Sunday, October 25, 2026
Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Matthew 22:34-40
Listen to the whole reading — MP3
First reading
Exodus 22:20-26
“He who sacrifices to any god, except to the Lord only, shall be utterly destroyed. “You shall not wrong an alien or oppress him, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt. “You shall not take advantage of any widow or fatherless child. If you take advantage of them at all, and they cry at all to me, I will surely hear their cry; and my wrath will grow hot, and I will kill you with the sword; and your wives shall be widows, and your children fatherless. “If you lend money to any of my people with you who is poor, you shall not be to him as a creditor. You shall not charge him interest. If you take your neighbor’s garment as collateral, you shall restore it to him before the sun goes down,
Responsorial psalm
Psalms 18:1-2,2-3,46,50-50
I love you, the Lord, my strength. The Lord is my rock, my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge; my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my high tower. I call on the Lord, who is worthy to be praised; and I am saved from my enemies. The Lord lives; and blessed be my rock. Exalted be the God of my salvation, He gives great deliverance to his king, and shows loving kindness to his anointed, to David and to his offspring, forever more.
Second reading
1 Thessalonians 1:5-10
and that our Good News came to you not in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Spirit, and with much assurance. You know what kind of men we showed ourselves to be among you for your sake. You became imitators of us, and of the Lord, having received the word in much affliction, with joy of the Holy Spirit, so that you became an example to all who believe in Macedonia and in Achaia. For from you the word of the Lord has been declared, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every place your faith toward God has gone out; so that we need not to say anything. For they themselves report concerning us what kind of a reception we had from you; and how you turned to God from idols, to serve a living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who delivers us from the wrath to come.
Gospel
Matthew 22:34-40
But the Pharisees, when they heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, gathered themselves together. One of them, a lawyer, asked him a question, testing him. “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law?” Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. A second likewise is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.”
Lectio
There is a striking intimacy in how God speaks to Israel about the widow, the orphan, the alien, the poor man whose only blanket is the cloak he sleeps under. God notices the garment. He knows that when the sun goes down, a poor man will be cold, and He tells us to give it back before nightfall. This is not the God of abstractions. He hears the cry of the specific person we are tempted to overlook, and He hears it as personally as a mother hears her own child weep in the night.
When Jesus is asked to name the greatest commandment centuries later, He does not reduce the law to a slogan. He binds two loves together so tightly they cannot be pried apart: love of God, love of neighbor. The Exodus reading shows us why they cannot be separated. You cannot claim to love the God who freed you from Egypt while you become an oppressor to the alien in your own land. To love God with all your heart is, in the very same motion, to return the blanket, to refuse to profit from another's desperation, to treat the vulnerable as though their cry reaches heaven — because it does.
The Thessalonians remind us this love is not merely a duty performed but something that changes what kind of person we become. They "turned to God from idols" and their faith went out from them like light, so that Paul had nothing left to explain. The two commandments are not a burden laid on us but a way of becoming someone whose whole life quietly announces the God who is love.
Who is the "alien" or the overlooked one in your own life right now — the coworker, the neighbor, the family member — whose cry you have been able not to hear, and what would returning their "garment before sundown" actually look like this week?
When you examine your heart honestly, is there an idol you have not yet turned from — a source of security or comfort you cling to instead of the living God — and can you name it today?
Saint of the day
Sts. Crispin & Crispinian, Martyrs († c. 287)
Ora reads this aloud, every morning, free. Ora