November 20, 2025 // Thursday of the Thirty-third Week in Ordinary Time
Read the Word // Open your Bible to today’s First Reading: 1 Maccabees 2:15-29
Reflect on the Word //
I’d arrived early to a doctor’s appointment. As I got situated in the waiting area, I discovered that they had recently installed multiple widescreens flashing advertising for fancy skin treatments, beauty products, and an assortment of other exorbitantly priced and apparently age-defying miracle potions.
After my appointment, I stopped to get gas. There were more screens at the pump, more screaming advertisements I couldn’t escape. As I filled my tank I looked up to see a young mother with her toddler. She looked exhausted. Her boy was crying and cranky in his car seat until she handed him a tablet. He immediately quieted, mesmerized by the screen before him.
Screens. They’re ubiquitous. And disturbing, an unending source of distractions and advertisement for the nonessential, constantly stoking the fire of discontent.
Evil slithers through screens. We must be wise as serpents in our prudent use of them.
Wisdom would have us flee to the desert, as in today’s First Reading: “Many who sought to live according to righteousness and religious custom went out into the desert to settle there” (1 Maccabees 2:29).
I cannot retreat to the desert or to a hermitage in the mountains, as appealing as that sounds and as often as that kind of life calls to me. I know I need to be where I am now, in the thick of things, in the throes of battle against the evil that attacks our faith at every turn. But I can create a little desert in my life, and within it an oasis that will protect my heart, my faith, my hope in the Lord.
My desert looks pretty much like my home, my prayer room, my back porch. It very often looks like the adoration chapel near my house, and it certainly looks like my husband and I cozied up on the couch every night at 7 p.m. to pray together, no matter what.
If you don’t have any desert in your life, then make one. Create places and spaces where you and your family can rest in things that matter: faith and family, righteousness and peace.
Relate to the Lord // Do you need to retreat from screens? What desert spaces do you retreat to in order to find rest for your heart with the Lord?
Liz Kelly Stanchina is a jazz singer who met Jesus in late-night adoration. She is the community leader for women’s formation at the Word on Fire Institute and the author of more than a dozen award-winning books, including Jesus Approaches, Love Like a Saint, and the Blessed is She Advent devotional A Thrill of Hope. She holds advanced degrees in creative writing and Catholic studies. She is trained as a spiritual director, leading retreats and speaking around the world with a particular focus on helping women to flourish in their faith. Visit her website at LizK.org or follow her on Instagram at LizKToday.
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