July 20, 2026 // Monday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time // Optional Memorial of Saint Apollinaris, Bishop and Martyr Read the Word // Open your Bible to today’s First Reading: Micah 6:1-4, 6-8 Reflect on the Word //  I sat at the kitchen table staring absently out the window, my thoughts a million miles away. I was healing and reorienting after a major personal decision, and many negative emotions now competed with good memories from the past year. My thoughts harshly accused me as I assessed my mistakes and wondered how I could “make it up” to God for falling short. At that moment, my eyes drifted to the Divine Mercy image on our kitchen wall. Christ’s face pleaded that I didn’t need to do this. Trust and humility would suffice.  Today’s First Reading takes us into the hills where the Lord and Israel hold trial. I imagine myself standing in the mountains where this exchange reverberates from the rocks and high places. Since the Lord uses many words like “hear,” “pay attention,” and “answer me,” I know I must listen carefully. Then, the divine vulnerability of God’s petition cuts me to the heart: “O my people, what have I done to you, or how have I wearied you? Answer me!” (Micah 6:3) Although He is God, He only accuses us humbly.  Do I perceive Christ’s mercy? I often anticipate an exacting God only to find Him more lenient than I am towards myself. I am sometimes like Israel, trying to offer holocausts and streams of oil: I also try to calculate how to placate God, certain that I must do something big.  But the Lord shows me I am thinking in human terms. Have I listened to what He requires? His tenderness convicts, then shows me the true solution, simple and insignificant though it may seem: “to do the right and to love goodness, and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8). His divine, merciful gaze entreats me to let this truth echo in my memory.  Sister, release your thoughts and self-accusation to Him. God does not upbraid you or measure the way we do, even in the hilly, hard places of life. He does not condemn: He calls out tenderly, mercifully, and humbly. He shows us how to act. Trust that He knows what suffices.  Relate to the Lord // Today, meditate on an image of the Divine Mercy. 

May 9, 2026 // Saturday of the Fifth Week of Easter Read the Word // Open your Bible to today’s Gospel: John 15:18-21 Reflect on the Word //  An elegant, jazzy ambiance pulsed through the restaurant downtown even as airhorns and megaphoned voices throbbed outside. These were not the circumstances my choirmates and I expected for our special post-performance dinner, but we were safe. Although the protestors outside were nonviolent and few in number, their noise was great, and their shouts proved that they knew Who we followed. Eventually, we raised our own chorus from indoors, the Salve Regina. I heard the commotion stop halfway through the hymn, and to my disbelief, it never resumed. Our love and praise for the names of Jesus and Mary quelled this persecution. During this close brush with animosity because of the faith, I thought of Christ’s words from today’s Gospel: “If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first [. . .] if they persecuted me, they will also persecute you” (John 15:18, 20b). With this reminder from Jesus in mind, I was not perturbed. Instead, I counted it a privilege to experience the world’s hatred “on account of [Christ’s] name” (John 15:21). When others lash out from places of hurt deep inside of them, intending to demean us for our faith, they in fact only reaffirm the dignity of our discipleship in Christ. We can experience peace in the face of opposition because we know we walk in the love of God.  The world touts “love” everywhere, particularly as their buzzword to back whatever awareness movement they are trying to push. And yet their version of love is a strongly selective, feel-good concept, because the world only loves its own. Jesus reminds us that we “do not belong to the world” (John 15:19)—we were chosen out of it by true, abiding Love Himself. The world hates this, yet they know they are lacking something. They don’t know that they replace authentic love with mere fickle favor.  The Lord invites us to a constant, faithful love, built on His abiding, eternal love. The One Who sent us invites us to confidently choose peace and praise even when the world clamors against us. We can witness to His Love, trusting that He will overcome all hate. Relate to the Lord // Sing or listen to the Salve Regina. Ask Our Lady to pray for you today.

April 21, 2026 // Tuesday of the Third Week of Easter // Optional Memorial of Saint Anselm, Bishop and Doctor of the Church Read the Word // Open your Bible to today’s First Reading: Acts 7:51-8:1a Reflect on the Word //  I was returning from a funeral at my parish when surprised by joyful news: A friend was in labor with her second child. My thoughts were suddenly torn between melancholic considerations of the brevity of existence and tender excitement for an infant’s coming. The close, paradoxical succession of sorrow and joy in life is unpredictable and often catches me unprepared. An expectant mother does not know when her child’s birth will begin, and the moment of death cannot be anticipated either. But we can trust that the Holy Spirit is with us in these moments. Today’s First Reading recounts the martyrdom of Saint Stephen. It is almost shocking how quickly after Easter day the stories of the sufferings of the first Saints in Acts are paired with Christ’s lifegiving discourses from the Gospel of John. Yet rather than being unsettled by this, I can see it as a sign of the Holy Spirit present in the liturgical year and in our world.  The Holy Spirit figures prominently in the story of Saint Stephen’s death. In fact, the entire Blessed Trinity is present to the first martyr, for he is “filled with the Holy Spirit” and sees “the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God” (Acts 7:55). By contrast, the people stoning Stephen are told they “always oppose the Holy Spirit” (Acts 7:51). I, too, at times oppose the Holy Spirit instead of consenting to be filled with His grace. I want to always desire to be like Stephen, convicted of the Blessed Trinity’s presence, asking them to deepen my trust in the Holy Spirit present in my life and open Heaven even amid mundane moments (see Acts 7:56). The Blessed Trinity is present in our paradoxes and will welcome us into eternity one day, at a moment still hidden to us. Life and death, joy and sorrow stand alongside each other here below, but the final word is rebirth in the Resurrection. Relate to the Lord // Pay attention for the Holy Spirit’s life-giving presence today. Where is moving? 

December 23, 2025 // Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Advent Read the Word // Open your Bible to today’s Psalm: Psalm 25:4-5ab, 8-9, 10 and 14 Reflect on the Word //  She clicked “submit” and abruptly lowered her head, burying her face in her arms on the desk. “What’s wrong?” I asked gently, in surprise. “I’m nervous to see my grade,” the fourth grader replied. “How about I check for you?” I suggested. She nodded, and I clicked to view the automatic scoring on the spelling test. “Congratulations! You have a one-hundred!” She looked up and saw; wide-eyed disbelief became perfect joy when she realized my word was true. I smiled; in these moments with the students I tutor, I recall my own fear of checking big assignment grades.  Today’s Responsorial Psalm reminds me that, in my spiritual life, I often behave similarly. The Responsorial Verse, “Lift up your heads and see; your redemption is near at hand” (see Luke 21:28), is an invitation to hope: not just to do so distantly, but to hope in the immediacy of the promise.  Why might my head be lowered in the first place? Perhaps it is a stance of deep prayer or of humility. But I may also do it for a negative reason. I may cast my gaze downwards because I hesitate to expect something good from God. Perhaps I feel the need to protect myself from premature hope, from looking forward too hard and being disappointed. Maybe my head is bowed under the weight of interior burdens, which today could be the bustle of the holidays or the keen emotions that reappear this time of year. But only when I lift my head and live in active expectation do I see the Lord making His ways known to me (see Psalm 25:4) and guiding me in them with kindness and constancy (see Psalm 25:5, 10). I understand that He is my Savior and friend (see Psalm 25:5b, 14), a hope near at hand.  Dear sister, our hope is almost here: tomorrow night, He comes. May we not fear to look up and see. As Catholics, we know how to meet this day, for every Eucharistic consecration invites us to lift up our heads and behold the sign of our redemption—to come, fix our gaze, and adore Christ.  Relate to the Lord // This week, make a visit to Jesus in the Eucharist and adore Him.