O Lord, mercifully receive the prayers of your
people who call upon you, and grant that they may know and understand what things they
ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to accomplish them; through
Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and
for ever. Amen.
FIRST LESSON Amos 7:7-17
This is what he showed me: the Lord was standing beside a wall
built with a plumb line, with a plumb line in his hand. And the Lord said to me,
"Amos, what do you see?" And I said, "A plumb line." Then the Lord
said, "See, I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel; I will never
again pass them by; the high places of Isaac shall be made desolate, and the sanctuaries
of Israel shall be laid waste, and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the
sword." Then Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, sent to King Jeroboam of Israel, saying,
"Amos has conspired against you in the very center of the house of Israel; the land
is not able to bear all his words. For thus Amos has said, ‘Jeroboam shall die by the
sword, and Israel must go into exile away from his land.’ " And Amaziah said to
Amos, "O seer, go, flee away to the land of Judah, earn your bread there, and
prophesy there; but never again prophesy at Bethel, for it is the king’s sanctuary,
and it is a temple of the kingdom." Then Amos answered Amaziah, "I am no
prophet, nor a prophet’s son; but I am a herdsman, and a dresser of sycamore trees,
and the Lord took me from following the flock, and the Lord said to me, ‘Go, prophesy
to my people Israel.’ Now therefore hear the word of the Lord. You say, ‘Do not
prophesy against Israel, and do not preach against the house of Isaac.’ Therefore
thus says the Lord: ‘Your wife shall become a prostitute in the city, and your sons
and your daughters shall fall by the sword, and your land shall be parceled out by line;
you yourself shall die in an unclean land, and Israel shall surely go into exile away from
its land.’ "
