Tuesday, July 28, 2026
Tuesday of the Seventeenth week in Ordinary Time
Matthew 13:36-43
Listen to the whole reading — MP3
First reading
Jeremiah 14:17-22
“You shall say this word to them: “‘Let my eyes run down with tears night and day, and let them not cease; for the virgin daughter of my people is broken with a great breach, with a very grievous wound. If I go out into the field, then, behold, the slain with the sword! If I enter into the city, then, behold, those who are sick with famine! For both the prophet and the priest go about in the land, and have no knowledge.’” Have you utterly rejected Judah? Has your soul loathed Zion? Why have you struck us, and there is no healing for us? We looked for peace, but no good came; and for a time of healing, and behold, dismay! We acknowledge, the Lord, our wickedness, and the iniquity of our fathers; for we have sinned against you. Do not abhor us, for your name’s sake. Do not disgrace the throne of your glory. Remember, and don’t break your covenant with us. Are there any among the vanities of the nations that can cause rain? Or can the sky give showers? Aren’t you he, the Lord our God? Therefore we will wait for you; for you have made all these things.
Responsorial psalm
Psalms 79:8,9,11,13
Don’t hold the iniquities of our forefathers against us. Let your tender mercies speedily meet us, for we are in desperate need. Help us, God of our salvation, for the glory of your name. Deliver us, and forgive our sins, for your name’s sake. Let the sighing of the prisoner come before you. According to the greatness of your power, preserve those who are sentenced to death. So we, your people and sheep of your pasture, will give you thanks forever. We will praise you forever, to all generations.
Gospel
Matthew 13:36-43
Then Jesus sent the multitudes away, and went into the house. His disciples came to him, saying, “Explain to us the parable of the darnel weeds of the field.” He answered them, “He who sows the good seed is the Son of Man, the field is the world; and the good seed, these are the children of the Kingdom; and the darnel weeds are the children of the evil one. The enemy who sowed them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. As therefore the darnel weeds are gathered up and burned with fire; so will it be at the end of this age. The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will gather out of his Kingdom all things that cause stumbling, and those who do iniquity, and will cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be weeping and the gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the Kingdom of their Father. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.
Lectio
There is something almost unbearably patient in the way God tends the field of the world. The darnel and the wheat grow together, roots intertwined, and the Lord does not tear up the weeds at once. He waits. He allows the mystery of freedom to unfold until the harvest. This patience can trouble us, because we would prefer a cleaner world, a swifter justice, a life uncomplicated by the presence of what wounds us. Yet the psalmist, crying out from a place of desperate need, understands something deeper: he does not ask God to burn the world, but to remember His mercy. "Let your tender mercies speedily meet us." The one who suffers under the weight of evil learns to plead not for vengeance but for compassion.
We are quick to sort the world into wheat and weeds, and quicker still to place ourselves among the wheat. But the honest heart knows that the two grow together not only in the field of the world but within the soil of a single soul. There is darnel in me, and God has not uprooted it—perhaps because to do so violently would tear up what is still growing toward the light. His forbearance is not indifference. It is the space He gives us to become the wheat we are called to be, so that at the last we might "shine like the sun in the Kingdom of their Father."
To have ears to hear is to receive this waiting not as delay but as grace. The psalmist's prayer for the prisoner and the condemned reminds us that no one is beyond the reach of that speedy mercy—not even ourselves, not even those we have quietly written off.
Where in your life are you demanding that God pull up the weeds now—an unresolved relationship, a lingering sin, a person you have judged—when He is asking you to endure the discomfort of waiting for His mercy to do its slower, deeper work?
When you imagine the harvest, do you place yourself among the wheat with easy confidence, or can you name the darnel still growing in your own heart that you have never brought before the tender mercy the psalmist begs for?
Saint of the day
St. Pedro Poveda Castroverde, Priest and Martyr (1874-1936)
Ora reads this aloud, every morning, free. Ora