Friday, 29 February, 2008
FRIDAY OF THE THIRD WEEK OF LENT (III)
(Day of fast and abstinence.)



Collect: We beseech Thee, O Lord, bless our fasts with Thy gracious favour: that as in body we abstain from food, so we may fast from sin in our mind. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Who livest and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, world without end.
Lesson: From the Book of Numbers, 20:1-3; 6-13.
[During the forty years passed in the desert, Moses and Aaron asked God to bring forth from the rock (a figure of Jesus Christ) a spring of living water, so that all the people could quench their thirst.]
Gospel: Continuation of the holy Gospel according to St. John, 4:5-42.
[During these forty days of Lent the Church entreats our Lord Jesus Christ to give us the living water about which He spoke to the woman of Samaria near Jacob’s well, the water which quenches the thirst or our souls for ever.]

Remarks are abstracted from The Daily Missal and Liturgical Manual, from Editio Typica of the Roman Missal and Breviary, 1962
(Baronius Press Limited, London, 2004, in conjunction with the Fraternal Society of St. Peter, www.baroniuspress.com)