Wednesday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time

First Reading: Amos 5:14-15, 21-24
Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 50:7, 8-9, 10-11, 12-13, 16bc-17
Gospel: Matthew 8:28-34
Daily readings: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/070126.cfm

Amos has been speaking hard words all week, but today he offers something surprising — a way through. "Seek good and not evil, that you may live. Hate evil and love good, and let justice prevail." It is not complicated. There is no elaborate ritual required, no spiritual performance. Just a turning: toward good, away from evil, toward justice for the people around you. God will be with you if you do this, he says. As you have claimed.

Then comes the part that stings: "I hate, I spurn your feasts. I take no pleasure in your assemblies. Away with your noisy songs. I will not listen to the melodies of your harps." God is not dismissing worship — he is dismissing worship that is hollow because it is disconnected from how people treat each other. You can fill a church, sing every hymn, show up every Sunday, and still be far from God if outside those walls you are indifferent to the suffering of the people around you. "Let justice surge like water, and goodness like an unfailing stream." The worship God wants is a life.

Then Jesus arrives in Gadara — territory outside Israel, pagan land, a place of tombs — and two men possessed by demons come out to meet him. They are violent, untouchable, living among the dead. And immediately they recognize him. "What have you to do with us, Son of God?" They know exactly who he is. He casts them out, the pigs rush into the sea, and the town comes to meet him. And then this strange, sad ending: the whole town begs Jesus to leave. He has just freed two men who had been terrorizing the region. And instead of celebrating, they want him gone. Perhaps his power frightened them. Perhaps losing the pigs cost too much. Whatever the reason — when Jesus shows up fully, it sometimes asks more of us than we planned to give.


A few questions to sit with today:

1. Is my worship — my Sunday Mass, my daily prayer, my Catholic identity — connected to how I actually treat people the rest of the week? Where is the gap?

2. Is there something in my life I would rather Jesus not touch — because cleaning it up would cost something I am not ready to lose?

3. Where have I been asked to let justice surge like water, and quietly turned down the volume instead?

4. Was there someone today living among the tombs — isolated, struggling, pushed to the edges — whom I noticed, or whom I passed by?


One small thing for tomorrow:

Think of one person in your life who is overlooked, difficult, or on the outside of your usual circle. Tomorrow, do one thing that acknowledges their dignity — a word, a small act, a moment of real attention. Let justice be, for that one moment, an unfailing stream.


Lord Jesus, you crossed into pagan territory, into the land of tombs, to free two men nobody else would go near. I want to be that kind of follower. Help me to connect my worship to my life — to let what I receive at Mass on Sunday actually change how I treat people on Wednesday. Forgive me for the places where I have sung the songs and said the prayers but kept the door closed on the justice you are asking for. And where you show up in my life asking for something costly — help me not to beg you to leave, but to trust that your presence is worth whatever it rearranges. May Mary, whose whole life was an act of justice and love, pray for me to live the same way. Amen.


If you'd like to share: is there a place in your life where you sense God is asking for more than ritual — more than showing up — and what would it look like to say yes?