September 26, 2025 // Optional Memorial of Saints Cosmas and Damian, Martyrs
Read the Word // Open your Bible to today’s First Reading: Haggai 2:1-9
Reflect on the Word //
“Look—here it is!” I wiped my hands on my apron and took the phone from my brother. I squinted at the image he’d pulled up of our childhood home, much smaller and humbler than I remembered it.
Later that night, finding myself hungering to remember more, I searched online for our first parish and found images of the majestic St. Anne’s. Seeing the red brick bell towers and arched stained-glass windows brought back floods of memories of my First Communion and the grainy photos of my Baptism. Sadly, I read that the building had been sold and was now home to a Protestant congregation. I ached as I thought of what it must look like inside: stripped of statues and bereft of its marble altar with no tabernacle, no Easter candle, no kneelers. I clicked off the phone. I didn’t want to think about it anymore, not that way.
In today’s First Reading, the prophet Haggai is speaking to a people who must have had similar feelings about the Temple in Jerusalem. Their exile over, they’d begun to rebuild their house of worship but were feeling discouraged as they sifted through desecrated rubble. Those who remembered the Temple “in its former glory” were desolate as they surveyed the ruins (Haggai 2:3). Jerusalem’s glory days were over, their resources scarce. This temple would pale in comparison to the one they remembered. But Haggai mysteriously prophesies that the future glory of “this house” will surpass the former (Haggai 2:9).
This prophecy is fulfilled in Jesus’ time, as the splendor of the Second Temple is added to by the Persians and by Herod the Great. But the more important temple is that of Jesus’ Body, which is also to be destroyed, but miraculously restored again in three days, and where “treasures of all the nations will come in” (Haggai 2:7).
Sister, we are this treasure, the living stones that build up the Body of Christ. We will see buildings—even sacred places—crumble. We long for things to last but will see them wither. But strengthened by the grace of our Baptism, we put our faith in the One to Whom we have been united, Who holds us all together in Himself—home and temple both, eternally.
Relate to the Lord // What places from your own childhood or early life come to mind as you read Claire’s experience? Share your memories with the Lord.
Claire Dwyer writes with the desire that all women see the sacredness of their stories in light of Salvation History. Speaker, Retreat Leader, Author of This Present Paradise, senior copywriter and content editor for Avila Foundation / Spiritualdirection.com, and co-founder of the PraiseWriters community, she knows firsthand the power of words to set a fire on the earth. She lives in Phoenix with her family. Find out more about her here.
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