh joyfully, acclaiming the Rock of our safety;

^95:2 let us come into his presence with thanksgiving, acclaiming him with music.

^95:3 For Yahweh is a great God, a greater King than all other gods;

^95:4 from depths of earth to mountain top everything comes under his rule;

^95:5 the sea belongs to him, he made it, so does the land, he shaped this too.

^95:6 Come in, let us bow, prostrate ourselves, and kneel in front of Yahweh our maker,

^95:7 for this is our God, and we are the people he pastures, the flock that he guides. If only you would listen to him today,

^95:8 ‘Do not harden your hearts as at Meribah, as you did that day at Massah in the wilderness,[*a]

^95:9 when your ancestors challenged me, tested me, although they had seen what I could do.

^95:10 ‘For forty years that generation repelled me, until I said: How unreliable these people who refuse to grasp my ways!

^95:11 And so, in anger, I swore that not one would reach the place of rest I had for them.’

^1:1 In the beginning was the Word: and the Word was with God and the Word was God.

^1:2 He was with God in the beginning.

^1:3 Through him all things came to be, not one thing had its being but through him.

^1:4 All that came to be had life in him and that life was the light of men,

^1:5 a light that shines in the dark, a light that darkness could not overpower[*a].

^1:6 A man came, sent by God. His name was John.

^1:7 He came as a witness, as a witness to speak for the light, so that everyone might believe through him.

^1:8 He was not the light, only a witness to speak for the light.

^1:9 The Word was the true light that enlightens all men; and he was coming into the world.

^1:10 He was in the world that had its being through him, and the world did not know him.

^1:11 He came to his own domain and his own people did not accept him.

^1:12 But to all who did accept him he gave power to become children of God, to all who believe in the name of him

^1:13 who was born not out of human stock or urge of the flesh or will of man but of God himself.

^1:14 The Word was made flesh, he lived among us[*b], and we saw his glory, the glory that is his as the only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth.

^1:15 John appears as his witness. He proclaims: ‘This is the one of whom I said: He who comes after me ranks before me because he existed before me’.

^1:16 Indeed, from his fulness we have, all of us, received – yes, grace in return for grace,

^1:17 since, though the Law was given through Moses, grace and truth have come through Jesus Christ.

^1:18 No one has ever seen God; it is the only Son, who is nearest to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

^4:4 but when the appointed time came, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born a subject of the Law,

^4:5 to redeem the subjects of the Law and to enable us to be adopted as sons.

^4:6 The proof that you are sons is that God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts: the Spirit that cries, ‘Abba, Father’,

^4:7 and it is this that makes you a son, you are not a slave any more; and if God has made you son, then he has made you heir.

^2:16 So they hurried away and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in the manger.

^2:17 When they saw the child they repeated what they had been told about him,

^2:18 and everyone who heard it was astonished at what the shepherds had to say.

^2:19 As for Mary, she treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart.

^2:20 And the shepherds went back glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen; it was exactly as they had been told.

^2:21 When the eighth day came and the child was to be circumcised, they gave him the name Jesus, the name the angel had given him before his conception.