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.

The Memorial of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Saturday, June 13, 2026

Luke 2, 41-51

Each year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the feast of Passover, and when he was twelve years old, they went up according to festival custom. After they had completed its days, as they were returning, the boy Jesus remained behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. Thinking that he was in the caravan, they journeyed for a day and looked for him among their relatives and acquaintances, but not finding him, they returned to Jerusalem to look for him. After three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions, and all who heard him were astounded at his understanding and his answers. When his parents saw him, they were astonished, and his mother said to him, “Son, why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety.” And he said to them, “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” But they did not understand what he said to them. He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them; and his mother kept all these things in her heart. 

This feast was first celebrated locally in France in 1648 and was instituted for the universal Church in 1805.  It was at first celebrated in February.  As war raged throughout the world during the year 1944, Pope Pius XII dedicated it to the protection of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, moving the feast celebrating it to August 22, the octave day of the Solemnity of Mary’s Assumption into heaven.  In 1969, Paul VI moved the feast to the Saturday following the Feast of the Sacred Heart, and the Feast of the Queenship of Mary from May 31 to August 22 so that it fell on the octave day of the Assumption.  The devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary commemorates the overflowing love of the Blessed Virgin for her Son Jesus and also for us, whom the Lord gave to her as her children while he hung dying on the Cross.

The present Gospel passage was set in the lectionary for this feast because it tells of the love of the Virgin’s heart for her Son, an ongoing love that grew as she thought upon him and his deeds and actions, just as ours will if we do this.

“Each year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the feast of Passover, and when he was twelve years old.”  St. Luke could have written this verse in another way: When Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the feast of Passover, after he turned twelve.  Luke could safely assume that Theophilus, to whom he was writing, knew that the Jews all went up to Jerusalem at this time so he need not have included the words “each year”.  He does so, however, to emphasize the piety of the Lord’s parents.  They practiced their religion with great devotion and so fostered their Son’s love for his Father in heaven as he grew according to his human nature.  “When he was twelve years old.”  Luke is careful to point out this detail: Jesus is now an adult in the Jewish world.  This allows him, for the first time, to separate himself from his human parents in order to begin the work set for him by his Almighty Father.  Luke will make a similar statement about the Lord’s age at the beginning of his Public Life: “Jesus, when he began his ministry, was about thirty years of age” (Luke 3, 23).  He does so to show that the Lord obeyed the custom of the time, that a man could not begin to teach as a rabbi until he had reached his thirtieth year.  

“After they had completed its days.”  We note the precise information that Luke has, as though coming from the Blessed Virgin herself.  According to the Law, the people would eat unleavened bread for seven days after the Passover and then come together for an assembly to worship God.  The Holy Family, then, stayed in Jerusalem for about a week.  It would be interesting to know if they stopped by Bethlehem as they came or went in order to see members of their extended family who would have still lived there.

“The boy Jesus remained behind in Jerusalem.”  The Greek word translated here as “boy” has a broad range of meanings including “young man”, “son”, “servant”, and “attendant”.  It implies a young man not yet married, for then another word, meaning both “adult man” and “husband” would be used.  “Thinking that he was in the caravan, they journeyed for a day and looked for him among their relatives and acquaintances.”  The men and women traveled in separate caravans, and at the age of twelve Jesus could have walked with either Joseph or Mary.  One of his parents must have sent a message to the other inquiring about Jesus, and then they would have known that Jesus was not among them.  Supposing he was walking with other relatives in the throng, each would have searched through the particular caravans, enlisting others to help them.  It would have been a big job.  But when Jesus was not found, Mary and Joseph dropped out of the crowds and went together back to Jerusalem.  They must have figured that if Jesus was in the city, he would have to be in the Temple courtyard, presumably in the women’s court, the only part of the Temple he had gone into to that time.

“When his parents saw him, they were astonished.”  In verse 47, the people are astonished at the Lord’s knowledge; in verse 48, Mary and Joseph are described as “thunderstruck” (as the Greek word means) at seeing him there, sitting in the midst of a group of teachers.  They might have reacted this way because they saw him “sitting” there, ringed around by the teachers, as though students, in the posture of one who was himself teaching.  The gulf between teacher and student has shrunk dramatically in our times so that teachers often cannot control their students and even fear them.  In ancient times, a teacher was revered by student and public alike.  To be known as the student of a prominent teacher amounted to a mark of honor and a sign of intelligence.  Therefore, the sight of the young, unschooled, Jesus seated as a teacher while holding spellbound older men recognized as teachers must have come as a shock, even given their knowledge of his divine origins.  It was also, for them, the first sign since his Birth and the days following of his divinity.

“Son, why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety.”  Mary speaks before Joseph can.  She reveals her heart to us in her.  She calls him “child”, according to the Greek, that is, a male child, not so much “son”.  “What did you do thus to us”, literally.  She is not simply asking him the reason for his acting as he had. According to the Greek, it is as though Mary knows that from now on, their relationship with him has changed.  It is a sign of the day when Mary will come to him while he is preaching and he continues preaching without greeting her (cf. Matthew 12, 46-50).  The Greek word translated here as “anxiety” actually means the much stronger “pain” or “torture”, so that Mary was saying, “Child, what have you done thus to us? Your father and I were searching for you, suffering torture.”

“Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”  Jesus confirms his Mother’s understanding of the change in their relationship with him.  He also answers her address of him as “child” by speaking of choosing to be in his Father’s house than with his human parents.  He is an adult now, not a child, and is free from then on to make his own way in life.  It is a hard blow for any mother to hear, but a much harder one for this Mother, who loved her Son with a love beyond all telling.  The Lord also reminds her and Joseph that they knew this day would come.  According to the Greek, he asks them, “Had you not known that I must be in my Father’s house?”  That is, from the beginning.

“But they did not understand what he said to them.”  They did not understand fully what he said to them, for he spoke to them as an adult and with authority as he would later speak to the crowds.  

“He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them.”  He could have gone off from Mary and Joseph after that or he could have stayed in Jerusalem, but he went home with them out of his love for them and to show us his humility through his obedience, though he did not owe it.  “And his mother kept all these things in her heart.”  The Greek says, His Mother “kept safe” or “held fast” all these “words” or “sayings”.  She treasured all his Son’s words and actions.  She clung to them tightly throughout her life.  Her keen intellect caught it all and she forgot nothing.  

In understanding something of her love for her Son we can apply the words of the Bride from The Song of Songs to her: “I sat down under his shadow, whom I desired: and his fruit was sweet to my palate.”  She was happily content to be his Handmaid even as he became her Son, and she watched and listened to him, enjoying his fruit, his love for her.

The Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, Friday, June 12, 2026

 Matthew 11, 25–30

At that time Jesus exclaimed: “I give praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to little ones. Yes, Father, such has been your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him.  Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.” 

This feast was first celebrated in 1670 in France through the efforts of St. John Eudes. A hundred years later it was established on the first Friday after Corpus Christi in connection with the visions of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque.

“At that time Jesus exclaimed.”  The context for this Gospel Reading is that the Lord is speaking after he has warned various cities he has visited that  they will be condemned at the end of the world because they have not repented despite his preaching and miracles.  He even compares them to Sodom, upon which God poured fire and brimstone for its sins.  Following this, the Lord praises his Father for revealing his mysteries to “little ones” while withholding them from “the wise and the learned”, by which he first of all meant the Pharisees.  But the Father does not hold his truth back from anyone: he simply accepts its rejection by those who nourish a high opinion of themselves.  These “little ones” of whom he speaks are the ordinary people, illiterate and not schooled in the intricacies of the Law so that they are dependent on the scribes and Pharisees to know what it means.  They follow Jesus when they hear his voice and his clear message of salvation because he loves them.

“I give praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth.”  The Son praises the Father for revealing his mysteries to “the little ones” while those great in their own estimation reject them.  The Father reveals these through his Son, and the Son delights in doing the Father’s work, and zealously performs it.  “Yes, Father, such has been your gracious will.”  That is, it is no accident of fate or alteration of the Father’s will to reveal these mysteries to the little ones after the great ones had rejected him: it is his purpose, for God’s glory is made more manifest through the little and the poor than through the wise, the powerful, and the rich, just as an artist shows the greatness of his skill through the use of poorer brushes, canvasses, and paints than if he had used the best that money could buy.

“All things have been handed over to me by my Father.”  Following his short prayer of praise to the Father, the Son speaks of his relationship with him.  These verses remind us very strongly of the language Jesus employs in doing this as recorded in the Gospel of St. John.  The Lord does not employ and figures of speech or memorable images to teach about this relationship.  Rather, he speaks about it very plainly.  He begins by teaching that the Father has handed “all things” over to him.  After his Resurrection he will say something similar: “All power is given to me in heaven and in earth” (Matthew 28, 18).  In this way the Son explains that he is equal to the Father. “No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him.”  Here, Jesus speaks of himself explicitly as the Son of the Father.  Having established his equality with the Father, he goes on to teach that knowledge of the Son comes only through the grace provided by the Father, and that true knowledge of the Father comes through the Son.  The first part of the verse brings to mind words that the Lord spoke after feeding the crowd of five thousand: “No man can come to me, unless the Father, who has sent me, draw him” (John 6, 44).  The second part reminds us of John 14, 6: “No one comes to the Father except through me.”  The Father draws us to the Son through love of our Savior, which leads to faith; and the Son reveals God as Father to us.  At the end of time, it is the Son who calls the righteous into heaven to be in his Father’s Kingdom: “Come, ye blessed of my Father, possess you the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Matthew 25, 34).

“Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.”  These next verses also seem apart from what went before and may have been spoken by the Lord at another time, possibly after the Apostles returned from their first mission, but Matthew, recalling the words, did not recall the circumstances and place them here.  He is speaking this to “the little ones” of whom he spoke above, so it could be that Jesus has returned to this theme.  Those who labor and are burdened are those who strive to do God’s will in their lives in the face of opposition and temptation.  The “rest” Jesus promises that he himself will give is spiritual refreshment here, and eternal rest with him in heaven.  “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart.”  The “yoke” of Jesus is his Cross, but the Lord does not give it to us to carry alone, for he Carrie’s it with us.  The fact that he takes up his Cross for our sake proves beyond any doubt that he is “meek and humble of heart”, and through his Cross we can be made thus too.  We “learn” from Jesus through reading the Gospels and through prayer.  We learn about him in the Gospels but we know him through prayer, especially before the Blessed Sacrament or the crucifix.

“For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.” His Cross — doing the will of the Father — is “easy” because he gives us both the example and the grace we need to do this.  His burden — the suffering we undergo in carrying his yoke — is “light” because of the reward he sets before us.

Thursday in the Tenth Week of Ordinary Time, June 11, 2026

Matthew 5:20-26

Jesus said to his disciples: “I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter into the Kingdom of heaven. You have heard that it was said to your ancestors, You shall not kill; and whoever kills will be liable to judgment. But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment, and whoever says to his brother, Raqa, will be answerable to the Sanhedrin, and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ will be liable to fiery Gehenna. Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar, and there recall that your brother has anything against you, leave your gift there at the altar, go first and be reconciled with your brother, and then come and offer your gift. Settle with your opponent quickly while on the way to court with him. Otherwise your opponent will hand you over to the judge, and the judge will hand you over to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison. Amen, I say to you, you will not be released until you have paid the last penny.”

“I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter into the Kingdom of heaven.”  The Lord Jesus continues his Sermon on the Mount.  In the first Gospel reading taken from this Sermon, the Beatitudes, the Lord laid the foundation for holiness as imitating they ways in which he was poor in spirit, pure of heart, merciful, etc., not as others may be said to be.  The next reading after that, used at yesterday’s Mass, showed how a person, holy through this imitation, was made “salt” for the earth, a “light” in a room, and a “city” on a hill, bring others to the Lord.  In this third Gospel reading, the Lord emphasizes that this holiness or righteousness is of a kind not seen before in the world.  And so he says, “Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter into the Kingdom of heaven.”  The righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees was merely on the surface and did not involve a radical reorientation of the heart.  They carried out the commandments — or their interpretation of the commandments — but they did not do this out of love.  The Christian’s righteousness must surpass theirs through acting from the heart, which is conformed to that of Christ.  And because the Lord’s heart gushes forth love for us, our hearts need to gush for love of him and of our neighbors.  This love is enabled by grace: “God is able to make all grace abound in you: that ye always, having all sufficiently in all things [for yourselves], may abound to every good work” (2 Corinthians 9, 8).  

“You have heard that it was said to your ancestors, You shall not kill; and whoever kills will be liable to judgment. But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment.”  The Lord gives an example of the righteousness he calls his followers to.  The scribes and Pharisees might follow the letter of the law in not killing, but what is necessary to please God is the change of heart through grace which prevents a person from being enraged at another to the point of desiring his death.  “Whoever says to his brother, Raqa, will be answerable to the Sanhedrin.”  Even calling names is forbidden.  “Whoever says, ‘You fool,’ will be liable to fiery Gehenna.”  “Raqa” and “You fool” have approximately the same meaning.  Perhaps the distinction is that one person is talking to another person about a third person, and says that the third person is a raqa, but “You fool” is said directly to someone.  “Gehenna” is a valley outside the Old City of Jerusalem which was popularly identified of as the valley spoken of in 1 Enoch where the damned would suffer punishment.  The identification probably has to do with the fact that human sacrifices were performed there during the reigns of the wicked kings of Judah who ruled after Solomon.

“Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar, and there recall that your brother has anything against you, leave your gift there at the altar.”  The Lord speaks of the altar in the Temple in Jerusalem, to which various kinds of offerings such as thanks-offerings or sin-offerings would be made.  The reference assures us that Matthew wrote his Gospel before the destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D.  Making the prescribed sacrifice at the altar was of the greatest importance, and so the Lord is saying that reconciling with one’s brother was even more important than that.  Again, this is about following the Law with one’s heart and not merely following its letter.  The Pharisee would sacrifice first and then make peace.  The Lord says, in essence, making peace with your brother is the condition for offering the sacrifice at the altar.

“Settle with your opponent quickly while on the way to court with him.”  This next saying is related to the preceding in that both are about reconciliation, but since it does not fit in with the theme of true righteousness and superficial righteousness, it may be a separate saying of the Lord’s that Matthew set in this place.  The meaning of the saying assumes that one person has harmed another in some way and that the one who caused the harm ought to realize that he will be found guilty and punished, so the proper course is to swallow one’s pride and ask for terms from the one he has harmed and to accept what is offered because a judge will be more severe than the plaintiff.  This is the humble confession of sins with the firm purpose to sin no more and to make amends.  “Amen, I say to you, you will not be released until you have paid the last penny.”  The defendant, once convicted, would be given a fine so heavy that he would need to sell all his property to pay it off, and even so he might not have enough.  But if he can pay it he can be released from the prison so he has hope.  We can understand this as the Lord teaching about purgatory, a concept already current among the Jews, as we find in their writings in the years before the birth of Jesus.

We pray Almighty God to make us truly sincere in our acts of piety, done for the love of God and neighbor, and not for show or out of habit.

Wednesday in the Tenth Week of Ordinary Time, June 10, 2026

Matthew 5:17-19

Jesus said to his disciples: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have taken place. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do so will be called least in the Kingdom of heaven. But whoever obeys and teaches these commandments will be called greatest in the Kingdom of heaven.”

There must have been a fair number of people saying that the Lord was abolishing the Law or the Prophets.  Why would they think that?  This can be understood with the Lord’s teaching about himself as found in the Gospel of John, for instance in his conversations with Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman.  He taught them that he was the Son of God and that he would be killed so that all who believe in him might be saved (cf. John 3, 13-16); and that he would give the “water” of eternal life to those to whom he willed (cf. John 4, 14).  This made it seem as though following the Law and believing the writings of the Prophets had no purpose: salvation would be achieved without them.  If that were the case, then this Jesus of Nazareth must be “abolishing” (or, better, “overthrowing”), the Law and the Prophets.

“I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.”  The Old Law was given to the Hebrews in the time before grace, and as such it was a Law they were capable of upholding.  In the time of grace, the Lord revealed the fullness of the Old Law, for now, with the necessary help of grace, that could be carried out. “Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have taken place.”  That is, not the smallest part of the New Law which the Lord reveals in his Sermon on the Mount.  “Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do so will be called least in the Kingdom of heaven.”  Indeed, those who reject the Law and teach others to do so through bad example and scandal, shall not have any part of the Kingdom of heaven, as they have rejected the Law that leads to it.

“But whoever obeys and teaches these commandments will be called greatest in the Kingdom of heaven.”  Among these are parents who practice the Faith and teach it to their children, as well as priests and men and women religious who both practice and teach the Faith.  In fact, the best way to teach it is to obey it so that others may see it.  All of us, no matter what our state of life may accomplish this and become great in the Kingdom of heaven.