June 18, 2026
Thursday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time
Lectionary: 368
Reading 1
Like a fire there appeared the prophet Elijah
whose words were as a flaming furnace.
Their staff of bread he shattered,
in his zeal he reduced them to straits;
By the Lord’s word he shut up the heavens
and three times brought down fire.
How awesome are you, Elijah, in your wondrous deeds!
Whose glory is equal to yours?
You brought a dead man back to life
from the nether world, by the will of the LORD.
You sent kings down to destruction,
and easily broke their power into pieces.
You brought down nobles, from their beds of sickness.
You heard threats at Sinai,
at Horeb avenging judgments.
You anointed kings who should inflict vengeance,
and a prophet as your successor.
You were taken aloft in a whirlwind of fire,
in a chariot with fiery horses.
You were destined, it is written, in time to come
to put an end to wrath before the day of the LORD,
To turn back the hearts of fathers toward their sons,
and to re-establish the tribes of Jacob.
Blessed is he who shall have seen you
And who falls asleep in your friendship.
For we live only in our life,
but after death our name will not be such.
O Elijah, enveloped in the whirlwind!
Then Elisha, filled with the twofold portion of his spirit,
wrought many marvels by his mere word.
During his lifetime he feared no one,
nor was any man able to intimidate his will.
Nothing was beyond his power;
beneath him flesh was brought back into life.
In life he performed wonders,
and after death, marvelous deeds.
Responsorial Psalm
R. (12a) Rejoice in the Lord, you just!
The LORD is king; let the earth rejoice;
let the many isles be glad.
Clouds and darkness are round about him,
justice and judgment are the foundation of his throne.
R. Rejoice in the Lord, you just!
Fire goes before him
and consumes his foes round about.
His lightnings illumine the world;
the earth sees and trembles.
R. Rejoice in the Lord, you just!
The mountains melt like wax before the LORD,
before the Lord of all the earth.
The heavens proclaim his justice,
and all peoples see his glory.
R. Rejoice in the Lord, you just!
All who worship graven things are put to shame,
who glory in the things of nought;
all gods are prostrate before him.
R. Rejoice in the Lord, you just!
Alleluia
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
You have received a spirit of adoption as sons
through which we cry: Abba! Father!
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
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.”
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/061826.cfm
Commentary on Sirach
48:1-15
About this passage, the Vatican II Missal states:
“Having read in the Book of Kings the story of the great
Elijah, we now read Sirach’s poetic description and praise of this prophet.”
It is quite normal in our liturgical readings that, after we
have been hearing about one of the great personalities of the Old Testament,
there is a final encomium taken from the Book of Sirach (also known as
Ecclesiasticus). We had a similar reading after hearing about David’s
life. These testimonies are taken from a part of the book called “Praises
of the Fathers”. The book is listed among the so-called ‘apochryphal’
books which are not part of the recognised canon in either the Hebrew or Christian
Scriptures of other denominations.
The author of Sirach here recalls the great exploits of
Elijah, including his triumph over the priests of Baal and his bringing down
fire from heaven when the Lord burnt up the sacrifice of Elijah, but not that of
the priests of Baal. He was also instrumental in the breaking of a long
drought; he raised a dead child to life; and he brought about the destruction
of kings (Ahab).
About Elijah, the passage states:
[You] heard rebuke at Sinai
and judgments of vengeance at Horeb…
This seems to refer to the time when Elijah went to the
mountain at Horeb and learned that God was not in violence, but in the gentle
breeze (“sheer silence” in the NRSVue translation). This seemed to be a
reproof from Yahweh that violent action was not the way Elijah’s enemies were
to be dealt with.
Finally, he anointed kings who would do the Lord’s work,
appointed Elisha as his successor and at the end was taken up to Yahweh in a
fiery chariot, the transport of kings.
There is then a subtle reference to his future coming,
heralding the arrival of the Messiah:
[You] who were prepared at the appointed time
to calm wrath before it breaks out in fury,
to turn the hearts of parents to their children
and to restore the tribes of Jacob.
The coming of the Messiah will see the inauguration of peace
(“My peace I give you…” John 14:27). It will be a time of reconciliation and it
will see the inauguration of a new family embracing not just the tribes of
Jacob, but the peoples of the whole world.
And yes, says the author in a beautiful turn of phrase:
Happy are those who saw you
and were adorned in love!
For we also shall surely live.
Here there are intimations of immortality. And for
those who “were adorned in love”, the word “love” surely means the love of God.
However, the Hebrew text is unclear and the sentence may apply to Elisha, whose
praises immediately follow.
Elisha was filled with the spirit of Elijah. He
wrought many marvels and nothing was beyond his power—even:
…in death his deeds were marvelous…
This refers to a strange event in the Second Book of Kings
which took place after Elisha’s death. Just as a dead man was going to be
buried, a raiding party was seen, so the mourners threw the dead body into the
grave where Elisha was buried and fled. But as soon as the man’s body
touched Elisha’s bones, the man came to life and stood up (2 Kgs 13:20-21).
Shakespeare has one of his characters say rather cynically
that “the evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with
their bones”. Unfortunately that is often the case, but as Christians we
might make a special point of remembering the good things that people did in
their lifetime, as this reading does.
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Commentary on
Matthew 6:7-15
Into yesterday’s passage on how we are to worship God
through prayer, alms and fasting, Matthew places a related piece of teaching on
how we ought to pray. This clearly seems to be an insertion, and today we deal
with it separately.
Jesus tells his disciples not to pray like many of the
Gentiles. They go in for long prayers, hoping that eventually God will hear
them. That is quite unnecessary, Jesus says, because our Father already knows
our needs before we ask. If that is the case, why then should we bother praying
at all? We do not pray to tell God what he already knows—we pray so that we
will realise more deeply our own needs and our total dependence on him.
Jesus then goes on and tells his disciples how they should
pray. He teaches them, in effect, what we now call the Lord’s Prayer, or the
‘Our Father’. We have become accustomed to reciting this prayer very often—at
every Mass, as well as whenever we say the Rosary and at many other times.
The prayer in this form (Luke has a shorter version)
contains seven petitions. Seven is a favourite number for Matthew. In listing
the genealogy of Jesus he divides it into three lists of seven (chapter 1 of
his Gospel); there were probably seven Beatitudes in the original text (chap
5); there are seven parables of the Kingdom (chap 13); forgiveness is to be
offered not seven times, but 77 times (chap 18); and there are seven ‘Woes’
when denouncing the Pharisees (chap 23). Finally, the Gospel itself is divided
into seven main sections (Infancy, five discourses, Passion).
The text of the Lord’s Prayer should not be seen as just a
formula for vocal recitation. It is, rather, a series of statements and
petitions in which we affirm our relationship with God, with the people around
us and with the world in general. It is a statement of faith and it is, as we
shall see, a highly challenging and, therefore, even rather dangerous prayer.
Let us take a brief look at the petitions one by one.
Our Father
The challenge and the danger begin right in the first two words. We address God
as Father, the source of life and of everything that we have; we have nothing
purely of our own. But God is not just ‘Father’; he is ‘our‘ Father. And
that ‘our’ includes every single person who lives or has ever lived on this
earth; not a single person can be excluded.
In addressing God as ‘our Father’ we are acknowledging that
every human person (every one of us) is a child of God, and therefore, that we
all belong to one huge family where we are all, in a very real way, brothers
and sisters to each other. There is no room here for rejection, or hatred, or
prejudice or contempt of any kind based on race, nationality, colour of skin,
gender, sexual orientation, social class, religion or anything else. If I am
not prepared to accept every single person as a brother or sister, I will have
problems even beginning to say this prayer.
May your name be revered as holy
Other forms are ‘Hallowed be thy name’ or ‘Holy be your name’. Of course, God’s
name is holy no matter what we say or think. We make this prayer more for our
sake rather than for his. Here we are praying that God’s name be held in the
deepest respect by people everywhere. That is sadly not the case. Some people
despise his name and others do not even know it. We pray that the whole world
will know God’s name, which is to say, to know and recognise God as their God
and Lord, their Creator and Conserver and the final end of their lives on this
earth. It is, in fact, another form of the next petition.
Your Kingdom come
We have already spoken about the nature of the Kingdom. It might be more
accurate to say, ‘Your kingship come’. In other words, we pray that every
person in our world may put themselves consciously and willingly under the
kingship and lordship and the love of God. We do this, above all, by our
working together to make this world the kind of place that God wants it to be—a
place of truth and love, of justice and peace, of sharing and caring. In one
sense, of course, God is Lord irrespective of our relationship to him. But it
is clearly his will that people, on their part, should accept that loving
lordship as the centre of their lives. And that is the work of the Church and
of every single Christian, indeed of every person anywhere—to help people
recognise the kingship and lordship of God and to accept it as the key to their
present and future happiness.
Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven
This, in a way, is simply another way of saying what we have already asked for
in the previous two petitions—it is the will of God that people everywhere
recognise the holiness of his name and submit themselves gladly to his kingship
and lordship in our world. We do that most effectively by identifying totally
with the mission and work of Jesus to bring life, healing and wholeness to our
world. To do the will of God is not simply to throw aside what we want and
accept God’s will even when it is totally contrary to our own. We are only
fully doing God’s will when we can see clearly that what he wants is always
what is the very best for us. And we are only fully doing his will when we
fully want what he wants, when our will and his will are in perfect harmony.
Then we do what he wants and we do what we want. We are praying here to reach
that level of oneness.
Give us today our daily bread
While it does not look like it, this also is a highly dangerous prayer for us
to make. First of all, we are only asking for what we need now. Later in the
Sermon on the Mount Jesus will tell us not to be anxious about the future. We
are asking for what we need today; tomorrow is another day. We take care of one
day at a time.
But there is one little word here that is highly dangerous.
It is the word ‘us’. Who is that ‘us’? Just me and my immediate family? Or my
parish? Or my neighbourhood or my town or my country? Surely it is the same as
that ‘our’ in the first petition—it includes every single person. I am praying,
therefore, that every single person have bread to eat today. We know, of
course, that there are millions of people (some of them in wealthy countries)
who do not have enough to eat, or who suffer from malnutrition and poorly
balanced diets. In praying that all of ‘us’ have our daily bread, are we
expecting God to drop manna from the skies or are we not reminding ourselves
that the feeding of brothers and sisters is our responsibility? If people are
hungry or badly fed, it is not God’s doing. Human beings are directly responsible
for this in most cases (outside of natural disasters).
This petition prayer can also include the Bread of the
Eucharist. But in sharing that Bread together we are saying sacramentally that
we are a sharing people and we will share our goods and blessings with others,
especially those in need. Otherwise our Eucharist becomes a kind of sacrilege.
And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our
debtors
Again, is this not another dangerous prayer to make? We are asking that God’s
forgiveness to us be conditional on our readiness to forgive
those we perceive to have hurt us in some way. That is a daring thing to do.
And forgiveness does not simply mean uttering a few words. Forgiveness in the
Scripture always includes an attempt at reconciliation between offender and
offended. But even if reconciliation is not achieved, we can still forgive.
We can go even further and say that the fully Christian
person is never offended—or even more, cannot be offended. The
true Christian has a rock solid sense of their own security and their own inner
worth which no other person can take away. When such a person is the recipient
of some attack, be it verbal or physical, their first response is to reach out
to the attacker with concern and sympathy. It is the attacker who has the
problem, not the one attacked. Most of us have a long way to go to reach that
level of inner peace. If what you say about me is true, I accept it; if it is
false, then it is false. Why should I take offence?
And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us
from the evil one (or from evil)
In the end, we acknowledge our weaknesses and our total dependence on God’s
help. We pray that we will not find ourselves in a situation where we fall
seriously. We ask to be protected from the powers of evil with which we are
surrounded.
Some texts conclude with:
For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory
forever and ever. Amen
This prayer is used by many Christian denominations and has
now been included in the Catholic Eucharist after the Lord’s Prayer, but
separated by a prayer for peace. It is believed that this conclusion, not found
in most Bible manuscripts, was introduced for liturgical reasons.
Finally, in addition to simply reciting this prayer in the
rapid way we normally do, we could sometimes take it very slowly, one petition
at a time and let its meaning sink in. Or we could just take one petition which
is particularly meaningful to us at any time and just stay with it until it
really becomes part of us.
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Thursday,
June 18, 2026
11th Week of Ordinary Time
Opening Prayer
Almighty God, our hope and our
strength, without you we falter. Help us to follow Christ and to live according
to your will.
Who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God,
for ever and ever. Amen.
Gospel Reading - Matthew 6: 7-15
Jesus said to his disciples: 'In your prayers
do not babble as the gentiles do, for they think that by using many words they
will make themselves heard. Do not be like them; your Father knows what you
need before you ask him. So you should pray like this:
Our Father in heaven, may your
name be held holy, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts, as we
have forgiven those who are in debt to us. And do not put us to the test, but
save us from the Evil One.
'Yes, if you forgive others their failings,
your heavenly Father will forgive you yours; but if you do not forgive others,
your Father will not forgive your failings either.
Reflection
The Gospel today presents the
prayer of the Our Father, the Psalm which Jesus has left us. There are two
redactions of the Our Father, of Luke (Lk 11: 1-4 and of Matthew (Mt 6: 7-13).
The redaction of Luke is briefer. Luke writes for the community coming from
paganism. He tries to help the persons who are beginning a path of prayer. In
the Gospel of Matthew, the Our Father is found in the part of the Discourse of
the Mountain, where Jesus orientates the disciples in the practice of the three
works of piety: alms giving (Mt 6: 1-4), prayer (Mt 6: 5-15) and fasting (Mt 6:
26-18). The Our father forms part of a catechesis for the converted Jews. They
were used to pray, but they had certain vices which Matthew wanted to correct.
In the Our Father, Jesus summarizes all his teaching in seven petitions
addressed to the Father. In these seven petitions, he takes the promises of the
Old Testament and orders to ask the Father to help us to realize them. The
first three refer to our relationship with God. The other four have to do with
the community relationship that we have with others.
•
Matthew 6: 7-8: The introduction to the Our Father.
Jesus criticizes the persons for whom prayer was a repetition of magic
formulae, of strong words, addressed to God to oblige him to respond to their
petitions and needs. Anyone who prays has to seek, in the first place, the
Kingdom, much more than the personal interests. The acceptance of prayer by God
does not depend on the repetition of words, but rather on the goodness of God
who is Love and Mercy. He wants our good and he knows our needs, even before we
pray.
•
Matthew 6: 9a: The first words: “Our Father in
Heaven!” “Abba, Father, is the name which Jesus uses to address himself to God.
It expresses the intimacy that he has with God and manifests the new
relationship with God which should characterize the life of people in the
Christian communities (Ga 4: 6; Rm 8: 15). Matthew adds to the name of Father
the adjective our and the expression in Heaven. The true prayer is a
relationship which unites us to the Father, to the brothers and sisters, to
nature. Familiarity with God is not intimist but expresses the awareness of
belonging to the great human family, in which all persons participate; of all
races and of all creeds: Our Father. To pray to the Father is to enter in
intimacy with him, it is also to be in harmony with the cry of all the brothers
and sisters. It is to seek the Kingdom of God, in the first place. The
experience of God the Father is the foundation of the universal fraternity.
•
Matthew 6: 9b-10: The three petitions for the
cause of God: the Name, the Kingdom, the Will. In the first part of the Our
Father, we ask to restore our relationship with God. To do this Jesus asks
•
the sanctification of the Name revealed in
Exodus on the occasion of the liberation from Egypt;
•
to ask for the coming of the Kingdom, expected
by the people after the fall of the monarchy;
•
to ask for the fulfilment of God’s Will,
revealed in the Law which was in the center of the Covenant.
The Name, the Kingdom, the Law: are three axis taken from
the Old Testament which express how the new relationship with God should be.
The three petitions indicate that it is necessary to live in intimacy with the
Father, making his Name known, making him loved, doing in such a way that his
Kingdom of love and of communion becomes a reality that his Will may be done on
earth as it is in Heaven. In heaven, the sun and the stars obey the law of God
and create the order of the Universe. The observance of the Law of God “on
earth as it is in heaven” should be a source and a mirror of harmony and of
well-being for the whole creation. This renewed relationship with God becomes
visible only in the renewed relationship among us, which on his part is the
object of other four petitions: our daily bread, the forgiveness of debts, not
to fall into temptation, to deliver us from evil.
•
Matthew 6: 11-13: The four petitions for the
brothers: Bread, Forgiveness, Victory, Liberty. In the second part of the Our
Father we ask to restore and renew the relationship between persons. The four
petitions indicate how the structures of the community and of society should be
transformed in such a way that all the children of God may live with equal
dignity. The daily bread: “Daily Bread” (Mt 6: 11) recalls the daily manna in
the desert (Ex 16: 1-36). The manna was a “test” to see if the people were
capable to follow the Law of the Lord (Ex 16: 4), that is, if they were capable
to store food only for one day as a sign of faith that Divine Providence passes
through the fraternal organization. Jesus invites them to walk toward a new
Exodus, toward a new way of fraternal living together which can guarantee bread
for all. Forgiveness of debts: the request of “forgiveness of debts” (6: 12)
recalls the sabbatical year which obliged creditors to forgive all the debts to
the brothers (Dt 15: 1-2). The objective of the sabbatical year and of the
jubilee year (Lev 25: 1-22) was to do away with inequalities and to begin anew.
How to pray today: “Forgive us our debts as we have forgiven those who are in
debt to us”? The rich countries, all of which are Christian, are getting richer,
thanks to the external debt. Not to fall into Temptation: the petition “not to
fall into temptation” (6: 13) reminds us of the errors committed in the desert,
where the people fell into temptation (Ex 18: 1-7; Nb 20: 1-13; Dt 9: 7-29). To
imitate Jesus who was tempted and obtained victory (Mt 4: 1-17). In the desert,
the temptation pushed people to follow other paths, to go back, not to
undertake the road of liberation and to be demanding on Moses who guided them.
Freedom from Evil: evil is the Evil One, Satan, who seeks to deviate and who in
many ways, seeks to lead persons not to follow the path of the Kingdom,
indicated by
Jesus. He tempted Jesus to abandon the Project of the
Father and to be the Messiah according to the idea of the Pharisees, the
Scribes and other groups. The Evil One takes us away from God and is a reason
of scandal. He also entered in Peter (Mt 16: 23) and he also tempted Jesus in
the desert. Jesus overcame him. (Mt 4: 1-11).
Personal Questions
•
Jesus says “forgive us our debts”, but today we
say “forgive us our offences”, what is easier to forgive offences or to cancel
the debts?
•
How do you usually pray the Our Father:
mechanically or putting all your life and all your efforts in the words you
pronounce?
Concluding Prayer
The mountains melt like wax, before the Lord of all the earth.
The heavens proclaim his saving justice, all nations see his
glory. (Ps 97: 5-6)
