July 26, 2014

Reading

The Book of the Prophet Jeremiah   7: 1-11

7:1	The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying:
7:2	“Stand at the gate to the house of the Lord, and preach this word there, and say: Listen to the word of the Lord, all you of Judah who enter through these gates to adore the Lord.
7:3	Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Make your ways and your intentions good, and I will live with you in this place.
7:4	Do not choose to trust in lying words, saying: ‘This is the temple of the Lord! The temple of the Lord! The temple of the Lord!’
7:5	For if you direct your ways and your intentions well, if you exercise judgment between a man and his neighbor,
7:6	if you do not act with deceit toward the new arrival, the orphan, and the widow, and if you do not pour out innocent blood in this place, and if you do not walk after strange gods, which is to your own harm,
7:7	then I will live with you in this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers from the beginning and even forever.
7:8	Behold, you trust in false words, which will not benefit you,
7:9	so as to steal, to murder, to commit adultery, to swear falsely, to offer libations to Baal, and to go after strange gods, which you do not know.
7:10	And you arrived and stood before me in this house, where my name is invoked, and you said: ‘We have been freed because we carried out all these abominations.’
7:11	So then, has this house, where my name has been invoked, become a den of robbers in your eyes? It is I, I am, I have seen, says the Lord.

Gospel

The Holy Gospel According Matthew   13: 24-30

13:24	He proposed another parable to them, saying: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field.
13:25	But while the men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds amid the wheat, and then went away.
13:26	And when the plants had grown, and had produced fruit, then the weeds also appeared.
13:27	So the servants of the Father of the family, approaching, said to him: ‘Lord, did you not sow good seed in your field? Then how is it that it has weeds?’
13:28	And he said to them, ‘A man who is an enemy has done this.’ So the servants said to him, ‘Is it your will that we should go and gather them up?’
13:29	And he said: ‘No, lest perhaps in gathering the weeds, you might also root out the wheat together with it.
13:30	Permit both to grow until the harvest, and at the time of the harvest, I will say to the reapers: Gather first the weeds, and bind them into bundles to burn, but the wheat gather into my storehouse.’ ”