Gideon

The first reading at Mass today is one my favourites:

Then the angel of the LORD came and sat under the terebinth in Ophrah that belonged to Joash the Abiezrite. While his son Gideon was beating out wheat in the wine press to save it from the Midianites, the angel of the LORD appeared to him and said, "The LORD is with you, O champion!" "My Lord," Gideon said to him, "if the LORD is with us, why has all this happened to us? Where are his wondrous deeds of which our fathers told us when they said, 'Did not the LORD bring us up from Egypt?' For now the LORD has abandoned us and has delivered us into the power of Midian."

What I enjoy is the exchange between the angel who greets Gideon with a Dominus vobiscum (`the Lord is with you` in this context) and who gets the reply `Well if He is why are things so terrible?` It almost sounds liturgical.

For more on Gideon and the angel cf. Fr Mark at Vultus Christi with reflection on how this applies t0 Summorum Pontificum.