An Inheritance to Receive and Pass On, Eleventh Wednesday (II), June 17, 2026

Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Annual Retreat for the Priests of the Diocese of Gary
Mundelein Seminary Conference Center
Mundelein, Illinois
Wednesday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
June 17, 2026
2 Kings 2:1.6-14, Ps 31, Mt 6:1-6.16-18

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following text guided the homily: 

• Elijah was the great prophet of the Lord, who, in the midst of ferocious opposition by political leaders and the leaders of other religions, proclaimed God, his word and his ways in way that called the children of Israel back to the true God. He sought to help them remember who they were, heirs of the covenants made with Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses and David. He sought to help them remain faithful to these Covenants. Today we have the scene at the very end of his life. The prophet Elisha, his assistant and coadjutor, was clinging to him. He didn’t want to say bye. He didn’t want to lose him. He swore an oath on the name of the Living God not to leave him. Eventually, after yet another miracle of crossing the Jordan, Elijah got Elisha to focus on his departure and to ask for whatever he might be able to do for him. He requested a double portion of his spirit. It’s a strange phrase. It ultimately goes back to the Mosaic law, where the first-born son received two-thirds of the family inheritance to ensure he could care for his mothers and sisters after his dad’s death. It was a sign of both special blessing and responsibility. Elisha was asking to be Elijah’s spiritual heir, to be the recipient of his spiritual goods so that he might use them to continue Elijah’s work. Elijah said that Elisha was asking for something “not easy,” because that’s ultimately God’s to give, but said that if Elisha saw Elijah taken away by God from him, it would be a sign that God had granted the wish. That’s what occurred when Elijah was taken up by God in a flaming chariot by horses of fire. And we see the immediate impact with Elisha’s using Elijah’s mantle to part the Jordan just as Elijah had done a short time before.
• In this retreat on the missionary mind, heart and identity of priests, it’s important for us to focus on the transmission not just of the Gospel but of the full inheritance of the deposit of faith. Just as Elisha followed upon Elijah, so we follow, as Elishas, upon a long line of prophets, priest and kings stretching all the way back to Christ himself. And we, similarly, are in the spot of Elijah, with Elishas after us. We ask the Lord for a double-portion of Peter, Paul and the other disciples, of Ignatius of Antioch and Polycarp, of Chrysostom and Augustine, of Thomas and Bonaventure, of Francis and Dominic, of Ignatius and Francis Xavier, of Francis de Sales and Vincent de Paul, of the North American Martyrs, of Junipero Serra and Frances Cabrini, of Stanley Rother and Fulton Sheen. Seven months before John Paul II died, I brought a group to a general audience to meet him. As we were having our photo taken with him, I felt a hand on my head, something that I thought was outrageous for such a moment with the successor of St. Peter. When I turned around after the photo, prepared to give a stare-down to a mischievous pilgrim, I saw that the hand was attached to a white cassock. I blurted out in Italian to St. John Paul — whom I had had the privilege to meet 10 times previously for brief conversations and who knew me by a nickname, il gemello americano, based on first having met me with my identical twin brother Scot — “Che cosa ha significato quello, Santità?,” “What did that mean, Holiness?” And he replied, “Un Giorno saprai!,” “One day you’ll know.” I’ve always prayed since that God would give me a double-portion of John Paul II’s holiness and apostolic zeal. As we think about this episode of Elijah and Elisha, we are summoned not just to think as Elishas of all of the Elijahs ahead of us — bishops who have ordained us, priests who have mentored us, the great saints who have interceded for us, stretching all the way back to the Upper Room — but also we should ponder as Elijahs the Elishas God wants to receive from us the gifts that moths can destroy, rust can’t corrode or the IRS can’t tax. It’s a time for praying to the harvest master for vocations for his harvest to whom we can see to pass on a double-portion of our spirit. God is involved in all of this. And not to be outdone, when Jesus was preparing to be taken to heaven, he gave us not a double-portion of his spirit, but he sent out the full outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the Church, upon his priests and prophets, from the Upper Room down to the present day. This is the gift that allows us to conform ourselves, our desires, our intentions, our goals, our mind and heart, to Christ’s. This is what makes possible our continuing his work.
• With these thoughts in mind, we turn to the Gospel, where we have the words we have the privilege to proclaim every Ash Wednesday. They teach us that prayer, fasting and almsgiving are not just Lenten activities, but perpetual calls for us and the whole Christian people. A retreat is a time for us, of course, for us to examine not just the quality and quantity of our prayer, but also to examine our fasting and whether we’re really hungering for what God hungers, as well as our almsgiving, short-term and long-term, both of the material possessions God has temporarily placed in our hands but more importantly of our life and whether we’re imitating Jesus’ Eucharistic total self-giving. But I leave those to your prayer. Based on the first reading, I’d like to focus instead on what Jesus says about the purity of intention with which he wants us to do not only those three staple spiritual practices but everything. Jesus today has us concentrate both on the audience for whom we’re praying, hungering and giving of ourselves and the reward. 
• The audience in the case of fasting, prayer and almsgiving is not supposed to be others, in order vainly to gain their approval or esteem. The audience needs to be God who sees in secret. We fast for God, in order to hunger for him more and to share his hunger for the care of all his hungry and needy sons and daughters. We pray for him, in our “inner room” where we store our valuables, and seek to conform ourselves with his will, his glory, his kingdom, his name. We give alms for him, as his stewards, knowing that he has placed within our reach all our material goods, our time, our life, even God himself, so that we can be the extension of God’s providence to others. So often we can be tempted to do things for the eyes of our peers and parishioners, the bishop and those in the chancery, even those in the media or on social media. But that’s what so many of the outwardly righteous scribes and Pharisees did, what so many people in the world seek to do. Jesus wants us to act for God and God alone.
• And that leads directly to the subject of reward. Jesus promises, “And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” Many Christians are uncomfortable with the whole thought of reward because it seems “impure” to do it for any benefit other than out of love for God. But Jesus who made us is constantly speaking to us about rewards. He mentions that if we are persecuted for the sake of his name, our reward in heaven will be great; if we’re faithful in little things, we’ll be given greater responsibilities; if we leave all things for him and his name, we’ll be given 100-fold in this life and eternal life; if we’re faithful, we will be with him forever. Jesus has made us to work for a goal. The goal, however, he wants us to strive for, as he tells us later in the Sermon on the Mount, is the “kingdom of God and his righteousness” knowing that “everything else will be given” to us besides. We seek what St. Thomas Aquinas asked for when God said to him, “Bene scripsisti de me Thoma; quam ergo mercedem accipias?” “You have written well of me Thomas; What reward would you receive?” He replied, “Non aliam, Domine, nisi te ipsum,” or “Nothing but you, Lord!” So the reward we seek is not vain, the reward we seek is not this-worldly, the reward we seek is precisely the Reward with a capital R God wants to give: himself. Jesus himself tells us: “Your Father is pleased to give you the kingdom!” And we know the Kingdom of God is God. He is our great inheritance. He is what we seek to obtain and to pass on.
• Today at Mass we come to put into action Christ’s words today. We come having fasted, not out of routine, not out of vanity, but out of hunger for God’s word and for God himself in the Eucharist. We come praying not for others to notice but with our hearts lifted up to God, seeking what he wants, which is that we live these words we’ve heard and make our lives Eucharistic, doing “this” in memory of him. We come prepared to receive the greatest alms of all and to pay that gift forward, to the end of our life. The full portion of the Holy Spirit is about to be sent upon us to help us to have purity of intention and to recognize that God is our reward. Our hearts that hope in the Lord are about to take comfort as God fulfills our heart’s deepest longing!

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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