Daily Readings for July 30, 2018

1st READING

As disciples, one of the most common mistakes we make is that we do not listen well. If we do not listen to God’s will for us, we will neither know it nor obey it. In the Old Testament, God repeats the command, “Listen!” many times. God and the good Jewish leaders exhort the people to listen to His Word and follow.

Jeremiah 13:1-11

1 The Lord said to me: Go buy yourself a linen loincloth; wear it on your loins, but do not put it in water. 2 I bought the loincloth, as the Lord commanded, and put it on. 3 A second time the word of the Lord came to me thus: 4 Take the loincloth which you bought and are wearing, and go now to the Parath; there hide it in a cleft of the rock. 5 Obedient to the Lord’s command, I went to the Parath and buried the loincloth. 6 After a long interval, the Lord said to me: Go now to the Parath and fetch the loincloth which I told you to hide there. 7 Again I went to the Parath, sought out and took the loincloth from the place where I had hid it. But it was rotted, good for nothing! 8 Then the message came to me from the Lord. 9 Thus says the Lord: So also I will allow the pride of Judah to rot, the great pride of Jerusalem. 10 This wicked people who refuse to obey my words, who walk in the stubbornness of their hearts, and follow strange gods to serve and adore them, shall be like this loincloth which is good for nothing. 11 For, as close as the loincloth clings to a man’s loins, so had I made the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah cling to me, says the Lord; to be my people, my renown, my praise, my beauty. But they did not listen.

P S A L M 

Deuteronomy 32:18-19, 20, 21

R: You have forgotten God who gave you birth.

18 You were unmindful of the Rock that begot you, you forgot the God who gave you birth. 19 When the Lord saw this, he was filled with loathing and anger toward his sons and daughters. (R) 20 “I will hide my face from them,” he said, “and see what will then become of them. What a fickle race they are, sons with no loyalty in them!” (R) 21 “Since they have provoked me with their ‘no-god’ and angered me with their vain idols, I will provoke them with a ‘no-people’; with a foolish nation I will anger them.” (R) 

GOSPEL 

In the Scriptures, there are many images of the Kingdom of God. Let us reflect on them and recall the various aspects of His Kingdom to which we belong and that which we are building. Take the leaven as an example. This encompasses the sense of mystery that feeds our understanding and experience how the Kingdom of God works in our life. 

GOSPEL ACCLAMATION

The Father willed to give us birth by the word of truth that we may be a kind of firstfruit of his creatures.

Matthew 13:31-35

31 Jesus proposed another parable to the crowds. “The Kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that a person took and sowed in a field. 32 It is the smallest of all the seeds, yet when full-grown it is the largest of plants. It becomes a large bush, and the birds of the sky come and dwell in its branches.” 33 He spoke to them another parable. “The Kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed with three measures of wheat flour until the whole batch was leavened.” 34 All these things Jesus spoke to the crowds in parables. He spoke to them only in parables, 35 to fulfill what had been said through the prophet: I will open my mouth in parables, I will announce what has lain hidden from the foundation of the world.”