June 19, 2026
Friday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time
Lectionary: 369
Reading I
When Athaliah, the mother of Ahaziah,
saw that her son was dead,
she began to kill off the whole royal family.
But Jehosheba, daughter of King Jehoram and sister of Ahaziah,
took Joash, his son, and spirited him away, along with his nurse,
from the bedroom where the princes were about to be slain.
She concealed him from Athaliah, and so he did not die.
For six years he remained hidden in the temple of the LORD,
while Athaliah ruled the land.
But in the seventh year,
Jehoiada summoned the captains of the Carians
and of the guards.
He had them come to him in the temple of the LORD,
exacted from them a sworn commitment,
and then showed them the king’s son.
The captains did just as Jehoiada the priest commanded.
Each one with his men, both those going on duty for the sabbath
and those going off duty that week,
came to Jehoiada the priest.
He gave the captains King David’s spears and shields,
which were in the temple of the LORD.
And the guards, with drawn weapons,
lined up from the southern to the northern limit of the enclosure,
surrounding the altar and the temple on the king’s behalf.
Then Jehoiada led out the king’s son
and put the crown and the insignia upon him.
They proclaimed him king and anointed him,
clapping their hands and shouting, “Long live the king!”
Athaliah heard the noise made by the people,
and appeared before them in the temple of the LORD.
When she saw the king standing by the pillar, as was the custom,
and the captains and trumpeters near him,
with all the people of the land rejoicing and blowing trumpets,
she tore her garments and cried out, “Treason, treason!”
Then Jehoiada the priest instructed the captains
in command of the force:
“Bring her outside through the ranks.
If anyone follows her,” he added, “let him die by the sword.”
He had given orders that she
should not be slain in the temple of the LORD.
She was led out forcibly to the horse gate of the royal palace,
where she was put to death.
Then Jehoiada made a covenant between the LORD as one party
and the king and the people as the other,
by which they would be the LORD’s people;
and another covenant, between the king and the people.
Thereupon all the people of the land went to the temple of Baal
and demolished it.
They shattered its altars and images completely,
and slew Mattan, the priest of Baal, before the altars.
Jehoiada appointed a detachment for the temple of the LORD.
All the people of the land rejoiced and the city was quiet,
now that Athaliah had been slain with the sword
at the royal palace.
Responsorial Psalm
Psalm
132:11, 12, 13-14, 17-18
R. (13) The Lord has chosen Zion for his dwelling.
The LORD swore to David
a firm promise from which he will not withdraw:
“Your own offspring
I will set upon your throne.”
R. The Lord has chosen Zion for his dwelling.
“If your sons keep my covenant
and the decrees which I shall teach them,
Their sons, too, forever
shall sit upon your throne.”
R. The Lord has chosen Zion for his dwelling.
For the LORD has chosen Zion;
he prefers her for his dwelling.
“Zion is my resting place forever;
in her will I dwell, for I prefer her.”
R. The Lord has chosen Zion for his dwelling.
“In her will I make a horn to sprout forth for David;
I will place a lamp for my anointed.
His enemies I will clothe with shame,
but upon him my crown shall shine.”
R. The Lord has chosen Zion for his dwelling.
Alleluia
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Blessed are the poor in spirit;
for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
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.”
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/061926.cfm
Commentary on 2
Kings 11:1-4,9-18,20
As stated in the Vatican II Missal:
“We read one of the most shameful episodes in the history of
Judah. Around 837 BC the wicked queen mother Athaliah seized
power. The high priest Jehoiada led a revolution, put the young Davidic
King Joash on the throne and renewed the covenant with God.”
If we thought Queen Jezebel was bad, we are hardly ready to
read about Queen Athalia. She was a daughter of King Ahab, but Jezebel was
probably not her mother. Her influence on King Jehoram, her late husband,
paralleled that of Jezebel on King Ahab.
When her son, King Ahaziah died at the young age of 22, she
immediately moved to have all his children, that is, her grandchildren done
away with so as to secure the throne of Judah (the southern kingdom) for
herself. The royal family had already been reduced to a mere
remnant. Jehoram, her late husband and the father of Ahaziah, had already
killed all his brothers when he succeeded his father Jehoshaphat on the
throne. King Jehu had slain another 42 members of the royal house of
Judah, perhaps including many of the sons of Jehoram’s brothers. To top it
all, the brothers of Ahaziah had been killed by raiding Arabs.
In the eyes of the author, this attempt to completely
destroy the house of David was an attack on God’s redemptive plan—a plan that
centred on the Messiah, which the Davidic covenant had promised and which
depended on the continuation of the Davidic line to become a reality.
However, as we are told today, a sister of King Ahaziah
managed to save one of the princes, Joash, and hid him first in the servants’
sleeping quarters together with his nurse. This would indicate that the
child was not more than a year old and not yet weaned. There he remained
in hiding while Athalia took over as ruler of the kingdom. This woman,
Jehosheba, was the wife of Jehoiada the high priest, who will soon appear in
the story, and it explains how she was able to keep Joash hidden in the Temple
for six years.
Not surprisingly, Athalia in time became the object of a
palace coup organised by the high priest Jehoiada. It happened in the
seventh year of her rule. He made a pact with the captains of the mercenary
soldiers who served as the palace guard. The Carians were mercenary soldiers
from Caria in southwest Asia Minor who served as royal bodyguards. After both
those on and off duty had sworn their commitment, they are secretly shown the
young prince. They are then given detailed instructions on how to protect him.
They got together their men and were given weapons which
David had captured in a former battle. David had probably taken the spears and
gold shields as plunder in his battle with Hadadezer and then dedicated them to
the Lord (see 2 Sam 8:7-11). This would explain why there were weapons in
the Temple. They then surrounded the altar and the Temple. Joash, the
king’ son, was brought out, anointed as king by Jehoiada and given some of the
royal insignia. He was then acclaimed by the people gathered in the
Temple for the Sabbath. “Long live the king!” they cried. This was
clearly an act of rebellion and a coup d’etat.
Athalia discovered the rebellion too late. She saw the
new king “standing by the pillar”. This was apparently one of the two
bronze pillars of the portico of the Temple. With him were “all the people of
the land”. It is likely that Jehoiada had chosen to stage his coup
on a Sabbath during one of the major religious festivals, when many from the
kingdom who were loyal to the Lord would be in Jerusalem. Athalia tore
her garments and cried “Treason! Treason!”
Jehoiada then gave orders for her arrest. Any of her
supporters were to be killed and she was not to be executed within the sacred
confines of the Temple. As was the custom, she was put to death outside
the city confines, near the ‘horse gate’ of the royal palace.
Jehoiada then had a double covenant made between the Lord
and his people and between the new king and the people. It was a renewal
of the Mosaic covenant declaring that Israel was Yahweh’s people and the king
his vicegerent. The years of apostasy, involving both the royal house and
the people of Judah, necessitated a renewal of allegiance to the Lord at the
time of an important new beginning for the southern kingdom.
Finally, the temple to Baal, its altars and images were
smashed and Mattan, the priest of Baal, was put to death. All the “people of
the land”, that is, the country people, supported the return to the traditions
of David and Yahweh. The city was forced to accept the situation.
Finally, right order had been restored between God and his people.
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Commentary on
Matthew 6:19-23
This short passage contains two related teachings. The first
may be seen as a commentary on the petition in the Lord’s Prayer:
Give us this day our daily bread…
It is a teaching about the things which are really valuable,
which really count. We live in a highly materialistic world where a very large
number of people seem to believe that material wealth is the solution to every
problem. There is nothing that money cannot buy—no problem it cannot solve.
This belief prevails even though every day it is shown to be false.
Jesus urges us to put our trust and our security in
something less perishable, something more lasting. To ‘store up treasure in
heaven’ is not just to pile up a whole lot of ‘good works’ which will be to our
credit in the next life. That credit too can be very quickly lost. It is much
more a question of growing more and more into the kind of person who is steeped
in the values and the outlook of the gospel. It is less a question of doing
than of becoming. We also build treasure by what we give away, by sharing with
others whatever gifts we have, especially those most in need.
Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least
of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me. (Matt 25:40)
And, as Jesus so wisely says:
For where your treasure is, there your heart will be
also.
Obviously, the questions for me to ask today are: Where is
my treasure? What do I value most in life? And how do I reveal that in the way
I live?
And that brings us to the second part:
The eye is the lamp of the body.…if your eye is healthy,
your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole
body will be full of darkness.
It is that light which we need in order to have a clear
vision of what is most valuable in our lives. The person who cannot see beyond
money, status, power, or fame is truly in darkness. Life is not about getting
these things. Life is about who we are; it is about love and relationships.
Let us pray today for vision and light to be able to discern
what are the real treasures, the most precious things of human living. In that
way, our life truly becomes a Christian life.
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https://livingspace.sacredspace.ie/o2116g/
Friday,
June 19, 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: 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."
Reflection
In today’s Gospel we continue our reflection
on the Sermon on the Mount. The last few days we have reflected on the practice
of the three works of piety: almsgiving (Mt 6: 1-4), prayer (Mt 6: 5-15), and
fasting (Mt 6: 16-18). Today’s and tomorrow’s Gospel presents four
recommendations on the relationship with material goods, clearly explaining how
to live the poverty of the first Beatitude: (a) not to accumulate (Mt 6:
19-21); (b) to have a correct idea of material goods
(Mt 6: 22-23); (c) to not serve two masters
(Mt 6: 24); (d) to abandon oneself to Divine Providence (Mt 6: 25-34). Today’s
Gospel presents the first two recommendations: not to accumulate goods
(6:19-21) and not to look at the world with diseased eyes (6: 22-23).
•
Matthew 6: 19-21: Do
not accumulate treasures on earth. If, for example, today on TV, it is
announced that next month sugar and coffee will be lacking in the market, we
might all buy the most coffee and sugar we can. We accumulate because we lack
trust. During the forty years in the desert, the people were tested to see if
they were capable of observing God’s Law (Ex 16: 4). The test consisted of
this: to see if they were capable of gathering only the necessary manna for a
single day and not accumulate for the following day. Jesus says: “Do not store
up treasures for yourselves on earth, where moth and woodworm destroy them and
thieves can break in and steal. But store up treasures for yourselves in
heaven, where neither moth nor woodworm destroys them and thieves cannot break
in and steal. What does it mean to store up treasures in heaven? It is a
question of knowing where I place the basis of my existence. If I place it on
material goods of this earth, I always run the danger of losing what I have
stored up. If I place the basis in God, nobody will be able to destroy it and I
will have interior freedom to share with others what I possess. In order that
this may be possible and feasible it is important to reach a community life
which will favor sharing and reciprocal help, and in which the greatest
richness or the treasure is not material riches, but rather the richness or the
treasure of fraternal living together born from the certainty brought by Jesus:
God is Father and Mother of all. Because there, where your treasure is, is your
heart.
•
Matthew 6: 22-23:
The light of your body is the eye. To understand what Jesus asks it is
necessary to have new eyes. Jesus is demanding and asks very much; do not store
up (6: 19-21), do not serve God and money together (6: 24), do not worry about
what you are to eat or drink (6: 25-34). These demanding recommendations have
something to do with that part of human life where people are anguished and
worried. It also forms a part of the Sermon on the Mount that is more difficult
to understand and practice. This is why Jesus says: “If your eye is diseased
....". Some translate this as diseased eye and healthy eye. Others
translate as mean or poor eye and generous eye. It is the same, in reality, the
worse sickness that one can imagine is a person closed up in herself and in her
goods and who trusts only worldly things. It is the sickness of being stingy!
Anyone who looks at life with this eye lives in sadness and in darkness. The
medicine to cure this sickness is conversion, a change of mentality and
ideology. To place the basis of life on God allows our look to become generous
and life becomes luminous, because it makes sharing and fraternity emerge.
•
•Jesus wants a
radical change. He wants the observance of the Law of the sabbatical year,
where it is said that in the community of believers there cannot be poor (Dt
15: 4). Human living together should be organized in such a way that a person
should not have to worry about food and drink, about dress and house, about
health and education (Mt 6: 25-34). But this is possible if we all seek the
kingdom of God and His justice first (Mt 6: 33). The kingdom of God means to
permit God to reign: it is to imitate God (Mt 5: 48). The imitation of God
leads to a just sharing of goods and of creative love, which brings about a true
fraternity. Divine Providence can be mediated by the fraternal organization. It
is only in this way that it will be possible to eliminate any worry or concern
for tomorrow (Mt 6: 34).
Personal Questions
•
• We are stewards of what God gives us and He tells
us not to store up these goods for ourselves. How do I manage this in real
life? What have I stored up? Should I share a little part or everything?
•
When I share, or give to others, do I give a
little and keep most of it, or give most and keep only what I need for the day?
•
In giving, the Church talks of time, talent, and
treasure. What would be ways of hoarding these instead of sharing them? Are
there other things from God to be given to others? Do I share a little and
enjoy the most for myself?
Concluding Prayer
For Yahweh has chosen Zion, He has desired it as a home. Here
shall I rest for evermore, here shall I make My home as I have wished. (Ps 132:
13-14)
