Reading 1, 1 John 4:7-10
7 My dear friends, let us love one another, since love is from God and everyone who loves is a child of God and knows God.
8 Whoever fails to love does not know God, because God is love.
9 This is the revelation of God’s love for us, that God sent his only Son into the world that we might have life through him.
10 Love consists in this: it is not we who loved God, but God loved us and sent his Son to expiate our sins.
Responsorial Psalm, Psalms 72:1-2, 3-4, 7-8
1 [Of Solomon] God, endow the king with your own fair judgement, the son of the king with your own saving justice,
2 that he may rule your people with justice, and your poor with fair judgement.
3 Mountains and hills, bring peace to the people! With justice
4 he will judge the poor of the people, he will save the children of the needy and crush their oppressors.
7 In his days uprightness shall flourish, and peace in plenty till the moon is no more.
8 His empire shall stretch from sea to sea, from the river to the limits of the earth.
Gospel, Mark 6:34-44
34 So as he stepped ashore he saw a large crowd; and he took pity on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd, and he set himself to teach them at some length.
35 By now it was getting very late, and his disciples came up to him and said, ‘This is a lonely place and it is getting very late,
36 so send them away, and they can go to the farms and villages round about, to buy themselves something to eat.’
37 He replied, ‘Give them something to eat yourselves.’ They answered, ‘Are we to go and spend two hundred denarii on bread for them to eat?’
38 He asked, ‘How many loaves have you? Go and see.’ And when they had found out they said, ‘Five, and two fish.’
39 Then he ordered them to get all the people to sit down in groups on the green grass,
40 and they sat down on the ground in squares of hundreds and fifties.
41 Then he took the five loaves and the two fish, raised his eyes to heaven and said the blessing; then he broke the loaves and began handing them to his disciples to distribute among the people. He also shared out the two fish among them all.
42 They all ate as much as they wanted.
43 They collected twelve basketfuls of scraps of bread and pieces of fish.
44 Those who had eaten the loaves numbered five thousand men.
