(For the audio version of this blog, please visit: https://brothersinchristcmf.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Mass-Blog-for-the-13th-Sunday-in-Ordinary-Time-2026.mp3)
Read the entire chapter from which Sunday’s first reading came (2 Kings 4:8-11, 14-16a) and one might think the prophet Elisha was the Old Testament version of Christ. He brings a friend’s son back to life, multiplies food and heals a leper. But read between the lines and we see the difference.
This passage tells us Elisha made a regular habit of dining with a “woman of influence” and her husband. His hosts eventually decide to make up a room for him so he can be their resident guest. THEN he learns a pertinent detail he would have learned if he’d only asked, “Any children?” In those days children were the key to eternal life for any family, yet Elisha had to learn from his servant Gehazi that this couple had no son. Why didn’t that come up in any of his dinner conversations with them?
This may be what separated Elisha the prophet from Jesus the Christ. God seemed to share details with his Old Testament prophets on an as-needed basis, while Jesus shared the mind of God. Research tells us that prophetic knowledge in the Old Testament was derivative, not intrinsic. God dispensed it according to His will, not the recipient’s.
Elisha must have been aware of his own limitations. When the son he predicted his benefactor would bear suddenly dies in childhood, we hear an echo from the Lazarus account when the mother asks Elisha for help:
When she reached the man of God on the mountain, she clasped his feet. Gehazi came near to push her away, but the man of God said: “Let her alone, she is in bitter anguish; the LORD hid it from me and did not let me know.” (2 Kings 4:27)
Jesus, on the other hand, knew Lazarus had died, and indeed, waited for it to happen until he could come and raise him from the dead. Elisha had to learn of this child’s death from the mother herself. Then God uses Elisha to demonstrate that prophets are his instruments for perfectly-timed miracles.
Back to the New Testament. During their last supper together, Jesus told his disciples, “Whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father. And whatever you ask in my name, I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.” (John 14:11-13)
Jesus was imparting to them the secret of eternal life: to live for God. As Paul learned and teaches us this Sunday, Jesus “died to sin once and for all; as to his life, he lives for God. Consequently, you too must think of yourselves as dead to sin and living for God in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 6:3-4, 8-11)
Jesus puts it plainly this Sunday as we hear him commission them (and us): “Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.” (Matthew 10:37-42)
One of our Church’s most beloved hymns teaches us to live this way. It invites the spirit of God to reside in the little space we make and furnish in our hearts—kind of like “the woman of influence” did for Elisha. But as the lyrics of this song imply, we want more than just counsel. “Eye Has Not Seen” prays, “Spirit of love, come give us the mind of Jesus; teach us the wisdom of God.”
If we pray that prayer in Christ’s name wherever we go, we can give a piece of God’s mind to whomever we meet.
–Tom Andel