June 22, 2026
Monday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time
Lectionary: 371
Reading I
Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, occupied the whole land
and attacked Samaria, which he besieged for three years.
In the ninth year of Hoshea, king of Israel
the king of Assyria took Samaria,
and deported the children of Israel to Assyria,
setting them in Halah, at the Habor, a river of Gozan,
and the cities of the Medes.
This came about because the children of Israel sinned against the LORD,
their God, who had brought them up from the land of Egypt,
from under the domination of Pharaoh, king of Egypt,
and because they venerated other gods.
They followed the rites of the nations
whom the Lord had cleared out of the way of the children of Israel
and the kings of Israel whom they set up.
And though the LORD warned Israel and Judah
by every prophet and seer,
“Give up your evil ways and keep my commandments and statutes,
in accordance with the entire law which I enjoined on your fathers
and which I sent you by my servants the prophets,”
they did not listen, but were as stiff-necked as their fathers,
who had not believed in the LORD, their God.
They rejected his statutes,
the covenant which he had made with their fathers,
and the warnings which he had given them, till,
in his great anger against Israel,
the LORD put them away out of his sight.
Only the tribe of Judah was left.
Responsorial Psalm
R. (7b) Help us with your right hand, O Lord, and
answer us.
O God, you have rejected us and broken our defenses;
you have been angry; rally us!
R. Help us with your right hand, O Lord, and answer us.
You have rocked the country and split it open;
repair the cracks in it, for it is tottering.
You have made your people feel hardships;
you have given us stupefying wine.
R. Help us with your right hand, O Lord, and answer us.
Have not you, O God, rejected us,
so that you go not forth, O God, with our armies?
Give us aid against the foe,
for worthless is the help of men.
R. Help us with your right hand, O Lord, and answer us.
Alleluia
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
The word of God is living and effective,
able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Jesus said to his disciples:
“Stop judging, that you may not be judged.
For as you judge, so will you be judged,
and the measure with which you measure will be measured out to you.
Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye,
but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own eye?
How can you say to your brother,
‘Let me remove that splinter from your eye,’
while the wooden beam is in your eye?
You hypocrite, remove the wooden beam from your eye first;
then you will see clearly
to remove the splinter from your brother’s eye.”
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/062226.cfm
Commentary on 2
Kings 17:5-8,13-15,18
We continue today with the tragic tale of the kings and the
punishments they and their people experienced for their serious violation of
the Lord’s will for them. We see in today’s reading the fall in 721 BC of the
Northern Kingdom (variously called Israel, Samaria or the Ten Tribes, as
opposed to the Southern Kingdom known also as Judah).
This all happened in the reign of King Hoshea, who reigned
for nine years altogether. However, “he did what was evil in the sight of the
Lord,” although his behaviour was not as bad as some of his predecessors. He
fell victim to an Assyrian invasion and became a vassal of the Assyrian King
Shalmaneser. However, after violating the terms of his vassalage by sending
envoys to the king of Egypt and failing to pay tribute to the Assyrians, he was
arrested and thrown into prison.
The whole of Samaria was then invaded and the city of
Samaria was captured. The well-defended city took three years to overcome.
Shalmaneser died just before the capture—possibly by assassination—and the
actual capture was effected by his son, Sargon II. In his annals Sargon laid
claim to the capture of Samaria at the beginning of his reign, but it was
hardly more than a mopping-up operation.
This spelt the end of Hoshea’s reign and it saw a major
deportation of the Israelites to exile in Assyria. In his annals, Sargon II
claims to have deported 27,290 Israelites. They were brought to Halah, whose
location is uncertain, but it was near the Habor, a river not far from Haran in
the extreme north of Mesopotamia. (The name ‘Mesopotamia’ means ‘between
rivers’ because it lies between the two great rivers, the Tigris and the
Euphrates, and corresponds more or less to Iraq today.) Gozan was an Assyrian
provincial capital located on a tributary of the Euphrates. The “cities of the
Medes” lay east of Mesopotamia (in Persia or Iran). They were towns located in
the area south of the Caspian Sea and northeast of the Tigris River. The
Israelite settlements there would form the background for the story of Tobit
(which we read at another time in the liturgical cycle).
And so the second part of the reading is a commentary on why
all of this happened. The events described in today’s readings are clearly
attributed to the sins of Israelites against their God, the God who had brought
them up out of the slavery of Egypt to the freedom of the Promised Land. In the
Old Testament, things seldom happen by chance nor are purely human agencies
involved. Good things indicate God’s blessings and bad things his displeasure.
What happened was due to the Samaritans’ continual worship
of the idols worshipped by their conquerors. (It seems that it was this kind of
situation that Jesus was referring to when he told the Samaritan woman that she
had had “five husbands”. Each time it was conquered by an invading force,
Samaria had adopted the religion of its new masters.)
The accusations do not seem to come from one source, but are
a compilation of several. For the principal author of the book the grievous
fault of Israel is the religious pluralism, an ‘original sin’ of which every
king of Israel is accused. The language is rich in reminiscences of Deuteronomy
and the prophets (especially Jeremiah) as it denounces religious compromise and
the setting up of local and idolatrous shrines.
Israel repeatedly spurned the Lord’s graciousness to it, and
refused to heed the prophets’ warnings of impending judgement and had failed to
keep her covenant obligations. The result was the implementation of the
covenant curse precisely as it had been presented to the Israelites by Moses in
his final words to the Israelites before they entered Canaan (Deut 28:49-68)
and in the Song of Moses (Deut 32:1-47).
Israel not only violated the requirements of the Sinai
covenant, but she also spurned the words of prophets the Lord had graciously
sent to call his people back to the covenant as well as the ministries of
Elijah, Elisha, Amos and Hosea. Instead they showed themselves “stiff-necked”,
like a stubborn ox being placed under the yoke. (A phrase used by Jesus also
when speaking of the Pharisees.)
Ultimately they experienced defeat and exile as:
…the Lord was very angry with Israel and removed them out
of his sight…
All that was left was Judah, the Southern Kingdom which
included the city of Jerusalem and elements of the tribes of Simeon and
Benjamin. Its behaviour was not much better and it would not escape either.
Further on, but not in our reading, a second addition extends the condemnation
to Judah, the Southern Kingdom.
We need to be careful about attributing painful experiences
in our own lives or in the lives of others to God’s anger or vindictiveness.
One hears some still believe that the scourge of serious disease or misfortune
is God’s punishment. It is unthinkable that God punishes this way.
Nevertheless, sinful acts consistently indulged in are
undoubtedly destructive of individuals and communities. But the effects arise
out of the disordered nature of the acts themselves rather than as an act of
God. And they are warnings to us that we have strayed from the paths of truth,
love and integrity. We cannot blame anyone but ourselves.
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Commentary on
Matthew 7:1-5
We begin today the last chapter of the Sermon on the Mount.
In the Gospel, Jesus says:
Do not judge, so that you may not be judged.
This means, of course, judged by God. This is a good example
of Matthew’s using an impersonal passive voice to avoid mentioning the name of
God, which is understood. Another example is where he has Jesus say:
…whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven [by
God], and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven [by
God]. (Matt 16:19)
Jesus today touches on an issue in which very few of us can
claim innocence—passing judgment on others. Sometimes we call it gossip, which
seems harmless enough, and very often it is relatively harmless. And yet at
times we can spend a long time tearing other people apart, revealing to others
information about people which they do not need to know. What Jesus says is so
true. We focus on a tiny speck in someone else’s eye while there is a large
plank in our own.
In fact, that is probably why we are so fond of indulging in
this exercise. Our purpose is not so much to bring another person down as to
bring ourselves up. Often those we judge are ‘higher placed’ than we are, or
more gifted or more educated. To some extent unconsciously, we feel inferior.
One way to even things up is to bring them down, to reveal their feet of clay
(and this is made even worse in our time by the reach and impact of social
media).
But as Jesus says, this is a kind of hypocrisy. Given our
own faults, what right have we to sit in judgement on another? So often our
judgements are based on the purely external or on incomplete evidence. We
condemn acts while being quite ignorant of the motives behind the acts. Only
God is in a position to make an accurate judgement of a person’s strengths or
weaknesses.
Linked with all this is the fact that, nine times out of
ten, we would never make our criticisms face to face. This, on the one hand, is
a form of cowardice and, on the other, proves our hypocrisy because we make no
effort to help the person make the changes we would like to see. It might be a
good resolution for us to promise only to criticise people to their face and
then in a non-judgmental fashion—and to give them an opportunity to express
their side. Sometimes we will find that our criticisms are without real
foundation, or we will find the person grateful for our having drawn attention
to something of which they were unaware.
And removing that plank from our eye is another way of
saying, that before we make any evaluation of another, we need to be sure that
our view is totally free from any prejudice or bias. We do have a serious
responsibility to draw attention to things that people do wrong, especially if
others or they themselves are hurt, but it is a responsibility we often shirk.
Gossiping behind their backs is so much easier, but it helps no one.
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Monday,
June 22, 2026
12th Week of Ordinary Time
Opening Prayer
Father,
guide and protector of your people, grant us an
unfailing respect for your name, and keep us always in your love. We ask this
through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the
Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Gospel Reading - Matthew 7: 1-5
Jesus said to his disciples: 'Do not judge,
and you will not be judged; because the judgements you give are the judgements
you will get, and the standard you use will be the standard used for you. Why
do you observe the splinter in your brother's eye and never notice the great
log in your own? And how dare you say to your brother, "Let me take that
splinter out of your eye," when, look, there is a great log in your own?
Hypocrite! Take the log out of your own eye first, and then
you will see clearly enough to take the splinter out of your brother's eye.'
Reflection
In today’s Gospel we continue to meditate on
the Sermon on the Mountain found in chapters 5 to 7 of the Gospel of Matthew.
During the 10th and 11th week we have seen chapters 5 and 6. Beginning today,
we will see chapter 7. These three chapters, 5, 6, and 7 offer an idea of how
the catechesis was done in the communities of the converted Jews in the second
half of the first century in Galilee and in Syria. Matthew unites and organizes
the words of Jesus to teach how the new way of living the Law of God should be.
After having explained how to re-establish
justice (Mt 5: 17 a 6: 18) and how to restore the order of creation (Mt 6:
19-34), Jesus teaches how the life in community should be (Mt 7: 1-12). At the
end he presents some
recommendations and final advice
(Mt 7: 13-27). Then follows an outline of the entire Sermon on the Mountain:
•
Matthew 5: 1-12: The Beatitudes: solemn openness
of the New Law.
•
Matthew 5: 13-16: The new presence in the world:
Salt of the earth and light of the world.
•
Matthew 5: 17-19: The new practice of justice:
relationship with the ancient law.
•
Matthew 5: 20-48: The new practice of justice:
observing the new law.
•
Matthew 6: 1-4: The new practice of the works of
piety: alms giving.
•
Matthew 6: 5-15: The new practice of the works
of piety: prayer.
•
Matthew 6: 16-18: The new practice of the works
of piety: fasting.
•
Matthew 6: 19-21: The new relationship to
material goods: do not store up.
•
Matthew 6: 22-23: The new relationship to material
goods: a correct vision.
•
Matthew 6: 24: The new relationship to material
goods: God or money.
•
Matthew 6: 25-34: The new relationship to
material goods: trust in Providence
•
Matthew 7: 1-5: The new community life together:
do not judge.
•
Matthew 7: 6: The new community life together:
do not despise the community
•
Matthew 7: 7-11: The new community life: trust
in God produces sharing
•
Matthew 7: 12: The new community life together:
the Golden Rule • Matthew
7: 13-14: Final recommendations to choose the sure way.
•
Matthew 7: 15-20: Final recommendations, the
prophet is known by his fruits.
•
Matthew 7: 21-23: Final recommendations not only
speak but also practice.
•
Matthew 7: 24-27: Final recommendations,
construct the house on rock The community lived experience of the Gospel (Mt 7:
1-12) is the touchstone. It is where the seriousness of the commitment is
defined. The new proposal of life in community embraces diverse aspects: do not
observe the sprinter in your brother’s eye (Mt 7: 1-5), do not throw your
pearls in front of pigs (Mt 7: 6), do not be afraid to ask God for things (Mt
7: 7-11). These advices reach their summit in the Golden Rule: Always treat
others as you would like them to treat you (Mt 7: 12). The Gospel of today
presents the first part: Matthew 7: 1-5.
•
Matthew 7: 1-2: Do not judge and you will not be
judged. The first condition for a good life together in community is not to
judge the brother or the sister, that is, to eliminate the preconceptions which
prevent a transparent community life. What does this mean concretely? John’s
Gospel gives an example of how Jesus lived in community with the disciples.
Jesus says: “I shall no longer call you servants, because a servant does not
know the master’s business; I call you friends, because I have made known to
you everything I have learnt from my Father” (Jn 15: 15). Jesus is an open book
for his companions. This transparency comes from his total trust in the
brothers and sisters and has its origin in his intimacy with the Father who gives
him the force of opening himself up totally to others. Anyone who lives in this
way with his brothers and sisters accepts others as they are, without any
preconceptions, without previously imposing any conditions, without judging.
Mutual acceptance without any pretension and with total transparency! This is
the ideal of the new community life, which has come from the Good News which
Jesus has brought to us: God is Father and Mother and, therefore, we are all
brothers and sisters. It is a difficult ideal but a very beautiful and
attractive as the other one: “Be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect.
•
Matthew 7: 3-5: You observe the splinter in your
brother’s eye and never notice the great log in your own. Immediately Jesus
gives an example: Why do you observe the splinter in your brother’s eye, and
never notice the great log in your own? And how dare you say to your brother,
‘Let me take that splinter out of your eye, when look, there is a great log in
your own? Hypocrite! Take the log out of your own eye first, and then you will
see clearly enough to take the splinter out of your brother’s eye”. When
hearing this phrase, we usually think of the Pharisees who despised the people,
considering them ignorant and they considered themselves better than others
(cf. Jn 7: 49; 9: 34). The phrase of Jesus serves for all of us. For example,
today many of us Catholics are less faithful to the Gospel than the
non-Catholics. We observe the splinter in the eye of our brothers, and we do
not see the big log of collective powerful pride in our own eyes. This log
causes many persons today to have much difficulty to believe in the Good News
of Jesus.
Personal Questions
•
Do not judge others and eliminate all
preconceptions: which is my personal experience on this point?
•
Splinter and log: which is the log in me which
makes it difficult for me to participate in the life of the family and in
community?
Concluding Prayer
Your kindnesses to me are countless, Yahweh; true to
your judgements, give me life. (Ps 119: 156)
