St. Januarius, bishop & martyr 

＊＊＊ 1st Reading ＊＊＊

1Corinthians 15:35-37, 42-49

Some of you will ask:

How will the dead be raised? With what kind of body will they come?  You fools! What you sow cannot sprout un­less it dies. And what you sow is not the body of the future plant but a bare grain of wheat or any other seed, It is the same with the resurrection of the dead.

The body is sown in decomposition; it will be raised never more to die. It is sown in humiliation, and it will be raised for Glory. It is buried in weakness, but the resurrection shall be with power. When buried it is a natural body, but it will be raised as a spiritual body. 

For there shall be a spiritual body as there is at present a living body. Scripture says that Adam, the first man, became a living being; but the last Adam has become a life-giving spirit.

 The spirit does not appear first, but the natural life, and afterwards comes the spirit. The first man comes from the earth and is earthly, while the second one comes from heaven. As it was with the earthly one, so is it with the earthly people.

As it is with Christ, so with the heavenly. This is why, after bearing the image of the earthly one, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly one.

 

Ps 56:10c-12, 13-14

I will walk in the presence of God, in the light of the living.

 

＊＊＊＊ Gospel ＊＊＊＊

Luke 8:4-15

As a great crowd gathered and people came to him from every town, Jesus began teaching them through stories, or para­bles, “The sower went out to sow the seed. And as he sowed, some of the grain fell along the way, was trodden on and the birds of the sky ate it up.

Some fell on rocky ground, and no sooner had it come up than it withered, because it had no water. Some fell among thorns; the thorns grew up with the seed and choked it. But some fell on good soil and grew, producing fruit – a hundred times as much.” And Jesus cried out, “Listen then, if you have ears to hear!”

The disciples asked him, “What does this story mean?” And Jesus answered, “You have been granted to know the mystery of the kingdom of God. But to others it is given in the form of stories, or parables, so that seeing they may not perceive and hearing they may not understand.”

 Now, this is the point of the parable: The seed is the word of God. Those along the wayside are people who hear it, but immediately the devil comes and takes the word from their minds, for he doesn’t want them to believe and be saved. 

Those on the rocky ground are people who receive the word with joy, but they have no root; they believe for a while and give way in time of trial. Among the thorns are people who hear the word but as they go their way, are choked by worries, riches, and the pleasures of life; they bring no fruit to maturity.

The good soil, instead, are people who receive the word and keep it in a gentle and generous mind, and persevering patiently, they bear fruit.

 

Gospel Reflection：

A teacher calls the top fifteen students of her class. She instructed each of them to sit beside a show-learnig classmate. The bright students were tasked to help their slow classmates understand the lesson.

She then said that the grades of the bright students would depend on the progress of the slow-learning ones. What happened was that the tutor students assist their classmates even during the break.

They even make follow-ups whether their classmates were studying at home. This sounds unfair. However, all the fifteen students claimed they become sharper and brighter by teaching their classmates than studying by themselves.

Similarly, a bad or dry soil can become rich when mixed with fertile ones. The fertile ones may even get richer supplementing rocks and sands. The Gospel then challenge us to enrich those who are in arid conditions. We cannot do that if we are not enriched first.