Redirecting Our Energies:

 

The Sixteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time 2026 

July 19, 2026

www.johnpredmoresj.com | predmore.blogspot.com

Wisdom 12:13-19; Psalm 86; Romans 8:26-27; Matthew 13:24-43

 

 

Through a few more parables Jesus invites people to reflect upon the nature of God’s project in the world. The first parable is one that looks at reality that can be somewhat depressing. Evil exists in the world and we have to accept that there are bad actors. Evil had nothing to do with God’s plans. It is a part of life that offers us choices and calls us to discern the Good Spirit and the evil spirits around us. We have to play the long game because God will do the sorting out in the end. The parable reminds us that we have no direct control over the actions of those who are around us. The parable of the man who sowed good seed was mixed by the actions of an evil man who planted weeds. How unfortunate. We have much work to do.

 

The other two stories give us hope. The story of the mustard seed reminds us that God’s plan will be furthered exponentially by our good works. The third parable reassures us that our good works will rise like the leaven in bread. There is nothing to stop God’s project from expanding. The moral of the story is that Good will always outlast evil in the world. Love will eventually have the last word. Evil actions cannot stop the progress of God’s project. We need your help.

 

We live and move and have our being in the love of the Universal Christ. Love runs beneath our civilization and is the driving force in the growth and development of human thought and creativity. This creative love, this sacred reserve of energy, is limitless, and it is what keeps the Body of Christ growing towards the fullness of life. As Christians, we are called to collaborate in this plan that gives us a higher level of energy. 

 

The time on Cross provided us with the invitation to salvation, which means to bring humanity and all creation to the fullness of life. It means that we have to love more deeply and inclusively. We, therefore, have to direct our energy towards efforts to do good in the world. At the Eucharist, we can offer to Christ the energy we spend in unavoidable suffering so that He may use it to bring more fullness of life to others. Our suffering can be used to bring about salvation for others. We direct our energy by joining our sufferings to those of Christ. 

 

When we are confronted with evil, we have a fundamental choice to discern. How am I going to direct my energies? I can fight evil with more evil, I can fight anger with anger, I can fight hate with more hate, or I can choose to align myself with the leaven of the yeast or the expansion of the mustard seed. We are to bring love into the world where we see hate. We are to bring peace to places where there is dissension. We are to create systems of harmony and collaboration when there is division. We are true to our faith and our covenant with God when we unite people. If actions are divisive, the heart of those humans do not know God. 

 

We are to be active. We can redirect our energy to foster growth in God’s plan of fulfillment. Each time we celebrate Eucharist, Christ presents us with our lives. He wants us to reflect upon and see ourselves as vital parts of God’s plan. We are the yeast. We are the mustard seed. We are the healthy seeds. At the Eucharist, Christ sees the best in you and rejoices. He sees your heart and the core of your goodness. Will you accept how Christ sees you as part of the transformed, consecrated host? You are the consecrated one. Will you see your vital role as the one who needs to produce this creative love that will bring all to the fullness of life? 

 

 

The power and gift of gratitude . . .

 

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity.... It turns problems into gifts, failures into success, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.

(Melodie Beattie)

Accepting God . . .

 May God bless you when you become paralyzed by unreal self-expectations or by the expectations of others. As you tighten your fist around your many "shoulds," may you experience God's loving touch loosening your grip and opening you to a gentler holding, to a place of self-compassion and acceptance. In the opening may you love yourself as God loves you and share that unconditional love with those around you. May the God of Acceptance bless you. --Maxine Shonk, OP

Seeds of honesty and courage!!



A successful business man was growing old and knew it was time to choose a successor to take over the business. Instead of choosing one of his Directors or his children, he decided to do something different. He called all the young executives in his company together.

He said, 'It is time for me to step down and choose the next CEO. I have decided to choose one of you. 'The young executives were shocked, but the boss continued. 'I am going to give each one of you a SEED today - one very special SEED. I want you to plant the seed, water it, and come back here one year from today with what you have grown from the seed I have given you. I will then judge the plants that you bring, and the one I choose will be the next CEO.'

One man, named Jim, was there that day and he, like the others, received a seed. He went home and excitedly, told his wife the story. She helped him get a pot, soil and compost and he planted the seed. Everyday, he would water it and watch to see if it had grown. After about three weeks, some of the other executives began to talk about their seeds and the plants that were beginning to grow. Jim kept checking his seed, but nothing ever grew.

Three weeks, four weeks, five weeks went by, still nothing.
By now, others were talking about their plants, but Jim didn't have a plant and he felt like a failure. Six months went by -- still nothing in Jim's pot. He just knew he had killed his seed. Everyone else had trees and tall plants, but he had nothing. Jim didn't say anything to his colleagues, however. He just kept watering and fertilizing the soil - He so wanted the seed to grow.

A year finally went by and all the young executives of the company brought their plants to the CEO for inspection. Jim told his wife that he wasn't going to take an empty pot...

But she asked him to be honest about what happened. Jim felt sick to his stomach, it was going to be the most embarrassing moment of his life, but he knew his wife was right. He took his empty pot to the boardroom. When Jim arrived, he was amazed at the variety of plants grown by the other executives. They were beautiful -- in all shapes and sizes. Jim put his empty pot on the floor and many of his colleagues laughed, a few felt sorry for him! When the CEO arrived, he surveyed the room and greeted his young executives.

Jim just tried to hide in the back. 'My, what great plants, trees, and flowers you have grown,' said the CEO. 'Today one of you will be appointed the next CEO!'
All of a sudden, the CEO spotted Jim at the back of the room with his empty pot. He ordered the Financial Director to bring him to the front. Jim was terrified. He thought, 'The CEO knows I'm a failure! Maybe he will have me fired!'

When Jim got to the front, the CEO asked him what had happened to his seed - Jim told him the story. The CEO asked everyone to sit down except Jim. He looked at Jim, and then announced to the young executives, 'Behold your next Chief Executive Officer. His name is Jim!'

Jim couldn't believe it. Jim couldn't even grow his seed.
'How could he be the new CEO?' the others said. Then the CEO said, 'One year ago today, I gave everyone in this room a seed. I told you to take the seed, plant it, water it, and bring it back to me today. But I gave you all boiled seeds; they were dead - it was not possible for them to grow.

All of you, except Jim, have brought me trees and plants and flowers. When you found that the seed would not grow, you substituted another seed for the one I gave you. Jim was the only one with the courage and honesty to bring me a pot with my seed in it. Therefore, he is the one who will be the new Chief Executive Officer!'

Paid in Full

 

Possessed by Success?

A young man was getting ready to graduate from college. For many months he had admired a beautiful sports car in a dealer’s showroom, and knowing his father could well afford it, he told him that was all he wanted.

As Graduation Day approached, the young man awaited signs that his father had purchased the car.

Finally, on the morning of his graduation, his father called him into his private study. His father told him how proud he was to have such a fine son, and told him how much he loved him. He handed his son a beautifully wrapped gift box.

Curious, and somewhat disappointed, the young man opened the box and found a lovely, leather-bound book, with the young man’s name embossed in gold.

Angry, he raised his voice to his father and said “with all your money, you give me a used book?” and stormed out of the house.

Many years passed and the young man was very successful in business. He had a beautiful home and wonderful family, but realized his father very old, and thought perhaps he should go to him. He had not seen him since that graduation day.

Before he could make arrangements, he received a telegram telling him his father had passed away, and willed all of his possessions to his son. He needed to come home immediately and take care of things.

When he arrived at his father’s house, sudden sadness and regret filled his heart. He began to search through his father’s important papers and saw the still gift-wrapped book, just as he had left it years ago. With tears, he opened the book and began to turn the pages. His father had carefully underlined.

 

As he read those words, a car key dropped from the back of the book. It had a tag with the dealer’s name, the same dealer who had the sports car he had desired. On the tag was the date of his graduation, and the words PAID IN FULL.   (Author Unknown)

 

Kateri - First Native American Saint!

July 14 - Feast of Kateri Tekakwitha - First Native American Saint

1656 - 1680
In April 1656, a baby was born in an Iroquois village situated along the banks of the Mohawk River in upstate New York. Her mother was a Christian and wanted her to be baptized, but her father was chief of a tribe who opposed the French Jesuit priests. "Little Sunshine" was a ray of joy to family and friends, but joy and love in the family didn't last long. When she was four years old, smallpox swept through the village. Her father, mother, and baby brother died, leaving Sunshine pock-marked and almost blind. Her uncle adopted her and she was renamed Tekakwitha ("she who pushes with her hands") due to her having to feel her way around as a blind person.

As her childhood passed, her eyesight improved. She became very skilled in Indian embroidery, beading, and wood carving. She worked hard, but in her free time she liked to walk in the woods or stroll along the river, where she could be alone and think about God. As her new family was not Christian, she was not to pray or talk with the missionaries who worked among the Indians. When she was eighteen, she announced that she wanted to become a Christian. Her family was furious.

She attended lessons at the mission and on Easter Sunday, 1676, she was baptized with the name Kateri (Katherine). After this she was treated cruelly by her family, but she never showed her misery. Eventually, two kind Christian Indians helped her escape across the St. Lawrence River to a Christian community in Canada, where she received her First Holy Communion on Christmas Day, 1677. There she carried water, cooked, sewed, and attended every Mass. She spent all her free time in the love and service of the Lord.

On a trip to Montreal to sell Native American handicrafts, Kateri met a religious order of nuns and realized her calling. On March 25, The Feast of the Annunciation, Kateri privately pronounced her vows. From then on, she devoted her life completely to God.

Her private penances and hard work left her often ill. She suffered greatly during the winter of 1680 and on April 17, 1680, at the age of 24, Kateri died. Almost immediately her face turned beautiful and shining. All the pockmarks from her disease disappeared. A smile appeared on her lips. Everyone was astonished. The wonderful transformation remained until burial the next day on Holy Thursday.

The Lily of the Mohawk was beatified in 1980 by Pope John Paul II. Her feast day is celebrated on July 14.

Kateri Tekakwitha is the first Native American to be declared a Saint. She is the patroness of the environment and ecology, as is St. Francis of Assisi. On October 21, 2012, Kateri Tekakwitha was canonized by Pope Benedict XVI.  The miracle attributed to Kateri's canonization is the story of Jake Finkbonner. Jake was so close to death after flesh-eating bacteria infected him through a cut on his lip that his parents had last rites performed and were discussing donating the 5-year-old's tiny organs. His cure in 2006 from the infection was deemed medically inexplicable by the Vatican, and became the "miracle" needed to propel a 17th century Native American, Kateri Tekakwitha, on to sainthood. Jake is fully convinced, as is the Catholic Church, that the prayers his family and community offered to God through Kateri's intercession, including the placement of a Kateri relic on Jake's leg, were responsible for his survival. Jake, now 13 and an avid basketball player and cross-country runner, was present at the canonization; along with hundreds of members of his own Lummi tribe from northwest Washington State and indigenous communities across the U.S. and Canada.


Statue at Cathedral Basilica ~ Santa Fe, NM

Jake's story:

 https://news.diocesetucson.org/news/honoring-st-kateri-tekakwithas-legacy-and-jake-finkbonners-journey

(previously posted)

Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time - Reflection . . .

 

https://www.catholicwomenpreach.org/preaching/07122026July 12, 2026

Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Olivia Catherine

Hastie

You would think—growing up in New England—I would be better at enduring the cold, gray winters. And every year, somewhere around February, I convince myself that I am. But then late May arrives with its return of sunlight, and I realize just how much of myself had gone dormant. I return to myself. Suddenly I remember what I love. I remember that I am nourished by warmth, by breathing in the clarity of ocean air, by evenings stretched long around tables with friends, and by the exhilarating chill of plunging into the Atlantic, by lilacs, hydrangeas, and beach roses bursting into color. Creation itself seems nourished back into fullness.

In summer’s light, the seeds buried deep in the earth seem to awaken too. They stretch toward life, toward growth. And perhaps that is why Jesus so often speaks to us in the language of gardens, soil, seeds, and harvest. We, like the earth, need certain conditions to come alive. We long to discover the fullness of who we are and to live into the truth of who we are meant to be. In today’s Gospel, we are the seeds, and yet we are also each other’s co-sowers.

Throughout my life, I have always felt a pull toward my vocation as a theologian, but I scattered myself across so many different places because I wanted to try things out. Sometimes, the birds came and ate the seeds up quickly. Other times, I felt the slow pain of the earth scorching around me until those seeds seemed too far gone to salvage. And still, there were moments where the soil where I planted myself was rich enough to bear fruit.

Anyone who knows me knows that my ministry with adults with intellectual disabilities at L’Arche is a cornerstone of who I am. And yet, strangely enough, it is not where I spend the bulk of my time anymore. But it remains the place I return to over and over again to remember something essential about myself and about the world.

Core members—folks with disabilities—ask me questions about myself in both a literal and cosmic sense. They hold up mirrors to the parts of myself I want to hide—the impatient parts, the insecure parts, the exhausted parts, the parts of me obsessed with achievement and productivity and appearing put together. And at the same time, they continually invite me into a more honest and tender way of living. They prompt me, again and again, to ask: what is the best way to live? What actually makes a life fruitful?

My fellow assistants—many of whom have become some of my closest friends—do this too. They call me into becoming my best self without awakening shame. They offer a kind of presence so rare in the world: a non-judgmental place of rest.

And I think that is what Jesus is getting at in today’s Gospel. Soil does not become fruitful through force or perfection. Good soil is soil that has been tended to. Softened. Nourished. Given water and sunlight and time. L’Arche has been that kind of soil for me, and let me tell you, it took many test runs.

For a long time, I thought that vocation was mostly about finding the right thing to do—finding the useful, marketable skill to make money and live: The right career. The right ministry. The right path. But in these last several years, as I have nurtured the beginning of my adult life, I have come to believe that vocation is just as much about finding the communities and relationships that make it possible for us to become who God is calling us to be.

In the parable, the seed is good from the very beginning. It was made good. And in the parable we come to see that the problem is never the seed itself. The question is whether it has the conditions necessary to grow and bloom.

I think many of us are tempted to spend our lives wondering whether we are enough. Whether we are talented enough, faithful enough, disciplined enough, holy enough. We look at the places where we have struggled, where things have not worked out, where our efforts have failed, and we begin to wonder whether the problem is us. To quote Taylor Swift, we might be tempted to say “It's me, hi, I’m the problem, it's me.”

But Jesus offers a different perspective. Sometimes the issue is not the seed. Sometimes the issue is that the seed landed among rocks, or thorns, or ground that had not yet been prepared. Growth requires relationships. It requires care. It requires belonging.  

That has certainly been true in my own life. Every meaningful transformation I can point to came not because I worked harder or became more impressive, but because someone made room for me to grow. Good teachers played to my strengths and watched me soar. My parents nurtured the earth around me so that I could thrive. Someone believed there was something worth cultivating. Sometimes we drop our seeds in the wrong places and we have to start all over again. But what a gift to be on a journey to find that perfect, just right soil.

We are also invited to be co-sowers in one another's lives. We help create the conditions where growth becomes possible. We encourage one another when the harvest seems distant.

The truth is that none of us grows alone. We rely on people who soften the hard ground around us. We ask our friends and family to help us navigate the things that get in the way of joy. We gather near the people whose presence reminds us that growth happens quietly, beneath the surface, long before anyone can see it.

Seeds do not stop being alive simply because growth is not yet visible. Beneath the surface, God is still at work.

And as we all bask in the joy of summer’s warmth, vibrancy, and sunshine, may we be reminded of this feeling when the trees are bare in the dead of winter. When the sun is setting before 4 pm (at least for me in Boston), when the mornings are sub zero. That the promise of a summer bloom for creation, is also the promise of growth and blooming in our own lives. I leave us with the words of Pope Francis from On Hope.

"Let us be confident as we await the coming of [our God], and what the desert may represent in our life — each one knows what desert [we are] walking in — it will become a garden in bloom. Hope does not disappoint!"

So scatter your seeds and continue the journey of finding that just-right soil. It is promised.

https://www.catholicwomenpreach.org/preacher/olivia-catherine-hastie