Readings

First Reading
Jer 13:1-11

The people shall be like a loincloth which is good for nothing.

A reading from the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah

The LORD said to me: Go buy yourself a linen loincloth;
   wear it on your loins, but do not put it in water.
I bought the loincloth, as the LORD commanded, and put it on.
A second time the word of the LORD came to me thus:
   Take the loincloth which you bought and are wearing,
   and go now to the Parath;
   there hide it in a cleft of the rock.
Obedient to the LORD’s command, I went to the Parath
   and buried the loincloth.
After a long interval, the LORD said to me:
   Go now to the Parath and fetch the loincloth
   which I told you to hide there.
Again I went to the Parath, sought out and took the loincloth
   from the place where I had hid it.
But it was rotted, good for nothing!
Then the message came to me from the LORD:
Thus says the LORD:
   So also I will allow the pride of Judah to rot,
   the great pride of Jerusalem.
This wicked people who refuse to obey my words,
   who walk in the stubbornness of their hearts,
   and follow strange gods to serve and adore them,
   shall be like this loincloth which is good for nothing.
For, as close as the loincloth clings to a man's loins,
   so had I made the whole house of Israel
   and the whole house of Judah cling to me, says the LORD;
   to be my people, my renown, my praise, my beauty.
But they did not listen.

The word of the Lord.

Responsorial Psalm
Deuteronomy 32:18-19, 20, 21

R. :

℟. (see 18a) You have forgotten God who gave you birth.

You were unmindful of the Rock that begot you,
   You forgot the God who gave you birth.
When the LORD saw this, he was filled with loathing
   and anger toward his sons and daughters.

℟. You have forgotten God who gave you birth.

“I will hide my face from them,” he said,
   “and see what will then become of them.
What a fickle race they are,
   sons with no loyalty in them!”

℟. You have forgotten God who gave you birth.

“Since they have provoked me with their ‘no-god’
   and angered me with their vain idols,
I will provoke them with a ‘no-people’;
   with a foolish nation I will anger them.”

℟. You have forgotten God who gave you birth.

Acclamation before the Gospel
Jam 1:18

℟. Alleluia, alleluia.

The Father willed to give us birth by the word of truth
that we may be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.

℟. Alleluia, alleluia.

Gospel
Mt 13:31-35

The mustard seed becomes a large bush and the birds of the sky come and dwell in its branches.

✠ A reading from the holy Gospel according to Matthew

Jesus proposed a parable to the crowds.
“The Kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed
   that a person took and sowed in a field.
It is the smallest of all the seeds,
   yet when full-grown it is the largest of plants.
It becomes a large bush,
   and the ‘birds of the sky come and dwell in its branches.’”

He spoke to them another parable.
“The Kingdom of heaven is like yeast
   that a woman took and mixed with three measures of wheat flour
   until the whole batch was leavened.”

All these things Jesus spoke to the crowds in parables.
He spoke to them only in parables,
   to fulfill what had been said through the prophet:

      I will open my mouth in parables,
         I will announce what has lain hidden from the foundation of the world.

At the end of the Gospel, the Deacon, or the Priest, acclaims:

The Gospel of the Lord.

All reply:

Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.

Then he kisses the book, saying quietly:

Through the words of the Gospel
may our sins be wiped away.