Saturday in the Eleventh Week of Ordinary Time, June 20, 2026

Matthew 6, 24-34

Jesus said to his disciples: “No one can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds in the sky; they do not sow or reap, they gather nothing into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are not you more important than they? Can any of you by worrying add a single moment to your life-span? Why are you anxious about clothes? Learn from the way the wild flowers grow. They do not work or spin. But I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was clothed like one of them. If God so clothes the grass of the field, which grows today and is thrown into the oven tomorrow, will he not much more provide for you, O you of little faith? So do not worry and say, ‘What are we to eat?’ or ‘What are we to drink?’ or ‘What are we to wear?’ All these things the pagans seek. Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides. Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself. Sufficient for a day is its own evil.”

“No one can serve two masters.”  In our modern world many different masters make demands on us.  Often these conflict with one another.  Men and women engage in demanding careers and then try to still be a spouse and parent.  Many people work more than one job, perhaps a main job and then a side gig that they hope will turn into the main job.  Those with dual citizenships are sometimes cast into difficult situations.  We may pride ourselves on our ability to multi-task, too.  In the end, we have to choose because it is unsustainable to have multiple masters.  Portable phones and computers have aggravated the situation because now we can work or communicate with others in places where our attention ought to be focused on higher priorities. 

The Lord begins to speak on this subject in what seems to us a general way: “No one can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other.”  We ought to consider the societal context to gain understanding.  When we say “master” today we mean something very different from what the Lord  meant when he used the term.  In the Lord’s day, a “master” was someone who owned slaves.  The slave was dependent on the master for his life, and to disregard his master’s command for another’s was to put his life in jeopardy.  Only if he deeply despised his master could he risk obeying the other man, otherwise the other man represented a threat to his existence and so he would be despised.

“You cannot serve God and mammon.”  The Lord here gives a prime example of what he means by two masters.  The Greek word translated as “serve” here means “to be subject to”, or “to be a slave to”.  Here we see another word that means something entirely different now than it did two thousand years ago.  The Lord is telling us that we are either God’s slaves or mammon’s, that is, the pursuit of wealth.   We can either slave for God or slave for money.  If we slave for God we will enjoy his presence here on earth during our lifetimes, and will enter its ecstasy in heaven.  If we slave for mammon. We may or may not become wealthy, and we will not live long  after we obtain wealth.  Then, because we have rejected God, we will suffer forever.

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will wear.”  The Lord now turns back to explain what it means to accept God as one’s Master.  Because the slave belongs to the master, it is the master’s responsibility to shelter, clothe, and feed him.  Thus, the slave did not have to worry about finding shelter, clothes, or food.  They were provided.  Therefore, the slave need not “worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will wear.”  The one who belongs to the Lord Jesus has even less worry in this regard, for Jesus is not a harsh master who thinks little of his slaves, but a tender Master who thinks only of his slaves.  In fact, he even calls us “friends” (cf. John 15, 15) though we remain in bondage to him.  “Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?”  That is, we ought to pay little attention to these things.  The Lord will see to them so that we can devote ourselves to our life of serving him.

“Look at the birds in the sky; they do not sow or reap, they gather nothing into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are not you more important than they?”  This brings to mind these lovely verses from the Psalms: “You have made [man] a little less than the angels, you have crowned him with glory and honor and have set him over the works of your hands. You have subjected all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, moreover, the beasts also of the fields, the birds of the air, and the fishes of the sea” (Psalm 8, 6-9).  

“Can any of you by worrying add a single moment to your life-span?”  This line in the lectionary does not translate very well the Greek, which says, “Can any of you, being anxious, add one cubit to your stature?”  One of the differences between the two translations is the participle I have translated as “being anxious”.  That is, “being anxious” is a persistent state for someone — he or she is an anxious person.  The lectionary reading implies that “worry” is used as a tool in order to gain a moment of life.  The anxious person is in a worse state than one who can utilize worry.  This is anxious one is Martha, to whom the Lord said, “You are worried and upset about many things” (Luke 10, 41).  He counsels her to follow her sister’s example: to sit at his feet and to listen to his word.  That is, “Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness.”  The “cubit” mentioned in the text would measure between two and three feet, so this would make a substantial increase in height for someone.  It could make a person of average height a giant.  A person can become a giant, but, as the Lord says, an anxious person cannot achieve this.  The one who is the “greatest” will be the servant of all, in the servitude of Jesus Christ, for “whosoever shall exalt himself shall be humbled: and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted” (Matthew 23, 12) by Almighty God.  

Friday in the Eleventh Week of Ordinary Time, June 19, 2026

Matthew 6, 19-23

Jesus said to his disciples: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and decay destroy, and thieves break in and steal. But store up treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor decay destroys, nor thieves break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be. The lamp of the body is the eye. If your eye is sound, your whole body will be filled with light; but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be in darkness. And if the light in you is darkness, how great will the darkness be.”

“For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.”  The Lord Jesus offers us an acute piece of wisdom which enables us, with some ease, to identify our true priorities and to understand the target to which the trajectory of the choices we make will take us.

In Psalm 119, 97, we read: “O how have I loved your law, O Lord! It is my meditation all the day.”  The tense of the verb in the first sentence of the verse is in the perfect, indicating that an action begun in the past has continued into the present where it is completed.  The loving of the law does not mean a single action completed in the past but is continuous to the present time.  In order to accomplish this action a person must be vigilant and concentrated.  No other action may interfere with it or surpass it.  “It is my meditation all the day” tells us the result of this love of the law of God.  Notice that “all the day” does not rule out other activities, but that these would be subordinated to or derive from the meditation.  This preoccupation with the law of God — that is, his nature, his work as Creator, his Divine Providence, the Redemption of the human race, and so on, shows where this person’s heart is because this is his treasure.  

In contrast, Ecclesiastes 5, 11 says: “Whoever loves money never has enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income.”  The one who loves money or devotes himself to fornication, drunkenness, or power never has enough.  The more he has, the more he wants.  These are his treasures.  As Ecclesiastes 4, 8 reflects: There is a man, who has no spouse, no child, no brother, and yet he ceases not to labor, neither are his eyes satisfied with riches, neither does he reflect, saying: For whom do I labor, and defraud my soul of good things?”  Giving in to the drive for more and more makes it almost impossible for a person to realize that the treasures which he seeks are ultimately worthless: “You fool, this night do they require your soul of you. And whose shall those things be which you have obtained?” (Luke 12, 20).  His heart lies in his treasure, which “moth and decay destroy, and thieves break in and steal.”

At what do we spend our time and our attention?  Is it on video games or social media?  On our career or our personal ambitions or those we have for members of our family?  These are our treasures, for these are where our hearts are.  But these are not treasures in heaven.  Ultimately they will fail and we will have nothing to show for having hard them.

But to place our hearts on Jesus Christ and knowing and serving him results in everlasting riches.  We will have no need to ask ourselves, “For whom do I labor, and defraud my soul of good things?”  For we labor for God and receive good things now and in eternity.

Thursday in the Eleventh Week of Ordinary Time, June 18, 2026

Matthew 6, 7-15

Jesus said to his disciples: “In praying, do not babble like the pagans, who think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them. Your Father knows what you need before you ask him. This is how you are to pray: ‘Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.’ “If you forgive others their transgressions, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your transgressions.”

There seem to be two stories of how Jesus teaches the Our Father to his followers.  Here, he teaches it as part of his Sermon on the Mount.  In Luke 11, 1 we read: “And it came to pass that as he was in a certain place praying, when he ceased, one of his disciples said to him: Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples.”  Luke then quotes the Lord, who presents a slightly different form of the prayer.  The most sensible way to understand this as that these are two separate occurrences.  The settings and circumstances of the accounts are very distinct.  And it is likely that many people would have asked the Lord how to pray during the course of the three years of his Public Life.

The prayer itself is meant as a sign of the distinction between the followers of John the Baptist, those of the Pharisees, and others, as we can tell from the quote from Luke.  It is not a prayer for the coming of the Messiah, as John would have taught his disciples, nor for worldly goods, as the Pharisees would have taught theirs, but for the Kingdom of God to come.  That is, for the great judgment at the end of the world and the raising up of the just into heaven.  The main intention of the prayer is made clear at the beginning.  After addressing the heavenly, Father, he is blessed: “Hallowed by thy name.”  Then the leading petition, to which all the others are subordinate which relate to it, is made: “[May] thy kingdom come.”  The petition that follows it is akin to it: “[May] thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”  That is, the Father’s will is accomplished by the coming of his kingdom.  The Lord instructs us to pray for our “daily bread”, grace and the Holy Eucharist, which will preserve us until God’s kingdom comes.  We pray for the forgiveness of our sins, which we must have in order to enter heaven, which is conditioned upon our forgiveness of others: “If you forgive others their transgressions, your heavenly Father will forgive you.”  The petition translated centuries ago as “Lead us not into temptation” sounds alarming to modern ears.  The Greek says, “Put us not to the test.”  We can learn the meaning of the petition by considering the Lord’s admonition to the Apostles at the Last Supper: “Pray that you be not put to the test” (Matthew 26, 41), that is, their faith.  We are praying for perseverance in our faith in Jesus, come what  may, so that we may enter the Kingdom of God.  “Deliver us from evil”, or, “Deliver us from the evil one” concludes the prayer, for we owe our salvation to God alone, and cannot buy it or earn it on our own.

This prayer that Jesus teaches, emblematic of the Christian, is concise and to the point.  May all of our prayers be like this and not the rambles of lawyers who seek to gain a positive outcome for their clients by clouding the issue at hand with an over abundance of words.

Wednesday in the Eleventh Week of Ordinary Time, June  17, 2026

Matthew 6, 1-6; 16-18

Jesus said to his disciples: “Take care not to perform righteous deeds in order that people may see them; otherwise, you will have no recompense from your heavenly Father. When you give alms, do not blow a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets to win the praise of others. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right is doing, so that your almsgiving may be secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you. When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, who love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on street corners so that others may see them. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you. When you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites. They neglect their appearance, so that they may appear to others to be fasting. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that you may not appear to others to be fasting, except to your Father who is hidden. And your Father who sees what is hidden will repay you.”

“Take care not to perform righteous deeds in order that people may see them; otherwise, you will have no recompense from your heavenly Father.”  The desire for the approval and applause of others is rooted in weakness.  It is as though we depend on this approval and applause to reassure us of our essential goodness and reaffirm our high opinion of ourselves.  It is also true that some very deliberately and publicly perform some act of charity in order to uphold their place in society by gaining and cementing the good opinion of others.  The Lord is criticizing these latter, for they make a travesty of charitable actions, which are done for the sake of the needy and not for the sake of oneself.  Because these actions are performed for the sake of the needy, the person doing them does not draw attention to the recipients of his actions, lest they be embarrassed by their need.  Done properly, with true love for the recipients, these deeds receive “recompense” from our Heavenly Father.  What kind of recompense?  One only the Father can render: “He who has mercy on the poor, lends to the Lord: and he will repay him” (Proverbs 19, 17).

“When you give alms, do not blow a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do.”  The Greek word translated here as “hypocrite” is used in the Septuagint (the early Greek translation of the Old Testament) to translate a Hebrew word that means “godless”.  We see, then, how strong the Lord’s condemnation is.  To be “godless” is to act as the heathen do, without any reference to God but solely based on one’s own self-interest.  Godless actions harden a person in his godlessness so that he deserves a severe punishment in hell: “Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward.”  That is, they make their place in the afterlife more certain.

“Do not let your left hand know what your right is doing, so that your almsgiving may be secret.”  Throughout the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord uses figures of speech to drive home his meaning.  He uses hyperbole, for instance, in advising people to cut off their hands lest their hands cause them to sin, or not to resist evil.  Here he speaks of one hand not knowing what the other is doing, as though hands had their own minds.  His point is that his followers should be so accustomed to performing good deeds that they themselves do not notice the significance of what they are doing.  That is, charity ought to become ordinary behavior, not extraordinary.

“When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, who love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on street corners so that others may see them.”  This May seem ridiculous behavior to us today, but in the very religious culture of the Jews in .Israel at that time, it often happened that someone whose heart was full would cry out in prayer publicly.  We see an example of this in the case of Zechariah when he recovered his ability to speak after naming John the Baptist.  Prayer was always spoken aloud at that time, whether on the street or in the synagogue or Temple.  It could be used to proclaim one’s good fortune or supposed virtue.  But the Lord cautions his followers, “When you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret.”  This practice preserves the purity of the prayer, which is meant for God alone.

“When you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites.”  That is, like the godless heathens who are only interested in the approval of others.  In the days when Jesus walked the earth, there was one major fast, the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur), and various minor fasts that prohibited eating from sundown to sunrise.  The Lord says not to make a show of fasting, but to act as one would on ordinary days.  The purpose of fasting is to do penance, to remember one’s lowliness.  Calling attention to oneself when fasting directly contradicts this purpose.

Just as the Law given by God to the Hebrews in the wilderness made them a nation distinct from the peoples around them by its particular regulation of behavior, so the fulfillment of the Law in the Sermon on the Mount does this for Christians.  We are not to act like the others around us, but like Jesus our Lord.

Tuesday in the Eleventh Week of Ordinary Time, June 16, 2026

Matthew 5, 43-48

Jesus said to his disciples: “You have heard that it was said, You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have? Do not the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your brothers only, what is unusual about that? Do not the pagans do the same? So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

When cornered regarding an error, a miscalculation, or a sin, people often excuse themselves by saying, “Nobody’s perfect.”  But that is not true.  Besides the Lord Jesus himself, there is Blessed Mother.  She is not perfect through a magic spell but because she cooperated with the will of God in all the moments of her life.  Grace certainly aided her, but it only made what she accomplished achievable.  At any time she could have chosen to deviate from his will but she did not.  There are all the saints, as well.  These men, women, and children may have sinned and even have lives of debauchery, but by the time of their deaths, through lives spent in penance and selfless devotion to the Lord, they became perfect.  We can think of St. Mary of Egypt, a courtesan for much of her life whose heart was changed by a few lines from the Gospel which she heard one day while passing a church.  She repented in the wilderness, living in a cave on bread and water, praying for forgiveness.  Or St. John of God, who hired himself out as a mercenary during the sixteenth century, living a thoroughly ungodly life, until he converted, did penance, and served the poor for the rest of his life.  He died while trying to save a youth from drowning.

“So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  These words may seem impossible to fulfill.  It may seem one thing to become as perfect as a human saint but quite another to be perfect as God himself is perfect.  We think this because we fail to understand what Jesus means.  He is not telling us to become infinite as God is, or as fully actuated as God is (for, as St. Thomas Aquinas tells us, God is pure act).  God is perfect in the ways that God can be perfect, and we are called to be perfect in the ways that a human can be perfect, and for us that principally means having no attachment to sin and loving, believing, and hoping to the full extent of our ability.  And, as we see in the saints, this is quite possible for us.  We may gaze upon St. Therese or St. Anthony and think that we have so far to go that we will never succeed.  It is like a child beginning to learn to play the piano and struggling with a simple tune, thinking she will never be able to perform the Beethoven piano sonatas.  It takes work, hard work, accepting the assistance of the grace God provides, but it can be done.  In our case, it must be done, for only the pure of heart shall see God.

Monday in the Eleventh Week of Ordinary Time, June 15, 2026

Matthew 5, 38-42

Jesus said to his disciples: “You have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you, offer no resistance to one who is evil. When someone strikes you on your right cheek, turn the other one to him as well. If anyone wants to go to law with you over your tunic, hand him your cloak as well. Should anyone press you into service for one mile, go with him for two miles. Give to the one who asks of you, and do not turn your back on one who wants to borrow.”

Jesus says, “Offer no resistance to one who is evil”.  We have to read this verse in context with the preceding verses, which include, “If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off.”  That is, Jesus is using hyperbole to make a point.  He is telling us not to offer violence with intent to harm: do not provoke someone into a fight, and do not enact revenge against a person.  Rather, seek justice from the proper authorities.  Now, in following the commandment to love oneself and our neighbors, we ought to understand that we can defend ourselves and those for whom we have responsibility.  In contrast, if we literally offered no resistance to evil, we would be complicit in it.  This applies also to the famous words about turning one’s cheek.  We are not to offer ourselves to violence, but we are to avoid committing it, particularly with malice, as best we can.  

“Give to the one who asks of you, and do not turn your back on one who wants to borrow.”  The commandment here is to be generous, but it is not meant in an absolute sense: a person ought to be generous but not so that it affects one’s own good or that of the people for whom one is responsible.  If our neighbor asks us for a thousand dollars and we have only that much and it is for the rent we owe, then we cannot give to our neighbor.  In this case, we simply do not have it to give.  We can understand this verse, then, as: Give to the one who asks of you if you are able.  We must also be prudent with our money and other goods.  If a person asks us for money and our best guess is that the person will use it to fuel his addiction, then we ought not to provide the money.  We use it to pay our bills or help someone with the necessities of life.  We should also keep in mind here that in the historical context in which Jesus was speaking, a person only asked for a loan if he was in trouble.  In the first century A.D., no one was seeking loans in order to pay for luxuries.  Loaned money would be used to pay taxes, to buy food, or even to get a person released from debtor’s prison.  Often, usurious rates would be applied to the loan, although theoretically the Jewish law prohibited Jews from charging interest on loans to each other.  Jesus is reminding his hearers not to do this, but to loan freely.

The reason for us to be generous is that our God is generous.  As we have freely received from him, we should freely give.

The Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, June 14 2026

Matthew 9, 36—10, 8

At the sight of the crowds, Jesus’ heart was moved with pity for them because they were troubled and abandoned, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few; so ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest.” Then he summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits to drive them out and to cure every disease and every illness. The names of the twelve apostles are these: first, Simon called Peter, and his brother Andrew; James, the son of Zebedee, and his brother John; Philip and Bartholomew, Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James, the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddeus; Simon from Cana, and Judas Iscariot who betrayed him. Jesus sent out these twelve after instructing them thus, “Do not go into pagan territory or enter a Samaritan town. Go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. As you go, make this proclamation: ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, drive out demons. Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give.”

“At the sight of the crowds, Jesus’ heart was moved with pity for them because they were troubled and abandoned.”  A couple of vocabulary details help us with this Gospel Reading.  First, while “Jesus’ heart was moved with pity” is a picturesque phrase, the Greek word simply means “to pity”.  St. Matthew, as an author, was not much given to sentimental phrases like this.  Second, the Greek word translated as “abandoned” actually has the meaning of “cast aside”: the shepherd has not merely walked away from the flock, he has treated them contemptuously in leaving them.  This describes the state of the Jews at that time.  The priests did not preach to them or teach them the Law as the Law itself commanded them to do, and those self-appointed experts, the Pharisees, misinterpreted the Word of God for the people so that they were not much better off than if they had no teachers at all.  The people yearned for a Savior and desired to do God’s will, but the Pharisees did not accept Jesus despite his miracles and they made following the Law so complicated that the idea of serving God fell away from the Law altogether.

“The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few; so ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest.”  The people are ready to hear the announcement of the approach of the Kingdom of heaven, but despite his relentless efforts, the Lord could not go out to all the towns and villages of Galilee and Judea.  Nor could he go to the Jewish communities in Alexandria, Egypt, or in Rome to preach to them.  The three years allotted for his Public Life simply did not contain enough days.  The Lord tells the disciples to pray for “laborers” — he is telling them to pray that they be good laborers for this work.  When the Lord makes us aware of a problem, he is pointing to us to do something about it.  “Then he summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits to drive them out and to cure every disease and every illness.”  We do not give ourselves authority, but it must come from an authority.  Otherwise we are usurpers and no better than the Pharisees.  The Apostles receive this authority and power not in order to gather followings for themselves but to validate their preaching about the Kingdom of heaven and the need for repentance.  These signs, worked from heaven, prove to all that what they say comes from God.

“The names of the twelve apostles are these, etc.”  The list of names appears in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke.  The Evangelists give them in almost in the same order, with a couple variations on the names, as Nathanael for Bartholomew.  Looking at the calling of the Apostles in the four Gospels, the Apostles seem to be listed in the order in which they were called, except for Peter, who should be listed after Andrew and John, to go by the Gospel of St. John.  The Evangelists may give these lists in order to distinguish them from the deacons and other disciples preaching in the earliest days of the Church.

“Do not go into pagan territory or enter a Samaritan town. Go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”  The Lord forbids the Apostles to go into non-Jewish lands not because he disdains the people in these places but because he wants to give his Apostles a chance to learn how to preach in a familiar setting before going into more challenging locations.  “The kingdom of heaven is at hand.”  This verse is more correctly translated, The Kingdom of God has drawn near” — it did not suddenly and randomly appear; it has steadily and deliberately approached.  “Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, drive out demons. Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give.”  The Apostles did not have to pay expensive fees to obtain the authority and power to perform these miraculous works.  Nor did they even dare to ask for it.  The Lord gave it to them with their asking and without cost.  It came with their assignment.  Evidently they did heal the sick and cast out devils, from what they told Jesus on their return, but they did not raise the dead until after they received the Holy Spirit after the Resurrection.

We are sent out likewise with such power — grace — given to us as we may need for the individual job each of us is called to do.