THIRTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME, JUNE 28, 2026
- Maria Knox
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
Reading 1 2 Kings 4:8-11, 14-16a
One day Elisha came to Shunem, where there was a woman of influence, who urged him to dine with her.
Afterward, whenever he passed by, he used to stop there to dine. So she said to her husband, “I know that Elisha is a holy man of God. Since he visits us often, let us arrange a little room on the roof and furnish it for him with a bed, table, chair, and lamp, so that when he comes to us he can stay there.”
Sometime later Elisha arrived and stayed in the room overnight.
Later Elisha asked, “Can something be done for her?”
His servant Gehazi answered, “Yes! She has no son, and her husband is getting on in years.”
Elisha said, “Call her.”
When the woman had been called and stood at the door, Elisha promised, “This time next year you will be fondling a baby son.”
REFLECTION
What different times these are. In the reading from Kings we see the woman wishing to have a child. Nowadays, depending on the age group, between 21 up to 57 % of women want to stay childless.
In many developed countries, the natality rates have plummeted to unrecoverable levels. Leading this phenomenon are South Korea, a country with 51.7 million people in 2025, had 254,500 live births the same year. Singapore, a country of about 6 million people with 29,864. These numbers are way below replacement rate. This means that by 2040 these will be countries of almost all old people (below 1).
The US is also falling behind. Out of about 342 million people, we only had 3,606,400 live births. Also below replacement rate (1.59). To be able to replace current adult population, a woman has to have an average of at least 2.1 live births.
This phenomenon of not wanting to have children are a combination of the extreme school and work circumstances in East and South East Asia. As well as exhaustive government campaigns that indoctrinated couples to have less children, as well as not giving them better housing if they had more than 2 children.
The Catholic Church teaches us that children are the supreme gift of marriage. Marriage has the twofold purpose of uniting the spouses in a profound manner, and at the same time the spouses have to be open per se to the transmission of life (CCC 2366)
What is happening in these countries where birth rates are so low? Adults engage in heavy drinking and other self destructive practices to be able to deal with the abuses they suffer at work. What happens when adults, specially older adults suffer from solitude? They spend more. This model of less children only helps commerce. People buy more things and spend more in care and doctors as they grow older. How many times have you met an older person that talks to no end to waiters, doctors, and whoever lends an ear to them?
Let us pray for a change of heart in people that reject the idea of children. And the change in societies that force their young people into deciding between being able to afford basic things like rent and groceries, and getting married and having children. And a change of heart on those who put their career advancement ahead of personal relationships.
Let us pray to the Sacred Heart of Jesus to give us a heart like His so we can learn to love God, and not be afraid of loving and living, and giving ourselves to others in justice and charity.
God bless y'all!
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