Advent's extra day

 This is it! The Advent day we hardly ever see: a Friday of the Third Week of Advent that's not within the Christmas novena. And so the reading for today are just as rare, which is too bad. The first reading is God's marvelous promise through the prophet Isaiah that his house "will be a house of prayer for all peoples." Later, of course, Jesus will cite those very words when he "cleanses" that part of the Temple that was open to the Gentiles. And as God promised to join "others" to Israel who had not been part of that people, Jesus would say that he had "other sheep not of this flock" that would be joined into one flock under the one shepherd.