'Tis the Tuesday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time (Tempus per annum, "time through the year"): Wikipedia-link.
'Tis the festival of Blessed Stanley Rother, Priest & Martyr (1935-1981), martyred by a Guatemalan death squad.
Scripture of the Day
Mass Readings—Tuesday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time
The Book of Jeremiah, chapter fourteen, verses seventeen thru twenty-two;
Psalm Seventy-nine (R/. nine), verses eight, nine, & eleven & thirteen;
The Gospel according to Matthew, chapter thirteen, verses thirty-six thru forty-three.
Commentary: Daily Readings.
Gospel reflection by Bishop Robert Barron (Word on Fire):
Friends, in our Gospel today, Jesus explains the parable of the weeds among the wheat. God’s word creates the Church, the community of those who strive to build up the kingdom. But this Church is never absolutely pure and untrammeled, for God’s ways are opposed by a spiritual power, an enemy. His task is to sow weeds among the wheat—clandestinely, quietly, unobtrusively.
This sort of coming together of good and evil is to be expected. The Church will always be a place of saints and sinners, and the sinners will often look like saints. The enemy of the Church, who never rests, ensures it.
Vigilance in regards to evil is necessary in a fallen world, yet we must be wary of a zeal that, in its passion for setting things right, comes to believe that evil can be dealt with by destroying what is good.
In the midst of a fallen world, what is expected of us is that we live in hope that at the end, at harvest time, the Master will separate the good from the bad.
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