14 October 2026 - if we live by the Spirit

Today's Readings

(Audio)

 

Woe to you Pharisees!
You pay tithes of mint and of rue and of every garden herb,
but you pay no attention to judgment and to love for God.

The Pharisees were guilty of what we might call majoring in the minors. They dedicated immense effort to getting small details correct to the degree that they lost sight of the big picture. This is, we regret to acknowledge, a normal tendency for humans. We like to do things that give us a sense of accomplishment, things that are easy to control, have an obvious scope, and clear conditions for success. They are easy to check off of a list. Doing so gives us a sense of satisfaction. By contrast judgment and love for God are more nebulous. It's not that they are necessarily vague, since we known from our consciences how to respond moment by moment. But they are often not reducible to bullet points on a list. There cannot be the same sense of completion since we are never finished with our need for judgement or for love. 

Woe to you Pharisees!
You love the seat of honor in synagogues
and greetings in marketplaces.  
Woe to you!
You are like unseen graves over which people unknowingly walk.

It might seem benign to seek satisfaction from achievement or honor but it can result in an internal corruption of our souls that is all the more dangerous because of our external mask of religiosity. Rather than seeking our joy as a fruit of the Spirit we will be left with nothing better than to seek it at the level of the flesh. We may end up with a hidden life where we conceal and cherish those works of the flesh that particularly appeal to us, keeping up an external religious facade all the while. This may seem to the fallen mind to convey the best of both worlds. But it really gives us nothing. Fake religiosity helps to distract ourselves from our pangs of conscience regarding our hidden sins. But it also distracts us from the lack of satisfaction they provide, trapping us in an endless loop in which we continue to pursue such behavior, but never recognize that it isn't working. Thank God for Jesus and his woes helping us to see ourselves more clearly. Thank God for Paul, telling us we aren't meant to live at the level of the flesh, but encouraging us to rise to the level of the Spirit, since that is our calling as those united with Jesus himself.

“Teacher, by saying this you are insulting us too.”
And he said, “Woe also to you scholars of the law!
You impose on people burdens hard to carry,
but you yourselves do not lift one finger to touch them.”

We might think that our false religiosity and hidden sins only impact us, that they are, as we may say, private matters. But, as we already saw with the Pharisees, our hypocrisy is dangerous for others as well. It was dangerous in their case because they potentially exerted influence over others, as if a noxious cloud permeated wherever they went. But from the scholars of the law we can see that it also makes us fail in our obligations to others. One couldn't tell from social media, but we are not in fact meant to merely shout forth condemnations toward others. Yet the more we convince ourselves of our own religious excellence and take pride in it the harder this is to avoid. Something has gone very wrong indeed if we celebrate our neighbor's failings so that we can delight in our own supposed moral superiority. Instead we should be like Jesus. He took our burdens on himself first, creating the possibility that we could carry them ourselves, together with him. He didn't point out any problem without also demonstrating the willingness to do whatever he could to help. It is this approach which can make the Church persuasive when she must criticize or correct behavior. In such moments she says to us that we don't want to live in that way, but we don't have to, if only we will receive the Spirit and rely on him for strength. What God commands he gives grace to do.

If we live in the Spirit, let us also follow the Spirit. 

Maranatha! Music - I Will Delight

 

13 October 2026 - alms and joy

 

Today's Readings
(Audio)

 

The Pharisee was amazed to see
that he did not observe the prescribed washing before the meal.

It wasn't as though this washing was required by the law. It was a human tradition, no doubt one that began based on good intentions, but of human origin nonetheless. Why, then, were they so amazed? Jesus no doubt knew about the tradition, and was aware that the Pharisees expected that he would perform it. Therefore it was an intentional omission. The Pharisees had perhaps begun to use it to signal religious insider status to one another. They certainly didn't seem actually concerned with it as a metaphor for anything deeper within their souls. It ought to have been a deeply personal symbolic act, one in which a person reflected on their need for inner purity. But for the Pharisees it had become a means to pass praise or judgment on others. They did it themselves to check a box and then were careful to make sure others were checking the same box, indicating their common membership in the same religious club. In the first place, Jesus had no need to cleanse himself. And in the second, he wasn't interested in joining the mutual adoration society that the Pharisees seemed to represent.

The Lord said to him, “Oh you Pharisees!
Although you cleanse the outside of the cup and the dish,
inside you are filled with plunder and evil.

It is possible that our motivations for specifically religious acts can be not only neutral but negative. If we perform our religious duties merely to appear praiseworthy to others, or so that we can judge others who don't  meet our standards, we are not only not growing, but becoming corrupt. In Galatians, Paul taught that circumcision for the Gentiles would potentially lead them away from path to salvation revealed in Jesus. But so too can merely human systems of religious traditions and self-imposed laws. How are they similar? Both, seemingly, are meant to be signs that point to something important. But, without grace, they remain at the level of the flesh and are easily twisted to our destruction. They make us fixated on ourselves, and on what we do at an external level, and make us forget that we are really supposed to be awaiting the hope of righteousness through the Spirit by faith. As Paul said "neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything", how much more could Jesus say, 'neither handwashing nor the lack of handwashing counts for anything'. However, Jesus didn't go on to mention faith or hope directly. Rather he mentioned giving alms, and therefore charity. For Paul and for Jesus charity was meant to be the result of faith. Alms were meant to be an instance of "faith working through love".

But as to what is within, give alms,
and behold, everything will be clean for you.

Alms might have appeared to be a merely external act, one that could be performed for show. And perhaps this was not impossible. Yet it was more difficulty to sabotage an interpersonal act of charity than it was to forget the purpose of something that was merely symbolic. It was possible to blow one's horn in the city square when giving alms. But if one simply gave alms in a normal unaffected way it was likely to be an action that affected the whole being, internal and external, cleansing the soul in the process. Alms-giving not predicated on rewards for the ego required faith. Without faith it might seem futile. The fact that the poor will always be with us might seem insurmountable. Without faith we might not recognize the God given dignity of the poor, his presence in them. But when we have faith we reach beyond the walls of our egos to make truly human connections. We become the hands and feet of God reaching out to the world and begin to embody in ourselves the heart of Jesus Christ. Faith works in love because it opens the door for Jesus to work in us. So we say with Saint John Paul the Great, "Do not be afraid. Open, I repeat, open wide the doors to Christ!"

Chris Tomlin - Give Us Clean Hands

 

12 October 2026 - Jonah, brother?

Today's Readings
(Audio)

This generation is an evil generation;
it seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it,
except the sign of Jonah.

The people in the crowd were an evil generation in that they did not respond to Jesus with faith, just as those who journeyed through the desert under the leadership of Moses did not respond to God's guidance with faith. Both groups had, in fact, already seen many signs. But in spite of this they kept asking for more. Jesus, knowing that they would never be satisfied, referred to a final sign as a kind of last resort to help them to understand and believe.

Jonah did not want to preach the message of repentence to the Ninevites. He did not want to see the enemies of God's people blessed, to such an extent that he preferred to die rather than participate in the mission. Yet even spite of this the people of Nineveh were able to recognize and respond to God's word. Jesus too expanded God's message beyond the bounds of Israel. It was typically the outsiders and even Gentiles who responded and recognized that what he said was true. Jesus was the faithful messenger of God, conveying the truth to the people. But the crowds of that evil generation played the part of Jonah's reluctance, finally attempting to kill the messenger before, they imagined, he could accomplish his mission. Yet even this attempt at sabotage, like Jonah's attempt at self-sabotage, was foreseen in the divine plan. Jonah was raised to life after three days on the shores of Nineveh to proceed with his mission. Jesus was vindicated on the third day after being put to death. They could look to this to reveal their own hidden resistance to God to them, and from there to the reality that Jesus was who he claimed to be. 

An additional aspect of how the sign could be interpreted was the result of Jonah's preaching. Just as the word of God had been successful in his day, and as the wisdom of Solomon was persuasive even to the queen of the south, so too was the way the words of Jesus successfully reached even the most unlikely individuals a testament to the wisdom of those words. Thus the sign of Jonah refers to Jesus both in the aspect of the wisdom of his preaching and in the way it foreshadowed his miraculous resurrection.

At the judgment the men of Nineveh will arise with this generation 
and condemn it,
because at the preaching of Jonah they repented,
and there is something greater than Jonah here

It is interesting that Jesus did not try to guide them gently but instead used imagery that he knew would be provocative. He didn't refer to much of the obvious common ground that existed between them but instead highlighted the precise point of their resistance. Doing otherwise might have left them dancing around the true issues indefinitely. He didn't refer to the inclusion of the Gentiles just to make them mad, but rather to provoke them to a point of crisis. From that point they could look to the history of what God had already done in the past for the Gentiles and choose to place their faith in him. They might not fully understand or agree, but faith could make up for help them get there. Or, otherwise, they could remain in their obstinate opposition. Jesus is wise in revealing the strongholds of opposition within our own hearts as well, not to antagonize us, but to set us free. He can guide us, even kicking and screaming, through our own death to self, until our hearts our large enough to accept the entirety of his plans for the world.

Keith & Kristyn Getty, Matt Papa - Christ Our Hope In Life And Death

 

11 October 2026 - better things to do?

 

 

Today's Readings
(Audio)

 

He dispatched his servants
to summon the invited guests to the feast,
but they refused to come.

Somehow we too often can't be bothered with an invitation to come to the feast. Celebration is too distant from horizon of our normal daily reality and, as a result, we don't even recognize it when it is suggested. We have been hypnotized by the daily reality of farm, or business, or whatever the case may be, to the degree that we self-select servitude rather than the freedom implied in the invitation. Our interests, compared to the Kingdom, are narrow and boring, making us, in turn, quite dull. God wants to talk about his marriage with humanity. But we don't want to hear from him unless it is about our daily responsibilities. Why? Well, they do feel necessary don't they? The Kingdom isn't known as a great way to put food on the table. Any break we take seems fraught with peril, since there exists the possibility that it might set us back too far for us to recover. There are also many potential distractions from the Kingdom in addition to our work. Think of all of the other things we seek in our daily lives, whether power, pleasure, rest, or distraction. We convince ourselves that our hobbies are interesting and that our work is necessary. We fail to realize how mundane all of it is compared to the feast. We put on blinders and force ourselves to ignore the fact that pursuing this course has never once satisfied us and is therefore unlikely to do so in the future. 

Some ignored the invitation and went away,
one to his farm, another to his business. 
The rest laid hold of his servants,
mistreated them, and killed them. 
 

The feast, by definition, is not a resource we can redirect toward our own goals and so we tend to resist it. At first we usually to think that our failure to respond to the invitation of the Kingdom is relatively benign, a mere prudential decision or preference. But the more we are pressed on the issue the more the true rebellion in our hearts is unmasked. Mention the possibility of giving up some cherished pleasure to follow Jesus and we may say, 'Sounds nice, but no'. But when we actually have to reckon with losing it, we tend to hold it tightly with all our strength, and fight those who would take it, as though our lives were on the line. God really does want us to come to his feast. He knows it is better for us than anything reward or goal we can imagine ourselves. But he wants us to come so much that he is willing to push us to, and past, the point of crisis so that we can reckon with our own refusal. 

Go out, therefore, into the main roads
and invite to the feast whomever you find.'

The rebellious parts of us do need to be put to death. The only parts of hearts that manage to attend the feast are those that are surprised by the graciousness of the invitation and that recognize the goodness of the offer. When we realize how poor we are, and how boring are our interests and occupations compared to the Kingdom, we should be highly motivated to do whatever is necessary to be there. Treating the invitation casually and showing up in clothes soiled from our daily labor is insufficient, and indicates a lack of true appreciation for the blessing of having been invited. We can't treat the wedding feast like one more day of work. God himself is giving us his best, as Isaiah described. So we must give him our best in response.

On this mountain the LORD of hosts
will provide for all peoples
a feast of rich food and choice wines,
juicy, rich food and pure, choice wines.

The wedding feast really does teach us a new way to live, a way that mitigates the highs and lows of life in the so-called 'real world'. It therefore gradually cures our addictions to lesser things. Like Paul we learn the secret "of living in abundance and of being in need". We learn to say with him that, "I can do all things in him who strengthens me". And how does he strengthen us? Precisely through the gift of himself that we receive in the Eucharist, the marriage feast of the Lamb.

Matt Maher - Come  To The Water

 

10 October 2026 - blessed rather

 

Today's Readings
(Audio)

“Blessed is the womb that carried you
and the breasts at which you nursed.”

Family was a immensely important in ancient cultures, and Israel was no exception. In fact Israel understood better than any other nation the importance of family since they could see from the story of creation how it was God himself who invented it and went on to enshrine it in the commandments he gave to Moses. It was indeed through the particular family of Israel that God promised to bless the world, through a particular descendant of Abraham. God never revised or abolished any aspect of his law, and his high regard for family was no exception. Yet when Jesus came he brought with him a new reality that did make family less important by comparison. Family was still of great importance, but what he introduced was simply that much better. 

He replied, “Rather, blessed are those
who hear the word of God and observe it.”

Mary was not blessed primarily because she gave birth to Jesus physically. Rather, as Elizabeth said, "Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled" (see Luke 1:45). She was in fact, more than all other humans of all times, one who heard the word of God and observed it. Without this faith she never would have had her physical connection to Jesus, for that required her to consent to obey the command of the angel, which in turn required her to believe him, and through him God himself. Only faith could convey the blessings God manifested in Jesus Christ to the world, whether that world was Jewish or Gentile. Jews had the law. But that law only acted as a custodian which pointed them toward Christ and offered correction when they transgressed. But it did not convey the blessings themselves, participation in the Sonship of Jesus, and the gift of his Spirit. Without these blessings everything was "confined" "under the power of sin". The law pointed in the direction of hope and made it clear why we had need to hope for more. Finally in Jesus the solution to the problem of human sinfulness had arrived. But the way to share in that promise was not through the law, not through any merely physical process like circumcision, but through being united to Jesus by faith in baptism.

Because faith in Jesus was necessary to receive the promise the importance of family was in some way relativized. Many good things came and would continue to come through families and they were still important. But one's ancestry was not sufficient to guarantee salvation. This remains true in the Kingdom. Even good Christian parents recognize that their best efforts are insufficient to ensure that their children go to heaven. The only thing that can ensure that is if the children themselves growing into individuals who choose to believe and obey God. In doing so they come to share, together with their earthly parents and all Christians, the Sonship of Christ. 

We recognize that treating goods like family as absolutes can actually set them in conflict with better things that are higher in the divine hierarchy. We see this when family potentially prevents someone from heeding the call to follow Jesus. Sometimes this is probably just an excuse, as when a man refrained from following Jesus in order to bury his father. But it is possible, for instance, for parents to misuse their authority to command their children not to follow Christ. In such cases disobedience is not only permissible but required. It was in this sense that Jesus predicted, "They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law" (see Luke 12:52), and why he insisted, "Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me" (see Matthew 10:37). 

Loving anything, even the best things, more than Jesus is foolish since he is the source of all other blessings. Ultimately there is nothing else besides him, and those blessings we have in him, through him, and for him, that we can hold forever. It is in the sense that we may hope that even our natural bonds of family become bonds of faith that make us spiritual family. That which is not raised to the level of the spirit is destined to pass away. But if we are united in Christ then there is nothing, not even death itself that can separate us.

John Michael Talbot - Holy Is His Name

 

9 October 2026 - wrong division

Today's Readings
(Audio)

Every kingdom divided against itself will be laid waste
and house will fall against house.

Jesus was never divided against himself. He was always only about the will of his heavenly Father. The crowds were, however, divided within and among themselves about the identity of Jesus. They had seen good things since they acknowledged that he drove out demons. But they refused to trust him completely. We can be like them when confronted with any new truth that is potentially uncomfortable. If it veracity would wound our pride, make us revise our worldview, or change our way of living, we might make the suggestion that something about its origin or intent was corrupt in order that we don't have to take the thing itself seriously.  

The statement of Jesus about a kingdom divided can help us to look more deeply into the matters we are considering. It is an invitation to assess whether what we witness could really be in service of evil, or, rather, whether it is so good that there is no way that is possible since it would in fact undermine any hypothetical evil that attempted it. Evil can indeed put on the appearance of good, and the enemy can disguise himself as an angel of light. But it can't actually undermine itself. It can't actually set people free from its power in order to prove itself. Such things are the absolute opposite of its goals of domination. And so there is a clear distinction between "finger of God" at work and the lies and pretense of Satan's kingdom. If we are divided about Jesus and his teaching, we must not remain divided. Divided hearts lack the integrity to withstand the spiritual battle in which we find ourselves. Only if we are built entirely on the rock of Christ, on obedience to his word, can we hope to survive the storms that will surely come.

When a strong man fully armed guards his palace,
his possessions are safe.
But when one stronger than he attacks and overcomes him,
he takes away the armor on which he relied
and distributes the spoils.

Jesus is stronger than the the evil one who holds souls captive in his power. He alone is uniquely able to despoil the enemy and set captives free. Others who do so are in fact doing by in some way appropriating power that is in fact properly his. Anything other than this is ultimately nothing but ineffective scattering, as with the crowds sought to stir up and exacerbate division about Jesus himself. In pretense, this pushed people back to their carefully controlled (and probably usually ineffective) methods of exorcism. But in actuality it kept people from the one person who had the absolute ability to succeed. 

The power of Jesus means that he can deliver us even from the places where our hearts are divided, where we have one foot in his Kingdom, but another still in the enemy's palace. He has the power to set us free and give us all the gifts that spiritual freedom entails. And we need these gifts.

But upon returning, it finds it swept clean and put in order.

It is not sufficient to merely clean ourselves up after we receive this freedom. We need to be filled with something new in order to prevent the return of that which afflicted us. No matter how meticulously we organize our lives, no matter how highly effective our habits, we will always be at risk without the Holy Spirit dwelling within us. Where he is present and active the enemy does not dare approach. He is the chief blessing of freedom that Jesus delights to bestow on those who welcome his rescue mission. May we be among those whom he sets free, free from the places where our own hearts remain divided, and may he fill us to overflowing with his Spirit. When our homes are thus transformed into his temples there is nothing further to fear.

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom (see Second Corinthians 3:17).

 

Darryl Evens - Freedom

 

8 October 2026 - and keep asking!

 

Today's Readings
(Audio)

 

I tell you, if he does not get up to give him the loaves
because of their friendship,
he will get up to give him whatever he needs
because of his persistence.

Is the premise of this Gospel really that we can annoy God into doing what he would not have done based merely on our friendship? Obviously not. We aren't going to convince or manipulate God into doing something other than his will for us. If we know who God is we shouldn't even want to. So why this need to persist, if not to change his mind? It can only be to change ourselves, and our own hearts and minds. When we continue to bring our requests to God as we grow spiritually they are purged of the excesses of self-love that often contaminate them in the beginning. When we don't give up on them our own hearts take on something of the commitment that God himself has toward us. It is comforting to know that God recognizes that this process can be difficult, as he demonstrates by how response the individual receives in the parable. It often does feel to us as though it's midnight, the door is locked, and like hearing an immediate refusal from the far side of a door, without much in the way of consideration or compassion. We may well feel like the Syrophoenician woman during the initial response to her request for Jesus to heal her demon possessed daughter. It might feel like we're up against a wall of impossibility. But we should remember that what seemed initially impossible for her was in the end granted by Jesus. It cost him nothing to give scraps from the master's table. But she gained a great depth of faith by her persistence.

Whenever this passage comes up we can't help but reiterate that Jesus does not simply say to seek, knock, and ask once and then forget about it. The grammar really indicates that we must ask and keep asking, seek and keep seeking, knock and keep knocking until the door is opened for us. Again we cite the Amplified translation of this passage:

So I say to you, ask and keep on asking, and it will be given to you; seek and keep on seeking, and you will find; knock and keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you (see Luke 11:9, AMP).

We are too quick to give up when things seem difficult or impossible. This is problematic because it implies both a lack of true concern for either ourselves or our neighbors, whomever are prayers are meant to benefit, and also because our surrender implies we have accepted some lesser vision of God than all loving and all powerful. It is a problem of faith and of good will. But when we don't succumb we find healing at all of the levels of our being and miracles can finally happen.

If you then, who are wicked,
know how to give good gifts to your children,
how much more will the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit
to those who ask him?

We might not get exactly what we asked when we started asking. But we may eventually be led to openness to something better, something that does fulfill the initial good impulse that led us to pray, but in a way that goes beyond what we asked, expected, or could even imagine. Many of us who started out asking for an egg or a fish would initially find the Holy Spirit to be a paltry consolation prize. Let's keep praying until we realize that this is precisely backward. There is nothing better that God can give us than more of himself. The way to receive that gift is to be constant in prayer.

Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer (see Romans 12:11-12).

Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you (see First Thessalonians 5:16-18).

praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication (see Ephesians 6:18).

Prayer is the way to begin in the Spirit and also end, not in the flesh, but in the Spirit. When we do it, we experience what Zachariah described, freedom to worship without fear. Since we have a lot of fear in our world and probably our own lives let us take prayer is the antidote. We have a divine guarantee as to its efficacy.

Matt Maher - Canticle Of Zechariah