Daily Readings - 20/12/2026

^88:1 Yahweh my God, I call for help all day, I weep to you all night;

^88:2 may my prayer reach you hear my cries for help;

^88:3 for my soul is all troubled, my life is on the brink of Sheol;

^88:4 I am numbered among those who go down to the Pit, a man bereft of strength:

^88:5 a man alone, down among the dead, among the slaughtered in their graves, among those you have forgotten, those deprived of your protecting hand.

^88:6 You have plunged me to the bottom of the Pit, to its darkest, deepest place,

^88:7 weighted down by your anger, drowned beneath your waves. (pause)

^88:8 You have turned my friends against me and made me repulsive to them; in prison and unable to escape, my eyes are worn out with suffering.

^88:9 Yahweh, I invoke you all day, I stretch out my hands to you:

^88:10 are your marvels meant for the dead, can ghosts rise up to praise you?

^88:11 Who talks of your love in the grave, of your faithfulness in the place of perdition?

^88:12 Do they hear about your marvels in the dark, about your righteousness in the land of oblivion? (pause)

^88:13 But I am here, calling for your help, praying to you every morning:

^88:14 why do you reject me? Why do you hide your face from me?

^88:15 Wretched, slowly dying since my youth, I bore your terrors – now I am exhausted;

^88:16 your anger overwhelmed me, you destroyed me with your terrors

^88:17 which, like a flood, were round me, all day long, all together closing in on me.

^88:18 You have turned my friends and neighbours against me, now darkness is my one companion left.

^16:25 Glory to him who is able to give you the strength to live according to the Good News I preach, and in which I proclaim Jesus Christ, the revelation of a mystery kept secret for endless ages,

^16:26 but now so clear that it must be broadcast to pagans everywhere to bring them to the obedience of faith. This is only what scripture has predicted, and it is all part of the way the eternal God wants things to be.

^16:27 He alone is wisdom; give glory therefore to him through Jesus Christ for ever and ever. Amen.

^1:26 In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth,

^1:27 to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the House of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary.

^1:28 He went in and said to her, ‘Rejoice, so highly favoured! The Lord is with you.’

^1:29 She was deeply disturbed by these words and asked herself what this greeting could mean,

^1:30 but the angel said to her, ‘Mary, do not be afraid; you have won God’s favour.

^1:31 Listen! You are to conceive and bear a son, and you must name him Jesus.

^1:32 He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David;

^1:33 he will rule over the House of Jacob for ever and his reign will have no end.’

^1:34 Mary said to the angel, ‘But how can this come about, since I am a virgin?'[*g]

^1:35 ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you’ the angel answered ‘and the power of the Most High will cover you with its shadow. And so the child will be holy and will be called Son of God.

^1:36 Know this too: your kinswoman Elizabeth has, in her old age, herself conceived a son, and she whom people called barren is now in her sixth month,

^1:37 for nothing is impossible to God'[*h]

^1:38 ‘I am the handmaid of the Lord,’ said Mary ‘let what you have said be done to me.’ And the angel left her.