for that part of the Church
which through your servant Patrick you planted in Ireland,
that it may hold fast the faith entrusted to the saints
and in the end bear much fruit to eternal life;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
18 March
Cyril of Jerusalem
Bishop of Jerusalem, Teacher of the Faith
England, Scotland: Commemoration – Wales: V
If celebrated otherwise, Common of Teachers
Born in about the year 315, probably in Caesarea, Cyril became Bishop of Jerusalem when he was about thirty-four years old. There he nurtured both the resident Christian population and the many pilgrims, following the end of the era of persecution, who were beginning to make their way from all over Christendom to the places associated with Christ. Cyril taught the faith in line with the orthodoxy of the Council of Nicæa and the credal statement that became associated with it. Though he found difficulty with the word in that creed which described Jesus as being ‘of one substance with the Father’, nevertheless he took the side of the Nicene Party against the Arians, who denied the divinity of Christ. His teaching through his Catechetical Lectures, intended for those preparing for baptism, show him to be a man profoundly orthodox and sound, and his liturgical innovations to celebrate the observance of Holy Week and Easter are the foundation of Christian practices to this day. He died in the year 386.
Collect (Wales)
Almighty God,
who inspired your bishop Cyril
to lead many to the font of baptism,
there to die in Christ and to be born anew in him:
grant to all who are to be baptized [at Easter]
grace to turn from evil
and boldly to profess their faith in Jesus Christ,
your Son, our Lord,
whom by the power of the Spirit
you raised to live with you,
his God and Father,
for ever and ever.
19 March
Joseph of Nazareth
White
England, Ireland: Festival – Scotland: IV – Wales: IV
In the gospel of Matthew, Joseph is depicted as a good man, a working carpenter, who trusted in God. He received God’s messenger who shared with him God’s will for him and for Mary, to whom he was engaged to be married. Luke’s gospel describes how Joseph took the new-born child as if he were his own. He was with Mary when, on the fortieth day after the birth, Jesus was presented in the Temple, ‘where every first-born male is designated as holy to the Lord’. The adoption of Jesus by Joseph also established Jesus in the descent of David, to accord with the prophecy that Israel’s deliverer would be of the House and lineage of David.
Collect
God our Father,
who from the family of your servant David
raised up Joseph the carpenter
to be the guardian of your incarnate Son
and husband of the Blessed Virgin Mary:
give us grace to follow him
in faithful obedience to your commands;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
A reading from the Second Book of Samuel
The word of the Lord came to Nathan: Go and tell my servant David: Thus says the Lord: Are you the one to build me a house to live in? I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle. Wherever I have moved about among all the people of Israel, did I ever speak a word with any of the tribal leaders of Israel, whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, saying, ‘Why have you not built me a house of cedar?’ Now therefore thus you shall say to my servant David: Thus says the Lord of hosts: I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep to be prince over my people Israel; and I have been with you wherever you went, and have cut off all your enemies from before you; and I will make for you a great name, like the name of the great ones of the earth. And I will appoint a place for my people Israel and will plant them, so that they may live in their own place, and be disturbed no more; and evildoers shall afflict them no more, as formerly, from the time that I appointed judges over my people Israel; and I will give you rest from all your enemies.
Moreover the Lord declares to you that the Lord will make you a house. When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom for ever. I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me. When he commits iniquity, I will punish him with a rod such as mortals use, with blows inflicted by human beings. But I will not take my steadfast love from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I put away from before you. Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me; your throne shall be established for ever.
This is the word of the Lord.
2 Samuel 7.4–16
Responsorial Psalm
R: I will be a father to him,
[and he shall be a son to me].
The Lord said: I will make him my firstborn,
the most high above the kings of the earth.
The love I have pledged to him will I keep for ever,
and my covenant will stand fast with him. R
My covenant will I not break
nor alter what has gone out of my lips.
Once for all have I sworn by my holiness
that I will not prove false to David. R
His seed shall endure for ever
and his throne as the sun before me;
It shall stand fast for ever as the moon,
the enduring witness in the heavens. R
From Psalm 89
A reading from the Letter of Paul to the Romans.
The promise that Abraham would inherit the world did not come to him or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith. If it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. For the law brings wrath; but where there is no law, neither is there violation.
For this reason it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham (for he is the father of all of us, as it is written, ‘I have made you the father of many nations’) – in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. Hoping against hope, he believed that he would become ‘the father of many nations,’ according to what was said, ‘So numerous shall your descendants be.’
This is the word of the Lord.
Romans 4.13–18
Hear the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Matthew.
The birth of Jesus the Messiah took place