Since Wednesday of last week, the sixteenth week of the year, we have been reading Matthew 13, his great collection of Jesus' parables concerning the Kingdom of God.

Matthew apparently collected Jesus' teaching into five great discourses, quite probably imitating the five books of Moses in the Old Testament.

Just as Moses went up Mount Sinai and received the Law from God, so (5:1) Jesus went up a mountain like a new Moses to present us with the essential doctrine of the New Covenant. Jesus presented this New Covenant as a new word of God. Later, at the last Supper, It will become a New Covenant in his blood, the Eucharist. Both Word and Sacrament must come together, for, as Luke intimates in his Emmaus story, it is only when the Word of God prepares our hearts for the Eucharist that we will recognize Jesus in "The Breaking of the Bread." Then, concomitantly, it is only when we receive the Eucharist, the Covenant in his Blood, that we will recognize the fire in our hearts when Jesus uses his Word, his parables, his doctrine, to speak of the mystery of the Kingdom.