Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time – July 12, 2026 – Sr. Jane Dwyer, SNDdeN Matthew 13: 1-23 Today’s reading offers a challenge – an invitation for radical commitment to the mysteries of the Kingdom…an invitation to touch and experience the divine in our midst. As the text opens Jesus is sitting by the sea…contemplating. Suddenly, as so often happens in the Gospel, Jesus is surrounded by his people pressing in on him. To be able to better communicate, Jesus moves to a nearby boat, standing as he involves the people in a conversation. Jesus begins with the people’s story, their reality. Then he challenges them. First he reminds them of their history. They are a rural people, small family farmers, who worked the soil, planted, and harvested to provide a life, if difficult, for their families. Their lands were taken, their families removed by large landowners supported by the Temple and Government…they were once farmers learning now to be fishermen. Jesus begins with the planting of seeds, referring mostly to the type of land the people now find to eke out a meager existence: dried up roadsides, rocky and pebbled soil, thorns and bristles. They are people of the land, […]