October 26, 2003, Thursday of the 29th week in ordinary time.

A reading from the letter of St. Paul to the Romans.

Brothers and sisters, I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your nature.

For just as you presented the parts of your bodies as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness

for lawlessness, so now present them as slaves to righteousness for sanctification. For when

you were slaves of sin, you were free from righteousness. But what profit did you get then, from

the things of which you are now ashamed?

For the end of those things is death.

But now you have been freed from sin and have become slaves of God.

The benefit that you have leads to sanctification, and its end is eternal life.

For the wages of sin is death.

But the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus,

our Lord. The word of the Lord. The responsorial Psalm. The response is, blessed are they who hope in the

Lord. Blessed the man who follows not the counsel of the wicket, nor walks in the way of sinners,

nor sits in the company of the insolent, but delights in the law of the Lord and meditates

on his law day and night.

Blessed are they who hope in the Lord. He is like a tree planted near running water

that yields its fruit in due season and whose leaves never fade. Whatever he does,

prosperes. Blessed are they who hope in the Lord. Not so the wicked, not so.

They are like chaff which the wind drives away.

For the Lord watches over the way of the just, but the way of the wicked vanishes.

Blessed are they who hope in the Lord.

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