The Lord’s Tuning Our Missionary Mind and Heart to His, Monday of the 11th Week in Ordinary Time (II), June 15, 2026

Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Annual Retreat for the Priests of the Diocese of Gary
Mundelein Seminary Conference Center
Mundelein, Illinois
Monday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
June 15, 2026
1 Kings 21:1-16, Ps 5, Mt 5:38-42

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

The following text guided the homily: 

• At first glance, today’s readings are bound to make us physically and spiritually nauseous. In the first reading, we encounter the story of Naboth, whose vineyard Ahab, the king of Samaria, coveted. Ahab told Naboth, “Give me your vineyard to be my vegetable garden, since it is close by, next to my house. I will give you a better vineyard in exchange, or, if you prefer, I will give you its value in money.” But Naboth refused, not because of selfishness, but because he believed that it was God who had given that land to him and his family to be treasured almost as a covenantal relationship: “The Lord forbid that I should give you my ancestral heritage.”  Ahab was so disturbed and angry at not getting his way he lay down on his bed and refused to eat. We see how coveting for material goods can destroy someone: as King of Israel, he had so many pieces of property and so many possessions, but he was unhappy because of what he didn’t have, rather than grateful for what he did. When his wife Jezebel asked why he wasn’t eating and found out the reason, she set herself on a plan of calculated evil to obtain the vineyard, writing letters in the king’s name and with his seal calling on the “elders and nobles” to secure two scoundrels to frame Naboth for the capital crime of having “cursed God and king.” The nobles went along with this abomination, Naboth was stoned to death, and Jezebel told her husband to go to acquire Naboth’s familial vineyard. The whole scene points to the revolting ugliness of wickedness and corruption, of those in positions of authority abusing their offices to trample on those, especially the worldly insignificant, who impede their insatiable will to have more power, popularity and property.
• And yet, when we read the first reading through the prism of the Gospel, it seems at first glance that Jesus is calling us not to resist this corruption and injustice but to enable it. From the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells us, “Offer no resistance to one who is evil. When someone strikes you on your right cheek, turn the other one to him as well. If anyone wants to go to law with you over your tunic, hand him your cloak as well. Should anyone press you into service for one mile, go with him for two miles. Give to the one who asks of you, and do not turn your back on one who wants to borrow.” It would appear that Jesus is saying, when a covetous, evil, corrupt King asks you for your ancestral land, give it to him, and give him your house, and your clothes and everything else besides. That’s certainly the way some people have misinterpreted this Gospel passage, but that’s not what Jesus is affirming. Jesus’ message is highly challenging all the same — he’s calling us to live by his standards, to have our righteousness surpass that of the Scribes and Pharisees as he says to us earlier in the Sermon on the Mount, to go beyond a pagan sense of justice and love for those who love us, as we’ll hear tomorrow —  but he’s not telling us to become a punching bag or a defenseless victim before those who would seek to harm us or others.
• To grasp Jesus’ message, we first need to see the way he introduces it. He cites the “law of talion,” something that goes back to the Hammurabi Code of the 23rd century BC, but that was incorporated into the Mosaic law: “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” This was an ancient limit on vengeance, against a tribal notion of vendetta, that would prevent the escalation of an offense. Prior to this principle becoming popular, if someone killed your ox, your whole family would have a vendetta against that person’s whole family and there was a risk that much worse evil would be done and for generations. The law of talion put a limit to revenge. Jesus, however, wanted to give us a different principle for the limitation of vengeance: namely, love, in imitation of the sacrificial, other-centered, merciful love of God in whose image we have been made. When Jesus tells us to offer no resistance to one who is evil, he’s telling us not to be consumed with fighting back. He’s telling us to put the relationship with the offender over the material thing we might surrender or have already given. If someone backhands us on the right cheek, rather than strike him in the solar plexus, Jesus tells us to turn the other cheek, a maneuver that would prevent him from backhanding the other side and that would affirm our dignity without hurting someone we’re supposed to love, even if he’s not reciprocally loving us. When he tells us to give our cloak to someone who wants our tunic, he’s instructing us to sacrifice for him out of love even what we would need (most Jews would have a second tunic, but not a second cloak). When he tells us to walk a second mile rather than just one in compulsory service in delivering packages, he is urging us not to do so with resentment but to volunteer to go further out of love. When he instructs us “Give to the one who asks of you and do not turn your back on one who wants to borrow,” he’s forming us to imitate his own divine generosity. Jesus’ principle was not merely to prevent the escalation of violence, but to respond to evil with good, to respond to selfishness with selflessness, to respond to provocation with pardon, to respond to want with beneficence. This is, of course, what he himself did. When the Roman soldiers slapped one cheek and mocked him, he didn’t retaliate. When they stripped him of his cloak, he gave them his tunic and all his other clothes as well. When they pressed him to carry the cross, he carried it not only to Calvary but carries it still through time in his Mystical Body. When people asked of him, he gave a full measure, packed down, overflowing into his lap. In this, he calls us to follow him, to love others as he has loved us first, to live according to his standards.
• So back to Naboth, Ahab and Jezebel and to all victims of corruption and violence today: Is Jesus telling us to let the mafia, terrorists, or megalomaniacal public officials run wild and take whatever we have? No. In Naboth’s case, that would have been violating the covenant he had made with God. But he is telling us three things.
  • First, to leave justice to God, something that we will see he will do with Ahab by sending the prophet Elijah.
  • Second, not to let a worse evil beset us than the evil of losing what is rightfully ours: missing the opportunity to love, to forgive, to become more and more like our Trinitarian God. As we’ll be hearing tomorrow, Jesus calls us to retaliate to those who have made themselves our enemies with love, to those who are persecuting us with prayer. Even if people seek to take our lands, clothes, and time and to take advantage of our generosity, they can’t take our soul unless we give it to them, and that’s what’s most at stake in any such circumstance that Jesus describes.
  • Third, if we’re going to defend our rights, we should do so not out of selfishness but real care — love — for others who are hurt by selfishness or physical abuse against others or using others or manipulating others for what they don’t need.
• So many missionaries have lived by these challenging principles. I have the privilege to serve on the Board of the National Shrine of Our Lady of Martyrs in Auriesville, New York, where three of the North American Martyrs — Saints Isaac Jogues, Rene Goupil and Jean de Lalande — gave their lives for God and where, out of their fruitful blood irrigating the soil, St. Kateri Tekakwitha was born. The chronicles of the North American Martyrs reveal that they were willing to bear everything to convert those to whom they had been sent. Their meekness — a strength that is so strong it doesn’t have to show its strength — came through in the way that they endured far more than slaps on the face, running through gauntlets, having digits bit off, and in St. John de Brébeuf’s case, even being flayed, boiled, having his tongue cut off, and then chest pierced so that they could take out his heart and drink his valiant blood. All of this was part of their great witness to the Lord Jesus who had willingly endured similarly brutal tortures from the Roman soldiers, but this eventually led to the conversion of many of the native Americans in eastern Canada and the northeast. As priests, we have faced, and will face, likely far less to proclaim the Gospel. But we’re called to have a mind and a heart, a priestly identity, like them, to be willing to give all in testimony to the meek and humble of heart Savior who called us to follow him, to be with him, and sent us out to love like him.
• If today’s Gospel, responding to Ahab’s and Jezebel’s treachery toward Naboth, communicates anything, it’s that living as Christians, living by Christ’s standards and following his example, is not easy. But we know that God doesn’t leave us alone with demanding words and occasionally permitted sufferings. He gives us himself to help us meet his standards, and he offers us his mercy to help us never give up. Despite our sins having led to his crucifixion, at Mass he willingly goes far more than an extra mile and allows us to consume him. At Mass he gives us not just a tunic or cloak but his very own body, blood, soul and divinity. At Mass he gives to the one who asks. And then he tell us “Do this in memory of me.” By that command, he is charging us to be missionaries of this way of life, of this revolution of love. Let us receive Christ today with faith, that with him inside of us, we can not only live by his words but find in them truly the Good News that will lead us and others and ultimately, we pray, the whole world to salvation.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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