Wednesday, July 1, 2026
Wednesday of the Thirteenth week in Ordinary Time
Matthew 8:28-34
Listen to the whole reading — MP3
First reading
Amos 5:14-15,21-24
Seek good, and not evil, that you may live; and so the Lord, the God of Armies, will be with you, as you say. Hate evil, love good, and establish justice in the courts. It may be that the Lord, the God of Armies, will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph.” I hate, I despise your feasts, and I can’t stand your solemn assemblies. Yes, though you offer me your burnt offerings and meal offerings, I will not accept them; neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat animals. Take away from me the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps. But let justice roll on like rivers, and righteousness like a mighty stream.
Responsorial psalm
Psalms 50:7,8-9,10-11,12-13,16-17
“Hear, my people, and I will speak; Israel, and I will testify against you. I am God, your God. I don’t rebuke you for your sacrifices. Your burnt offerings are continually before me. I have no need for a bull from your stall, nor male goats from your pens. For every animal of the forest is mine, and the livestock on a thousand hills. I know all the birds of the mountains. The wild animals of the field are mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world is mine, and all that is in it. Will I eat the meat of bulls, or drink the blood of goats? But to the wicked God says, “What right do you have to declare my statutes, that you have taken my covenant on your lips, since you hate instruction, and throw my words behind you?
Gospel
Matthew 8:28-34
When he came to the other side, into the country of the Gergesenes, two people possessed by demons met him there, coming out of the tombs, exceedingly fierce, so that nobody could pass that way. Behold, they cried out, saying, “What do we have to do with you, Jesus, Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time?” Now there was a herd of many pigs feeding far away from them. The demons begged him, saying, “If you cast us out, permit us to go away into the herd of pigs.” He said to them, “Go!” They came out, and went into the herd of pigs: and behold, the whole herd of pigs rushed down the cliff into the sea, and died in the water. Those who fed them fled, and went away into the city, and told everything, including what happened to those who were possessed with demons. Behold, all the city came out to meet Jesus. When they saw him, they begged that he would depart from their borders.
Lectio
There is a strange thread running through these readings: the way we can hold all the outward forms of religion while our hearts remain untouched, or worse, while we quietly ask God to leave. Amos speaks for a God who is weary of the noise of worship offered by people who have abandoned justice. It is a startling thing to hear God say He cannot bear the very feasts and songs He once asked for. The problem was never the worship itself; it was that the worship had become a substitute for conversion rather than its fruit. God does not want the meat of bulls, the Psalmist reminds us. He wants us.
And then the people of the Gergesenes, faced with the living God who has just freed two men from torment and demonstrated power over the very forces that terrorized them, respond by begging Jesus to depart from their borders. There is no hatred in their request, only fear and, perhaps, the unsettling arithmetic of what his presence cost them. He healed the broken, but the pigs were lost. Sometimes we would rather keep our familiar arrangements, even our familiar miseries, than let God draw close enough to disrupt them. The demons knew who Jesus was. The townspeople could not bear to find out.
What unites these passages is the quiet question of whether we actually want God near, or only want the comfort of having him at a respectful distance. Justice rolling down like a river is not tidy. Healing that overturns the local economy is not convenient. Faith, it seems, asks more of us than attendance.
Where in your life are you offering God the right songs and gestures while quietly refusing him the one thing he is actually asking of you?
Is there some healing or change you secretly dread because of what it would cost you — some "herd of pigs" you are not ready to lose — and have you, like the townspeople, been gently begging Jesus to stay at the edge of your borders?
Saint of the day
St. Junípero Serra Ferrer, O.F.M. (1713-1784)
Ora reads this aloud, every morning, free. Ora