The Catholic Calendar for Monday, July 31, 2006
Monday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time
St. Ignatius of Loyola, priest

Scripture from today's Liturgy of the Word:
Jeremiah 13:1-11
Deuteronomy 32:18-19, 20, 21
Matthew 13:31-35

A reflection on today's Sacred Scripture:
Sometimes it is very difficult to understand what is going on and why we are going through the things that we are going through. We often ask ourselves, “Why me?” Often we are told that everything has a purpose and will reveal itself in time, but normally that isn't what we want to hear. During times of trial, it takes great faith and humility to continue and to pray that God's will be done.

In today's reading from the book of Jeremiah we learn what happens when we abandon God for earthly things: we rot and become worthless, just as the loin cloth did. The good news is that there is hope. Jesus describes this hope in the parable of the mustard seed, in which a very small seed is planted in a dark hole and dies; but at this darkest moment it changes. It will no longer be the same. Eventually, the seed will become a great and wondrous tree!

This is truly a message of hope telling us that from what little faith we may have, amazing things can happen. We must trust in faith that as long as we are constantly seeking God's will, we will be guided without fail and that by this faith God will do great things with us though we may not always see it at the time.

- Danielle