June 13, 2025 // Memorial of Saint Anthony of Padua, Priest and Doctor of the Church

Read the Word // Open your Bible to today’s First Reading: 2 Corinthians 4:7-15

Reflect on the Word // 

I anxiously rocked myself back and forth, attempting to calm my uneasy heart, as I was consumed with what I liked to call pre-Confession “jitters.” Intrusive thoughts circulated in my mind as I nervously waited in line. This time, as had happened oftentimes, I already felt defeated. What’s the point if I'm going to commit the same sins all over again? Yet this is exactly what the enemy wants: for me, for you, to give up.

But the Lord does not want us to give up. We can read Saint Paul’s words in the First Reading through the idea that, in the spiritual life, we are like babies learning to walk under the watchful care of the Lord: “We are afflicted in every way, but not constrained; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed” (2 Corinthians 4:8-10). 

When a baby attempts to take their first steps, the steps are wobbly and short, and if the baby falls down, the parents will immediately help the baby back up. The baby isn’t any less lovable if he or she falls down. The baby isn’t hopeless. They are still showered with love, tenderness, and encouragement, no matter how many times they fall. 

Like a human parent’s care for a baby, we can trust that God, as our tender and loving Father, is always with us. He’s with us when we make progress, and He's there to lovingly lift us back up when we fall. We are not promised to not fall, but we are promised that He will never abandon us and He won’t leave us to destruction (see 2 Corinthians 4:9). 

The Father does not see you as a failure, He sees you as His beloved daughter. Our strength and progress does not come from self-reliance, but it comes from Him (see 2 Corinthians 4:7). In the same way that Jesus was raised from the dead into His Resurrection, so will we be uplifted into our personal resurrections by the Father, both in this life and the next (see 2 Corinthians 4:14). 

Relate to the Lord // Make a plan to go to Confession this week and receive the Father’s love.