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.