Monday of the 17th week of Ordinary Time

1Thus saith the Lord to me: Go, and get thee a linen girdle, and thou shalt put it about thy loins, and shalt not put it into water. 2And I got a girdle accoding to the word of the Lord, and put it about my loins. 3And the word of the Lord came to me the second time, saying: 4Take the girdle which thou hast got, which is about thy loins, and arise, and go to the Euphrates, and hide it there in a hole of the rock. 5And I went, and hid it by the Euphrates, as the Lord had commanded me. 6And it came to pass after many days, that the Lord said to me: Arise, go to the Euphrates, and take from thence the girdle, which I commanded thee to hide there. 7And I went to the Euphrates, and digged, and took the girdle out of the place where I had hid it: and behold the girdle was rotten, so that it was fit for no use. 8And the word of the Lord came to me, saying: 9Thus saith the Lord: after this manner will I make the pride of Juda, and the great pride of Jerusalem to rot. 10This wicked people, that will not hear my words, and that walk in the perverseness of their heart, and have gone after strange gods to serve them, and to adore them: and they shall be as this girdle which is fit for no use. 11For as the girdle sticketh close to the loins of a man, so have I brought close to me all of the house of Israel, and all the house of Juda, saith the Lord: that they might be my people, and for a name, and for a praise, and for a glory: but they would not hear.

18Thou hast forsaken the God that beget thee, and hast forgotten the Lord that created thee.

19The Lord saw, and was moved to wrath: because his own sons and daughters provoked him.

20And he said: I will hide my face from them, and will consider what their last end shall be: for it is a perverse generation, and unfaithful children.

21They have provoked me with that which was no god, and have angered me with their vanities: and I will provoke them with that which is no people, and will vex them with a foolish nation.

31Another parable he proposed unto them, saying: The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field. 32Which is the least indeed of all seeds; but when it is grown up, it is greater than all herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come, and dwell in the branches thereof. 33Another parable he spoke to them: The kingdom of heaven is like to leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, until the whole was leavened. 34All these things Jesus spoke in parables to the multitudes: and without parables he did not speak to them. 35That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying: I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter things hidden from the foundation of the world.