forgiveness

Jesus will help us to remove the log from our own eyes so we can help others to remove their splinter.

For many of us, judging one another is almost as automatic as breathing. As we encounter someone we have instant internal judgments. We judge looks, clothes, actions, inactions, homes, cars, and material items. We judge our family, spouses, friends, colleagues, classmates, leaders, enemies, celebrities, as well as those we consider different as well as those we determine to keep at arm’s length. Much of what gets our attention is what Jesus is addressing in today’s Gospel, negative judgments.

Jesus said to his disciples: “How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove that splinter from your eye,’ while the wooden beam is in your eye? You hypocrite, remove the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter from your brother’s eye” (Mt 7:4-5).

There are positive judgments that bring about effective change for the good. In a court case, our hope is that the judge is learned in the law and guides the lawyers and jury in ways of sound judgment such that justice with mercy is served. For us to do likewise in our everyday interactions with one another, Jesus shares that we need to remove the wooden beam from our eye first before we are able to remove the splinter in another’s.

Jesus presents this hyperbolic image, a common rhetorical device for rabbis, of someone attempting to remove a splinter in someone else’s eye all the while the wooden beam protruding out of his or her own eye. This beam prevents the person from even being able to get close enough to actually be of any help! That is the point. Often in our rash judgements, we distance ourselves from our brother and sister, we not only judge them but condemn them. We don’t see the heart and mind of the person, we do not know what people are struggling with at any moment, and yet we allow ourselves to play judge and jury and so create further distance and so worse, separation.

Jesus is inviting us to remove the beam. We do so when we are willing to change our hearts and minds such that we are no longer callused and hardened by negative and condemning judgments toward others based on our own unbridled biases and prejudices. Softening happens when we take the risk and trust Jesus with those places in ourselves where we are believing the lies of the enemy, when we are judging and allowing ourselves to be poisoned by shame and self criticism. When we allow Jesus in to love us, we can then confess because we feel accepted and affirmed for who we are despite what we have allowed ourselves to do and not do.

Jesus is willing to lovingly enter our chaos, to embrace any and all of us who will receive the invitation of his healing embrace. Jesus walks with us, convicts us, and shines his light to reveal to us our where we are addicted, giving in to disordered affections and enslaved by sin. When we repent, allow ourselves to be loved at our worst, we experience God’s forgiveness, mercy, and grace.

We are then healed from our own limitations, weaknesses, self-centered perceptions, insecurities, denial and suppression of our anxieties and wounds that so often fueled our biases and prejudices. As we experience God’s forgiveness and love, we begin to heal, and that wooden beam shrinks. We are able to see others as God sees them, as human beings endowed with dignity because we have been created in the image and likeness of God. We come close as our hearts open wider to compassion and empathy.

Repentance, forgiveness, and growing in love helps us to collaborate and participate in Jesus’ work of redemption. Having removed the log from our own eyes, we can better assist others in removing their splinters. Admitting to our own shortcomings, weaknesses, and failures, and opening ourselves to healing, learning, and growing from those experiences, we are then in a better position to meet others in their own moments of chaos, to journey side by side, help others to repent, heal, and to be transformed by the love of God we have received.

Jesus helps us to remove our beams of judgment so that we can be more understanding, merciful, and forgiving. We will be blessed in doing so, for Jesus also taught us that as we judge, so will God judge us. As we repent and are forgiven, so may we forgive and show mercy. In receiving forgiveness and forgiving, in repenting from sin and judgmentalism, our souls will find rest and from that place of peace, we are better able to come close to help others as Jesus has done for us.

Photo: Allowing the light of Christ to shine within our hearts helps the logs in our eyes to dissolve.

Link for the Mass readings for Monday, June 22, 2026

“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you”.

The sixth antithesis may be the most challenging of them all. “You have heard that it was said, You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father” (Mt 5:43-45). The parable of the Good Samaritan provides a nice parallel to this verse. It can be found in Luke 10:25-37. For in that parable, Jesus shows our enemy and our neighbor to be one and the same.

A good examination of conscience would be to read the above verse, ponder who would come up for us as an enemy, and then read the Parable of the Good Samaritan. Whenever the word Samaritan comes up, we drop the word Samaritan and insert the person or persons who came up for us. When we have finished this exercise, then, may we pray for the person or persons defined by us as our enemy, for if we only love those who love us, “do not the tax collectors do the same?” If we are to be disciples of Jesus, if we are to be children of our heavenly Father, we are not only to love those who love us, but we are to also love our enemies. We are to love those for whom there is little chance of being loved in return.

Jesus offers us the way to be able to accomplish this seemingly impossible feat: “So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt 5:48). We are able to love our enemy as ourselves by being perfect. This is not much help unless we understand that the English word used here is translated from the Greek word telios, which means complete, whole, to reach one’s goal or purpose in life. As a Christian, our end goal, our purpose, our fundamental option, is to be in full communion with God our Father, who is Love. God the Father is not just loving, not just a lover, but Love. “God is love” (1 John 4:8).

God is love and so, “makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust” (Mt 5:45). We strive in our life to attain the end goal of being perfected by Jesus the Christ, when we, through an act of our will, allow ourselves to become transformed into becoming agents of his love. The most challenging of enemies is facing the enemy within. To love as God loves, we are to follow the words and actions of Jesus and the prophets.

Each day we are given a choice. We can choose to feed our fears, seek revenge, dig in our heels, embrace our egos, react in kind to negativity, and/or remain indifferent to the suffering around us and in our world. We can refuse to love our enemies, withdraw our love, and so reap what we sow and contribute to the condition of separation, polarization, violence, and dehumanization that plagues our communities, nation, and world.

Or, we can choose instead to resist giving in to all of the above and instead allow ourselves to be perfected by Jesus, brought into alignment with his Father’s will, and collaborate with the love of the Holy Spirit so to be agents and models of love, mercy, forgiveness, and justice in our realm of influence. By loving our enemies, we will help to diffuse the power of hate.

We can only be perfected and transformed by the love of Jesus when we spend time with him by participating in the sacraments, reading, meditating, and praying with Sacred Scripture and Tradition. We are called to receive his teachings, to resist hearing and letting them go in one ear and out the other, and instead read them again a second, third, and fourth time to allow the light of the Holy Spirit to convict us. Assessing honestly where we fall short and seeking the help of Jesus will help us to receive more of the love of God and the strength to put these seemingly impossible commands into practice in our lives with the real people we engage with every day.

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Photo: Who better than Mary, John, and Mary Magdalene to model for us Jesus’ teachings!

Link for the Mass readings for Tuesday, June 2026

Revenge, retribution, or eye for an eye? Neither. “Offer no resistance to evil” – Love, forgive, and show mercy.

Today we receive the fifth antithesis, in which, Jesus said to his disciples: “You have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you, offer no resistance to one who is evil” (Mk 5:38-39). The Mosaic law, an eye for an eye, that Jesus first addressed was originally an attempt to curb the emotive response of revenge. If someone had killed a clan or tribal member, there would have been those who would choose to retaliate by inflicting as much carnage as possible to the people responsible, even up to and including the death of the whole clan or tribe, even the women and children. The rationale behind this was that there would then be no one to come back for revenge. The idea of seeking instead an eye for an eye was to temper the retribution to a more measured and proportionate response.

Jesus though is saying that “an eye for an eye” does not go far enough, and raises the challenge of being his disciple to a higher level, being that even the thought of revenge is not to be considered. Jesus is not just seeking to lessen the cycle of violence, he is giving us the means to end it. Forgiveness is the cornerstone of the teachings of Jesus. Instead of seeking revenge, Jesus is commanding that we seek to forgive those who have harmed us. We who pray the Our Father or the Lord’s prayer, are to take to heart and be mindful of the words we pray each and multiple times each day: “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.“

The urge for revenge is powerful and primal. Revenge is wired into our survival instinct to protect ourselves. Jesus invites us to grow beyond our mere instinctual responses and survival instincts. He is calling us to mature beyond the bestial and to be a people who do not merely survive, but thrive. Jesus is seeking to infuse us with his divine life so that we will be transformed. This is true not only for ourselves but for those who would seek to do us harm. Instead of striking back with revenge, we are to be flexible and adept enough to instead appeal to their conscience. We are to take all that others throw at us, and meet them with the courage to stand, receive their worst, and disarm them with the blinding light of the love and forgiveness of Jesus.

This is no easy task, especially when we experience ongoing injustice and needless loss of life. To put into practice such teachings as the turning of the other cheek, we need to start small. We need to resist the immediate thoughts of revenge that arise for the smallest of offenses. When someone makes a snide remark, and/or offers demeaning or dehumanizing comments directed at us or others, we resist retaliation. We hold them accountable by not adding more fuel to the fire. Our hope is to receive the offense and mirror back to them what they have done such that their conscience may be convicted. By loving them instead of striking back in kind, we may win back a brother or sister.

To be a disciple of Jesus means we need to be contemplatives in action in the face of cruelty, division, and dehumanization. We need to ground ourselves in the word of God as we return to these challenging teachings of the Beatitudes and antitheses often, believe in them, meditate and pray upon them, keep them at the forefront of our minds and, with the courage and guidance of the Holy Spirit, put them into practice. Doing so will then help us to be centered and intentional when conflict arises. Instead of responding with a knee-jerk reaction, we can breathe and seek the Holy Spirit’s guidance and then choose how best to respond.

Some would say this is naive and impossible. It is true that we will not be able to resist thoughts, words, and acts of revenge and walk the path of forgiveness on our willpower alone. We need to surrender our ego and pride to Jesus, who as the Son of God became one with us in our humanity, experiencing our humanity at its worst, so that we can become one with him in his divinity and become human at our best. As we receive his love, forgiveness, and mercy, we will be transformed. We will be even more transformed when we love, forgive, and extend mercy to others.

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Photo: Jesus has taken our sins, our worst, and our inhumanity upon himself on the Cross to forgive us and show us that there is a way through our darkness into his light.

Link for the Mass readings for Monday, June 15, 2026

Loving God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength and our neighbor as ourselves begins the moment we allow God to love us.

“Which is the first of all the commandments” (Mk 12:28). This may have been a challenge to Jesus, or it may just have been a valid question of one seeking the Truth. Scribes were the experts in securing and making known the Torah. They could read and write, a skill not only used for protecting and passing on the faith, but also for the daily tasks of commerce and contract writing.

This question of the scribe was one that was asked often by those who sought how best to live out the Torah. Not only were there the Ten Commandments, but throughout the Torah, there were 613 prescribed laws! A common debate that was often entered into was which were the most important to follow to be faithful, as well as the minimalist approach, being, which were the most important to be followed so someone could just get by?

Jesus replied, “The first is this: Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.” With this response, Jesus drew first on Deuteronomy 6:4-5 and then regarding loving your neighbor, Leviticus 19:18. By answering in this way, Jesus stated that when we orient our lives to who God has created us to be, which is to Love God first, place God at the center instead of ourselves, we can then better love our neighbors and ourselves.

St Augustine, the bishop of Hippo (354-430), echoed Jesus’ “Greatest Commandment” by stating that we can love God and do whatever we want. The order of that statement is aligned to the commandment Jesus gave. God is first. The problem many of us have is that we place ourselves first and seek to bend God’s will to our own. We look to flip the words to: do what I want and God will love me. It is true that God will love us, but we will not experience the intimacy of his love, just as we weaken intimacy with our human relationships when we put ourselves, our interests first before others.

When we shift our orientation to God first, such that he is the foundation of our life, our world opens up and expands. Many of us are wounded by our own sin and the sin of others. We retreat into defensive postures and actualize defense mechanisms to survive. These may be good and necessary at the moment, but the challenge is that if we continue to live in a posture of survival mode, we are merely existing.

God lays out for us a life of consolation and joy, and we can experience this more when we recognize our need for and open ourselves up to receive God’s love. When we allow him to love us, we can then receive his healing balm of forgiveness, love, and mercy. Once we begin to experience these gifts, we will begin to see ourselves and others, not from our own limited perspectives where we can slip into defensive postures that may feed our insecurities, biases, and prejudices, but see from the greater breadth and depth of how God sees us as his children, made in his image. We are not constricted by God’s love but expanded.

God reaches out to us in so many ways to tell us that he loves us more than we can ever imagine. Unfortunately, when we are diverted and distracted by other false pursuits and find ourselves opposed to his will, we limit our experience of his love. Yet, God’s love for us remains unconditional. God loves us as we are, right now, right at this moment. We just need to take some time to sit, breathe, and be willing to accept the gift of being loved for who we are as well as embrace the fullness of who he has created us to be as mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual human beings; as well as resist repressing any aspect of who we are, allow God access to all of us, and when we do we will grow in holiness and wholeness.

Through embracing God’s healing forgiveness, love, and mercy and being engaged in the fullness of our humanity, we can begin to relax our defensive postures. We can become advocates for healing the division, dehumanization, disrespect, and polarization in our realm of influence, in person, and online. In being loved, we begin to feel safe and no longer controlled by our fears and insecurities. Being loved, we will project, react, and should over ourselves less, and be more open to encounter and accompany one another as human beings, and experience our differences not as obstacles but as gifts for our mutual growth.

Photo: The fire of God’s love burns in each sanctuary lamp where his Son is present in the tabernacle. May we join him, sit awhile, breathe, receive, rest, and abide in his love.

Link for the Mass readings for Thursday, June 4, 2026

Perfect as his Heavenly Father? When we trust Jesus, yes, he will take us to new heights!

How many times have we looked to others instead of staying focused on what we need to do or be doing? How many times do we compare ourselves, assessing what we or others have or don’t have, how others are more or less confident, more or less better looking, more or less intelligent, how others lives are altogether or a catastrophe, and even, how our faith life is worse or better?

We get a taste of these questions and what our response ought to be from Jesus in today’s Gospel. The background of today’s reading is a continuation from yesterday’s, in which the author described how Jesus forgave Peter for denying him by asking him not only if Peter loved him, but how he was to put that love into action by feeding his lambs, taking care of and feeding his sheep. Jesus also had just let Peter know that Peter was going to die in his service to him.

Today, we read that upon hearing the news of his eventual death, that Peter shifts the direction away from himself.  When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, “Lord, what about him?” Jesus said to him, “What if I want him to remain until I come? What concern is it of yours? You follow me” (Jn 21:21-22). Jesus does not definitively say what is or is not going to happen to the beloved disciple. Jesus is clear with Peter that his focus is not to be on what is going to happen to the beloved or any other disciple, but to direct his attention to following him and his will.

Our orientation as disciples of Jesus is to follow Jesus, to focus on his will for our lives and to expend our energy in such a way that promotes his will. We are to slowly transform each thought, word, and action such that each is to be aligned with God’s will. A good way to start that change is to spend less time comparing ourselves to others. The temptation to compare is a slippery slope that can lead us to the devastating sins of gossip, pride, and envy. If we are to compare ourselves to anyone, let it be to Jesus.

Jesus calls us to be perfect as his heavenly Father is perfect, which is an impossible task if we seek to go it alone. Yet, we can become perfected through our participation in the life of Jesus the Christ. We begin when we ask for Jesus to help us make a commitment to resist the temptation to compare ourselves to others. Then when the first instant of a comparative thought arises, we can replace it with a prayer of blessing directed toward another and follow up with some pondering about what we are grateful for.

Moment by moment, we just need to remember that we are not alone, that we walk with Jesus. One thought, one action, one interaction at a time, we are called to surrender our will to the love of God. By taking these steps to counter the influences of a focus on self first as well as resist the comparative and/or seeking to follow a cult of personality, we can begin to shift the momentum away from increasing divisiveness, defensiveness, and mistrust, and instead strive toward supporting, encouraging, and uplifting one another.

As we allow Jesus to love us in places we feel unlovable, our thoughts, prayers, and actions will change. We will become more understanding, patient, willing to engage in conflict resolution, and dialogue. To allow Jesus to love and forgive us, and take the time to savor and experience both, helps us to begin to lessen the intensity of fear, prejudice, biases, and chronic stress. As we are able to then experience his peace, let our shoulders come out of our ears, we become less defensive and willing to see each other through God’s eyes, as beloved daughters and sons with whom he is well pleased.

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Photo: When we follow Jesus where he leads, we will be able to rise above our sins, wounds, and resistance because when we trust in Jesus forgiveness, healing, and reconciliation is possible.

Link for the Mass readings for Saturday, May 23, 2026

Our response to the darkness is the light, love, and joy of Jesus.

“But I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away from you” (Jn 16:22). 

Jesus continues to prepare his disciples for his horrific death by offering hope that he will see them again. That he will see them again is not a typo. We can read about the exchanges between Jesus and his risen disciples. Jesus appeared to Mary of Magdalene at the tomb, he appeared to Cleopas and his companion on the road to Emmaus, and he appeared to the ten and then the eleven with Thomas. Jesus sought out those he commissioned to proclaim his Gospel message after his Resurrection, just as he had done during his ministry before his crucifixion.

When Jesus did appear to them again, at the moment of recognition, there was wonder and great joy! It is hard for us to even imagine these early Resurrection accounts. Although, this is a wonderful meditative practice! The disciples witnessed his brutal death, lived in fear because of the very real possibility of their own persecution and similar death, and then, they encountered the risen Jesus. St Paul would also shortly thereafter encounter Jesus on a different road, the one to Damascus en route to continue his persecution of the followers of Jesus. 

All of their hearts rejoiced when they experienced the risen Jesus, and it was this joy that they proclaimed with boldness. The Apostles, like Jesus, led with joy and love to embark on their evangelical mission. They lived a difficult and challenging life that for many ended in their own brutal deaths, yet their joy carried them through and into eternity.

Life is hard, even in the best of circumstances. There is evil present in this world, not of God’s creation, because all that he has created is good. Through the corruption of the good that God has created, bad things happen to good people, and good people do bad things. Suffering, disease, violence, natural disasters, division, corruption, hatred, and dehumanization abound. It can be easy to succumb to the overwhelming tide of negativity and assume a stance of cynicism, detachment, denial, defensiveness, and/or indifference. Yet this is not the response Jesus modeled nor has infused his followers through the ages with.

Our response to the evil and darkness of this world is to be bearers of the joy of Jesus! We are to be as lights shining in the darkness, providing hope for those in despair, accompanying those in their struggles, and being willing to receive help when we are ourselves are in need. We cannot do any of this alone and on our own, but it can be done in participation with Jesus and each other. The Apostles, disciples, and saints, those who have gone before us, have shown us that it is possible to be beacons of hope in very dark places.

Pope Francis reminded us about our mission in The Joy of the Gospel (276): “However dark things are, goodness always re-emerges and spreads. Each day in our world beauty is born anew, it rises transformed through the storms of history. Values always tend to reappear under new guises, and human beings have arisen time after time from situations that seemed doomed. Such is the power of the resurrection, and all who evangelize are instruments of that power.”

No matter how bumpy our lives get or how much we are tossed about, we can trust that Jesus is with us, closer than we can ever imagine. He readily offers us his love and joy. Are we willing to receive each? May seem like a silly question, but we can refuse to receive the joy and love of Jesus when our hearts are constricted or closed. 

When we choose to allow his light to enter and dwell within us, even though the light may reveal some darkness and deep suffering, we can experience forgiveness and healing. Once experiencing his healing and love — joy! And when the joy wells up and radiates through us and outward, no matter how small or insignificant, the darkness in our realm of influence will begin to fade away. For, within or without, darkness cannot remain in the presence of the light of Christ.

Photo: May the light of Jesus shine through us for others to see!

Link for the Mass readings for Friday, May 15, 2026

The commandments of Jesus do not constrict but expand our freedom to be loved and to love.

“Whoever has my commandments and observes them is the one who loves me” (John 14:21).

Especially in our modern, western mind set, the idea or mere mention of following commandments may cause a bristling. Mostly this is because of the witnessing weakness of our fallen nature expressed in egregious ways through the abuse of power, abuse in relationships, and a weakening of trust in secular and religious institutions.

Jesus though is offering more of a challenge as he draws the following of commandments and love together. He is sharing with his apostles in the beginning stages of his farewell discourse, and before his crucifixion, what he feels is most important to share. His testament that he not only wants to give, but these final words he wants to impart upon them in such a way that they continue to learn and receive his teachings, put them into practice, allow themselves to be transformed by and so perpetuate them.

Just as commandments can lead one to bristle, love has many more superficial meanings than what Jesus means. One reason is that, even though the English language has a plethora of words to utilize and choose from, there is only one word for love and it is interpreted and used in many ways. In Ancient Greek, there are four words that are used to connote love. There is eros, which has to do with attraction. It is the beginning stage of love because we are drawn out of ourselves as we are attracted to another. The next word for love is philia, which aligns with friendship, a wanting to be together, to share between friends. If our love matures it moves from attraction or infatuation to friendship. The third word, storge, is the deeper love shared with family members which can be through blood or a deepening of friendship. The fourth word is agape, which is unconditional love, a sacrificial love.

When Jesus shares that we are to follow the commandments, he is not demanding that we do so as a tyrant would. He is providing boundaries, guard rail, parameters for us to grow and mature as people who love, who, in the words of St Thomas Aquinas, will the good of the other as other. As humans, we are social beings. We want to belong, to be accepted, and to be a part of. We seek meaning, purpose, and fulfillment in our lives. This is best done through cooperation and collaboration with God and with one another, striving to love unconditionally, agape. We desire to belong, to be loved, and to love in return. Yet, we need to ground our love in God first or our pursuit of love and belonging will be disordered.

As a good son of St. Augustine, Pope Leo XIV quoted Augustine in his inaugural Mass as Pope last year: “Lord, you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you (Confessions, I: 1,1).” We are made by God to be loved and to love in return. Nothing we seek in this world will satisfy this deepest hunger that we all have in our soul besides the love God has for us. Unfortunately, we succumb to many disordered affections in pursuit of the love we seek. We are led astray by apparent goods that leave us hungry, thirsty, and wanting for more.

If we operate from a self-centered posture in which we are only turned in upon our self, and we only seek to manipulate and get from others, or worse, objectify others. Instead of working for consensus and sharing a common vision, we will ultimately be empty with the exchange on any level, because even in our relationships as with material things, we will be left wanting more. This is true because once the immediacy of the stimulation, whether material, emotional, or sensual, ends, so does the experience of the feeling. Some happiness may linger from the effect, but we will never be filled or satisfied with that which is finite. We will continue to seek more and more until the pursuit of instant and constant gratification ensnares us and we are entangled in a web of addiction.

God’s commandments, grounded in love, are meant to provide boundaries for us, training wheels, and to keep us free from enslavement to sin. The commandments point us to that which is not apparently but truly good for a wholesome and whole life. At the same time God’s commandments and the teachings of Jesus help us to mature as persons moving away from a posture of being self-centered to becoming disciples that love as Jesus loves.

Discipline in this way is meant to be a means of freedom for excellence such that we can become who God calls us to be and who we truly desire to be. God is not in competition with us. He is our biggest fan. As St Irenaeus wrote, the glory of God is the human being fully alive! When we can rest in the truth that God loves us as we are, even in our sin, when we can stop, breathe, receive, rest, and abide in his love, we can begin to settle and feel safe. Our restlessness can slow, the grasping can release, and we can just be, be loved, be ourselves, and experience peace.

Commandments and morality imposed indiscriminately, without reason or an end goal is a bludgeon. Love and mercy without accountability and justice can be enabling. Jesus’ invites us to receive and observe his commandments so that we may be freed from disordered affections and so properly order and discipline our desires and passions to be free to love authentically. Jesus knows what will truly fulfill and give us deeper meaning. May we trust in and learn from the deposit of faith passed on from Jesus to the Apostles, to each successive generation, as well as the ongoing guidance of the Holy Spirit, our Advocate that the Father sent in his name (John 14:26).

Pope Leo XIV, the vicar of Christ, implored us about a year ago: “Brothers and sisters, this is the hour for love! The heart of the gospel is the love of God that makes us brothers and sisters.” We are brothers and sisters, disciples of Jesus, when we receive and put into practice Jesus’s commandments, when we love him and his Father, we are given the discernment to reveal the lies of the enemy, we grow, and mature in our spiritual lives. The “heart of the gospel” Pope Leo preached in his inaugural address echoed again in his Sunday Regina Caeli address, May 3, 2026.

Having faith in God and Jesus “frees our hearts from the anxiety of possessing and acquiring, and from the illusion that we must pursue a position of prestige to have worth. Each person already has infinite worth in the mystery of God, which is the true reality. By loving one another as Jesus has loved us, we impart this awareness to one another… through love, amidst a multitude of brothers and sisters, each one discovers that they are uniquely made.”

Let us allow and continue to allow the tender chords of the Holy Spirit’s love to draw us deeper into intimacy with Jesus so that we can be transformed, forgiven, and healed by his love, and so freed from the false lures and promises that seek to divert us from being the beloved daughters and sons of God our Father that he has uniquely created us to be.

Photo: Pope Leo Regina Caeli address (Vatican Media)

Quotes above from Pope Leo XIV Inauguration Mass, May 18, 2025: Transcript of Pope Leo XIV’s Homily

Pope Leo XIV Regina Caeli, Sunday May 3

Link for the Mass readings for Monday, May 4, 2026

Jesus has come to serve, not to be served. How about us?

Today’s Gospel from John begins as Jesus had just finished washing the feet of his disciples. Jesus then said, “Amen, amen, I say to you, no slave is greater than his master nor any messenger greater than the one who sent him” (Jn 13:16). Jesus not only taught the truth that God the Father sent his Son to serve and not be served, he modeled this practice consistently.
From his conception, gestation, and birth, the Son of God developed as a human being in the very simplest of conditions and endured the hardships of those on the margins. Joseph, Mary, and Jesus were most likely ostracized because of the circumstances of Jesus’ conception. The census was a good opportunity to get of Nazareth. And then when the time came there was no room or hospitality so Jesus was born in a cave. Very soon after his birth, the young family was forced to flee from Bethlehem to Egypt. When Herod the Great died they returned to Nazareth, and other than the incident when he remained in the Temple while Jospeh and Mary left him, we hear nothing about the life of Jesus until he begins his public ministry. The most likely reason for this was that there was nothing to tell. Jesus most likely apprenticed with Joseph, in the trade of a simple tektōn, a woodworker, which was pretty low on the rung of the social ladder.
Through the short time of his ministry, Jesus modeled for his disciples what a follower was and what it meant to be one of his successors. To follow in his footsteps they would need to participate in servant leadership, which is really authentic leadership as Jesus lived it. He not only taught them but lived and modeled that there is no task too menial that we can’t roll up our sleeves and dive in and help. There is no person too other that we can’t assist when they are in need.
In this act of washing the feet, Jesus also revealed something deeper. The depth of his love for the apostles and each of us. The Son was willing to come close, to become one with us in our humanity, to be in solidarity with us even in our sin by participating in John’s baptism of repentance, even though he was free of sin. He then took upon himself the sin of the world on the cross. In the washing of the apostle’s feet, he also showed the depth of his love in caring for them in such a menial way. Another foreshadowing of the depths of his love in his willingness to give his life in a humiliating and horrific way for all of humanity in willing to be crucified.
Jesus, fully divine, did not grasp at his divinity or lord it over anyone. He was willing to be baptized even though he was free of sin, washed the feet of his apostles even though he was their master and teacher, and he was willing to experience crucifixion and death even as the Messiah. In each of these acts, Jesus reveals the full gift of himself, holding nothing back. Jesus encouraged his apostles and is encouraging us with every breath, thought, word, and action to love each other as he has loved us.
A good prayer and meditation for us today is to ask Jesus to reveal for us how we have resisted his urgings in the past regarding serving and loving others as well as when we have refused to interact or treat someone with anything less than the basic human dignity which they deserved which is to love each other, to will each other’s good. Have we ever thought that what he was asking of us was beneath us? Have there been people we have kept at arm’s length or refused to reach out to? For those ways in which we have withdrawn within ourselves and refused to be of help may we ask for his forgiveness.
Are we willing to allow Jesus to wash our feet, to heal our wounds, and forgive our sins? If so, then having been washed, healed, forgiven and loved, may we be more willing to share what we have received from Jesus. May we be more open to each of the people and/or tasks that God asks us to engage in, the discernment to know his will, and the clarity and courage to act as his servant with humility, with love, and without hesitation.
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Painting: “The washing of the disciples’ feet” by Ghislaine Howard
Link for the Mass readings for Thursday, April 30, 2026

May we allow the light of Jesus to shine in our darkness.

“I came into the world as light, so that everyone who believes in me might not remain in darkness” (Jn 12:46).
What might be the darkness that Jesus refers to? It could be anything that turns us within ourselves, that turns us away from that which is True, Good, and Beautiful. Anyone or anything that turns us away from God. God has created humanity and all of creation out of the abundance of his love. Through sin, suffering and the good God has created, has been corrupted and darkened. We as well as the world has been wounded but not destroyed, nor is the damage so far gone that we are doomed. Prejudice, ignorance, cynicism, sin, violence, hatred, war, division, dehumanization, and destruction reign, but the darkness cannot stand up to the light. The darkness has not nor ever will overcome the light. Jesus invites us to make a choice to feed on the darkness or the receive the light.
Jesus has come and continues to be present in our lives to invite us to heal. Each and every one of us is important to him. Jesus knows us better than we know ourselves and he knows the darkness that is within, the places we may not want to even face. The wounds, the hurt, the grief and suffering, the pain, and our sin. Jesus invites us gently to trust him and allow his light to shine into these places, not to shame and condemn us, but to love us there and lead us to freedom.
Jesus encourages us to leave our self imposed imprisonment by loving us as we are, more than we can imagine, and more than we can ever mess up. Christianity is not just a set of moral principles, a set of doctrines, a philosophy, or a theology. Christianity is about an encounter with a person, the Son of God, Jesus the Christ, who invites us to be loved and to love in return. When we allow ourselves to feel safe with Jesus as a person who cares and has our best interest in mind, we can begin to trust him and experience his love and healing. The wonder of his gentle light is that we can see more clearly where we buy into the lies and deceptions of the enemy.
When we allow the light of Jesus into our hearts and minds, we can choose between the darkness and the light, evil and good, pride and humility. The light of Jesus leads and invites us to experience that which we have been created and are restless for – an intimate relationship with God the Father and each other. Through the light of his love, Jesus reveals to us those apparent goods, false substitutes, and idols that distract us and keep us separated from deepening our relationship with God. As we grow in our relationship with Jesus and his Father, we experience the love of the Holy Spirit and are moved to share his love with each other.
Jesus, in this moment, help us to take some slow deep breaths. Help us to be still. Help us to receive and experience your love. Help us to see where we are reactive, where triggers are engaging past wounds in need of healing, and what are the apparent goods we are attached to that are leading us away from spending time to be able to be still right now, right here with you. May we rest and abide here in your love so to experience the reality of your presence, and help us to come back to spend time with you tomorrow as well so that we come to believe that your light is greater than any darkness we may face, that you are with us, and that we know we are loved.
Photo: Breathing, receiving, resting, and abiding in God’s love.
Link for the Mass readings for Wednesday, April 29, 2026

Jesus did not give up on Thomas or Cleopas. He will not give up on us.

We return again to the reading of the Road to Emmaus pericope that we heard less than two weeks ago. This rich record is certainly worth many readings because there is within its telling so much contained in its depths that one, two, or three readings is nowhere near sufficient.
Jesus comes upon Cleopas and another disciple heading away from Jerusalem feeling devastated because not only had their teacher been brutally crucified but their hopes of him truly being the Messiah were also dashed. The interesting points that come up when they begin to talk to Jesus are that “some women…had indeed seen a vision of angels who announced that he was alive.” They also announced to Jesus: “Then some of those with us went to the tomb and found things just as the women had described, but him they did not see.”
Cleopas and the other disciple were certainly close enough to the inner circle of the Apostles to know Mary Magdalene and the Eleven to be in hiding with them after the crucifixion. This also meant that they knew Jesus pretty well. They had to have heard on more than one occasion either from Jesus himself or the other Apostles that Jesus would rise again on the third day.
Why then did they leave after hearing the tomb was empty? Wouldn’t they want to find out if what Jesus said about his Resurrection was actually true? Jesus had told them to wait for him in Jerusalem, not Emmaus. Cleopas and the other are heading the wrong way! Last week we read about how Thomas was away when Jesus reappears to the Apostles. Could he have gone his own way and leave like Cleopas and the other disciple did?
There were those like Mary, Peter, and John who stayed in Jerusalem, while at the same time we know about Thomas, Cleopas, and another disciple who had left, even after hearing about the empty tomb. Jesus was clear in what he taught about his coming back on the third day, just as he was when he told his followers that they would eat his flesh and drink his blood. People left then as well.
How many times have we given up or given in just when what we had been waiting for or working for would have been fulfilled? We may never know. Fortunately, for Cleopas and the other disciple that we read about this week and Thomas last week, Jesus was willing to reach out to them a second time. They heard his words about the Resurrection but they did not grasp or comprehend the full meaning of what Jesus meant.
The same is often true of us. Jesus invites us to follow him as he did the others, as he does with all of humanity, yet we often do not understand or fully appreciate the fullness of what Jesus is offering. Until we are able to relate to and value the deeper meaning and worth of what it means to truly develop a relationship with Jesus, to know, be loved by and love him, and be a follower of his, we will not be willing to invest our time and commitment. The Good News is that Jesus did not give up on Thomas or Cleopas nor will he give up on us. One day we too will also be able to exclaim with joy, “The Lord has truly been raised,” and our life we never be the same.
Painting: The Supper at Emmaus by Rembrandt 1648
Link for the Mass readings for Sunday, April 19, 2026