First ReadingMalachi 3:13-20b
From the Book of Malachi
13“Your words have been harsh against me,” says the Lord.“Yet you say, ‘What have we spoken against you?’14You have said, ‘It is vain to serve God,’and ‘What profit is itthat we have followed his instructionsand that we have walked mournfully before the Lord of Armies?15Now we call the proud happy;yes, those who work wickedness are built up;yes, they tempt God, and escape.’
16Then those who feared the Lord spoke one with another;and the Lord listened and heard,and a book of memory was written before him for thosewho feared the Lord and who honored his name.17They shall be mine,”says the Lord of Armies,“my own possession in the day that I make.I will spare them,as a man spares his own son who serves him.18Then you shall returnand discern between the righteous and the wicked,between him who serves God and him who doesn’t serve him.
19“For behold, the day comes,burning like a furnace,when all the proud and allwho work wickedness will be stubble.The day that comes will burn them up,”says the Lord of Armies,“so that it will leave them neither root nor branch.20But to you who fear my name shall the sun of righteousness arise with healing in its wings.You will go out and leap like calves of the stall.