Sunday

19 Jul 2020

Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle A Click here for all content for this cycle Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle A

SUNDAY SUMMARY

Wisdom 12:13, 16-19  For God, absolute power leads to justice, mercy, and kindness.

Psalm 86:5-6, 9-10, 15-16  God is great, and also good and forgiving.

Romans 8:26-27  We may not know how to pray, but the Spirit within us does.

Matthew 13:24-43  The kingdom of heaven is like wheat, a mustard seed, and yeast.

The inner word image

The inner word

What’s in your heart?

For Matthew, faith is never stagnant. If there’s faith, there’s growth: good seed planted in a field, a tiny mustard seed growing into a mighty bush, yeast making the dough rise and turning wheat into wholesome bread.

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Exploring the word

I will open my mouth in parables

The kingdom of heaven is like a child accompanying her mother to the mall. As the mother peruses the rack of dresses, the little girl spies a basket of cheap bangles glittering on a low table under the phosphorescent lights.

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In other words image

In other words

The Sunday gospel in everyday English

He told another story. “God’s kingdom is like a farmer who planted good seed in his field. That night, while his hired men were asleep, his enemy sowed thistles all through the wheat and slipped away before dawn. When the first green shoots appeared and the grain began to form, the thistles showed up, too.

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Homily stories image

Homily stories

Weed it and reap

My wife and I were young and naïve when we bought our first house. We moved into it in early spring, and soon discovered that the woman who owned the house before us had been a wonderful gardener.

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Homily stories image

Homily stories

Let God sort it out

Some Americans alive today can still recall the horror of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s paranoid hunt for communist infiltrators in the 1940s and ’50s, which ruined or stalled the careers of dozens of writers and entertainers who were labeled communist sympathizers.

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Homily stories image

Homily stories

One person’s weeds is another’s garden

In one of the more affluent suburbs of Chicago, in front of an expensive home, there is a front yard that looks uncared for and virtually abandoned. It has made the news because the new owner has taken out the green, unmowed lawn and let the yard revert back to its natural, prairie state.

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Prayers

Penitential Act & Prayer of the Faithful

We turn to our God who is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in kindness and faithfulness to us.

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Quotes

Those therefore who wish to . . . inherit the everlasting kingdom of God must not be weeds but wheat. They must avoid saying or doing anything useless, and practice the opposite virtues, thus bringing forth the fruits of repentance.

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