First Reading — Joel 4:12-21
Responsorial Psalm — Psalm 97:1-2, 5-6, 11-12
Tertullian
On 96:1
For if the earth has to suffer either joy or injury, it is simply on people's account, that they may suffer the joy or the sorrow through the events that happen to their dwelling place, whereby they will rather have to pay the penalty that, simply on their account, even the earth must suffer. When, therefore, God even threatens the earth, I would prefer saying that he threatens the flesh. So likewise, when he makes a promise to the earth, I would rather understand him as promising the flesh; as in that passage of David: "The Lord is King, let the earth be glad," meaning the flesh of the saints, to which appertains the enjoyment of the kingdom of God.
On 96:3
If, however, those whom God has accepted and the believers shall attain salvation, it is necessary that those whom God has rejected and the unbelieving should incur the opposite issue, even the loss of salvation. Now here is a judgment, and those who hold it out before us belong to the Creator. Whom else than the God of retribution can I understand by the one who shall "beat his servants with stripes," either "few or many," and shall exact from them what he had committed to them? Whom is it suitable for me to obey, but him who remunerates? Your Christ proclaims, "I have come to send fire on the earth." That most lenient being, the Lord who has no hell, not long before had restrained his disciples from demanding fire on the churlish village. Whereas he burned Sodom and Gomorrah with a tempest of fire. Of him the psalmist sang, "A fire shall go out before him and burn up his enemies round about." By Hosea he uttered the threat, "I will send a fire on the cities of Judah"; and by Isaiah, "A fire has been kindled in my anger." He cannot lie. If it is not he who spoke even out of the burning bush, it can be of no importance what fire you insist on being understood.
Gospel — Luke 11:27-28
John Chrysostom
On 11:27
(Hom. 44. in Matt.) In this answer He sought not to disown His mother, but to shew that His birth would have profited her nothing, had she not been really fruitful in works and faith. But if it profited Mary nothing that Christ derived His birth from her, without the inward virtue of her heart, much less will it avail us to have a virtuous father, brother, or son, while we ourselves are strangers to virtue.