Gospel: July 31, 2025
July 31, 2025 (Thursday)
17th Week in Ordinary Time
Psalter: Week 1 / (White)
St. Ignatius of Loyola, priest
Ps 84:3, 4, 5-6a & 8a, 11
How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord, mighty God!
1st Reading: Exodus 40:16-21, 34-38
Gospel: Matthew 13:47-53
A gain, the kingdom of heaven is like a big fishing net, let down into the sea, in which every kind of fish has been caught. When the net is full, it is dragged ashore. Then they sit down and gather the good fish into buckets, but throw the bad away.
That is how it will be at the end of time; the angels will go out to separate the wicked from the just, and to throw the wicked into the blazing furnace, where they will weep and gnash their teeth.” Jesus asked, “Have you understood all these things?” “Yes,” they answered. So he said to them, “Therefore, every teacher of the law, who becomes a disciple of the kingdom of heaven, is like a householder, who can produce from his store things both new and old.” When Jesus had finished these parables, he left that place.
Reflection:
“God’s ways are greater than our imagining.”
The stages of the long journey of the people of Israel to the Promised Land were made in response to the Lord’s commands. They waited on the Lord, and at his prompting, they would set off once again, following the Lord’s signs of cloud and flame. Following the cloud and the flame: following the mystery of God and his divine light. This is what Saint Ignatius of Loyola taught people to do through his method of prayerful discernment.
The symbols of cloud and flame tell us that God’s ways are greater than our imagining and yet we are given the light of insight to understand what he wills for us and for all of humanity through God’s revelation. God sets his Law in our hearts and enshrines it in the Ten Commandments. Just as Moses placed the ark of the Covenant with the tablets of the Commandments at the heart of the Tent of Meeting, so God’s commandments become the core of our discernment of what God wants us to do; the solid point from which we begin. Our activity needs to be accompanied by daily prayer so that our compass for life reads a true course.
