Daily Gospel Reflection
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July 11, 2026
Jesus said to his Apostles:
“No disciple is above his teacher,
no slave above his master.
It is enough for the disciple that he become like his teacher,
for the slave that he become like his master.
If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul,
how much more those of his household!“Therefore do not be afraid of them.
Nothing is concealed that will not be revealed,
nor secret that will not be known.
What I say to you in the darkness, speak in the light;
what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops.
And do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul;
rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy
both soul and body in Gehenna.
Are not two sparrows sold for a small coin?
Yet not one of them falls to the ground without your Father’s knowledge.
Even all the hairs of your head are counted.
So do not be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.
Everyone who acknowledges me before others
I will acknowledge before my heavenly Father.
But whoever denies me before others,
I will deny before my heavenly Father.”
Excerpts from the Lectionary for Mass for Use in the Dioceses of the United States of America, second typical edition © 2001, 1998, 1997, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Inc., Washington, DC. Used with permission. All rights reserved. No portion of this text may be reproduced by any means without permission in writing from the copyright owner. The full readings of the day from the Lectionary are available here.
Reflection
The Lord knows and calls us intimately. The hairs on our heads are counted. This seems a trivial thing to know. Our decisions to acknowledge or deny the Lord and his movements in our lives are often seen as equally trivial. We may think that offering our most dreaded work or our practice of daily prayer to the Lord would be insignificant. But nothing is insignificant to him, not the sparrows nor the hairs on our heads.
In my role with Campus Ministry, I encounter students as they seek to understand how to live their faith in ways that intentionally acknowledge Jesus rather than deny him. One way I witness this is through Spiritual Coaching. While our conversations may begin with how to form a habit of prayer or how to go deeper in prayer, over time, our conversations become less about the prayer itself. We begin to talk more about the movements of the heart that come from the prayer and the Holy Spirit’s inspiration that calls students to action.
Today we celebrate the feast of St Benedict, who provides us with much guidance on how to center our days around ora et labora, or prayer and work. Benedict wrote that the first step of humility is obedience and that obedience “comes naturally to those who cherish Christ above all.”
Just as Benedict found that putting Christ above all else meant that our prayer leads to our work, and our work invites us back to prayer again, I have seen students develop the discipline of prayer that brings them from contemplation to action and back to contemplation.
The Good News was not meant to instill fear but rather a courage with which to communicate with our Lord and to respond to him with both prayers of our heart and with actions that might in this manner become prayers. No offering or obedience is insignificant in our relationship with God.
Prayer
Almighty God, we are humbled as we ponder the mystery of your love for us. Open our eyes and our hearts to see you in the childlike and the wise, to know you in the stranger and the outcast, to love you in the poor and the needy. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Saint of the Day
St. Benedict is often called the father of monasticism in the Roman Catholic Church, but his influence extends beyond monasteries—the rule of life he wrote 1,500 years ago is still a pillar of Christian spirituality today.
He was the twin brother of St. Scholastica—the two were born in 480 to a noble family in Italy. Benedict was educated in Rome, but as a young man became repulsed by the laziness and promiscuousness of his classmates. In about 500, he left the city to live in the countryside about 40 miles away.
There, he met a hermit living nearby, St. Romanus, who saw something special in Benedict. He encouraged the young man to take on a life of solitude and offered him the use of a cave near his hermitage in an area known as Subiaco, and Benedict lived there for three years. Romanus would visit him on a regular schedule and bring him food.
Soon, people in the region started hearing stories of Benedict’s holiness and wisdom, and many sought him out. When the abbot of a nearby monastery died, the monks asked Benedict to lead them. He agreed and imposed on them a strict way of life. They soon changed their minds about him and tried to poison him.
On the first attempt, they poisoned his drink. Benedict received the cup, and when he blessed it, the cup broke (notice this cup in the painting of him from the Basilica, shown below). Undeterred, they poisoned his bread next. When he received it, he blessed it, and a raven flew by and stole it away (the raven symbolizes him in the stained glass window below from the chapel in Dillon Hall).
Benedict returned to Subiaco and gathered people around him, founding 12 different monasteries and transforming the region into an area of learning and spirituality.
In 525, Benedict left Subiaco and settled in Monte Cassino between Rome and Naples. He destroyed a temple to Apollo there and evangelized the people living nearby. He eventually built the famous monastery and wrote a rule of life for its monks. This “Rule of St. Benedict” has shaped Christian spirituality and monastic life for centuries.
The Rule offers practical advice for living a Christ-like life and for the administration of a monastery. It is based on common sense and encourages moderation, especially in asceticism and discipline. Prayer (especially with the psalms), study, work, obedience, stability, zeal, community, and hospitality are benchmarks of the Rule, which can be summed in the famous phrase, ora et labora, “pray and work.”
Benedict grew in holiness and became famous for his holiness and wisdom. He advised kings and popes and could read people’s consciences. He had the gift of prophecy and worked miracles.
He died on March 21 in 543, but this date almost always falls in Lent, so the Church moved his memorial to July 11. He was named the co-patron of Europe in 1964 and is the patron saint of students.
The relics of St. Benedict rest in the reliquary chapel in the Basilica, and he is depicted there in a mural. His image also stands in a stained glass window in the chapel in Dillon Hall.
St. Benedict, your common-sense rule of life still shapes Christian spirituality—pray for us!