Daily Readings - 20/02/2026

^58:1 Shout for all you are worth, raise your voice like a trumpet. Proclaim their faults to my people, their sins to the House of Jacob.

^58:2 They seek me day after day, they long to know my ways, like a nation that wants to act with integrity and not ignore the law of its God. They ask me for laws that are just, they long for God to draw near:

^58:3 ‘Why should we fast if you never see it, why do penance if you never notice?’ Look, you do business on your fastdays, you oppress all your workmen;

^58:4 look, you quarrel and squabble when you fast and strike the poor man with your fist. Fasting like yours today will never make your voice heard on high.

^58:5 Is that the sort of fast that pleases me, a truly penitential day for men? Hanging your head like a reed, lying down on sackcloth and ashes? Is that what you call fasting, a day acceptable to Yahweh?

^58:6 Is not this the sort of fast that pleases me – it is the Lord Yahweh who speaks – to break unjust fetters and undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and break every yoke,

^58:7 to share your bread with the hungry, and shelter the homeless poor, to clothe the man you see to be naked and not turn from your own kin?

^58:8 Then will your light shine like the dawn and your wound be quickly healed over. Your integrity will go before you and the glory of Yahweh behind you.

^58:9 Cry, and Yahweh will answer; call, and he will say, ‘I am here’. If you do away with the yoke, the clenched fist, the wicked word,

^50:1 Yahweh, God of gods, speaks, he summons the earth. From east to west,

^50:2 from Zion, perfection of beauty, he shines.

^50:3 Let our God come, and be silent no more! Preceding him, a devouring fire, round him, a raging storm;

^50:4 he summons the heavens above and the earth, to his people’s trial:

^50:5 ‘Assemble my faithful before me who sealed my covenant by sacrifice!’

^50:6 Let the heavens proclaim his righteousness when God himself is judge! (Pause)

^50:8 ‘I am not finding fault with your sacrifices, those holocausts constantly before me;

^50:9 I do not claim one extra bull from your homes, nor one extra goat from your pens,

^50:10 ‘since all the forest animals are already mine, and the cattle on my mountains in their thousands;

^50:11 I know all the birds of the air, nothing moves in the field that does not belong to me.

^50:12 ‘If I were hungry, I should not tell you, since the world and all it holds is mine.

^50:13 Do I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink goats’ blood?

^50:14 ‘No, let thanksgiving be your sacrifice to God, fulfil the vows you make to the Most High;

^50:15 then you can invoke me in your troubles and I will rescue you, and you shall honour me.’

^50:16 But to the wicked man God says: ‘What business have you reciting my statutes, standing there mouthing my covenant,

^50:17 since you detest my discipline and thrust my words behind you?

^50:18 ‘You make friends with a thief as soon as you see one, you feel at home with adulterers,

^50:19 your mouth is given freely to evil and your tongue to inventing lies.

^50:20 ‘You sit there, slandering your own brother, you malign your own mother’s son.

^50:21 You do this, and expect me to say nothing?

^50:22 ‘You are leaving God out of account; take care! Or I will tear you to pieces where no one can rescue you!

^50:23 Whoever makes thanksgiving his sacrifice honours me; to the upright man I will show how God can save.’

^9:14 Then John’s[*e] disciples came to him and said, ‘Why is it that we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not?’

^9:15 Jesus replied, ‘Surely the bridegroom’s attendants would never think of mourning as long as the bridegroom is still with them? But the time will come for the bridegroom to be taken away from them, and then they will fast.