Sunday, June 28, 2026
Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Matthew 10:37-42
Listen to the whole reading — MP3
First reading
2 Kings 4:8-11,14-16
One day Elisha went to Shunem, where there was a prominent woman; and she persuaded him to eat bread. So it was, that as often as he passed by, he turned in there to eat bread. She said to her husband, “See now, I perceive that this is a holy man of God who passes by us continually. Please let us make a little room on the roof. Let us set for him there a bed, a table, a chair, and a lamp stand. When he comes to us, he can stay there.” One day he came there, and he went to the room and lay there. He said, “What then is to be done for her?” Gehazi answered, “Most certainly she has no son, and her husband is old.” He said, “Call her.” When he had called her, she stood in the door. He said, “At this season, when the time comes around, you will embrace a son.” She said, “No, my lord, you man of God, do not lie to your servant.”
Responsorial psalm
Psalms 89:1-2,15-16,17-18
I indeed declare, “Love stands firm forever. You established the heavens. Your faithfulness is in them.” “I have made a covenant with my chosen one, I have sworn to David, my servant, In your name they rejoice all day. In your righteousness, they are exalted. For you are the glory of their strength. In your favor, our horn will be exalted. For our shield belongs to the Lord; our king to the Holy One of Israel. Then you spoke in vision to your saints, and said, “I have given strength to the warrior. I have exalted a young man from the people.
Second reading
Romans 6:3-4,8-11
Or don’t you know that all we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life. But if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him; knowing that Christ, being raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no more has dominion over him! For the death that he died, he died to sin one time; but the life that he lives, he lives to God. Thus consider yourselves also to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Gospel
Matthew 10:37-42
He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter more than me isn’t worthy of me. He who doesn’t take his cross and follow after me, isn’t worthy of me. He who seeks his life will lose it; and he who loses his life for my sake will find it. He who receives you receives me, and he who receives me receives him who sent me. He who receives a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward. He who receives a righteous man in the name of a righteous man will receive a righteous man’s reward. Whoever gives one of these little ones just a cup of cold water to drink in the name of a disciple, most certainly I tell you he will in no way lose his reward.”
Lectio
The Shunammite woman did something quietly extraordinary: she noticed the holy man passing by, and she made room. A bed, a table, a chair, a lamp — small furnishings of hospitality that asked nothing in return. She did not know that her generosity would open her own life to a gift she had stopped hoping for, the son she never named as her longing. This is how grace so often arrives: not as reward for a calculation, but as the surprising fruit of a heart that simply opened its door. Jesus echoes her in the Gospel, promising that even a cup of cold water given to one of his little ones will not be lost. God keeps an attentive memory of the smallest welcomes.
Yet between the woman's hospitality and the disciple's cup of water stands a harder word: whoever loves father or mother, son or daughter, more than Christ is not worthy of him. This is not a command to love our families less, but to let every love pass through the deeper love that gives all loves their truth. Paul tells us why this is possible — we have already died with Christ in baptism, already been buried with him so as to walk in newness of life. The self that clutches, that fears loss, that measures its giving — that self has been laid in the tomb. What rises is a life no longer ruled by the dread of losing, because it has already lost everything and found it again in him.
To lose one's life and so to find it: this is the paradox that turns a roof-room and a cup of water into eternal things. The Shunammite did not grasp; she gave, and life was given back. We are invited into the same trust today — to consider ourselves dead to the anxious grip of self and alive to God, free at last to make room.
Who is the holy presence passing by your life right now whom you have noticed but not yet made room for — and what small, concrete welcome are you withholding because you fear what it might cost you?
Where in your closest relationships — with a parent, a spouse, a child — have you let your love become a place of clutching rather than freedom, and what would it mean today to let that love die and rise again in Christ?
Saint of the day
St. Irenaeus, Bishop and Martyr († 202) - Memorial
Ora reads this aloud, every morning, free. Ora