A reading from the Book of Sirach 15:15-20

If you choose you can keep the commandments, they will save you;/ if you trust in God, you too shall live;/ he has set before you fire and water;/ to whichever you choose, stretch forth your hand./ Before man are life and death, good and evil,/ whichever he chooses shall be given him./ Immense is the wisdom of the Lord;/ he is mighty in power, and all-seeing./ The eyes of God are on those who fear him;/ he understands man’s every deed./ No one does he command to act unjustly,/ to none does he give license to sin.

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A reading from the holy Gospel according to Mark 7:31-37

Jesus left the district of Tyre and went by way of Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, into the district of the Decapolis. And people brought to him a deaf man who had a speech impediment and begged him to lay his hand on him. He took him off by himself away from the crowd. He put his finger into the man’s ears and, spitting, touched his tongue; then he looked up to heaven and groaned, and said to him, “Ephphatha!” (that is, “Be opened!”) And immediately the man’s ears were opened, his speech impediment was removed, and he spoke plainly.

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A reading from the first Book of Kings 11:4-13

When Solomon was old his wives had turned his heart to strange gods, and his heart was not ­entirely with the Lord, his God, as the heart of his father David had been. By adoring Astarte, the goddess of the Sidonians, and Milcom, the idol of the Ammonites, Solomon did evil in the sight of the Lord; he did not follow him unreservedly as his father David had done. Solomon then built a high place to Chemosh, the idol of Moab, and to Molech, the idol of the Ammonites, on the hill opposite Jerusalem. He did the same for all his foreign wives who burned incense and sacrificed to their gods. The Lord, therefore, became angry with Solomon, because his heart was turned away from the Lord, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice (for though the Lord had forbidden him this very act of following strange gods, Solomon had not obeyed him).

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