September 16, 2025 // Memorial of Saints Cornelius, Pope, and Cyprian, Bishop, Martyrs

Read the Word // Open your Bible to today’s Gospel: Luke 7:11-17

Reflect on the Word // 

I tend to really struggle when it comes to my daily prayer. Try as I might, it seems that when the impulse comes to mind or when my planned time for prayer arrives, I find something else to pull me away. So many times when the Lord calls, I feel but don’t act. How many times has Jesus given me my own little opportunity to push forward into an active, moving love? Even in my prayer—which is for our Lord as much as it is for me.

Today’s Gospel is such a tender reminder of the perfect humanity of Jesus Christ. For God Himself to become Man is the completion of a divine plan so perfectly good and wise. Jesus feels. Jesus feels pity. 

The interaction between our Lord and the grieving woman is so instinctive. It feels completely spontaneous, which seems counterintuitive when we consider that Jesus already knew this encounter would take place. He knew this moment was coming, He saw it coming, He even ordained it to come—and yet He responds to her as though He sees her now for the first time. The same way we might scoop up a weeping child, our hearts stirred immediately at the sight of their sorrow, but not a moment before. God knows our sorrow before we know it, yet His heart is still moved at the sight of us. And not just moved in stagnant emotion, Jesus Christ is moved to action. The Lord sees us in our need, and because of it He moves. 

The Lord wants His perfected love to be in us as well—for us to be tender and open enough to respond in a spontaneous moment charged by the heart, but to then go further, into real activation, in whatever way He is calling us. How, Lord, are You calling us? Children, spouses, friends, strangers, even. It’s all around us once we start seeing with the eyes of love. We need the Lord to help us, to go deeper into His very own Heart—a place where love is limitless, and He asks us to be limitless too.

Relate to the Lord // When will you make time for an encounter with Jesus in quiet prayer today?