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, with a love and passion to plant, grow and harvest. Robbed of their livelihood they know and still long for the wonders of good land where roots can be planted and counted on to grow and provide food and life for their families. They are reminded and led to a profound experience of abundance and then loss, hopefully enabling them to be opened and touched by Jesus’ parable. “Whoever has ears, let them hear”.
The disciples, listening and sensing the mood of the crowd, are confused. Why speak in parables? Why not just come out and say what you mean?
Jesus’ response: “Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.” The secret to understanding and opening oneself to the mysteries of God’s kingdom is a personal and community reality. How to be open? How to understand and let ourselves be challenged and motivated to live the Gospel as Jesus lived it and lives it today in us? It has to do with where I stand on life issues, with whom I stand and why. Is my life controlled by fear and distance or compassion and pain with the loss, mistreatment, exclusion and deportation of others who are not like me, where I am, how I am?
On Saturday, March 21, 2026, 15 women with their children gathered in the sisters’ home in Apopka to pray and reflect together the Via Crucis, the Way of the Cross, their lives today. They are all immigrants, some undocumented, some with family and friends already violently removed from U.S. soil. They prayed, reflected and shared their pain, their fears, their hope, remembering and revering those who with them are terrorized by the Trump administration. They continue to share this prayer and reflection with families and groups in the Apopka area remembering Jesus’ words: “Whoever has ears, let them hear”.
We read and hear some of their painful experiences. Can we feel their fear, their pain, their desperation? Are we able to sense, feel and know the secrets of the mystery of the Kingdom here…can we see and feel this mystery with the women in their prayer?
-Venezuelan migrant women understanding they were being returned to Caracas, were lied to by U.S. officials who concealed that their destination would be El Salvador. Acting quickly, the officials wanted nothing to interfere with the deportation. Some of the women had informed their families that they would arrive in Caracas. Others asked for food to be prepared for their return. But the women never arrived. According to them and their relatives, they were “kidnapped” and “deceived” by immigration agents. Only hours later did they realize they had been taken not to Venezuela, but first to Guatemala and then to El Salvador.
-Arturo Suarez asked guards at a prison in El Salvador to let him keep his glasses. Instead, they broke them during a beating. He lost consciousness and was carried to a cell where hundreds of deported migrants were held. When he awoke, everything was blurred. He remembered hearing: “Welcome to hell…You only leave here dead.”
-Without legal documents, many migrants struggle to find work and avoid deportation. A 53-year-old woman living in the United States for 25 years turned to making tamales to support her family after being unable to find formal employment. Despite fear and hardship, she continues to care for her children, including two with special needs.
-The threat by the U.S. government to deport 11 million undocumented people has raised alarms within the Mexican government, particularly in the northern states of the country. Several border cities, such as Tijuana, Ciudad Juarez, Piedras Negras, Nuevo Laredo and Reynosa, felt this pressure and worked at an accelerated pace to expand their network of shelters in order to assist the deported migrants, in coordination with the Mexican federal government.
In responding to the questioning of his disciples, Jesus replied: I speak in parables because “the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.”
-To whom then are the secrets of the kingdom of heaven given? Do these secrets appear in the prayer and reflection of the women immigrants in Apopka, in the experiences they share? How?
-When Jesus says whoever has will be given more, and they will have in abundance, what do these people have that opens them to understand and know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven? What is lacking in those who have not been given this precious knowledge? Why is what little they have understood taken away?
May we too participate in and share this experience of Jesus’ presence in our midst. May our lives give birth to life, faith and hope in all those around us.
Matthew 13: 1-23
On that day, Jesus went out of the house and sat down by the sea. Such large crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat down, and the whole crowd stood along the shore. And he spoke to them at length in parables, saying: “A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path, and birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky ground, where it had little soil. It sprang up at once because the soil was not deep, and when the sun rose it was scorched, and it withered for lack of roots. Some seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it. But some seed fell on rich soil, and produced fruit, a hundred or sixty or thirtyfold. Whoever has ears ought to hear.”
The disciples approached him and said, “Why do you speak to them in parables?” He said to them in reply, “Because knowledge of the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven has been granted to you, but to them it has not been granted. To anyone who has, more will be given and he will grow rich; from anyone who has not, even what he has will be taken away. This is why I speak to them in parables, because they look but do not see and hear but do not listen or understand. Isaiah’s prophecy is fulfilled in them, which says: You shall indeed hear but not understand, you shall indeed look but never see. Gross is the heart of this people, they will hardly hear with their ears, they have closed their eyes, lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their hearts and be converted, and I heal them.
“But blessed are your eyes, because they see, and your ears, because they hear. Amen, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.
“Hear then the parable of the sower. The seed sown on the path is the one who hears the word of the kingdom without understanding it, and the evil one comes and steals away what was sown in his heart. The seed sown on rocky ground is the one who hears the word and receives it at once with joy. But he has no root and lasts only for a time. When some tribulation or persecution comes because of the word, he immediately falls away. The seed sown among thorns is the one who hears the word, but then worldly anxiety and the lure of riches choke the word and it bears no fruit. But the seed sown on rich soil is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields a hundred or sixty or thirtyfold.”
Meet Sister Jane Dwyer, SNDdeN
