July 6, 2026
Monday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Lectionary: 383
Reading 1
Thus says the LORD:
I will allure her;
I will lead her into the desert
and speak to her heart.
She shall respond there as in the days of her youth,
when she came up from the land of Egypt.
On that day, says the LORD,
She shall call me “My husband,”
and never again “My baal.”
I will espouse you to me forever:
I will espouse you in right and in justice,
in love and in mercy;
I will espouse you in fidelity,
and you shall know the LORD.
Responsorial Psalm
R. (8a) The Lord is gracious and merciful.
Every day will I bless you,
and I will praise your name forever and ever.
Great is the LORD and highly to be praised;
his greatness is unsearchable.
R. The Lord is gracious and merciful.
Generation after generation praises your works
and proclaims your might.
They speak of the splendor of your glorious majesty
and tell of your wondrous works.
R. The Lord is gracious and merciful.
They discourse of the power of your terrible deeds
and declare your greatness.
They publish the fame of your abundant goodness
and joyfully sing of your justice.
R. The Lord is gracious and merciful.
The LORD is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger and of great kindness.
The LORD is good to all
and compassionate toward all his works.
R. The Lord is gracious and merciful.
Alleluia
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Our Savior Jesus Christ has destroyed death
and brought life to light through the Gospel.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
While Jesus was speaking, an official came forward,
knelt down before him, and said,
“My daughter has just died.
But come, lay your hand on her, and she will live.”
Jesus rose and followed him, and so did his disciples.
A woman suffering hemorrhages for twelve years came up behind him
and touched the tassel on his cloak.
She said to herself, “If only I can touch his cloak, I shall be cured.”
Jesus turned around and saw her, and said,
“Courage, daughter! Your faith has saved you.”
And from that hour the woman was cured.
When Jesus arrived at the official’s house
and saw the flute players and the crowd who were making a commotion,
he said, “Go away! The girl is not dead but sleeping.”
And they ridiculed him.
When the crowd was put out, he came and took her by the hand,
and the little girl arose.
And news of this spread throughout all that land.
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/070626.cfm
Commentary on Hosea
2:16,17-18,21-22
Today we begin reading from the prophet Hosea. Hosea
belonged to Israel, the Northern Kingdom, and began his prophetic career in the
last years of Jeroboam II (786-746 BC). Some believe that he was a priest,
others that he was a cult prophet, but the only information on his life comes from
this book.
He was a man of great feeling and could go from anger to
extreme tenderness. The prophecy is built around his difficult marriage to
Gomer, and this affected and deepened his teaching. Gomer was guilty of
adultery (very humiliating to anyone, but especially in those times, to the
husband) and comes to symbolise the sinful Israel. And just as Hosea could not
give up his wife in spite of her infidelity, so neither could Yahweh abandon
Israel, who was betrothed to him, in spite of her faithlessness and treatment
of the poor. There would be punishment, but its purpose was to heal and restore
the first love. In fact, it was Hosea who began the tradition of describing the
relations between Yahweh and Israel in terms of marriage, and this is taken up in
the New Testament by Paul and John.
Today’s passage is full of tenderness and a spirit of
reconciliation. In the verses just prior to today’s reading, God speaks to
Israel, his chosen people saying:
I will now allure her
and bring her into the wilderness
and speak tenderly to her… (Hosea 2:14)
He wants to lead his people into the desert for, in the eyes
of Hosea, like Amos before him, the years the Israelites spent in the desert
were idyllic times when the people had a particularly close relationship with their
Lord. Israel was then childlike, knowing nothing of pagan gods, and loyal to
Yahweh whose presence was manifest in the cloud. (In fact, it was not quite as
idyllic as all that, but we know how nostalgia can romanticise the past.)
Then, says the prophet, Israel:
…shall respond
as in the days of her youth,
as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt.
(Hosea 2:15)
Just as Gomer had treated her husband Hosea, so Israel has
behaved like an unfaithful wife, but now she will come back to Yahweh, her
spouse, who, of course, has always been faithful to her.
Picking up on today’s reading, Hosea says:
On that day, says the Lord, you will call me “my
husband,” and no longer will you call me “my Baal.”
There is an ironic play on words here. For a long time, the
word ‘baal’ which means ‘master’ was applied to husbands and also to God. It
had been from ancient times an element in certain proper names, without any
idolatrous significance. Yahweh was the ‘master’ to whom the bearer of the name
was thus dedicated.
But after the corrupting influences of the Canaanites, the
word ‘Baal’ came to be identified in people’s minds with the Canaanite gods.
There was such a vigorous reaction against that worship that this Hebrew word
for ‘master’ was no longer used of the Lord. He says:
For I will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth,
and they shall be mentioned by name no more.
And then the Lord will take Israel back:
And I will take you for my wife forever; I will take you
for my wife in righteousness and in justice…
Yahweh takes back his unfaithful wife with the fervour of
first love and showers her with spiritual gifts—with right and justice, with
love and mercy.
‘Righteousness’ and ‘justice’ are two terms dear to Hosea
and are used by him especially to condemn the popular social injustice and
corruption of the legal processes. Here they mean right conduct in general.
The primary meaning of the word ‘love’ (Hebrew, hesed)
is that of a bond, or contract. When used of human relationships it comes to
mean friendship, union, loyalty, especially when these are the outcomes of a
treaty or formal agreement.
Used of God, the term refers to his faithfulness to his
covenant and the kindness he therefore shows his chosen people (Exod 34:6).
Used by Hosea in the context of married love, the word assumes and from then on
retains a still warmer significance: it means the tender love God has for his
people and the benefits emanating from it.
But this divine hesed calls for
corresponding hesed in human beings towards Yahweh, consisting
of self-giving, loving trust, abandonment, deep affection and ‘piety’; a love
(in short) which is a joyful submission to the will of God and an active
charity to fellow humans. This ideal, expressed in many of the Psalms, will
later be that of the Hasidim, or Hasidaeans where, however, it
takes rather extreme forms (see verses beginning with 1 Macc 2:42).
Hosea continues:
I will take you for my wife in faithfulness, and you
shall know the Lord.
“Know” here means much more than an intellectual knowing. It
implies a deep and intimate relationship of love and unity. God ‘makes himself
known’ to man when he engages himself to him by covenant, and shows his hesed-love
for him by the benefits he confers. The word ‘know’ is used in the Bible
sometimes to express sexual unity as when Mary (in some translations) told the
angel that she “did not ‘know’ a man”, but it also refers to active
acknowledgement of a covenant partner.
Similarly, man ‘knows God’ when he loyally observes God’s
covenant, shows gratitude for God’s gifts, and returns love for love. In the
wisdom literature ‘knowledge’ in this sense and ‘wisdom’ are practically
synonymous. The two words ‘know’ and hesed are closely
interlinked.
Passages like this, of course, are laying the groundwork for
the love of God for us, which was shown in such a dramatic fashion by Jesus,
the Incarnate love of God. All the Gospels are suffused with this love, and we
are called to be filled with that love which is extended to God, to every
single person without exception and also to ourselves.
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Commentary on
Matthew 9:18-26
There is a great contrast in the way Matthew tells this
double story compared to that told by Mark (Mark 5:21-43). Matthew strips it
down to the bare details. The twenty-three verses that Mark needs are reduced
here to nine. Matthew makes no mention of the large crowd that was following
Jesus, only that his disciples are present. He concentrates on Jesus and on
what Jesus does and says.
A synagogue official approaches Jesus and says that his
daughter has just died. He is in fact the head of the synagogue, and in Mark
and Luke we learn that his name is Jairus. In Mark’s version, the girl is
seriously ill and dies only later in the story. The man says to Jesus:
…come and lay your hand on her, and she will live.
It is an extraordinary act of faith in the power of Jesus.
Up to this he had not brought anyone back from the dead.
As Jesus and his disciples were on the way to the house, a
woman who had suffered from a bleeding problem for twelve years unobtrusively
touched the hem of Jesus’ garment.
If I only touch his cloak, I will be made well.
Again, we are presented with a deep faith and trust in
Jesus’ power.
This was really the only way this unfortunate woman could
approach Jesus with other people around. Her bleeding was not only a physical
ailment. It also involved ritual uncleanness, and she was not supposed to be in
close contact with people. If they had known, they might have done something
terrible to her. Nor, for the same reason, could she approach Jesus openly
about her problem, so she quietly touched the hem of his robe. She trusted that
that would be enough and she was right.
Jesus, realising she had touched his garment, turned and
said kindly:
Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.
And the bleeding stopped instantly.
We now go back to the original story. As Jesus and his
disciples approach the house, they find a large crowd of mourners, many of them
wailing and weeping in the fashion still common in West, South and East Asia.
Jesus tells them all to:
Go away, for the girl is not dead but sleeping.
Hearing this, the crowd laughed at him. Whether the girl was
actually dead or was simply in some kind of death-like coma does not really matter.
As far as everyone there was concerned, she was dead.
Jesus went into the house, took the girl by the hand and she
“got up”. There are overtones of resurrection in the words “got up”.
In both these stories, using the literary device of
‘inclusion’ (one story wrapped inside another), we have a common theme of Jesus
as Lord of life. It is Matthew’s way of saying what we read in John:
I am the resurrection and the life. (John 11:25)
That life is to be understood in the fullest possible sense,
involving the physical, social, intellectual and spiritual aspects.
In one story, the girl is not only given back her physical
life, but is restored to the bosom of her family and all that means. In the
other story, not only is the woman’s haemorrhage stopped, but she can be fully
reinstated into normal relationships with the people around her. She is in a
very real sense made whole again. Let us today pray for Jesus to heal us and
make us whole—the wholeness that is holiness, the holiness that is wholeness.
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https://livingspace.sacredspace.ie/o2142g/
Monday, July 6, 2026
Ordinary Time
Opening Prayer
Father,
through the obedience of Jesus,
your servant and your Son, you raised a fallen world.
Free us from sin and bring us the joy that lasts for ever.
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 9: 18-26
While Jesus was speaking to them, suddenly
one of the officials came up, who bowed low in front of him and said, 'My
daughter has just died, but come and lay your hand on her and her life will be
saved.' Jesus rose and, with his disciples, followed him.
Then suddenly from behind him came a woman,
who had been suffering from a haemorrhage for twelve years, and she touched the
fringe of his cloak, for she was thinking, 'If only I can touch his cloak I
shall be saved.' Jesus turned round and saw her; and he said to her, 'Courage, my
daughter, your faith has saved you.' And from that moment the woman was saved.
When Jesus reached the official's house and saw the
flute-players, with the crowd making a commotion, he said, 'Get out of here;
the little girl is not dead; she is asleep.' And they ridiculed him. But when
the people had been turned out he went inside and took her by the hand; and she
stood up. And the news of this spread all round the countryside.
Reflection
Today’s Gospel takes us to meditate on two
miracles of Jesus. The first one was in favor of a woman considered unclean
because of an irregular hemorrhage which had been lasting for more than twelve
years. The second one in favor of a girl who had just died. According to the
mentality of that time, the person who touched blood or a corpse or dead body
was considered unclean and whoever touched that person became unclean. Blood
and death were factors of exclusion! This is why those two women were
marginalized persons, excluded from the participation in the community. Whoever
touched them became unclean, and therefore, would not be able to participate in
the community, and therefore, could not relate with God. To be admitted to
participate fully in the community, it was necessary to go through the rite of
purification, prescribed by the norms of the law. Now, when curing the impurity
of the woman, through faith, Jesus opens a new path toward God which does not
depend anymore on the rites of purification, controlled by the priests. In
resurrecting the girl, Jesus conquers the power of death and opens a new
horizon to life.
•
Matthew 9: 18-19: The death of the little girl.
When Jesus was still speaking, behold an official of the place came to
intercede for his daughter who has just died. He asks Jesus to go to impose his
hands on her and, “she will live.” The official thinks that Jesus has the power
to make his daughter rise from the dead. This is a sign of much faith in Jesus
on the part of the father of the little girl. Jesus rises and goes with him,
taking only his disciples. This is the starting point of both episodes which
follow: the cure of the woman who had been suffering for the past twelve years
from a hemorrhage, and the resurrection of the little girl. The Gospel of Mark
presents both of these episodes, but with many details: the official was called
Jarius and he was the president of the Synagogue. The little girl was not dead
as yet, and she was twelve years old, etc. (Mk 5: 21-43). Matthew gives a
briefer narration of the very lively one of Mark.
•
Matthew 9: 20-21: The situation of the woman.
While they were on the way to the official’s house, a woman who had been
suffering for twelve years because of a irregular hemorrhage got close to Jesus
seeking to be cured. Twelve years with a hemorrhage! This is why she was marginalized,
excluded, because as we have said, at that time blood rendered the person
impure. Mark says that the woman had spent all she had with doctors, but
instead of improving her situation had become worse (Mk 5: 25-26) But she had
heard some speak about Jesus (Mk 5: 27). This is why a new hope sprang in her.
She told herself: “If I can just touch his clothes, I shall be saved.” The
catechism of that time said: “If I touch his clothes, I will remain impure.”
The woman thinks exatly the contrary! This was a sign of great courage! A sign
also that women were not in agreement with everything that the religious
authority taught. The teaching of the Pharisees and of the Scribes failed to
control the thinking of the people. Thank God! The woman got close to Jesus
from behind, she touched the end of his cloak and she was cured.
•
Matthew 9: 22. The word of Jesus which
enlightens. Jesus turns and seeing the woman declares: “Courage, my daughter
your faith has saved you.” A brief phrase, but which makes us see three very
important points: (1) In saying “my daughter”, Jesus accepts the woman in the
new community which has formed around him. She was no longer excluded. (2) What
she expected and believed takes place in fact. She was cured. This proofs that
the catechism of the religious authority was not correct and that in Jesus was
opened a new path which gave people the possibility of obtaining the purity
which the law demanded and also to enter into contact with God. (3) Jesus
recognizes that without the faith of this woman, He would not have been able to
work the miracle. The cure was not a magic rite, but an act of faith.
•
Matthew 9: 23-24: In the house of the official.
After that Jesus goes to the house of the official. Seeing the agitation of
those who were mourning because of the death of the little girl, he asks
everybody to get out from the room. And he says: “The little girl is not dead,
she is sleeping!” People laugh, because they know how to distinguish when a
person sleeps or when she is dead. Death was for them a barrier that nobody
could go beyond. It is the laughter of Abraham and of Sarah, that is, of those
who fail to believe that nothing is impossible for God (Gn 17: 17; 18: 12-14;
Lk 1: 27). The words of Jesus still have a very deep significance. The situation
of the communities at the time of Matthew seemed to be in a situation of death.
Even though they heard said, “It is not death, you are asleep! Wake up!”
•
Matthew 9: 25-26: The resurrection of the little
girl. Jesus does not give any importance to the laughter of the people. He
waits for everyone to get out of the house. Then he enters, takes the little
girl by the hand and she gets up. Mark keeps the words of Jesus: “Talita kúmi!” which mean: “Little girl,
I tell you to get up!” (Mk 5: 41). The news spread throughout that region. The
people believed that Jesus is the Lord of life who overcomes death.
Personal Questions
•
Today, which are the categories of persons who
feel excluded from participating in the Christian community? Which are the
factors which cause the exclusion of so many persons and render life difficult
for them in the family and in society?
•
“The little girl is not dead. She sleeps!” “She
is not dead! You are sleeping! Wake up! This is the message of today’s Gospel.
What does it tell me? Am I one of those who laugh?
Concluding Prayer
I shall praise you to the heights,
God my King, I shall bless your name for ever and ever.
Day after day I shall bless you, I shall praise your name for
ever and ever. (Ps 145: 1-2)
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