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| Moses, by Michelangelo Buonarotti Tomb of Pope Julius II |
From the Canticle of Moses (Deuteronomy 32: 10-18)
HE FOUND them in a wilderness, a wasteland of howling desert.
He shielded them and cared for them, guarding them as the apple of his eye.
11 As an eagle incites its nestlings forth, by hovering over its brood,
So he spread his wings to receive them, and bore them up on his pinions.
12 The Lord alone guided them, no strange god was with him.
13 He had them ride triumphant over the summits of the land,
and fed them the products of its fields;
He suckled them with honey from its rocks and olive oil from the hard stony ground;
14 Butter from its cows and milk from its sheep, with the fat of its lambs and rams;
its Bashan bulls and its goats, with the cream of its finest wheat;
and the foaming blood of its grapes you drank.
15 So Jacob ate his fill, the darling grew fat and frisky; you became fat and gross and gorged.
They spurned the God who made them
and scorned the Rock of their salvation.
16 With strange gods they provoked him, and angered him with abominable idols.
17 They offered sacrifice to demons, to “no-gods,” to gods whom they had not known before,
To newcomers just arrived, before whom your ancestors had never stood in awe.
18 You were unmindful of the Rock that begot you,
you forgot the God who gave you birth.
Let us pray:
HEAR O Lord, our humble prayers, and grant that may devoutly keep this feast that has been established to cure our souls and bodies, Though Christ our Lord. Amen. (Collect for Saturday after Ash Wednesday. Tr Christine Mohrmann.)
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