April 3, 2025.

Thursday of the fourth week of Lent.

A reading from the Book of Exodus.

The Lord said to Moses,

Go down at once to your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt,

for they have become depraved.

They have soon turned aside from the way I pointed out to them, making for themselves a

molten calf and worshipping it, sacrificing to it and crying out, this is your God,

O Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt.

The Lord said to Moses, I see how stiff-neck this people is.

Let me alone, then, that my wrath may blaze up against them to consume them. Then I will make of you

a great nation. But Moses implored the Lord, his God, saying, why, O Lord, should your wrath blaze up against your own people,

whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with such great power and with so strong a hand?

Why should the Egyptians say, with evil intent, he brought them out,

that he might kill them in the mountains, and

exterminate them from the face of the earth. Let your blazing wrath die down. Relent in punishing

your people. Remember your servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, and how you swore to them by your own self, saying,

I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky, and all this land that I promised,

I will give your descendants as their perpetual heritage. So the Lord relented in the punishment he had threatened

to inflict on his people.

The word of the Lord.

The response is,

...