July 23, 2025
Wednesday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Lectionary: 397
Reading I
The children of Israel set out from Elim,
and came into the desert of Sin,
which is between Elim and Sinai,
on the fifteenth day of the second month
after their departure from the land of Egypt.
Here in the desert the whole assembly of the children of Israel
grumbled against Moses and Aaron.
The children of Israel said to them,
“Would that we had died at the LORD’s hand in the land of Egypt,
as we sat by our fleshpots and ate our fill of bread!
But you had to lead us into this desert
to make the whole community die of famine!”
Then the LORD said to Moses,
“I will now rain down bread from heaven for you.
Each day the people are to go out and gather their daily portion;
thus will I test them,
to see whether they follow my instructions or not.
On the sixth day, however, when they prepare what they bring in,
let it be twice as much as they gather on the other days.”
Then Moses said to Aaron, “Tell the whole congregation
of the children of Israel:
Present yourselves before the LORD,
for he has heard your grumbling.”
When Aaron announced this to the whole assembly of the children of Israel,
they turned toward the desert, and lo,
the glory of the LORD appeared in the cloud!
The LORD spoke to Moses and said,
“I have heard the grumbling of the children of Israel.
Tell them: In the evening twilight you shall eat flesh,
and in the morning you shall have your fill of bread,
so that you may know that I, the LORD, am your God.”
In the evening quail came up and covered the camp.
In the morning a dew lay all about the camp,
and when the dew evaporated, there on the surface of the desert
were fine flakes like hoarfrost on the ground.
On seeing it, the children of Israel asked one another, “What is this?”
for they did not know what it was.
But Moses told them,
“This is the bread which the LORD has given you to eat.”
Responsorial Psalm
Psalm
78:18-19, 23-24, 25-26, 27-28
R. (24b) The Lord gave them bread
from heaven.
They tempted God in their hearts
by demanding the food they craved.
Yes, they spoke against God, saying,
“Can God spread a table in the desert?”
R. The Lord gave them bread from heaven.
Yet he commanded the skies above
and the doors of heaven he opened;
He rained manna upon them for food
and gave them heavenly bread.
R. The Lord gave them bread from heaven.
Man ate the bread of angels,
food he sent them in abundance.
He stirred up the east wind in the heavens,
and by his power brought on the south wind.
R. The Lord gave them bread from heaven.
And he rained meat upon them like dust,
and, like the sand of the sea, winged fowl,
Which fell in the midst of their camp
round about their tents.
R. The Lord gave them bread from heaven.
Alleluia
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
The seed is the word of God, Christ is the sower;
all who come to him will live for ever.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
On that day, Jesus went out of the house and sat down by the
sea.
Such large crowds gathered around him
that he got into a boat and sat down,
and the whole crowd stood along the shore.
And he spoke to them at length in parables, saying:
“A sower went out to sow.
And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path,
and birds came and ate it up.
Some fell on rocky ground, where it had little soil.
It sprang up at once because the soil was not deep,
and when the sun rose it was scorched,
and it withered for lack of roots.
Some seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it.
But some seed fell on rich soil, and produced fruit,
a hundred or sixty or thirtyfold.
Whoever has ears ought to hear.”
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/072325.cfm
Commentary on Exodus
16:1-5,9-15
After crossing the Sea of Reeds in safety, the Israelites
begin their long, meandering journey to the promised land. In spite of all
that God had done for them, they began complaining first of all about their
water situation. There was water, but it was too bitter to drink. They discovered
it could be made drinkable by throwing a certain kind of wood into it. God also
told them that if they acted properly and observed the Lord’s precepts, they
would not experience any of the problems which had afflicted the Egyptians.
They reached an oasis called Elim, an oasis with twelve water springs and 70
palm trees. There they had an abundance of water and shelter.
Then, as we see in today’s reading, they set off again and
arrived in the desert of Sin, which lay about halfway between Elim and Sinai and
was clearly not a very hospitable terrain. They were following a route close to
the eastern shore of the sea they had crossed earlier. It was the 15th day of
the second month, just one month since they had escaped from Egypt. They had
eaten the Passover meal and left Egypt on the 15th day of the first month,
Abib, later known as Nisan.
Once again the grumbling started. They spoke with nostalgia
of the “pots of meat” of Egypt and the abundance of food they had when they
lived there. Apparently, all the hardships from which they were so anxious to
escape were now all forgotten. And, once again, they laid all the blame on
Moses for bringing them to a place where they could only die of starvation.
A patient God heard their complaint and told Moses of his
plan to rain down ‘bread’ from heaven on them every day. As a gift from God,
the manna was said to come from the sky. It may, in fact, have been something
similar to a natural substance still found in small quantities on the Sinai
peninsula, but here it is, at least in part, clearly miraculous.
However, there were some rules to test their obedience to
God’s law. Each day they were to pick just what they needed and no more; and,
on the day before the sabbath, they were to pick a double portion. Clearly,
there was to be no gathering of manna on the sabbath.
This message was passed on by Moses to Aaron who announced
it to the people. And, just then:
…the glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud.
This was the cloud which was accompanying them on their
journey, the pledge of God’s closeness to them. What form this manifestation
took we do not know, but the message was clearly understood by the Israelites
and was intended to put a stop to their grumbling.
Once again the Lord spoke with Moses. He was to tell the
people that, from now on, in the evening they would have their fill of meat and
in the morning their fill of ‘bread’. Sure enough, that evening a flock of
quail came and covered the camp and, in the morning, they saw what looked like
hoarfrost all over the ground.
When they first saw it, they asked: “What is that?” and were
told by Moses,
It is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat.
“What is that?” is represented in Hebrew as man hu and
is taken to be the origin of the word ‘manna’.
We are told that quail are common in the Sinai and that, as
mentioned, the manna was possibly the juice of some local shrub. However, the
narrative intends some special intervention under natural forms by which God
fed his people.
The Psalms and the Book of Wisdom gratefully recall the gift
of manna which, in Christian tradition (as early as John 6:26-58), is a figure
of the Eucharist, the spiritual food of the Church, the new Israel, on her
earthly journey to the Promised Land. Jesus will refer to the manna as a type
of the Bread that he will give (see John 6:32,49-52).
We have since taken over phrases like, “I will now rain down
bread from heaven on you” and “This is the bread which the Lord has given you
to eat” and given them Eucharistic significance.
What is made clear in the story is that the source of the
food (and indeed of all we have and receive) is a compassionate and caring God,
one who is largely deaf to his people’s constant complaints, their short
memories of former help and protection and their weak faith.
We too so often suffer from the same weaknesses. It is so
easy to be aware of our grievances and to forget the wonderful blessings we
have received in life. Let us count our blessings today and say a big Thank You
to our God and Lord.
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Commentary on
Matthew 13:1-9
Today we come to the third of the five discourses of Jesus
found in Matthew’s Gospel. It consists entirely of the Parables of the
Kingdom of Heaven, as Matthew calls it. It might be helpful to go back to
Monday of the 10th Week (Ordinary Time) and look again at what is said there
about the meaning of the ‘Kingdom of heaven’. Briefly to repeat, we are talking
about, not a place and still less a place in the future life, but a network of
people and communities who are committed to all that God is and stands for, as
revealed to us through the life and teaching of Jesus. The people are those who
work to see that God’s will be done on earth, which is the establishment of the
Kingdom.
These parables, then, are images that Jesus gives to help us
understand how we are to enter into and become part of that Kingdom—of that
kingship of God to which we adhere with all our heart and soul.
Our passage begins:
That same day Jesus went out of the house…
What day? And what house? It seems that Matthew is linking
the parables of the Kingdom with the scene at the end of chapter 12 (vv 46-50)
about those who are on the ‘inside’ and those on the ‘outside’. The house—whose
ownership is never referred to, and we know that Jesus had no house of his own—seems
to refer to any place where people are gathered together with Jesus.
For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am
there among them. (Matt 18:20)
And wherever people are closely related with Jesus, not just
physically, but intentionally, that is what it means to be on the ‘inside’, and
it is also to be part of the Kingdom.
We are told that the crowds wanting to listen to Jesus were
so great that he had to use a boat moored near the shore to speak to them. In
the Gospel, the boat often represents the Church or the Christian community
from which Jesus continues to speak his message to the world. We are also told
that he spoke to them in parables. Once again, Matthew uses his favourite
number by having seven of them. Just to remind ourselves: there are 2×7
generations in Jesus’ genealogy; 7 Beatitudes; forgiveness not 7 but 77 times;
7 ‘alas’ in the condemnation of the Pharisees; and his Gospel is divided into
seven main sections—infancy, five discourses, passion.
For three days, that is, for the rest of this week, we are
going to be considering the first and the longest of the parables, the parable
of the sower. First, today, we have the parable itself, then tomorrow some
explanation of the role of parables in Jesus’ teaching and, finally on Saturday,
an interpretation of the parable.
The parable itself is very straightforward. It speaks about
a farmer sowing seed in his field, a typical Palestinian field of the time. It
is obviously a very mixed patch of ground. There are paths going across it
where people have long established a right of way. There are bits of rock
sticking up above the ground with small hollows where water can gather after
rain. At that time, ploughing was done after the seed was sown, so there are
weeds and brambles growing wild all over the place. And then there are parts of
the field which have good, fertile soil.
This image largely describes too the field in which Jesus,
the preacher and teacher, is working. It provides very mixed soil, and much of
the seed does not go very far in producing fruit. All this has been described
in what we have already seen of Jesus’ mission among the people, the religious
leaders, his own family—and his disciples. It is these latter who are the
fertile soil, these are the ones who will enter, who are already entering the
Kingdom.
A parable in the Gospel usually makes just one point. In
this case the message is that God’s plan will succeed, even though there seem
to be setbacks. It was as important a message for the early Christians to hear
as it is for us today. It is a word of encouragement when Christians see how
little success they seem to have at times in their evangelising work. The
message is not to worry—God’s Word will prevail, and there will always be
fertile soil in which to grow and multiply. Indeed, in the past, some
communities did fail, but overall the Christian communities grew and the
message spread to every corner of the world.
And then there is the final exhortation:
If you have ears, hear!
‘Listening’ and ‘hearing’ are sometimes used interchangeably.
In this context, to ‘hear’ is not just to be physically capable of picking up
sound. To ‘hear’ presumes attention and awareness; it implies understanding and
acceptance and, ultimately, implementation of what is heard.
Am I ready to enter the Kingdom? What kind of soil do I
present for the Lord’s Word? Am I really listening to him in the fullest sense?
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https://livingspace.sacredspace.ie/o2164g/
Wednesday,
July 23, 2025
Ordinary Time
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.
Gospel Reading – Matthew 13: 1-9
That same day, Jesus left
the house and sat by the lakeside, but such large crowds gathered round him
that he got into the boat and sat there. The people all stood on the shore and
he told them many things in parables.
He said, ‘Listen, a sower
went out to sow.
As he sowed, some seeds fell
on the edge of the path, and the birds came and ate them up. Others fell on
patches of rock where they found little soil and sprang up at once, because
there was no depth of earth; but as soon as the sun came up they were scorched
and, not having any roots, they withered away. Others fell among thorns, and
the thorns grew up and choked them. Others fell on rich soil and produced their
crop, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. Anyone who has ears should
listen!’
Reflection
In chapter 13 of the Gospel
of Matthew the third great discourse begins, the
Discourse of the Parables. As we already said before, Matthew
organized his Gospel like a new edition of the Law of God or like a new
“Pentateuch” with its five books. For this reason his Gospel is composed of
five great discourses or teachings of Jesus, followed by narrative parts, in
which he describes how Jesus put into practice what he had taught in the
discourses. The following is the outline:
Introduction: Birth and Preparation of the Messiah (Mt 1 to 4)
•
Sermon on the Mountain: the entrance door to the
Kingdom (Mt 5 to 7) Narrative Mt 8 and 9
•
Discourse of the Mission: how to announce and diffuse
the Kingdom (Mt 10) Narrative Mt 11 and 12
•
Discourse of the Parables: the mystery of the Kingdom
present in life (Mt 13) Narrative Mt 14 to 17
•
Discourse of the Community: the new way of living
together in the Kingdom (Mt 18)
Narrative 19 to 23
•
Discourse of the future coming of the Kingdom: the
utopia which sustains hope (Mt 24 and 25)
•
Conclusion:
Passion, Death and Resurrection (Mt 26 to 28).
In today’s Gospel we will
meditate on the parable of the seed. Jesus had a way of speaking so popular by
means of comparisons and parables. Generally, when he finished telling a
parable, he did not explain it, but used to say: “He who has ears to hear, let
him hear!” (Mt 11: 15; 13: 9, 43). Sometimes he would explain the meaning to
the Disciples (Mt 13: 36). The parables speak of the things of life; seed,
lamp, mustard seed, salt, etc. These are things that exist in daily life, for
the people of that time as well as today for us. Thus, the experience that we have
today of these things becomes for us a means to discover the presence of the
mystery of God in our life. To speak in parables means to reveal the mystery of
the Kingdom present in life.
•
Matthew 13: 1-3: Sitting
in the boat, Jesus taught the people. As it happened in the Sermon on the
Mountain (Mt 5: 1-2), here also Matthew makes a brief introduction to the discourse of the Parables, describing
Jesus who teaches in the boat, on the shore, and many people around him who
listen. Jesus was not a person who was instructed (Jn 7: 15). He had not been
to a higher school in Jerusalem. He came from inside the country, from
Nazareth. He was unknown, a farmer and craftsman or artisan at the same time.
Without asking permission from the religious authority, he began to teach the
people. People liked to listen to him. Jesus taught especially by means of
parables. We have already heard some of them: fishermen of men (Mt 4: 19), the
salt (Mt 5: 13), the lamp (Mt 5: 15), the birds of the sky and the lilies of
the field (Mt 6: 26, 28), the house constructed on the rock (Mt 7: 24). And
now, in chapter 13, the parables begin to have a particular meaning: they serve
to reveal the mystery of the Kingdom of God present in the midst of people and
the activity of Jesus.
•
Matthew 13: 4-8: The
parable of the seed taken from the life of the farmer. At that time, it was
not easy to live from farming. The land was full of stones. There was little
rain, too much sun. Besides, many times, people in order to shorten the way,
passed through the fields and destroyed the plants (Mt 12: 1). But in spite of
all that, every year, the farmer would sow and plant, with trust in the force
of the seed, in the generosity of nature. The parable of the sower describes
that which we all know and do: the seed thrown by the farmer falls on the
ground along the road, another part falls among the stones and thistles; still
another part falls on good earth, where, according to the quality of the land,
will produce thirty, sixty and even up to one hundred.
A parable is a comparison.
It uses things known by the people and which are visible, to explain that the
Kingdom of God is an invisible and unknown thing. The people of Galilee
understood about seeds, ground, rain, sun, and harvest. And so now Jesus uses exactly
these things that were known to people to explain the mystery of the Kingdom.
•
Matthew 13: 9: He,
who has ears to hear, let him listen. The expression “He, who has ears, let him listen” means: “It is this! You have heard. Now try to understand!” The way to be
able to understand the parable is to search: “To try to understand!” The
parable does not give everything immediately but pushes one to think and to
make one discover starting from the experience
which the auditors have of
the seed. It opens to creativity and to participation. It is not a doctrine
which comes ready to be taught. The parable does not give water in bottles, but
the source. The farmer who listens to the parable says: “Seed in the round, I
know what that means! But Jesus says that it has something to do with the
Kingdom of God. What would that be?” And it is easy to imagine the long
conversations of the people! The parable leads to listen to nature and to think
of life. Once a person asked in a community: “Jesus says that we have to be
salt. For what is salt good?” There was discussion and then at the end, ten
different purposes that salt can have, were discovered. Then all this was
applied to the life of the community and it was discovered that to be salt is
difficult and demanding. The parable worked well!
Personal Questions
•
When you were a child how was catechism taught to you?
How do you compare some parts of life? Do you remember some important
comparison that the catechist told you? How is the catechesis today in your
community?
•
Sometimes we are the roadside, sometimes the rock;
other times the thorns or thistles, and other times good earth. What am I? What
are we in our community? Which are the fruits which the Word of God is
producing in my life, in my family, and in our community: thirty, sixty, one
hundred?
Concluding Prayer
Yahweh in his holy temple!
Yahweh, his throne is in heaven; his eyes watch over the world, his gaze
scrutinizes the children of Adam. (Ps 11:4)
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