June 26, 2026
Friday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time
Lectionary: 375
Reading 1
In the tenth month of the ninth year of Zedekiah’s reign,
on the tenth day of the month,
Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, and his whole army
advanced against Jerusalem, encamped around it,
and built siege walls on every side.
The siege of the city continued until the eleventh year of Zedekiah.
On the ninth day of the fourth month,
when famine had gripped the city,
and the people had no more bread,
the city walls were breached.
Then the king and all the soldiers left the city by night
through the gate between the two walls
that was near the king’s garden.
Since the Chaldeans had the city surrounded,
they went in the direction of the Arabah.
But the Chaldean army pursued the king
and overtook him in the desert near Jericho,
abandoned by his whole army.
The king was therefore arrested and brought to Riblah
to the king of Babylon, who pronounced sentence on him.
He had Zedekiah’s sons slain before his eyes.
Then he blinded Zedekiah, bound him with fetters,
and had him brought to Babylon.On the seventh day of the fifth month
(this was in the nineteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar,
king of Babylon),
Nebuzaradan, captain of the bodyguard,
came to Jerusalem as the representative
of the king of Babylon.
He burned the house of the Lord,
the palace of the king, and all the houses of Jerusalem;
every large building was destroyed by fire.
Then the Chaldean troops who were with the captain of the guard
tore down the walls that surrounded Jerusalem.
Then Nebuzaradan, captain of the guard,
led into exile the last of the people remaining in the city,
and those who had deserted to the king of Babylon,
and the last of the artisans.
But some of the country’s poor, Nebuzaradan, captain of the guard,
left behind as vinedressers and farmers.
Responsorial Psalm
R. (6ab) Let my tongue be silenced, if I ever
forget you!
By the streams of Babylon
we sat and wept
when we remembered Zion.
On the aspens of that land
we hung up our harps.
R. Let my tongue be silenced, if I ever forget you!
Though there our captors asked of us
the lyrics of our songs,
And our despoilers urged us to be joyous:
“Sing for us the songs of Zion!”
R. Let my tongue be silenced, if I ever forget you!
How could we sing a song of the Lord
in a foreign land?
If I forget you, Jerusalem,
may my right hand be forgotten!
R. Let my tongue be silenced, if I ever forget you!
May my tongue cleave to my palate
if I remember you not,
If I place not Jerusalem
ahead of my joy.
R. Let my tongue be silenced, if I ever forget you!
Alleluia
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Christ took away our infirmities
and bore our diseases.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
When Jesus came down from the mountain, great crowds
followed him.
And then a leper approached, did him homage, and said,
“Lord, if you wish, you can make me clean.”
He stretched out his hand, touched him, and said,
“I will do it. Be made clean.”
His leprosy was cleansed immediately.
Then Jesus said to him, “See that you tell no one,
but go show yourself to the priest,
and offer the gift that Moses prescribed;
that will be proof for them.”
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/062626.cfm
Commentary on 2
Kings 25:1-12
Today we come to the end of the sad story of Israel’s
degradation and humiliation—the second deportation. Yesterday we saw how
Mattaniah, renamed Zedekiah, had been made a puppet or vassal king of Judah,
the southern kingdom, by Nebuchadnezzar. He was no improvement on his
predecessors. The passage which comes between yesterday’s and today’s readings
is as follows:
Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he began to reign;
he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem…He did what was evil in the sight of the
Lord, just as Jehoiakim had done. Indeed, Jerusalem and Judah so angered the
Lord that he expelled them [the two kings] from his presence.
Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon. (2 Kings 24:18-20)
Rebelling against the king was a bad mistake on his part…
It was in the ninth year of his reign that Nebuchadnezzar
came to Jerusalem with his army and, for the second time, laid it under siege.
Earlier, he had subdued all the fortified cities in Judah except Lachish and
Azekah (see Jer 34:7). A number of Hebrew inscriptions on potsherds were found
at Lachish in 1935 and 1938. The Lachish ostraca (i.e.
letters) describe conditions at Lachish and Azekah during the Babylonian siege.
Jerusalem, built as it was on an outcrop of high rock with
steep sides, was not an easy city to capture and was able to resist for more
than one year, into the 11th year of Zedekiah’s reign. But eventually, with the
people starving, the walls were finally breached. It is possible that some
desperate citizens may have deliberately brought this about to end the
siege—and their starvation.
However, the king and his soldiers escaped from the city by
night. Because of the surrounding armies, they had no option but to head for
the Arabah, a desolate area in the Jordan valley. But there was no escape and
the hapless king was caught near Jericho and abandoned by his troops.
He was brought into Nebuchadnezzar’s presence where sentence
was passed on him, as a rebellious vassal. His two sons (his potential
successors as king) were killed before his eyes while Zedekiah himself then had
his eyes put out and was brought to Babylon. Ezekiel (12:13) had prophesied
that the king would be brought to Babylon, but would not see the city. Jeremiah
had advised Zedekiah what to do to avoid his own punishment and the destruction
of the city, but the king had not listened (see Jer 38:14-28).
Finally, Nabuzaradan, the captain of Nebuchadnezzar’s
bodyguard, took control over Jerusalem. He proceeded to wipe out every vestige
of its past by burning the Temple, the king’s palace and every large building
in the city. In the previous siege, the vessels of the Temple had been taken
away, but the building had remained. Lastly, the formidable walls which had
protected the town were torn down.
The remainder of the population, those who had gone over to
Babylon’s side, and the last of the artisans, were all carried off into bitter
exile. Only the very poor were left behind to take care of the vineyards and
the farms. They would form the remnant which would maintain the continuity of
the city of David with the future.
It was an ignominious end of the kingdom originally
established by Saul. With the outstanding exception of David—and even he had
done some pretty bad things—the dynasty had a pretty dismal record as
vicegerents of Yahweh.
The lesson of the reading is very similar to that of
previous days. God does not take vengeance as we humans do, but on the other
hand, we do reap the natural consequences of immoral behaviour.
At the same time, even the most negative experiences can be
turned round. A good example of this is to be found in Viktor Frankl’s
book, Man’s Search for Meaning, where he shows that those who
survived best in the Nazi concentration camps were those who found positive
meaning and something to live for even in the utter degradation of their
surroundings. Frankl himself was a clear example of one such person. Out of all
this corruption and immorality will come David’s descendant, Jesus the Christ.
God certainly does write straight with crooked lines.
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Commentary on
Matthew 8:1-4
The two chapters (8 and 9) following the Sermon on the Mount
include a long list of miracles (ten altogether) performed by Jesus. They are
seen as a confirmation of his authority to teach because they are so obviously
the work of God himself. The man who can do these things also has the right to
be heard and followed.
The first story is the cure of a leper. It is told with the
usual brevity and lack of detail characteristic of Matthew (compare with Mark’s
version, 1:40-45). A leper begs to be healed. His faith and trust in Jesus is
revealed by his saying:
Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.
Jesus replies:
I am willing.
And he cures him instantly. We may note the simplicity of
Jesus’ act. In this, the healing miracles of Jesus contrast with the fantastic
stories from the Hellenistic world and those sometimes attributed to Jewish
rabbis.
But Jesus’ miracles also differ because of the spiritual and
symbolic meaning attached to them. They often have the quality of a parable,
and frequently the words that accompany the miracle are of greater
significance. Such is true in this case, where the healing of the leper has
wider ramifications as indicated below.
While compassion is many times the motive behind a miracle,
most often they are seen as strengthening a person’s faith. Jesus, too, is very
selective in the miracles he performs and often demands secrecy from the
beneficiary. Jesus does not want to be the centre of any sensational
wonder-working. It will be the miracle of his resurrection that will be the
really determining factor of who he is.
Soon, we will see Jesus sending out his disciples to
proclaim the Kingdom and giving them his own powers of healing. Their mandate
will be to do the same work that Jesus has been doing. The 10 miracles
recounted in chapters 8 and 9 will be the kind of thing that the missionary
successors of Jesus will also do.
After the healing, Jesus then instructs the man, in
accordance with the requirements of the law, to go to the Temple to get a
certificate from the priests as proof of his return to health. Only with this
official documentation will he be allowed to re-enter society.
The leper was a particularly unfortunate person in ancient
society. It was known that through contact with a leprous person one could
contract the disease, so they were kept isolated from the rest of society.
There was, of course, no known cure and the person’s body just gradually rotted
away.
What was probably more tragic was the fact that many people
with other kinds of similar-looking skin diseases, which were not at all
infectious, could be branded as lepers and condemned to the same policy of
isolation. The healing of the leper by Jesus was then much more than a physical
healing. It meant that the man could be fully re-integrated into normal
society.
In our time, the leper can be a symbol for all those who are
marginalised by our societies for one reason or another—foreigners; people of a
different colour or culture, or gender, or religion; those with addictions—to
drugs or alcohol, wealth or power, or pornography; victims of sexually
transmitted diseases…the list could go on and on.
We Christians have a special responsibility to be agents of
healing to re-integrate such people and accept them fully as brothers and
sisters.
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https://livingspace.sacredspace.ie/o2126g/
Friday,
June 26, 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 8: 1-4
After Jesus had come down from the mountain large crowds
followed him. Suddenly a man with a virulent skin-disease came up and bowed low
in front of him, saying, 'Lord, if you are willing, you can cleanse me.' Jesus
stretched out his hand and touched him saying, 'I am willing. Be cleansed.' And
his skin-disease was cleansed at once. Then Jesus said to him, 'Mind you tell
no one, but go and show yourself to the priest and make the offering prescribed
by Moses, as evidence to them.'
Reflection
In chapters 5 to 7 we have heard the words of
the New Law proclaimed on the Mountain by Jesus. Now, in chapters 8 and 9,
Matthew indicates how Jesus put into practice that which he had just taught. In
today’s Gospel (Mt 8: 1-4) and of tomorrow (Mt 8: 5-17), we see closely the
following episodes which reveal how Jesus practiced the Law: the cure of a
leper (Mt 8: 1-4), the cure of the servant of the Roman soldier (Mt 8: 5-13),
the cure of Peter’s mother-in law (Mt 8: 14-15) and the cure of numerous sick
people (Mt 8: 14-17)
•
Matthew 8: 1-2: The leper asks: “Lord, if you
are willing you can cleanse me”. A leper comes close to Jesus. He was one who
was excluded. Anybody who would touch him would remain unclean! This is why the
lepers had to remain far away (Lv 13: 45-46). But that leper had great courage.
He transgresses the norms of religion in order to be able to enter into contact
with Jesus. Getting close to him he says: If you are willing you can cleanse
me! That is: “It is not necessary for you to touch me! It suffices that the
Lord wants it and he will be cured”. This phrase reveals two things:
•
1) the sickness of leprosy which made people
unclean;
•
2) the sickness of solitude to which the person
was condemned, separated from society and from religion. It reveals also the
great faith of the man in the power of Jesus.
•
Matthew 8: 3: Jesus touches him and says: I am
willing. Be cleansed. Filled with compassion, Jesus cures two sicknesses. In
the first place, in order to cure solitude, loneliness, before saying any word,
he touches the leper. It is as if he would say: “For me, you are not excluded.
I am not afraid to become unclean by touching you! And I accept you as a
brother!” Then he cures the leper saying: I am willing! Be cleansed! The leper,
in order to be able to enter in contact with Jesus, had transgressed the norms
of the Law. Thus Jesus, in order to help that excluded person and reveal the
new face of God, transgresses the norms of his religion and touches the leper.
•
Matthew 8: 4: Jesus orders the man to go and
show himself to the priest. At that time, a leper in order to be reintegrated
into the community needed a certificate of healing confirmed by the priest. It
is the same thing today. The sick person gets out of the hospital only if he
has a certificate signed by the doctor of the department. Jesus obliges the
person to look for that document, in order to be able to live normally. He
obliges the authority to recognize that the man had been cured. Jesus not only
heals but wants the healed person to be able to live with others. He
reintegrates the person in the fraternal life of the community.
The Gospel of Mark adds that the man did not present
himself to the priest. Instead, “He went away and started freely proclaiming
and telling the story everywhere, so that Jesus could no longer go openly into
the town, but stayed outside in deserted places (Mk 1, 45). Why could Jesus no
longer enter openly into the town? Because he had touched the leper and had
become unclean before the religious authority who embodied the law of that time.
And now, because of this, Jesus was unclean and had to be away far from
everybody. He could no longer enter into the city. But Mark shows that people
cared very little for these official norms, because people came to Jesus from
all pats! This was totally overthrowing things! The message which Mark gives us
is the following: In order to take the Good News of God to the people, we
should not be afraid to transgress the religious norms which are contrary to
God’s project and which prevent a fraternal spirit and love. Even if this
causes some difficulty to the people, as it did to Jesus.
•
In Jesus everything is revelation of what he has
within himself! He does not only announce the Good News of the Kingdom. He is
an example, a living witness of the Kingdom, a revelation of God. In Him
appears what happens when a human being allows God to reign, allows God to
occupy the center of his life.
Personal Questions
•
In the name of the Law of God, the lepers were
excluded and they could not live with others. In our Church are there norms and
customs which are not written and, which up until now, marginalize persons and
exclude them from living together with others and from communion. Do you know
any such persons? Which is your opinion concerning this?
•
Jesus had the courage to touch the leper. Would
you have this courage?
Concluding Prayer
I will bless Yahweh at all times, his
praise continually on my lips. I will praise Yahweh from my heart; let the
humble hear and rejoice. (Ps 34: 1-2)
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