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Lord My Chef Daily Recipe for Soul by Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II Monday in the Seventeenth Week of Ordinary Time, Year II, 27 July 2026 Jeremiah 13:1-11 ><))))*> + ><))))*> + ><))))*> Matthew 13:31-35
How lovely and so practical, O God, is your portrayal to us today of your intimacy with us like a "linen loincloth": the most simple and ordinary part of our clothing we take for granted yet so important and crucial because it is so close, so intimate to our skin, to our private parts; an intimacy we take for granted because it is something hidden, too personal. But, do we really care at all?
For, as close as the loincloth clings to a man’s loins, so had I made the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah cling to me, says the Lord; to be my people, my renown, my praise, my beauty. But they did not listen (Jeremiah 13:11).
Like that linen loincloth you asked Jeremiah to hide and retrieve later from a river, ending up as "rotted, good for nothing", we have betrayed you Lord, we have abandoned you to follow our many idols and false gods by keeping you in name, in rituals and rites yet compromising your laws and teachings with the ways of the world; we pretend to be close and intimate with you, Lord while choosing to be fence-sitters in situations demanding we make a stand for you, for what is true, for what is good.
True intimacy with you, O God is found in the most private moments when we choose you, when we abide in you, when we uphold your teachings and live in your ways of justice and love, kindness and mercy especially with those closest to us; may we realize, O Lord, that to whom we are most intimate and closest in following and imitating is found our Lord and God. Or sadly, our mammon too for where our treasure is, there our heart is. Amen.
