July 8, 2026 // Wednesday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Read the Word // Open your Bible to today’s Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 105:2-3, 4-5, 6-7 

Reflect on the Word // 

Her gaze was penetrating as she held my face with her hard-earned wrinkling hands. We were in public, yet I felt no discomfort. She wanted to communicate something to me, a message beyond the ability of words. She had just finished telling me a story from an earlier chapter of her life, sharing about an experience that deeply shaped her and moved the trajectory of her future years. Her look’s intent was to transmit a lesson that she wanted to be sure I comprehended. Her final words to me were, “There’s always more. We have a great deal to look forward to after this life.”

In that moment, this woman imparted a word of hope to me, a reminder of the end for which I was created. Her intent gaze revealed to me that the Father’s gaze constantly invites me into “the ever-more.” We are called to respond, just as we hear David exclaim in today’s Psalm: “Seek always the face of the Lord” (105:4). God’s look of love beckons, and He desires to receive a response of love from each soul He created, each soul whom He knows. Each one of us is awaited in the gaze of Christ—the icon of the Father, the second Person of the Trinity, true God and true Man. 

Saint Thérèse of Lisieux was known for her devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus, a devotion she learned from  her own beloved sister. In her Canticle of the Holy Face, Thérèse prays, “Your Face is my only Homeland.” May this be the constant prayer of my own heart. 

We are all invited each day to recall the wonders of the Lord and to live our lives glorifying Him. The gaze of Christ invites each of us to reorient our own gaze to the fundamental call of our lives: union with Him, the One Who thirsts for us to enter into the eternal Presence of the Holy Trinity.

Relate to the Lord // Pray Saint Thérèse’s Canticle of the Holy Face today.