Reading I
Bar 4:5-12, 27-29
Be of good comfort, O people of God, the memorial of Israel:
You have been sold to the Gentiles, not for your destruction: but because you provoked God to wrath, you are delivered to your adversaries.
For you have provoked him who made you, the eternal God, offering sacrifice to devils, and not to God.
For you have forgotten God, who brought you up, and you have grieved Jerusalem that nursed you.
For she saw the wrath of God coming upon you, and she said: Give ear, all you that dwell near Sion, for God hath brought upon me great mourning:
For I have seen the captivity of my people, of my sons, and my daughters, which the Eternal hath brought upon them.
For I nourished them with joy: but I sent them away with weeping and mourning.
Let no man rejoice over me, a widow, and desolate: I am forsaken of many for the sins of my children, because they departed from the law of God.
Be of good comfort, my children, and cry to the Lord: for you shall be remembered by him that hath led you away.
For as it was your mind to go astray from God; so when you return again you shall seek him ten times as much.
For he that hath brought evils upon you, shall bring you everlasting joy again with your salvation.
