Friday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time
Optional Memorial of Saint Romuald, Abbot

First Reading: 2 Kings 11:1-4, 9-18, 20
Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 132:11, 12, 13-14, 17-18
Gospel: Matthew 6:19-23
Daily readings: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/061926.cfm

Today’s First Reading is dramatic — a palace coup, a hidden king, a usurper finally brought down. But underneath all that noise is a quiet thread: a young child named Joash, hidden in the temple for six years, kept safe while chaos reigned outside. The temple was the place of God’s presence. In the middle of a world bent on seizing power and wealth, there was a secret refuge that the scheming could not touch.

Jesus picks up that thread in the Gospel. Do not store up treasures on earth, he says — the kind that rust, decay, and get stolen. Store them in heaven instead. And then this line: “Where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.” He is not giving us a lecture on finances. He is asking us a question about our attention. What do I keep returning to? What do I check first in the morning? What is the thing I am most afraid to lose? That is my treasure. And wherever that is, that is where my heart lives.

Saint Romuald, whose optional memorial we celebrate today, took this question seriously in a radical way. He was born into wealth, watched his father kill a man in a duel over property, and in that moment of horror walked away from the whole thing. He spent the next fifty years wandering Italy, founding monasteries, seeking silence, and teaching others to sit with God. His simple rule said: “Sit in your cell as in paradise. Put the whole world behind you and forget it.” He was not asking for despair of the world — he was asking for freedom from it. The Camaldolese monks he founded still live this today: together for prayer, but mostly alone with God, with no phones, no internet, no noise. Their screen, someone once said, is the tabernacle. Romuald teaches us that the eye can only take in so much light — and what we fix it on shapes everything.


A few questions to sit with today:

1. Where has my attention lived today — what have I returned to most, worried about most, scrolled past most? Is that where I want my heart to be?

2. Is there something I am holding onto tightly because I am afraid of losing it? Can I loosen that grip a little tonight?

3. Did I find any moment of quiet today — even a brief one — where I was simply with God and not performing or producing?

4. Where did I experience something that felt like treasure that cannot rust — a moment of real love, peace, or beauty?


One small thing for tomorrow:

Tomorrow morning, before you check your phone, take sixty seconds to sit quietly and ask God: “What do you want my attention on today?” Just one minute of stillness before the noise begins. Saint Romuald spent a lifetime learning this. We can start with sixty seconds.


Lord Jesus, you know exactly where my treasure is — you can see it in what I worry about, what I reach for, what I am afraid to lose. I do not always like what that reveals about me. Forgive me for storing up things that cannot last and neglecting the things that do. Help me to fix my eye on you — simply, quietly, without so many words — the way Saint Romuald learned to. I want the light in me to be actual light, not the glow of a screen or the shimmer of something I am grasping. Teach me to be still. Teach me that you are enough. May Mary, who treasured all things in her heart, help me to treasure the right things. Amen.


If you’d like to share: what is one thing you noticed yourself reaching for today that might be a sign of where your heart actually is?