August 7, 2026 // Friday of the Eighteenth Week in Ordinary Time // Optional Memorial of Saint Sixtus II, Pope and Martyr, and his Companions, Martyrs // Optional Memorial of Saint Cajetan, Priest Read the Word // Open your Bible to today’s Gospel: Matthew 16:24-28 Reflect on the Word //  It was a Friday evening, the exhausted kind, when I encountered a lovely Dominican Sister. As we talked, I shared some of my built-up weariness and fear as I was taking a new leap in my life. I guess I had thought that I had done enough hard things for Jesus, but I was realizing that He was going to keep asking for more. To which Sister confidently replied, “He will ask more of you, but He will also give you more.” In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells His friends something similar: “Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 16:25). I wonder if His disciples understood the weight of this statement, this calling to follow their Friend to His Cross and then to their own martyrdoms. The more I look at my own life, I wonder if I really understand it either. It is so radical that it has to change everything if it is true: my earthly life is meant to be lost. It is meant to be poured out, offered up, given away for God. In the end, nothing else will matter. This is freedom, really. No wonder that my attempts to keep my life for myself make me miserable! All my anxiety about how I am going to make myself happy, satisfying all of my own desires on just the right timeline! That was never what my life was for. Jesus speaks truly when He tells us, “What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?” (Matthew 16:26) The whole world is about all we can imagine, and yet He wants even more than that for us. He wants us to be happy, infinitely more than we ever could want it ourselves. He wants to give us everything for all eternity.  Relate to the Lord // Today, ask Him for the grace to give Him everything in return.

July 30, 2026 // Thursday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time // Optional Memorial of Saint Peter Chrysologus, Bishop and Doctor of the Church Read the Word // Open your Bible to today’s Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 146:1B-2, 3-4, 5-6ab Reflect on the Word //  It’s one of my very earliest memories—sobbing my heart out to the whirring sounds of the power screwdriver, and above it all, my father’s repeated words of consolation: “Don’t worry, Monica, I’m coming, I’m here.” I was just a little girl, maybe two or three, who had locked herself in the bathroom. In my terror and longing for safety, it felt like an eternity until I was in my dad’s arms on the other side. In a way, I am still that little girl: longing and panicking in the face of her own weakness. At times, I am tempted to grasp for anything that seems as though it would help. Yet today’s Responsorial Psalm reminds me of the reality that ultimately, no one can satisfy or save me except God: “Put not your trust in princes, in the sons of men, in whom there is no salvation. When his spirit departs he returns to his earth; on that day his plans perish” (Psalm 146:3-4). With the fall of Adam and Eve, humanity went from walking in the garden, satisfied and safe in friendship with God, to walking in a world full of broken and fleeting things. And yet the Church joyfully declares each year at the Easter Vigil Mass that this is a “happy fault” (see The Proclamation of Easter).  Happy because, in our littleness and sinfulness, God Himself came to help. In the person of Jesus, He came to bring us into His arms. “Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord his God . . . who keeps faith forever” (Psalm 146:5-6). This same God Who parted the sea for His people and fed them manna in the desert comes to rescue us too—in the confessional, in the Eucharist, in the Scriptures. Our Father hears the cries of our hearts, and they break His as He says: “Don’t worry, sweet girl, I’m here.” Relate to the Lord // Where do you find rest in the Father—the Confessional, the Eucharist, the Scriptures? Spend time with Him today.

March 27, 2026 // Friday of the Fifth Week of Lent Read the Word // Open your Bible to today’s First Reading: Jeremiah 20:10-13  Reflect on the Word //  I lit a candle and lay in bed, not quite tired, the silence marked by the occasional falling acorn on the roof. In that space, gold haloes on the ceiling and warm shadows in the corners, I found myself wrestling with the Lord, desires and disappointments rising up along with the “sunset” scent of my candle. I found myself asking Him what I was supposed to do with my life, and—the underlying question—didn’t He want me to be happy? “For to you I have entrusted my cause,” the prophet Jeremiah says to the Lord in today’s First Reading (Jeremiah 20:12). I find my whole body relaxing as I consider that “my cause”—my happiness, my interests, my loved ones, my vocation—is also His. After all, He wants me to be in Heaven, even more than I do! He has begun a great work in me, and He wants to bring it to completion (see Philippians 1:6). During this season of Lent, the Church spends forty days preparing for Easter, remembering Jesus’ forty days of desert trials before His ministry, Death, and Resurrection. Two thousand years ago, He was already fighting the battle against sin and death for me. Because even then, before I existed, He wanted me to spend eternity with Him, and He was willing to do anything to make that possible. Turns out, my cause has always been His. This is true for all of us in our various states of life. Wherever our hearts are today—whether we are at the beginning, in the middle, or near the end of life—we get to say with Jeremiah, “The Lord is with me, a mighty champion” (Jeremiah 20:11). The battle is already won. Let’s live our lives like that is true.  Relate to the Lord // What cause do you need to (re)entrust to the Lord today? Ask Him to be your champion.

February 9, 2026 // Monday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time Read the Word // Open your Bible to today’s Gospel: Mark 6:53-56 Reflect on the Word //  It was a moment of grace. I sat on the balcony, watching shadows fall over the valley, trying to muster the courage to go to Confession. And suddenly, as if from a similar bird’s-eye view of my heart, I understood how I was viewing myself: dirty and ragged, untouchable and unworthy. Later that night, I headed into the confessional, where Jesus met me through a Byzantine priest. In the Byzantine rite, I discovered, the priest drapes his stole over the penitent’s head during absolution. There, beneath this literal covering of mercy, I realized: Jesus actually wanted to touch me. The people who first meet Jesus in today’s Gospel do so with such feverish excitement. I imagine their joyful shouts and embraces on the seashore as they “immediately [recognize] him” (Mark 6:54). Their “scurrying about the countryside” (Mark 6:55) stands in stark contrast to the other group of people, the sick who cannot move their own mats to Jesus, who must wait for Him to pass by. I wonder if some were even too weak to touch their fingers to His cloak. Would He reach out to touch them instead? I picture myself on those mats as I remember how shame paralyzed me that spring night in high school. I wanted to be able to run to Jesus like the people who greet Him in today’s Gospel, but He couldn’t really want me the way I was—could He? Several years later, it is still hard to believe that my littleness could actually attract Jesus! That He might be drawn by the places of my heart that I most want to hide! But this is our God. This is mercy! The word mercy comes from the Latin misericordia, a compound of the words for “misery” and “heart.” When we feel too weak to run after the Lord, He is still merciful. His Heart is moved by our very misery, and He rushes to meet us there. Relate to the Lord // When was the last time you received absolution in the Sacrament of Confession? Make a plan to go and receive His mercy this week.

January 2, 2026 // Memorial of Saints Basil the Great and Gregory Nazianzen, Bishops and Doctors of the Church Read the Word // Open your Bible to today’s Gospel: John 1:19-28 Reflect on the Word // I run up against it all the time: my desire for something more. I actually laugh a bit when I think of how I started out the year 2025 with a deep desire on my heart to go somewhere new, and how now— halfway across the country—I often want to go back. Somehow I am still surprised that nowhere is perfect, that nothing completely satisfies me. Saint John the Baptist reminds me today, right alongside the people of his time, that the something more that I am looking for is already on its way.  “There is one among you who you do not recognize” (John 1:26). It seems as though that should fix everything. If the Messiah is in my midst—what more could I want? However, I still see people in pain, still see sin, still see darkness. I still want something different, something more. But the verse continues: “There is one among you whom you do not recognize, the one who is coming after me” (John 1:26-27, emphasis mine). The One Who is greater than the prophets is still to come. The people whom John is addressing still haven’t met Him yet. It’s a strange both/and: the Messiah is here and He is also coming. But this is the very promise of Christmas. Precisely because God has become Man to live with us and die for us, it is now possible for us to go to live with Him. This is why He is still coming: first to draw our souls to Himself at our deaths and then to raise our bodies at the end of time. And meanwhile, He is coming to us each day in the Eucharist to encourage and console us on our way to Heaven. Because it is just as John tells us: the greatest things are still to come. Relate to the Lord // How is your hope? Share it with Jesus and ask for an increase in the virtue of hope.

November 19, 2025 // Wednesday of the Thirty-third Week in Ordinary Time Read the Word // Open your Bible to today’s First Reading: 2 Maccabees 7:1, 20-31 Reflect on the Word //  When I was fourteen, my baby brother was born with two heart murmurs, which, in time, closed up. “Holes in his heart,” the doctors called them. Listening to his heartbeat, they would hear the rushing noises, murmurs caused by what is known as a “turbulent” flow of blood across the heart. This year, I have often prayed with this image. Exteriorly, I have been saying goodbye to college, moving cross-country, planning for the future. Interiorly, my heart has been murmuring—worrying, savoring, mourning, dreaming. The undercurrent of turbulence calls to my mind the quote from Saint Augustine’s Confessions: “My heart is restless until I rest in Thee.” In today’s First Reading, when I ponder the king’s offer to the youngest of the woman’s sons, I feel as though I am reading a list of things that would fill some of these holes in my heart: “The king appealed to him, not with mere words, but with promises on oath, to make him rich and happy if he would abandon his ancestral customs: he would make him his friend and entrust him with high office” (2 Maccabees 7:24). Surely this youngest son had his own hopes and dreams for his life, still just beginning. Surely he had many good and holy desires: longings for abundance, happiness, companionship, trust. Here, as an alternative to death, he is promised their fulfillment. Yet “the youth paid no attention to him at all” (2 Maccabees 7:25). Perhaps he was still pondering his mother’s earlier words. Perhaps he had even been able to predict them, if from his babyhood he had known the strength of her faith. She had just reminded her sons that God alone is the giver of good things, concluding: “He, in his mercy, will give you back both breath and life” (2 Maccabees 7:23). This confidence can be ours too. Like the mother in Maccabees, we can trust God to be generous. Our hearts are right to cry out for perfect happiness—for the day will come when the Lord will give all good things, no longer for a time but for eternity, and how glorious that day will be! Relate to the Lord // Has your heart been turbulent? Meditate on the generosity of God today. Trust in His love for you.

October 10, 2025 // Friday of the Twenty-seventh Week in Ordinary Time Read the Word // Open your Bible to today’s First Reading: Joel 1:13-15; 2:1-2 Reflect on the Word //  The chapel bell cut into our morning work, a clear chime amidst the silence of the cloister. I knelt in a side garden with a Sister, making space in the soil for baby strawberry plants. The next hole was ready and waiting for one of our last plants; we had only to place it in the ground and pat the dirt about its roots. As Sister rested her shovel, I broke the quiet, asking if we should quickly plant the seedling before going. But she told me that we would leave it until tomorrow. She was being called into the house of the Lord, and she went—evidently with the conviction that everything else could wait. “Into the house of the Lord, your God, and cry to the Lord!” the prophet Joel urges in today’s First Reading (Joel 1:14). “Blow the trumpet in Zion, sound the alarm on my holy mountain!” (Joel 2:1) It is a call to action that sounds urgent, dark, demanding. It is not the sort of gentle invitation that I would admittedly prefer. I like to be slowly romanced rather than rushed into anything—and certainly not into repentance. But what I witnessed that morning, on a different “holy mountain” out in California, was a woman who heard the urgency of the bell as the demand of love. She didn’t procrastinate, she didn’t panic, she just said yes. Today’s First Reading reminds me of this Sister, and I remember that love is demanding. “The house of your God is deprived of offering and libation” (Joel 1:13). How often do I still hold parts of my life back from God? But He loves me so much that He wants my heart to belong to Him entirely—whatever that takes. What are the offerings of which we, too, deprive the Lord? Perhaps we can rethink the small inconveniences: the chores, the phone calls, the unexpected requests of others. What if these interruptions are not merely a chaos of alarms and trumpets, but are our own mid-day prayer bells, calling us to love? Today, may we be willing to lay aside our own plans in order to respond. Relate to the Lord // What does love demand of you today? How can you respond promptly and joyfully to the Lord?  

September 12, 2025 // Memorial of the Most Holy Name of Mary Read the Word // Open your Bible to today’s First Reading: 1 Timothy 1:1-2, 12-14 Reflect on the Word //  My emotions came and went during those first days of missionary training like the clouds that would spontaneously sweep over the summer sky. The sudden storms would pound the pavement briefly, only to give way just as quickly to brilliant rainbows. And with similar intensity, my heart fluttered between future dreams, present joys, and the temptation to fear that in my new role, I would have nothing to offer.  Despite the Lord’s persistent beckoning, I still wondered: Why me? When Saint Paul writes about his own calling in today’s First Reading, his words are not of doubt but of gratitude: “I am grateful to him who has strengthened me, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he considered me trustworthy in appointing me to the ministry” (1 Timothy 1:12). Paul does not shy away from his own humanity; rather, he continues, “I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and an arrogant man” (1 Timothy 1:13). But rather than seeing his weakness as an obstacle to his vocation, Paul uses it as an opportunity to praise God for His generosity. When I think of all of the relationships and responsibilities with which the Lord has entrusted me throughout my life, I am in awe that He has “considered me trustworthy” over and over again. How kind is our God that even after I have been unfaithful, even after I have made mistakes, He continues to give me new opportunities to glorify Him. Our Lord wants us to have a part in His work of creation and His plan of redemption—so much that He is willing to trust us. He knows full well our every imperfection, as He knew Paul’s, and still He invites us each to embrace the work, or community, or cross, or person He puts before us—however inadequate we may feel. Happily for us, we can count on the Lord to strengthen us for our callings as only He can, just as He did for Saint Paul. Relate to the Lord // Prayerfully reflect on how your weakness is not an obstacle, but instead praise God for “new opportunities to glorify Him.”  

June 25, 2025 // Wednesday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time Read the Word // Open your Bible to today’s First Reading:  Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18 Reflect on the Word // We traipsed across the grassy quadrangle, drenched in sunshine. It was springtime on our college campus, and I could hardly imagine paradise being any more beautiful. And yet, when my friend asked how I was doing, I told her that I was sad. Despite the bright hope of that spring day, I found myself mourning missed opportunities. I wondered if I had made the right choices that year, and I dwelt upon what could or should have been—just as I have done when friendships faded, when jobs fell through, when relationships broke up. In those seasons, I have told Jesus over and over, I was just trying to do Your will. I don’t know why things ended this way, but I was just trying to be faithful to You.  Far more than I did at nineteen, Abraham, too, must have grieved lost time and opportunities. He, too, must have been confused by where his faithfulness led him. Here he was, in the evening of his life, facing the prospect of death without ever living the life for which he had hoped. Had he really come this far into the land the Lord had promised to him, doing as the Lord had told him to do, only to die without descendants to inherit it? He wondered, “O Lord God, what good will your gifts be, if I keep on being childless?” (Genesis 15:2) He expected to have a child by now, grandchildren even, maybe great-grandchildren—a glorious fulfillment of the Lord’s promises to him. Like Abraham in today’s First Reading, I have yet to see the final fulfillment of the Lord’s plan for my life. I don’t understand why sometimes my attempts at faithful obedience have led to misunderstanding, disappointment, and grief. But I take consolation in His promise to each of us. For He promises us, just as He promised Abraham, that He will honor our faithfulness. We may not see it in the moment, but we can trust that He will be faithful to us when, like Abraham, we put our faith in Him.  Relate to the Lord // Bring to mind today ways in which the Lord has been faithful to you in your life, and ask Him to renew your trust in Him.