Friday of the Fifteenth week in Ordinary Time

In those days was Hezekiah sick and near death. Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz, came to him, and said to him, “the Lord says, ‘Set your house in order, for you will die, and not live.’” Then Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord, and said, “Remember now, the Lord, I beg you, how I have walked before you in truth and with a perfect heart, and have done that which is good in your sight.” Hezekiah wept bitterly. Then the Lord’s word came to Isaiah, saying, “Go, and tell Hezekiah, ‘the Lord, the God of David your father, says, “I have heard your prayer. I have seen your tears. Behold, I will add fifteen years to your life. I will deliver you and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria, and I will defend this city. Now Isaiah had said, “Let them take a cake of figs, and lay it for a poultice on the boil, and he shall recover.” Hezekiah also had said, “What is the sign that I will go up to the Lord’s house?” This shall be the sign to you from the Lord, that the Lord will do this thing that he has spoken. Behold, I will cause the shadow on the sundial, which has gone down on the sundial of Ahaz with the sun, to return backward ten steps. So the sun returned ten steps on the sundial on which it had gone down.”’”

I said, “In the middle of my life I go into the gates of Sheol. I am deprived of the residue of my years.” I said, “I won’t see the Lord, the Lord in the land of the living. I will see man no more with the inhabitants of the world. My dwelling is removed, and is carried away from me like a shepherd’s tent. I have rolled up, like a weaver, my life. He will cut me off from the loom. From day even to night you will make an end of me. Lord, men live by these things; and my spirit finds life in all of them: you restore me, and cause me to live.

At that time, Jesus went on the Sabbath day through the grain fields. His disciples were hungry and began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. But the Pharisees, when they saw it, said to him, “Behold, your disciples do what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath.” But he said to them, “Haven’t you read what David did, when he was hungry, and those who were with him; how he entered into God’s house, and ate the show bread, which was not lawful for him to eat, neither for those who were with him, but only for the priests? Or have you not read in the law, that on the Sabbath day, the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath, and are guiltless? But I tell you that one greater than the temple is here. But if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you wouldn’t have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”