Tuesday, July 21, 2026

Tuesday of the Sixteenth week in Ordinary Time

Matthew 12:46-50

Listen to the whole reading — MP3

First reading

Micah 7:14-15,18-20

Shepherd your people with your staff, the flock of your heritage, who dwell by themselves in a forest, in the middle of fertile pasture land, let them feed; in Bashan and Gilead, as in the days of old. “As in the days of your coming out of the land of Egypt, I will show them marvelous things.” Who is a God like you, who pardons iniquity, and passes over the disobedience of the remnant of his heritage? He doesn’t retain his anger forever, because he delights in loving kindness. He will again have compassion on us. He will tread our iniquities under foot; and you will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea. You will give truth to Jacob, and mercy to Abraham, as you have sworn to our fathers from the days of old.

Responsorial psalm

Psalms 85:1-3,4-5,6-7

You have forgiven the iniquity of your people. You have covered all their sin. Selah. You have taken away all your wrath. You have turned from the fierceness of your anger. Turn us, God of our salvation, and cause your indignation toward us to cease. Will you be angry with us forever? Will you draw out your anger to all generations? Won’t you revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you? Show us your loving kindness, the Lord. Grant us your salvation. I will hear what God, the Lord, will speak, for he will speak peace to his people, his saints; but let them not turn again to folly.

Gospel

Matthew 12:46-50

While he was yet speaking to the multitudes, behold, his mother and his brothers stood outside, seeking to speak to him. One said to him, “Behold, your mother and your brothers stand outside, seeking to speak to you.” But he answered him who spoke to him, “Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?” He stretched out his hand towards his disciples, and said, “Behold, my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father who is in heaven, he is my brother, and sister, and mother.”

Lectio

There is a tenderness running through today's readings that almost catches us off guard. Micah, after pages of warning and lament, breaks into wonder: "Who is a God like you?" — a God who does not cling to His anger, who treads our sins underfoot and casts them into the depths of the sea. The image is so deliberate. He does not merely forgive; He buries the offense where it cannot be retrieved, where even we cannot fish it back up to torment ourselves. The psalmist, too, speaks of a God who has "covered all their sin" and longs to revive His people again. This is not a grudging pardon. It is the pardon of One who, as Micah says, "delights in loving kindness."

And then Jesus, in the Gospel, widens the circle of His own family until it includes anyone who does the will of His Father. At first this can sound like a rebuff to His mother and brothers waiting outside. But read alongside Micah, it is the same divine generosity reaching further still. The God who would not hold our sins against us now will not hold our bloodlines against us either — kinship with Him is offered to everyone willing to live in His Father's will. Mary, of course, belongs to that family more fully than anyone, precisely because no one ever did the Father's will more completely than she did.

Together these readings invite us to stop measuring our standing before God by our failures or our pedigree, and to start trusting the One who delights to forgive and longs to draw us close.

Where in your life are you still dragging up a sin from the depths of the sea, refusing to believe that God has already drowned it and moved on?

Jesus calls family those who do the Father's will — so what is the one thing you already sense God asking of you today that you have been keeping "outside," waiting at the edge rather than letting it draw you closer to Him?

Saint of the day

St. Lawrence of Brindisi, Priest and Doctor of the Church (1559-1619)

Ora reads this aloud, every morning, free. Ora