JULY 28,2018 : SATURDAY OF THE SIXTEENTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME

Saturday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Lectionary: 400

Reading 1JER 7:1-11

The following message came to Jeremiah from the LORD:
Stand at the gate of the house of the LORD,
and there proclaim this message:
Hear the word of the LORD, all you of Judah
who enter these gates to worship the LORD!
Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel:
Reform your ways and your deeds,
so that I may remain with you in this place.
Put not your trust in the deceitful words:
"This is the temple of the LORD!
The temple of the LORD! The temple of the LORD!"
Only if you thoroughly reform your ways and your deeds;
if each of you deals justly with his neighbor;
if you no longer oppress the resident alien,
the orphan, and the widow;
if you no longer shed innocent blood in this place,
or follow strange gods to your own harm,
will I remain with you in this place,
in the land I gave your fathers long ago and forever.

But here you are, putting your trust in deceitful words to your own loss!
Are you to steal and murder, commit adultery and perjury,
burn incense to Baal,
go after strange gods that you know not,
and yet come to stand before me
in this house which bears my name, and say:
"We are safe; we can commit all these abominations again"?
Has this house which bears my name
become in your eyes a den of thieves?
I too see what is being done, says the LORD.

Responsorial PsalmPS 84:3, 4, 5-6A AND 8A, 11

R. (2) How lovely is your dwelling place, Lord, mighty God!
My soul yearns and pines 
for the courts of the LORD.
My heart and my flesh
cry out for the living God.
R. How lovely is your dwelling place, Lord, mighty God!
Even the sparrow finds a home,
and the swallow a nest
in which she puts her young—
Your altars, O LORD of hosts,
my king and my God!
R. How lovely is your dwelling place, Lord, mighty God!
Blessed they who dwell in your house!
continually they praise you.
Blessed the men whose strength you are!
They go from strength to strength.
R. How lovely is your dwelling place, Lord, mighty God!
I had rather one day in your courts
than a thousand elsewhere;
I had rather lie at the threshold of the house of my God
than dwell in the tents of the wicked.
R. How lovely is your dwelling place, Lord, mighty God!

AlleluiaJAS 1:21BC

R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Humbly welcome the word that has been planted in you
and is able to save your souls.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.

GospelMT 13:24-30

Jesus proposed a parable to the crowds.
"The Kingdom of heaven may be likened to a man
who sowed good seed in his field.
While everyone was asleep his enemy came
and sowed weeds all through the wheat, and then went off.
When the crop grew and bore fruit, the weeds appeared as well.
The slaves of the householder came to him and said,
'Master, did you not sow good seed in your field?
Where have the weeds come from?'
He answered, 'An enemy has done this.'
His slaves said to him, 'Do you want us to go and pull them up?'
He replied, 'No, if you pull up the weeds
you might uproot the wheat along with them.
Let them grow together until harvest;
then at harvest time I will say to the harvesters,
"First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles for burning;
but gather the wheat into my barn."'"

www.usccb.org

Meditation: Guarding the good seed of God's word in our heart

What can malicious weed-sowing tell us about the kingdom of God? The image Jesus uses here is a common everyday example of planting, harvesting, and sorting the good fruit from the bad. Weeds can spoil and even kill a good harvest if they are not separated and destroyed at the proper time. Uprooting them too early, though, can destroy the good plants in the process.

Guard God's implanted word in your heart
Just as nature teaches us patience, so God's patience also teaches us to guard the word which he has planted in our hearts and to beware of the destructive force of sin and deception which can destroy it. God's word brings life, but Satan, the father of lies, seeks to destroy the good seed which God plants in the hearts of those who listen to his word.

God's judgment is not hasty, but it does come. And in the end, God will reward each person according to what he or she has sown and reaped in this life. In that day God will separate the evil from the good. Do you allow God's word to take deep root in your heart?

"Lord Jesus, may your word take deep root in my heart and may I bear good fruit for your glory. May I hunger for your righteousness now that I may also look forward to the day of judgment with joy rather than with dismay."

Daily Quote from the early church fathers: The Lord sows good seeds in our heart, by Chromatius (died 406 AD)

"The Lord clearly points out that he is the sower of good seeds. He does not cease to sow in this world as in a field. God’s word is like good seed in the hearts of people, so that each of us according to the seeds sown in us by God may bear spiritual and heavenly fruit." (excerpt from TRACTATE ON MATTHEW 51.1)

[Note: Chromatius was an early Christian scholar and bishop of Aquileia, Italy. He was a close friend of John Chrysostom and Jerome. He died in 406 AD. Jerome
described him as a "most learned and most holy man."]

www.dailyscripture.net

SATURDAY, JULY 28, MATTHEW 13:24-30
Weekday
​(Jeremiah 7:1-11; Psalm: Jeremiah 31:84)

KEY VERSE: "Let them grow together until harvest" (v. 30).
TO KNOW: The parable of the weeds among the wheat is a story of good and evil, which will exist together until the end of the world. The image in this parable would be familiar to the farmers in Jesus' audience. At times, an underhanded man deliberately sowed bad seed in someone else's field. The weed in the story was darnel, a poisonous plant that looked very much like wheat when it was young. So it is with evil; it is difficult to detect in its early stages until it grows strong and destroys what is good. But to pull up the weeds before the wheat matured would endanger its immature roots. When the wheat ripened it grew taller and stronger than the weeds. Then the experienced eye could distinguish the two and easily separate them. Jesus said that it was not the work of God's servants to make this judgment. Both the weeds and the wheat should be allowed to flourish until the harvest when God would separate error from truth.
TO LOVE: Do I tend to be judgmental toward others?
TO SERVE: Lord Jesus, help me to refrain from judging the actions of others until I know the truth.
​

OPTIONAL MEMORIAL OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY

Chapter V of the Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy, issued by the Holy See in December 2001, describes the Church's traditional dedication of Saturday to the Virgin Mary. "Saturdays stand out among those days dedicated to the Virgin Mary. These are designated as memorials of the Blessed Virgin Mary" (218). The chapter also describes the importance of Mary, the Mother of Jesus, in Catholic devotional life, in the Liturgy, and reflections on popular devotions to Mary, her feast days, and the Rosary. ​

www.togetherwithgodsword.com

Saturday 28 July 2018

Jeremiah 7:1-11. Psalm 83(84):3-6, 8, 11. Matthew 13:24-30.

How lovely is your dwelling-place, Lord, mighty God!—Psalm 83(84):3-6, 8, 11.

‘Listen to the word of the Lord.’

In our own gardens we pull out the weeds. But the wisdom of Jesus is not our wisdom. He knows full well there is light and shadow in our souls and our hearts are a divided kingdom.

To help build God’s kingdom we are called to encourage the good in our lives, to nourish virtue in the hope it will outgrow evil and in time overshadow it. Jesus is patient, so let us be patient also and trust him to help us.

If we turn to him and heed all he shows us in prayer, then perhaps the harvest will be good and the weeds of little account.

www.pray.com.au

Blessed Stanley Rother

Saint of the Day for July 28

(March 27, 1935 – July 28, 1981)

 

Blessed Stanley Rother | CNS photo/Charlene Scott

Blessed Stanley Rother’s Story

On May 25, 1963, Stanley Rother, a farmer from Okarche, Oklahoma, was ordained for his home diocese of Oklahoma City-Tulsa. Having flunked out of the area seminary due to his difficulty with Latin, Fr. Rother finally accepted an invitation to attend Mount St. Mary Seminary in Maryland, where he finished his studies and was approved for ordination.

After serving in his local diocese for five years, Fr. Rother joined five priests, three religious sisters, and three laypersons to staff a Guatemalan mission in Santiago Atitlán serving the Tz’utujil people. The Oklahoma City diocese heard the call of Pope John XXIII to send missionaries to foreign lands, especially Central America. These twelve individuals felt the call, and with their bishop’s approval, left the comforts of the United States to live and work in Guatemala.

By 1975, Fr. Rother was alone at his parish in Santiago Atitlán, the others having returned home for various reasons. He served the Tz’utujil people for 13 years and won their hearts and souls. Ever the farmer, and always unpretentious and mild mannered, Fr. Rother experimented with various crops as well as fulfilling his heavy pastoral duties which included as many as five Masses in four different locations on a given Sunday and as many as 1,000 baptisms a year.

Guatemala’s civil war reached the highlands and Lake Atitlán by 1980. Government troops camped on the parish farm and Fr. Rother witnessed the assassination of a number of his parishioners, including the parish deacon.

Warned of imminent danger, Fr. Rother returned to the United States for three months early in 1981, to visit with his family and friends. Against the advice of his family and the local bishop, Fr. Rother returned to Atitlán to be with his people. He remembered a Sisters’ community who had fled the country and later tried to return but the people asked, “Where were you when we needed you?”

On the evening of July 28, three masked men entered the rectory and shot Fr. Rother to death. His beloved parishioners mourned him repeatedly crying, “They have killed our priest.”

Pope Francis declared Stanley Rother a martyr on December 2, 2016. He was beatified in Oklahoma City on September 23, 2017.

---

Reflection

The declaration of a blessed or saint is always a celebration of the Church as the people of God. To single out an individual for his or her holiness and service builds up the entire community of faith. But this is doubly true for the Church in the United States and in Oklahoma, as one of our own is both declared a martyr for the faith and enrolled in the ranks of those declared Blessed by the Church. May the dedication, faith, and service of Blessed Stanley Rother be a source of strength for all in this country.

www.franciscanmedia.org

LECTIO: MATTHEW 13:24-30

Lectio Divina: 

 Saturday, July 28, 2018

Ordinary Time

1) OPENING PRAYER

Lord,
be merciful to Your people.
Fill us with Your gifts
and make us always eager to serve You
in faith, hope and love.
You live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

2) GOSPEL READING - MATTHEW 13:24-30

Jesus proposed a parable to the crowds. "The Kingdom of heaven may be likened to a man who sowed good seed in his field. While everyone was asleep his enemy came and sowed weeds all through the wheat, and then went off. When the crop grew and bore fruit, the weeds appeared as well. The slaves of the householder came to him and said, 'Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where have the weeds come from?' He answered, 'An enemy has done this.' His slaves said to him, 'Do you want us to go and pull them up?' He replied, 'No, if you pull up the weeds you might uproot the wheat along with them. Let them grow together until harvest; then at harvest time I will say to the harvesters, "First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles for burning; but gather the wheat into my barn."'"

3) REFLECTION

• Today’s Gospel speaks to us about the parable of the seed. Whether in society or in the community or in our family and personal life, there is a mixture of good qualities as well as inconsistencies, limitations and errors. People of various origins, each one with her own story, with her own lived experience, her own opinion, her own yearnings, her own differences, meet in community.  Some people do not know how to live with differences. They want to be the judges of others. They think that they are the only ones who are right, and that others are in error. The parable of the seed and the darnel helps us not to fall into the temptation to exclude from the community those who do not think like us.

•The background of the parable of the seed and the darnel. For centuries, because of the observance of the laws of purity, the Jews lived separated from other nations. This isolation had marked them. Even after being converted, some continued to follow this observance which separated them from others. They wanted total purity! Any sign of impurity had to be eradicated in the name of God. “Sin cannot be tolerated,” some would say. But others, for example Paul, taught that the new law which Jesus asked them to observe said the contrary! “Sin cannot be tolerated, but it is necessary to be tolerant with the sinner!”

• Matthews 13:24-26: The situation: the darnel and the wheat grain grow together. The Word of God causes communities to be formed and this is good seed, but within the communities there are always things which are contrary to the Word of God. From where do these come? This was the discussion or mystery which led to keeping the parable of the darnel and the wheat.

• Matthew 13:27-28a: The origin of the mixture which exists in life. The laborers asked the owner, the sower: “Sir, was it not good seed that you sowed in your field? If so, where does the darnel come from?” The owner responded, “Some enemy has done this.” Who is this enemy? The enemy, the adversary, Satan or the Devil (Mt 13:39) is the one who divides, who distracts from the right path. The tendency to division exists in the community and in each one of us. The desire to dominate, to take advantage of the community in order to be more important, and so many other interested desires divide. They are the enemy which sleeps in each one of us.

• Matthew 13:28b-30: The different reaction in the face of ambiguity. Faced with this mixture of good and of evil, the laborers want to eliminate the darnel. They thought, "If we leave everything in the community, we lose our reason for being! We lose our identity!” They wanted to send away those who they thought were different. But this is not the decision of the owner of the land. He says, “Let both the darnel and the wheat grow together till the harvest!” What is decisive is not what each one says, but what each one lives and does. God will judge us according to the fruit which we  produce (Mt 12:33). The force and the dynamism of the Kingdom will manifest themselves in the community. Even if it is small and full of contradictions, it is a sign of the Kingdom. But it is not the master or the owner of the Kingdom, neither can it consider itself totally just. The parable of the seed and of the darnel explains the way in which the force of the Kingdom acts in history. One must make a clear option for the justice of the Kingdom, and at the same time, fight together for justice, have patience and learn to live and to dialogue with differences and with contradictions. When harvest comes then there will be the division, the separation.

• Teaching in Parables. The parable is a pedagogical tool which uses daily life to indicate that life speaks to us of God. It becomes a reality and renders the people’s perspective contemplative. A parable deals with the things of life, and because of this it is an open teaching, because we all have some experience of things of life. The teaching in parables makes the person start from the experience that she has: seed, light, sheep, flowers, birds, father, net, little children, fish, etc. In this way daily life becomes transparent, revealing the presence and the action of God. Jesus did not usually explain the parables. He left the meaning open. He did not determine it. This was a sign that he believed in the capacity of the people to discover the meaning of the parable, beginning with their experience of life. Sometimes, at the request of the disciples, He would explain the meaning (Mt 13:10, 36). This is what He did with the parable of the seed and the darnel (Mt 13:36-43).

4) PERSONAL QUESTIONS

• How is the mixture of seed and darnel manifested in our community? What are the consequences of this for our life?

• Looking into the mirror of the parable, with whom do I feel more in agreement: with the laborers who want to cut away the darnel, or with the owner of the field who orders them to wait until the time of the harvest?

• This parable adequately describes both good and evil co-existing, and the darnel may impact the wheat exteriorly, but the wheat cannot become darnel. As humans, we can take on the habits and attributes of those around us, thereby losing our beginning character and taking on another. In many ways this is growth when it happens in a positive way. Can one, living in community and accepting differences and contradictions, continue to be “wheat” among “darnel”? How can this be done? What must one do?

5) CONCLUDING PRAYER

My whole being yearns and pines

for Yahweh's courts.

My heart and my body cry out

for joy to the living God. (Ps 84:2)

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