Friday, July 31, 2026
Friday of the Seventeenth week in Ordinary Time
Matthew 13:54-58
Listen to the whole reading — MP3
First reading
Jeremiah 26:1-9
In the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah, this word came from the Lord: “the Lord says: ‘Stand in the court of the Lord’s house, and speak to all the cities of Judah, which come to worship in the Lord’s house, all the words that I command you to speak to them. Don’t omit a word. It may be they will listen, and every man turn from his evil way; that I may relent from the evil which I intend to do to them because of the evil of their doings.’ You shall tell them, “the Lord says: ‘If you will not listen to me, to walk in my law, which I have set before you, to listen to the words of my servants the prophets, whom I send to you, even rising up early and sending them, but you have not listened; then I will make this house like Shiloh, and will make this city a curse to all the nations of the earth.”’” The priests and the prophets and all the people heard Jeremiah speaking these words in the Lord’s house. When Jeremiah had finished speaking all that the Lord had commanded him to speak to all the people, the priests and the prophets and all the people seized him, saying, “You shall surely die! Why have you prophesied in the Lord’s name, saying, ‘This house will be like Shiloh, and this city will be desolate, without inhabitant?’” All the people were crowded around Jeremiah in the Lord’s house.
Responsorial psalm
Psalms 69:5,8-10,14
I am weary with my crying. My throat is dry. My eyes fail, looking for my God. Don’t let those who wait for you be shamed through me, Lord God of Hosts. Don’t let those who seek you be brought to dishonor through me, God of Israel. Because for your sake, I have borne reproach. Shame has covered my face. I have become a stranger to my brothers, an alien to my mother’s children. Those who sit in the gate talk about me. I am the song of the drunkards.
Gospel
Matthew 13:54-58
Coming into his own country, he taught them in their synagogue, so that they were astonished, and said, “Where did this man get this wisdom, and these mighty works? Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t his mother called Mary, and his brothers, James, Joses, Simon, and Judas? Aren’t all of his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all of these things?” They were offended by him. But Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor, except in his own country, and in his own house.” He didn’t do many mighty works there because of their unbelief.
Lectio
There is a peculiar loneliness that comes to those who speak the truth. Jeremiah stands in the courts of the Lord's house, faithfully delivering every word God gave him, omitting nothing — and for this obedience he is seized and threatened with death. The psalmist echoes the ache: *I have become a stranger to my brothers, an alien to my mother's children.* And then Jesus, in the most tender wound of all, returns to Nazareth, the town that watched him grow, and finds not welcome but suspicion. They knew his mother, his cousins, his trade. Their familiarity became a wall. Because they thought they already knew who he was, they could not see who he had become.
What binds these readings together is the strange truth that closeness can blind us. The people of Nazareth were not far from Jesus — they were too near, or thought they were, and their assumptions left no room for wonder. We do this constantly. We file people into categories: the difficult relative, the estranged friend, the version of someone we knew years ago. And in doing so, we sometimes miss the very grace God is trying to work through them. Unbelief, the Gospel tells us, actually limited what Jesus could do among them. Our closed hearts have consequences.
Yet there is quiet consolation here too. If you have been misunderstood by the people who should know you best — dismissed, doubted, reduced to what you used to be — you are in the company of prophets, of the psalmist, of Christ himself. The rejection you feel is not proof that you are wrong. Sometimes it is the very shape holiness takes when it is not yet welcome.
Where in your life have you decided you already know someone — a spouse, a parent, an old friend — so completely that you no longer expect God to surprise you through them?
Is there a truth you have been avoiding speaking, not because you doubt it, but because you fear becoming a stranger to the people whose approval you still crave?
Saint of the day
St. Ignatius of Loyola, Priest (1491-1556)
Ora reads this aloud, every morning, free. Ora