August 19, 2025 // Optional Memorial of Saint John Eudes, priest
Read the Word // Open your Bible to today’s Gospel: Matthew 19:23-30
Reflect on the Word //
The smiling friar with a patchwork of different grays on his habit approached me and gave me a fatherly hug. He whispered, “I’m proud of you m’hija”—I was like a daughter to him and he was like a father to me. I wasn’t the only one. There were many “children” of this kind, fiery priest all around.
When I think about Jesus’ consoling yet challenging words in today’s Gospel, my mind goes immediately to all of the religious sisters and brothers I have been blessed to meet in my life. They have given up so much for Him and yet, they would be the first to tell others how much they have received in return. They vowed a life of poverty and have become truly rich in what matters before the Lord—rich in peace, devotion, love, repentance, selflessness. In leaving their comforts, their countries, families, and everything else, they gained hearts of singular devotion to Christ. They became poor to the things of the world so that they might “pass through the eye of the needle” (Matthew 19:24) and enter the Kingdom of God, which begins in this life.
I think of these dear religious friends of mine with a bit of jealousy, if I am honest. Because I want more of their devotion, more of their time spent with Jesus in the Eucharist, more of their silence during prayer times, more of their fraternal correction to grow in virtue. Yet, in my life, I can see how the Lord has made me poor also; He has stripped me of comforts, of status, of relationships, of my own plans through my ordinary day-to-day. And in those moments, I can testify that the Lord truly gives us back a hundredfold.
Sister, we can ask Him today to make us more like them who have “given up everything and followed” Him (Matthew 19:27)—rich in love and poor in what matters to the world—that we may be under the sweetness of His yoke and enter into the goodness of His Kingdom which is His holy will—on earth, as in Heaven.
Relate to the Lord // How have you experienced the richness of the Lord’s love and will?
