First Reading

Reading from the book of Jeremiah

Jeremiah 13, 1-11

The Lord said to me: “Go and buy a linen belt and put it around your waist, but do not put it in water”. I bought the belt and put it around my waist, as the Lord had commanded me.

Then the Lord spoke to me a second time and said: “Take the belt you bought and are wearing around your waist, get up and go to the Euphrates River and hide it there, in a hole in a rock”. So I went and hid it in the Euphrates, as the Lord had commanded me.

After a long time, the Lord said to me: “Get up, go to the Euphrates and retrieve the belt I told you to hide there”. I went to the Euphrates, dug it up and retrieved the belt from the place where I had hidden it; but the belt had rotted: it was good for nothing.

Then the Lord spoke to me and said: “This is what the Lord says: ‘In the same way I will make the great pride of Judah and Jerusalem rot. This wicked people has refused to obey me, they act stubbornly, they have followed other gods to serve and worship them, and they will be like this belt, which is good for nothing. For just as the belt is attached to the body, so I wanted to keep the house of Israel and the house of Judah united to me, so that they would be my people, my fame, my glory and my honor; but they did not listen to me’”.

Gospel

Reading from the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew

Matthew 13, 31-35

At that time, Jesus proposed this other parable to the crowd: “The Kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that a man sows in his garden. It is certainly the smallest of all seeds, but when it grows, it becomes larger than the vegetables and turns into a shrub, so that the birds come and make their nests in its branches”.

He also told them another parable: “The Kingdom of heaven is like a little yeast that a woman took and mixed with three measures of flour, and the whole dough finally fermented”.

Jesus told the crowd all these things in parables, and without parables he said nothing to them, so that what the prophet said might be fulfilled: I will open my mouth and speak to them in parables; I will announce what has been hidden since the creation of the world.