renew your wonders

Patricia A Faussett - God And Man At Table Are Sat Down

Gird your loins and light your lamps
and be like servants who await their master’s return from a wedding,
ready to open immediately when he comes and knocks.

Jesus alluded to the Passover meal, since the people were instructed to eat that meal with their loins girt. Since they needed to be prepared for a nighttime journey it would have also been appropriate to have lamps ready. The Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture informs us that this "consistent with Jewish expectation that the messiah would come during the meal on Passover night"¹. The emphasis on the Exodus is stressed in a particular way in this same Gospel of Luke, when, during the Transfiguration, we read that what Jesus, Moses, and Elijah discussed was specifically about "his exodus that he was going to accomplish in Jerusalem" (see Luke 9:30). Notice the close connection between the Passover meal and the crucifixion. As in the mass, both elements, sacred banquet and sacrifice, are in play. The fact is that Jesus does return during the Paschal banquet of the New Covenant, and blessed are those servants who are watchful and alert to his coming.

Blessed are those servants
whom the master finds vigilant on his arrival.
Amen, I say to you, he will gird himself,
have them recline at table, and proceed to wait on them.

Can we see that, in the mass, it is Jesus himself, in the person of the priest who instructs us to recline at the table of the altar, and the proceeds to wait on us? Can we also see how easy it is to miss this hidden reality entirely? It is too easy to see the priest as just an ordinary person, and the bread and wine as common food, missing their supernatural significance entirely. We must take an active role if we are to be prepared. It is not enough to merely bring the intention of full, active, and conscious participation when we come to mass. We must already be living lives of charity (with our loins girt) and seeking heavenly wisdom (with our lamps lit) if we want to be open to everything that is available in the mass. The mass in turn provides the grace we need to live lives of charity and unites us with the one who is himself divine wisdom. This is meant to be a virtuous cycle propelling us onward and upward.

And should he come in the second or third watch
and find them prepared in this way,
blessed are those servants.

Jesus is aware that as something continues over time it becomes routine. It takes a more concerted effort to remain attentive over the course of a lifetime than it does at first. This is why he is particularly pleased with those who remain faithful over the long haul. It is not only his presence in the mass for which they prepare themselves, it is his coming for them at the end of their lives, and for all of us, at the end of the age, when he returns in glory. Therefore we must not be casual about it, as though we can be content with good enough when it comes to our relationship with the mass. It is still training for something more and greater yet to be revealed. And we want to be among the those about whom, when it happens, Jesus says "blessed are those servants".

1) Gadenz, Pablo T.. The Gospel of Luke (Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture): (A Catholic Bible Commentary on the New Testament by Trusted Catholic Biblical Scholars - CCSS) (p. 244). (Function). Kindle Edition. "

Monday, October 19, 2026

19 October 2026 - the rich fool

Newsboys - Million Pieces (Kissin' Your Cares Goodbye)

He asked himself, ‘What shall I do,
for I do not have space to store my harvest?’

Because the man in this parable thought his life consisted in possessions he had no higher frame of reference for putting them to use. The only one he could ask about what he ought to do with his excess was himself. His focus on possessions had made him fundamentally incapable of relationship, of asking anyone else, let alone God, what he could do with them, rather than simply letting them go to waste. He didn't want to know what others might say because his possessions were his top priority. He didn't want to risk that they might say something persuasive. And yet the reason he had to ask himself was because there was nothing obvious to be done with them. Nor, indeed, did he foresee any actual concrete need.

And he said, ‘This is what I shall do:
I shall tear down my barns and build larger ones.

His lack of a higher frame of reference actually rendered him a servant of his wealth rather than, as it should be, the other way around. Rather than his resources helping him to enjoy his life he was actually putting in extra unnecessary work to maintain more than his surplus. Greed is a particular form of sin and, as we have said, sin makes us stupid.

Greed is also a form of idolatry. He thought that if he sacrificed enough to the idol of greed he could obtain happiness. His plan was so good, he thought, that such happiness would sustain him as far into the future as he was capable of thinking. Unfortunately this was not far enough. All sin has the tendency to narrow our horizons to the short-term benefits it promises. But even that narrow horizon has no guarantees. Without a proper hierarchy in our lives there is no way for us to be prepared when our life is demanded of us. There is no amount of effort or activity that can prepare for such an eventuality. Rather than trying to push back the terror of mortality through effort and distraction, remaining trapped in the "desires of our flesh" and "following the wishes of the flesh and the impulses", and therefore remaining "children of wrath", we must rely on the mercy God never ceases to bestow. New life is always available in Christ. And once we receive it we must let it, and not anything else, define us.

But God, who is rich in mercy,
because of the great love he had for us,
even when we were dead in our transgressions,
brought us to life with Christ (by grace you have been saved),
raised us up with him,
and seated us with him in the heavens in Christ Jesus,
that in the ages to come
he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace
in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.

In a way that is the very opposite of sin, the grace of God opens our horizons to eternity and fills us with hope. Not only that, but even here and now we able begin to experience the blessings that we hope to receive in fullness one day. Even now, already, we are in some way seated "in the heavens". But far from rendering us useless or inert this makes us dynamic agents of divine love.

For we are his handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for good works
that God has prepared in advance,
that we should live in them.

Sunday, October 18, 2026

18 October 2026 - a tax question

Matt Maher - You Are The Lord

Teacher, we know that you are a truthful man
and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth.
And you are not concerned with anyone's opinion,
for you do not regard a person's status.

Of course in saying that they knew Jesus was a truthful man they were themselves being untruthful. In praising him for not having regard for the opinions of others, and then asking for his opinion, they revealed that such freedom was not really a priority for them. They actually believed Jesus to be a liar and his thought his disregard for opinion was a fault. Yet here they sought to use these false pretenses to encourage Jesus to speak freely. They thought they could actually sway him by ingratiating themselves to him in his opinion about them just enough to make him speak freely and say something he ought not say. They posed a dilemma that, they thought, would prove that he cared either for the opinion of the Roman rulers, or else of the occupied Jewish people. But, as Jesus would prove, he cared not for the opinions of anyone, not those groups, not the crowds, and especially not people trying to entrap him in his speech. He did care for the people themselves, but not about their opinions of him, or their judgments on his words and deeds.

"Why are you testing me, you hypocrites?
Show me the coin that pays the census tax."

They were only pretending to have a genuine and sincere question. The fact that they possessed the coins, and had them ready at hand, all but proved that they were on the side of concession and cooperation with the Roman authorities. Even the possession of such coins, which hailed Caesar as divine, revealed their own compromised position. Shortly after the handing the coin to Jesus they probably began to realize the blow they had just suffered to their own public image. They were not free from the world of the flesh in which the opinions of others outweighed their concern for the truth. How could they be so blind as to make the claim that Jesus was guilty of the crime that they were themselves in that very moment committing? We will file this in the category of sin making us stupid. This is precisely the sort of spiritual blindness from which Jesus came to save us.

He said to them, "Whose image is this and whose inscription?"
They replied, "Caesar's."
At that he said to them,
"Then repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar
and to God what belongs to God."

This section is commonly misunderstood to mean that there are separate and unrelated sections of reality known as the spiritual on the one hand and the secular on the other. In such an interpretation the secular realm ought to be entirely free from any spiritual influence since it would be, in theory, the proper domain of Caesar. The spiritual in turn ought to be free from any influence of the secular, ought not in fact even think about secular things. But since the secular world defines so much of our lives as embodied creatures this relegates the realm of the spiritual to mere subjective feelings and sentiments. But this is not what Jesus actually intended to imply. He did not simply fall for the trap of his interlocutors and explain why paying taxes was acceptable. He did indeed acknowledge that there was a legitimate sphere of political governance, in which rulers could tax their citizens. But this sphere was not to be regarded as independent of the spiritual. Rather it was hierarchically below and inferior to the spiritual. Far from independent, it ought to be ordered toward the spiritual. The coin of Caesar might have been contained his name and inscription. But Caesar himself, along with all of us, was made in God's image and likeness. Failing to recognize this fact leads us to fail to honor the true ruler of all things, and leads us to fail to direct all things to him as their true and proper goal. Revolt in this sphere is much worse than any mere political upheaval.

Our call today is to avoid the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and the Herodians. We can do this when our inner reality, our words, and our actions all coincide. On our own we tend to fail. But, as Paul reminded the Thessalonians, we are not alone.

For our gospel did not come to you in word alone,
but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with much conviction.

Saturday, October 17, 2026

17 October 2026 - no hard feelings

Sonicflood - Open The Eyes Of My Heart

I tell you,
everyone who acknowledges me before others
the Son of Man will acknowledge before the angels of God.
But whoever denies me before others
will be denied before the angels of God.

We have recently seen the danger of hypocrisy, posed by a lack of consistency and integrity between our inner and outer worlds. Today we see again that it is not just our subjective inner feelings but our actions that matter. If we keep the fact that we belong to Christ a secret, if we can in fact keep it a secret, how true can it really be that we belong to him at all? It is our mission, even our privilege, to give testimony to Jesus. The world needs this testimony in order to be saved. Jesus himself did not waver in his testimony even in the face of persecution and death. Neither, then, must we. To know the name of Jesus but to keep it locked within our hearts is like receiving mercy but then refusing to let that mercy flow out of us. We may not realize it, but showing mercy may sometimes come with a genuine cost. The titular unforgiving servant in the parable would have had to pay a cost in order to show mercy to his fellow servant. But it was an incalculable lower cost than his own already forgiven debt. Indeed, even if we must give up our very lives for Jesus this is still negligible compared to the eternity he has won for us. This is why Paul is so insistent that we recognize the hope of our call.

that you may know what is the hope that belongs to his call,
what are the riches of glory
in his inheritance among the holy ones,
and what is the surpassing greatness of his power
for us who believe

When we are told that we must not deny Jesus he does not say it because he can't stand having his feelings hurt. He says it because it has real consequences for ourselves and for the world whether or not we will stand up for Jesus and acknowledge him. By doing so we make ourselves more and more into the kind of people who can be acknowledged before the angels and less and less into those unrecognizable fakes that must be dismissed into the darkness.

Everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven,
but the one who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit
will not be forgiven.

Again, the problem is not that God can't stand to have his feelings hurt. Rather, by definition sinning against the Holy Spirit makes forgiveness difficult, difficult to the degree that to persist obstinately in such sin puts us beyond the scope of God's forgiving power. It is not that there is really any sin that is unforgivable per se. Rather, what is described is how we can render ourselves unable to come to God and receive his mercy. When we call evil good and good evil, when we insist that the Spirit of Jesus himself is unclean, how can we then turn to him for help, he who is the one and only person who can help us?

do not worry about how or what your defense will be
or about what you are to say.
For the Holy Spirit will teach you at that moment what you should say.

Rather than blaspheming the Spirit we must rely on. He himself is the factor that makes the difference for whether we will be able to remain faithful enough to acknowledge Jesus before others. If we do not remain open to the Spirit we fall back unto the flesh, our own resources. These may be enough to get us by day to day. But they fail us during our own moments of testing "before synagogues and before rules". There is a virtuous cycle in which we can rely on the Holy Spirit to help us to acknowledge Jesus before others. But there is also a vicious cycle in which we refuse to rely on the Spirit and fail to acknowledge Jesus. One prepares us for a heavenly destiny. The other makes such a destiny increasingly improbable.

As long as we live it is never too late to repent and be forgiven. Even our own complicity in the death of Jesus did not prevent the Father from raising him up again for our salvation. But it is precisely on this reality above all else that we must rely, in which we must put our trust. We must be ready and willing to tell the whole world about a treasure so great.

Friday, October 16, 2026

16 October 2026 - whom to fear

Christians are meant to have the ease that comes from consistency between our inner lives and our exterior words and actions. There are several extremes that we are meant to avoid, the first being hypocrisy. Christianity is not merely a facade to conceal our sinful priorities from other people. Rather, our hearts are supposed to be in the state of constant renewal by the Holy Spirit, helping us to want what God wants. This means we can actually have some consistency between what is inside us and how we act before eyes. We recognize that we are not perfect, but no longer need to conceal this as a dark secret, since it is not a part of ourselves that we are trying to cultivate or protect. We can be open and transparent about our liabilities while trying to live more like Christ day to day.

There is nothing concealed that will not be revealed,
nor secret that will not be known.

Our hidden lives will eventually be made manifest. So we should work on removing those things that embarrass us now rather than later. At the same time, we must not keep the genuine good of the Gospel hidden in our hearts. We must be willing to speak it in the light and proclaim it on the housetops. We may mask our sinful behavior because we fear to look bad. But we may hide the treasure of the Gospel from others because we fear the consequences. However, when allow that kind of fear to immobilize us it means we have things precisely backwards, fearing the wrong things too much, and not fearing the right things enough. Therefore Jesus gives us a helpful corrective.

I tell you, my friends,
do not be afraid of those who kill the body
but after that can do no more.

God's priorities matter more than any worldly consequences we might experience. It isn't that he wants to cast anyone into Gehenna. He cares about us far more than many sparrows, and has numbered all the hairs of our heads. This is why he wants us to share his priority of ensuring that no one has to experience that place of eternal fire. We fear God in the sense that we know that he isn't messing around, that he will allow people to make such a choice if they insist on it. And so our reverence for him extends to the choice he has set before humanity. He is too good, too worthy, too generous to offend, to oppose, and to reject. But such rejection is a terrible possibility. Our fear actually helps us to remember and rely on his overwhelming goodness lest we squander it through our own bad decisions.

Our holy fear helps us to remember our dependence on God. When we do remember it we basically cannot fail and need fear nothing else on earth or in the evens. In him we were chosen and sealed. We have already tasted the first installment of what will one day by our eternal inheritance. Rather than living to indulge ourselves as hypocrites, or hiding from our mission as Christians, we are meant to exist, as Paul wrote, "for the praise of his glory". May it be so.

Matt Maher - Sophia

Thursday, October 15, 2026

15 October 2026 - blessings unlocked

Brooke Ligertwood - Bless God

Woe to you who build the memorials of the prophets
whom your fathers killed.
Consequently, you bear witness and give consent
to the deeds of your ancestors,
for they killed them and you do the building.

The apparently pious practice of building memorials for the prophets was an easy external way to honor their memory. But what did it matter if one did not honor their message? We can celebrate our saints with statues and holy cards. But what good does it do if we reject the witness of their lives and their words? In fact, the more we use saints as mere spiritual decorations in our lives the more we actually oppose the goals of their teaching and the purpose of their lives. Their words and their lives were full of the dangerous fire of God's love. But we prefer tame decorations and inert celebrations that are more decorations on an affected Christian lifestyle, lived for the sake of appearances. But can we see? The saints were never concerned with appearances. They were willing to appear and act in any way that was necessary to please God. Rather than build memorials to them out of stone or precious metals they would prefer that we built a temple of God in our hearts.

Woe to you, scholars of the law!
You have taken away the key of knowledge.
You yourselves did not enter and you stopped those trying to enter.

Why is it that we often use what we know in a way that makes it more difficult rather than easier for others to have access? We should want such knowledge as we have to be shared by as many as may be. But we prefer to hoard our knowledge in order to maintain our status as, if not experts, at least educated. We may make a show of instructing others, but more to feel smug ourselves than to help them. We don't want what we know to be common because we fear that would make us common in turn. This could be because we, like the scholars of the law, never used the key ourselves, never applied the knowledge in our own lives. Without this important first step, passing on our knowledge to others is always going to work against our own hypocrisy and sinfulness. Without using the knowledge we have we are stuck in a condition in which we don't want what we ought to want and do want what we ought not to want. Our goals in such a state are never going to be purely for the good of those whom our knowledge could benefit. We didn't use the knowledge ourselves to remove our own self-serving egotism, and are thus not free to use it in the service of others. The solution is straightforward, if not simple. First, we must actually apply the things we learn in our own lives. Then we must generously share what we know with others.

This Christian thing isn't supposed to be an act or a mere lifestyle decoration. It is supposed to be a transformation. There is so incalculably much that we have received. It would be a shame to receive such a gift and not open it.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who has blessed us in Christ
with every spiritual blessing in the heavens

Let us, therefore, open the gift! Let us really begin to live, with our whole beings, for "praise of the glory of his grace".

Wednesday, October 14, 2026

14 October 2026 - if we live by the Spirit

Maranatha! Music - I Will Delight

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.

Tuesday, October 13, 2026

13 October 2026 - alms and joy

Chris Tomlin - Give Us Clean Hands

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!"

Monday, October 12, 2026

12 October 2026 - Jonah, brother?

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

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.

Sunday, October 11, 2026

11 October 2026 - better things to do?

Matt Maher - Come To The Water

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.

Saturday, October 10, 2026

10 October 2026 - blessed rather

John Michael Talbot - Holy Is His Name

“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.

Friday, October 9, 2026

9 October 2026 - wrong division

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

Thursday, October 8, 2026

8 October 2026 - and keep asking!

Matt Maher - Canticle Of Zechariah

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.

Wednesday, October 7, 2026

7 October 2026 - teach us to pray

Matt Maher - As It Is In Heaven

Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he had finished,
one of his disciples said to him,
"Lord, teach us to pray just as John taught his disciples."

It is noteworthy that it was the way Jesus himself prayed, and also what they knew about the prayer of John the Baptist, that inspired them to ask Jesus to teach them to pray. It was clear that there was a reality to the spiritual conversation Jesus and John were having with God that did not necessarily characterize prayer as it was commonly practiced. For Jesus, prayer was personal, intimate, and effective. It was not rote or routine. If, for us, the Our Father has become a set formula, it is precisely because it is a crystallization of the wisdom we have from Jesus about prayer. In a way it is unsurpassable, something which our own words can never replace. But of course it is not meant to compete with our dynamic spontaneous prayer. It is meant to be the source, the mountaintop stream that flows down into all other forms of prayer. It can be so for us if we prayer it with attention and understanding. Of course, it is a given that when we pray it so often there will be lapses in our attention. But as long as we manage to pay attention sometimes we can know that it will bring a virtual intentionality to what we do habitually. Our wills won't be as engaged directly or effectively. But it won't be nothing either.

Father, hallowed be your name

Jesus taught us to call God Father. Previously in the history of Israel it was common to think of God as the Father of the nation. But Jesus understood this relationship in a uniquely personal way and invited his disciples, including us, to share in that relationship. Thus the posture with which we begin prayer is one of childlike receptive trust. This is contrasts with the anxious uncertain doubtfulness with which we often actually begin. It is important to have the right starting place because beginning with doubt and desperation is not going to bear fruit.

But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways (see James 1:6-8).

We ask for God's name to be hallowed, in our hearts, as reflected in how we live, and in the wider world. We don't ask to hallow it ourselves, but that God himself will do what is necessary. We can't really affect the holiness of God's name. He is unimpeachable. Even in our own hearts we lack the power realize what we are asking him to reveal. In our lives we need his grace to live based on that revelation. And it is clear the world cannot change without his help. But we desperately need to recognize the holiness of God at all of these levels. Otherwise we will treat him as something other and less than God. If we do that there is really no hope for things going well, since they will be at odds with their origin and purpose. His holiness, his otherness, prevents us from taking him too lightly or assuming that we don't really need him after all. And we really do need him if we hope to see anything like the coming of his Kingdom in our midst.

your Kingdom come.

Jesus taught us to seek first the Kingdom, which is, in one way, anywhere he himself is present and reigning in peoples' hearts. Wherever love and mercy prevail the Kingdom is present and active. If Jesus is the King of the Kingdom than there are nothing better than his own words, the words of the Word himself, to bring it to bear among us. When we seek first the Kingdom we receive all else besides. This is why we go on to trust in God for our daily bread.

Give us each day our daily bread

We must trust God for our daily bread because otherwise we will be at risk when the devil tempts us to obtain it by other unholy means. When we rely on God we recognize the priority of the hidden bread of God's word and of the daily manna of the Eucharist even above and beyond our physical needs. This allows us to receive the provisions from God in proportion to our needs as embodied spiritual creatures, addressing us at every level of our being. Without remembering the meaning of this petition we tend to get the proportions wrong.

and forgive us our sins
for we ourselves forgive everyone in debt to us,

We forgive debts because the coming of Jesus marks the year of the true Jubilee when all debts must be remitted. This is not merely an obligation, but the necessary prerequisite for the celebration Jesus intends for us. He came so we need no longer be trapped in sin ourselves and insists that we afford the same grace to others.

and do not subject us to the final test.

As we continue our pilgrimage toward the fullness of the Kingdom we recognize our own weakness and dependence. If God permits a test to overwhelm us, well, it will do so. The reason we stand, if we stand, is because we remember and rely on the grace he never ceases to offer. The alternative is to overestimate ourselves and try to pass such tests without help. But that is a recipe for disaster. Let us return to the beginning of the prayer, to our childlike trust in God our Father, and live from that place of peace and protection.

Praise the LORD, all you nations,
glorify him, all you peoples!

Tuesday, October 6, 2026

6 October 2026 - only one thing

Jesus Culture - One Thing Remains

Jesus entered a village
where a woman whose name was Martha welcomed him.
She had a sister named Mary
who sat beside the Lord at his feet listening to him speak.

The story of Mary and Martha isn't an excuse for laziness or a reason for us to avoid hospitality. The work Martha did was important. But the way she related to it in her spirit was problematic. The thorns of worldly anxieties crowded the seed of the word of God and fought with it for her attention. Not that the work of hospitality and welcome didn't need to be done. They did. But for her they were so all consuming that had the potential to become disruptive and undermine the good they were meant to enable. Insofar as her actual actions went, did she actually do anything wrong? It is unclear if she could have also sat at the feet of Jesus before beginning her work of serving without in some way failing to meet her obligations. Perhaps she too could have first come to Jesus and only then proceeded with her work. This seems to be the desirable sequence when it is possible. But where things became more obviously problematic for Martha was when she began to compare and complain. She compared her level of effort and engagement with the apparently lazy Mary who seemed to be shirking in her own obligation to be hospitable to guests in their home. Martha disrupted the whole moment of those receiving teaching from Jesus to protest about how this was unfair.

The Lord said to her in reply,
“Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things.
There is need of only one thing.
Mary has chosen the better part
and it will not be taken from her.”

Martha no doubt wanted to reply that there were some other things that were also important, things that they would miss if she ignored them. But Jesus hadn't actually said that she ought not do anything that she had done. Mary had chosen the good not so much because she was not presently doing housework but because her heart was centered on Jesus. It was impossible for a heart like that to have its reward taken from it by the thorns of worldly anxiety. But Martha's heart was not fixed on the one for whom she ostensibly worked so hard. It was fixed on the things themselves. It seems to us that if she had simply done these with a different perspective and state of mind it would not have experienced service as a burden but as a privilege. She would have realized that at some times people sit at the feet of Jesus and at other times people are active in service. But it wasn't her job to figure out who should do what when. If her own relationship to her service felt less like a burden she would not have even thought to try to take the moment Mary was experiencing away from her.

We tend to fight for Martha because we similarly recognize the necessity of our work. But if we always insist on our own actions as the absolute priority we will never make time to come to Jesus and receive. When he is not the center we have no center. We are pulled from this to that to the other thing with ballistic violence. It is like this with all of our resources, whether time, talent, or treasure. If we use our treasure to do good things like feed the poor we may never support our local church community. Jesus doesn't demand all that we have. He just demands the best and the first of what we have, which in turn sanctifies our other offerings.

It is not for us to judge Mary's decision, especially since Jesus did not judge it. But her moment with Jesus does not give us a free pass to avoid jobs we dislike or would prefer to avoid. She instead reminds us that we will do such things better, with a better spiritual and even emotional disposition, when Jesus is central and first. When we seek first the Kingdom, which in a real way is Jesus himself, we get everything else as well for the bargain.

Monday, October 5, 2026

5 October 2026 - who is my neighbor?