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| Mustard Seed |
FIRST READING: Jeremiah 13: 1 - 11
1 This is what Yahweh said to me: "Go! Buy yourself a linen belt and put it around your waist; do not put it in water."
2 So I bought the belt as Yahweh ordered and put it around my waist.
3 The word of Yahweh came to me a second time,
4 "Take the belt you bought, the one you put around your waist, and go to the torrent Perah; hide it there in a hole in the rock."
5 I went and hid it as Yahweh instructed me.
6 After many days Yahweh said to me, "Go to the torrent Perah and get the belt I ordered you to hide there."
7 I went to the torrent and dug up the belt but it was ruined and good for nothing,
8 and Yahweh said to me,
9 "In this way I will destroy the pride and great glory of Judah,
10 this wicked people who refuse to heed what I say, this stubborn people who go after other gods to serve and worship them. And they shall become like this belt which is now good for nothing.
11 For just as a belt is to be bound around a man's waist so was the people of Israel and Judah bound to me - it is Yahweh who speaks - to be my people, my glory and my honor; but they would not listen.
PSALM: Deuteronomy 32: 18 - 21
18 They have disowned the Rock who fathered them; they have forgotten the God who gave them birth.
19 The Lord saw this, and in his anger rejected his sons and daughters.
20 He said, "I will hide my face from them and see what will become of them. They are so perverse, so unfaithful!
21 They made me jealous with their false gods and angered me with their idols. I will, therefore, make them envious of a foolish people, I will provoke them to anger with an empty-headed nation.
GOSPEL: Matthew 13: 31 - 35
31 Jesus put another parable before them, "The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, that a man took and sowed in his field.
32 It is smaller than all other seeds, but once it has fully grown, it is bigger than any garden plant; like a tree, the birds come and rest in its branches."
33 He told them another parable, "The kingdom of heaven is like the yeast which a woman took and buried in three measures of flour until the whole mass of dough began to rise."
34 Jesus taught all this to the crowds by means of parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable.
35 So what the Prophet had said was fulfilled: I will speak in parables. I will proclaim things kept secret since the beginning of the world.
