First Reading
Esther C:12, 14-16, 23-25
And queen Esther took refuge in the Lord, being taken as it were in the agony of death. Having taken off her glorious apparel, she put on garments of distress and mourning. Instead of grand perfumes she filled her head with ashes and dung. She greatly humbled her body, and she filled every place of her glad adorning with her tangled hair. She implored the Lord God of Israel, and said, "O my Lord, you alone are our king. Help me. I am destitute, and have no helper but you, for my danger is near at hand. I have heard from my birth in the tribe of my kindred that you, Lord, took Israel out of all the nations, and our fathers out of all their kindred for a perpetual inheritance, and have done for them all that you have said. And now we have sinned before you, and you have delivered us into the hands of our enemies, because we honored their gods. You are righteous, O Lord. But now they have not been content with the bitterness of our slavery, but have laid their hands on the hands of their idols to abolish the decree of your mouth, and utterly to destroy your inheritance, and to stop the mouth of those who praise you, and to extinguish the glory of your house and your altar, and to open the mouth of the Gentiles to speak the praises of vanities, and that a mortal king should be admired forever. O Lord, don't surrender your sceptre to those who don't exist, and don't let them laugh at our fall, but turn their counsel against themselves, and make an example of him who has begun to injure us. Remember us, O Lord! Manifest yourself in the time of our affliction. Encourage me, O King of gods, and ruler of all dominion! Put harmonious speech into my mouth before the lion, and turn his heart to hate him who fights against us, to the utter destruction of those who agree with him. But deliver us by your hand, and help me who am alone and have no one but you, O Lord.