15th Sunday Ordinary Time July 12, 2026

Readings: Isaiah 55:10-11, Romans 8:18-23, Matthew 13:1-23

The Gospel takes up this same theme, but at great length. We are told by Scripture scholars that only the first part of this Scripture reading would have been original, although that does not mean that the other words do not also come from the Lord in some way. Always we can remember that the formation of our Scriptures was a process. That process still allows us to believe that the Scriptures are inspired revelation and the authentic Word of God.

The point of the first part of today’s Gospel is simply that the Word of God brings an incredible harvest, in spite of all of the lost seeds, the seeds that don’t grow, the seeds the grow and then die. Normal sowing of seed would yield perhaps a harvest seven to ten times as much as the seed—at least some think that. To have a harvest of thirty, sixty or a hundred-fold is incredible and shows the miraculous power of God’s Word.

When a person is sowing in a field, all the attention is on the sowing and on doing it well. That is also how our Christian lives must be lived: with attention on living well and proclaiming the truth of God. It is very easy in our time to attract followers with all kinds of gimmicks. It is easy to make a good living on the Word of God today, not by being faithful to that Word but by using it for our own ends.

Remaining faithful to the Word of God implies that even if no one listens to us, even if our Church gets smaller and smaller, we simply strive to live the Gospel in its fullness and strive to give our lives over to Jesus Christ. This does not imply that we should not try to gain converts nor that we should not use any of the modern means of making the Word known. It only insists that our basic loyalty is to the Word of God as it comes to us in the Scriptures and in the Church.

God Himself will bring the harvest. God will make the Word fruitful. God will transform the world. So today God invites us to give ourselves over as servants of the Word for the sake of the Kingdom. God invites us to proclaim our faith and to trust that the divine presence will bring about all that is truly needed in our world. That takes a lot of faith! Will we trust in God?