May 24th, 2006, Pentecost Sunday, extended vigil.

A reading from the book of Genesis.

The whole world spoke the same language using the same words.

While the people were migrating in the east,

they came upon a valley in the land of Sheinar and settled there.

They said to one another, come let us mold bricks and harden them with fire.

They used bricks for stone and bitumen for mortar.

Then they said, come, let us build ourselves a city

and a tower with its top in the sky,

and so make a name for ourselves,

otherwise we shall be scattered all over the earth.

The Lord came down to see the city and the tower

that the people had built.

Then the Lord said,

If now, while they are one people, all speaking the same language, they have started to do this.

Nothing will later stop them from doing whatever they presume to do.

Let us then go down and confuse their language so that one will not understand what

another says. Thus the Lord scattered them from there all over the earth, and they stopped building the city.

That is why it was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the speech of all the world.

It was from that place that he scattered them all over the earth.

The Word of the Lord

Responsorial Psalm.

...