Commentary on the readings of Sunday, July 19, 2026:
Wisdom 12:13.16-19, Romans 8:26-27, Matthew 13:24-43
The reading from Wisdom 12:13.16-19 offers us one of the main keys to understanding the experience of the God of Israel in the context of a people who know themselves to be distinct among the cultural and religious forms of the Canaanite, Egyptian, and Assyrian peoples surrounding them. A trustworthy God because He listens to us and welcomes us. This characteristic reveals two questions.
The first is that the experience of God having created us out of love begins to take shape alongside the experience of Salvation. The god who saved them does not forget them, but remains attentive to their concerns and needs and shows mercy and justice in adversity. Therefore, He is not just any creator god; He is rather a caregiver or sustainer, because He does not distance Himself from His creatures, but feeds them, sustains them in their weakness, and animates and empowers them to participate in the transformation of the world.
To understand God as nourishing Wisdom, as God who feeds life, is an intuition present in the experience of Jesus. Nothing that human beings can do—their inability to empathize with the world and other human beings, their tendency to put their personal interests above others, their predatory and destructive capacity, etc.—prevents God from continuing to nourish His creation in His infinite desire to return to the original garden.
God is Wisdom in motion, loving of people, who invades every miserable corner, groans accompanying humanity before loss or wound, and releases a power that allows for starting anew. His nourishment awakens the creative activity of the earth and reorients damaged life toward growth, leaving behind violence and meaninglessness. He nourishes and strengthens the poor and the mistreated by satisfying the hunger and yearning for justice that human despair believes it cannot satisfy.
Divine Wisdom dwells in the center and on the peripheries of the world; it is vitality that cries out with labor pains, bringing forth new creation every day, every instant. He does not spare resources and is abundant in the gifts He gives us daily. God knows our weakness, and how far we can go and how far we cannot, and He encourages us to resist and be resilient with His life-giving power and continue caring for the garden (Rm 8:26-27).
This is where we can name the second question. Divine Wisdom does not measure its excess that spills over onto every one of Its creatures, regardless of their goodness or evil. Jesus intuited that God’s logic is different from human logic and laws. With a particularly simple image, Jesus points out God’s infinite goodness and determination not to give up any creature. Wheat and weeds coexist together, and it is not possible to separate them (Mt 13:24-43). It would be an atrocity to think that good can be separated from evil, life from death, in vulnerable creatures who cry out to live a more livable life. Jesus is aware that the weed which at first resembles wheat often suffocates the good. And He poses the question to the owner of the harvest about whether the weeds should be pulled out. This question moves within human logic and their eagerness to clarify what is life and what is death, what is pure and what is impure, what is good and what is bad. Jesus knows that God does not answer this question from our categories. His answer is to continue feeding, nourishing, with patience, welcoming death and life at the same time, cultivating a goodness that loves even knowing that in the end the weed will suffocate in some part.
Therefore, Jesus refers us to the hope that divine Wisdom continues to nourish with the yearning that some of those weeds will not choke the harvest. Hurrying to judge and exclude the growing weeds is not God’s option. God’s proposal is to remain faithful to a heartfelt project that goes to the heart of things and people. Active fidelity, which nourishes and sometimes generates conversion: conversion of one’s own heart, which fills with more love and mercy, and conversion of the “weedy” heart, which perceives itself welcomed without deserving it in the eyes of human justice. This is how every day of our life is, feeding the surrounding life with patience and welcome, while desiring in action the growth of a goodness within the weed that mitigates the damage and wound of our world.