Sunday 12 July 2026
15th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Isaiah 55:10-11. The seed that falls on good ground will yield a fruitful harvest – Ps 64(65):10-14. Romans 8:18-23. Matthew 13:1-23.
God’s Word comes to us like rain
Today’s readings deal with the fecundity of life. Isaiah speaks of God’s Word coming to us like rain, watering the earth, ‘making it bud and flourish’. Isaiah offers us this rich simile of God’s spiritual purpose for humanity. Then, St Paul offers us his cosmic vision of a whole world in pangs of spiritual childbirth; new life is upon the universe.
Here is the fulfilment of which Isaiah spoke. In the Gospel, Jesus is so surrounded by people seeking life that he is forced to sit in a boat a little from shore to address them all. His use of imagery of seeds and growth, though, is tempered by a realism born of divine vision: the seeds of God’s Word obtain a spectrum of responses; but some will embrace the Word to the point where they will produce ‘a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown’. Life, to the full.
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