15 February 2026 - fire or water?

Today's Readings
(Audio) 

I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses
that of the scribes and Pharisees,
you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.

We have seen that an external and performative approach to the law leaves much to be desired and is ultimately insufficient. The Pharisees were able to manipulate the law by selectively prioritizing verses that seemed to endorse their sinful impulses. For instance, they were able to take the law about Sabbath rest and use it to justify their hostile opposition of Jesus. They ended up flipping the goodness motivating the law on its head such that they ended up trying to destroy life rather than saving it. If it is "life and death, good and evil" that are before man, as Sirach wrote, they clearly stretched forth their hand to death. And yet, for all this, the law was not at fault. There were limits to what the law could accomplish in fallen human hearts. It might prevent murder and adultery, but it did this by way of external consequences, rather than by inner conversion. Jesus did not desire to simply disregard the law and start fresh. Rather he fulfilled, not only by further specifying the provisions of the law, but by fulfilling God's promise through the prophets to give new hearts to the human race.

And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh (see Ezekiel 36:26).

For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people (see Jeremiah 31:33).

Thus it is not enough for us to avoid murder will still cherishing and indulging anger within our hearts. This is similar to how it was not enough for the exile generation to leave Egypt when the Egyptian idols still dominated their hearts, when they still longed for the leeks, the garlic, and the melons of they who held them captive (see Numbers 11:5).

The internal transformative to which we are called is a gift. But it is one with which we must cooperate if our righteousness is to surpass the scribes in the Pharisees. The Spirit is the one who initiates. But we must respond when he convicts us. When he makes us notice that we are dwelling on anger or allowing ourselves to careen dangerously toward occasions of temptation to lust we must use the strength he gives us to not only avoid the bad but even replace it with good. We can, perhaps, reconcile with those with whom we are angry, or at least pray for them. We can pray for the human dignity of those toward whom we were tempted to treat as objects of lust. Or, if we cannot even safely think of them, we can at least maintain custody of our eyes and turn our minds elsewhere, to the true, the excellent, and the praiseworthy (see Philippians 4:8). Anyone who has ever attempted this struggle without active reliance of God's grace while readily confirm that it feels overwhelming and impossible. But because Jesus fulfilled the law and gave us new hearts it is possible with his help.

But I say to you, do not swear at all;

Divorce and the swearing of private oaths were realities that seemed necessary under the Old Covenant, in which the old way to influence behavior was by external regulations. But in the ideal of the New Covenant the marriage without the possibility or need of divorce became real. It was no longer merely assumed that adultery was going to be part of the story, and indeed, it did not need to be. In the New Covenant people could now desire the truth enough to avoid the need for amplification when they supposedly really meant what they were saying, which in reality often led only to greater degrees of dissembling, the evidence of which was the way the language of their oath swearing had been twisted with too much shame to directly address the Most High.

The fact that Jesus raised the standard of the law should not cause us dismay, as though he only increased the arduous difficulty of our call to righteousness. He actually makes it possible for us to harmonize in inner lives with our external actions, such that all are motivated by desire for the good, all are motivated by love. At first the vision seems illusory or at best oblique. But the more we lean into responding to the words of Jesus with the help of the Spirit the more we will even here and now begin to discover something of the reality that Paul described to the church at Corinth:

What eye has not seen, and ear has not heard,
and what has not entered the human heart,
what God has prepared for those who love him, 
this God has revealed to us through the Spirit.

Elevation Worship - Trust In God

 

14 February 2026 - where can anyone get enough?

Today's Readings
(Audio)

His disciples answered him, “Where can anyone get enough bread
to satisfy them here in this deserted place?”

After the earlier occasion when Jesus fed the five thousand they ought to have already known the answer to their own question. But it is true of all of us that we don't always immediately internalize the superabundance of Jesus even when he clearly manifests it in our own lives. We still tend to face future situations, even similar ones, as though we are on are own. The disciples may thus have forgotten that they did have a way to help. Or, if they dimly remembered, they didn't choose to remember fully because they were now in Gentile territory (the Decapolis) and they did not yet have enough room in their hearts for these people. Jesus had been moved with compassion for the five thousand, but was equally moved with pity for this crowd. He desired that his disciples enlarge their hearts and expand the borders of their compassion to recognize that these people had the same needs as anyone, and that, he, Jesus, was the solution.

If I send them away hungry to their homes,
they will collapse on the way,
and some of them have come a great distance.

The disciples role in feeding the crowds represented the duties of the Church to the world in the age to come. She was not only to meet the spiritual needs of the people, but also do everything necessary to ensure that their material needs were met, and this precisely so that they might not miss out on the spiritual things Jesus had to offer because they were otherwise too distracted. Such individuals might begin to discover the reality of Jesus but go out to find a way to met their needs but experience a collapse on the way of the budding spiritual life that was beginning to grow within them. Thus their material needs, while not primary, were almost like prerequisites in the hierarchy of necessities. Jesus would refuse to be made king merely on the basis of meeting physical needs. But when he could meet them in such a way that it conduced to the spiritual good of others he always did so.

He ordered the crowd to sit down on the ground.
Then, taking the seven loaves he gave thanks, broke them,
and gave them to his disciples to distribute,
and they distributed them to the crowd.

The Church is not an NGO or a nonprofit that merely addresses itself to the many physical needs of the world. There is a difference about the love with which she addresses those needs, and the guidance she follows in doing so, and the aid she receives from the Lord as she does, that distinguishes her efforts. Every instance of genuine Christian love is a foreshadowing in preparation of the consummation of that love with Christ in heaven. Therefore all acts of love, even the corporeal acts of mercy, also lead to the Eucharist, since it is there that we partake of a foretaste of the heavenly banquet. We must not be content to merely give people bread and then leave them to their own spiritual resources. Of that bread it is said that they will hunger again. But the bread Jesus really wants to give, his flesh for the life of the world, leaves no more room for hunger.

They picked up the fragments left over–seven baskets.
There were about four thousand people. 

The seven baskets left over may have represented the seven pagan nations. Perhaps the four in the four thousand pointed to the four cardinal directions. The lesson would then be that there was no one anywhere who was not loved by Jesus, no one who could not find room in his compassionate heart. The disciples were supposed to learn this lesson so that the needs, both material and spiritual, of the world could be met. So too are we to ensure that we don't have blind spots. So too must we ensure that we don't stop short of playing our part in the plans Jesus has to share his love with the world.

BarlowGirl - Enough

 

13 February 2026 - he has done all things well

Today's Readings
(Audio) 

And people brought to him a deaf man who had a speech impediment
and begged him to lay his hand on him.
He took him off by himself away from the crowd. 

There are many times when the presence of a crowd isn't conducive to healing. It may lead to self-consciousness that makes one unwilling to be fully vulnerable to the Lord. Yet many of us are unwilling to be led away from the noise and confusion into a place of stillness where we can be alone with Jesus. Even if we can't effectively communicate with the crowds, we refuse to unplug so as to become plugged in to something better. We can't, or can only barely, hear the crowds through our own filters and preconceptions. What we often do hear sounds more like cacophonous unintelligible noise. When we try and speak into this milieu is it any wonder that our words don't come out as we intend, that we are unable to make ourselves completely intelligible, or to have the impact we desire? Yet, we think, better the devil you know than the messiah you don't. The world may be filled with noise, but we are used to that noise, even if it deafens us. Who knows what might happen alone in the silence with Jesus?

He put his finger into the man's ears
and, spitting, touched his tongue;
then he looked up to heaven and groaned, and said to him,
"Ephphatha!" (that is, "Be opened!")

Had he healed the man if the presence of the crowd it might have seemed, even to the man healed, like it was more of a publicity stunt than an act of mercy. But by his one on one engagement with the deaf-mute man he demonstrated that his action was entirely for his sake. Not only that, but the way in which Jesus healed the man was deeply intimate. He touched him in a way both physical and spiritual, once again shaping the elements of creation, as he had done with Adam, but this time to restore and to heal him. Just as we are often afraid to come away from the crowds, so too are we often afraid to allow Jesus to touch us so deeply. But when we are willing, and let him have his way in us, we will hear in a new way. We will listen to God's word first, with none of the crowd to distract us, and will learn to speak in accord with that word.

And immediately the man's ears were opened,
his speech impediment was removed,
and he spoke plainly. 

Only once we've had this encounter with Jesus can we hope to have useful communication with the crowds of our world. Only then will we know how to listen with compassion. And only then will we have something worth saying in response.

He ordered them not to tell anyone. 
But the more he ordered them not to,
the more they proclaimed it. 
They were exceedingly astonished and they said,
"He has done all things well. 
He makes the deaf hear and the mute speak."

It is true that there was no practical way to keep the crowds from realizing what had happened. But by telling them not to proclaim it he perhaps at least caused them to more fully appreciate what exactly the event was about which they desired to speak. It was not merely a miracle, much less self-promotion. It was in fact God fulfilling the promises that he had made through the prophets (see Isaiah 35:5-6). It is he alone who does all things well. 

Sonicflood - I Want To Know You

 

12 February 2026 - dog food?

 

Today's Readings
(Audio)

He said to her, “Let the children be fed first.
For it is not right to take the food of the children
and throw it to the dogs.”

If it were us who came to Jesus in our time of need and heard this in reply we might have made a variety of different responses, from despair to anger. But would any of us respond with in the persistent, humble, and hopeful way that the Syrophoenician woman did? We sometimes feel a sense of entitlement that makes us imagine ourselves to be deserving of divine blessings. When God makes us reckon with the fact that it is his election that is the basis of blessings we tend to react by closing down, walling off, and walking away. Or else, we take it personally, as a condemnation of us as individuals. We internalize the reality of ourselves as "dogs" and wallow in the fact that we are apparently unwanted. Either anger or a sense of self-pity can equally keep us from receiving blessings of which God has by no means denied us. Are we too proud to receive that which is unearned and undeserved? Or are we too saddened by our own insignificance to even ask? Somehow, miraculously, this Greek woman did not succumb to either extreme.

She replied and said to him,
“Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s scraps.”

Did Jesus say no? There were dozens of permutations of what he may have intended to say that implied a negative answer. It would have been easy to give up and go home. She was a foreigner, a woman, and a stranger. Jesus did not exactly give her such a welcome as to imply he was ready to help. He seemed to emphasize the difference between them, seemed to imply it was a barrier to her request. It would have been easy for a fallen human mind to assume the worst, as we often do. 

In some sense, the most miraculous thing in this account is that this woman didn't give up. She persisted, perhaps because she recognized that Jesus was more than a mere teacher and healer. She called him "Lord", and seemed to believe that his goodness could not leave even dogs without sufficient scraps to satisfy them. She might not have fully understood what it really meant to call Jesus Lord. But she did seem to regard him with an appropriate sort of reverence. This was not only demonstrated by the way she fell at his feet and begged him. It was demonstrated by the way she expressed faith in the superabundance Jesus possessed, from which he could give her what she asked without anyone else needing to have less because of it. It was not a zero sum game with God. He didn't have to balance blessings, because he always had more than enough, infinite sufficiency in himself. This fact that he could feed the dogs and the children with no one left in hunger or want was a nascent, implicit belief in his divinity.

Then he said to her, “For saying this, you may go.
The demon has gone out of your daughter.”

Her faith made possible one of the two times in the Gospels in which Jesus healed from a distance. Her healing not only fulfill her wishes and save her daughter. It implicitly demonstrated that the Gospel was meant to be bread for all peoples, both Gentile and Jew. It was among the first indications of the feast that would be fully revealed in the Eucharist.

When Solomon was old his wives had turned his heart to strange gods,
and his heart was not entirely with the LORD, his God,
as the heart of his father David had been.

Solomon seemed to turn to other sources to meet his desires. He turned to strange gods when his own God no longer satisfied him. We are often more like Solomon in this regard than the Syrophoenician woman, more ready to try alternatives than to persist in prayer. But this woman, among other lessons, demonstrates that the lack of an immediate is by no means a denial. Sometimes it really is meant to lead us to greater faith, and even to unlock blessings for those around us.

John Michael Talbot - I Am The Bread Of Life

 

11 February 2026 - under control?

Today's Readings
(Audio) 

Hear me, all of you, and understand.
Nothing that enters one from outside can defile that person;
but the things that come out from within are what defile.

We live in a society that is wont to blame circumstances, to point the finger at factors beyond our control. And it is true that the circumstances in our day are dire in many ways. Wealth is not distributed equitably. Many in need have far too little. Others have far too much and squander it on frivolity. Power is not awarded to the virtuous, and is often accumulated by the vicious. In the smaller sphere of our daily lives we seldom experience perfection even at this reduced scale. Everything from unpleasant people to unpleasant weather, traffic, bills, unsympathetic corporations, all of these find ample opportunities to kill our vibe. But, though our circumstances are beyond our power to control, they are not in charge of what matters most. Our circumstances, external factors, cannot defile us. That is, they cannot taint our souls. Unless, of course, we let them. Since "what comes out of the man" is what defiles him it is precisely in our response to our circumstances that we can become defiled. But this is something that is always within our purview, always in our locus of control.

From within the man, from his heart,
come evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder,
adultery, greed, malice, deceit,
licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly.
All these evils come from within and they defile.

It is not the thoughts themselves that defile us, but rather the way we deal with them, the way we respond. It is not so much how they are within us, but the ways they go out of us through our will. Do we seek out occasions that we already know cause us to experience evil thoughts? Do we intentionally ruminate on them even when we recognize them, at which time we should rather reject them with the full force of our will? Do we allow ourselves to wallow in evil thoughts, or do we instead intentionally meditate on better ones, on the words of Scripture perhaps or, "whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise" (see Philippians 4:8). 

We are not necessarily impregnable fortresses against a fallen world. Our hearts collude with circumstances to bring us down and keep us sinking in the mire of our pits, like the prophet Jeremiah (see Jeremiah 38:6). But we have been given renewed minds (see First Corinthians 2:16), and the potential to walk in victory (see John 16:33, First John 4:4), by Jesus himself, through his Spirit. We can let ourselves be transformed by the renewal of our minds and walk in victory. Or we can resign ourselves to succumbing to circumstances and our own fallen nature. What we should choose is obvious. The Spirit is whispering to us now that victory is possible. Let us embrace his plan to renew us in the image of Jesus (see Romans 12:2), the image according to which we were created. When we do others will experience of us something like what the Queen of Sheba experienced from Solomon. They will be captivated by our wisdom, and ready learn of its source.

Your wisdom and prosperity surpass the report I heard.
Blessed are your men, blessed these servants of yours,
who stand before you always and listen to your wisdom.

Maranatha! Singers - I Will Delight

 

10 February 2026 - human tradition

Today's Readings
(Audio) 

"Why do your disciples not follow the tradition of the elders
but instead eat a meal with unclean hands?" 

Their traditions may well have begun based on a good impulse, one which broadened a ritual practice meant only for priests. They may have hoped that if everyone thus expressed their desire for right standing before God the whole nation achieve sufficient righteousness to be delivered from their enemies. The idea of involving the populace in religious piety was a potentially good thing. The desire for the nation to be pleasing to God was a good goal. But if they ever truly meant it from the heart it had nevertheless devolved into something that was merely performative. It had become a standard for measuring themselves against others, for judging themselves as superior based on their faultless performance. Others who followed their traditions served as affirmations of their importance and authority. Others who did not follow their traditions called, not only the practices, but even they themselves into question. Failing to follow their lead demonstrated that they were not impressed by their empty show. It implied that they did not see some of these reasons that the Pharisees valued themselves as valuable. 

This people honors me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me;
In vain do they worship me,
teaching as doctrines human precepts.

The problem with merely human traditions about God is that they are too easy for us to manipulate, even unconsciously, to serve our own ends. We discover some helpful pious practice, but then make a law of it, and use it to judge others who don't favor whatever our preferred devotion might be. We use external actions and appearance to mask a lack of true conversion of heart. Human tradition subjects divine revelation to human authority, and this can never end well.

'If someone says to father or mother,
"Any support you might have had from me is qorban"'
(meaning, dedicated to God),
you allow him to do nothing more for his father or mother.

Human tradition is something that allows us to manipulate the word of God in order to use it for ends for which God did not intend it. For those who didn't want to deal with the support of elderly parents it was often easier to reserve their money for a grandiose donation to the temple after their death. We can probably imagine many ways by which the veneer of religion could be used to divert us from the more difficult work of holiness in our daily lives. We ought to be on guard against pitting revelation against itself, of using one precept as an excuse to ignore others. 

“Can it indeed be that God dwells on earth?
If the heavens and the highest heavens cannot contain you,
how much less this temple which I have built! 

The Tradition of the Church is different from the tradition of men because the Church knows herself to be the servant and not the master of divine revelation. She knows that she does not understand exhaustively, cannot completely contain God so as to confine him. She is like the temple of Solomon, which was not a limit on God, but was indeed his dwelling place, a unique focal point of his presence on earth.

Blessed they who dwell in your house!
continually they praise you.

Matt Maher - Better Is One Day

 

9 February 2026 - immortal, invisible

Today's Readings
(Audio) 

When the priests left the holy place,
the cloud filled the temple of the LORD
so that the priests could no longer minister because of the cloud,
since the LORD’s glory had filled the temple of the LORD.

During the time of the Old Covenant it was not possible to have a direct and immediate vision of God. Even Moses was only granted a vision of his back. When Elijah met God in the famous encounter on the mountain he prepared himself by first wrapping his face in his mantle (see First Kings 19:11-3). This seems altogether reasonable if even the seraphim use their wings to veil their faces in the presence of the almighty (see Isaiah 6:1-3). We see the overwhelming intensity of God's presence in today's first reading, in which the priests could no longer minister once the glory of the Lord had filled the temple. This unapproachable nature of God continued to mark the ministry of the priesthood within the temple up through the time of Jesus. We read about this in the Letter to the Hebrews, which tells that the high priest goes into the Holy of Holies "but once a year, and not without taking blood" (see Hebrews 9:6).

They scurried about the surrounding country 
and began to bring in the sick on mats
to wherever they heard he was.

We ought to be struck, then, by how easy it was to approach Jesus, the fact that he rejected none who came to him (see John 6:37). If Jesus was in fact God, as it is clear that all of the Gospel writers believed, how was it safe to come to him so freely? Should it not have been the case that no one could see the face of God and live (see Exodus 33:20)? Part of the reason this was possible was because his presence was still veiled, now by his sacred humanity. His divinity was truly present, but visible only to the eyes of faith. Thus the people who came to him were able, according to their capacity, to encounter God himself, and to see the face of God, without being undone by it. We might imagine that even the less filtered vision granted to Peter, James, and John at the transfiguration was still something less than the fullness of the reality. 

Amazingly, it does seem that the full vision of the face of God is intended by him to be our destiny. The fact that the letter to the Hebrews encourages us to seek holiness without which no one will see God seems to assume that this is meant to be so (see Hebrews 12:14). The first letter of Saint John tells us, "we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is" (see First John 3:2). Paul tells the Corinthians that we now "see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face" (see First Corinthians 13:12). 

What we see now through faith is real, if partial. It is by means of faith that we are brought from being unable to approach God at all to the holiness that allows us to more and more behold him directly. Again, listen to Paul to the Corinthians, "we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another" (see Second Corinthians 3:18). The vision of faith transforms us by means of what we behold. It increases our capacity to guide our lives by hope and to live in love. The tradition of the Church calls the destiny of the blessed the beatific vision. Those who see this vision are so overwhelmed by it that they are more or less unable to sin, since in the light of such a vision sin is so obviously empty. And those who see it experience in that vision the fulfillment of every hope and desire.

Whatever villages or towns or countryside he entered,
they laid the sick in the marketplaces
and begged him that they might touch only the tassel on his cloak;
and as many as touched it were healed.

A take away for us is that the process of growth is often both humble and hidden. Those around Jesus experienced transformation by merely touching his clothing. This calls us in turn to not take for granted on our opportunities for contact with Jesus, in his presence in others, in the sacraments, and especially in the Eucharist. If the crowds were healed when they so much as touched the tassel, how much more might we be healed if we encountered Jesus in the Eucharist with true and living faith?

 

Vineyard - I See The Lord