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June 26 Jesus Is Willing. He Is Always Willing. Our Lady of Meliapore, East Indies (1542) Gospel: Matthew 8:1-4 Image created using Google AI Image Creator. Someone is reading this right now who feels untouchable. Not from leprosy, but from shame, from failure, from a sin carried so long it has started to feel permanent. You have told yourself the story so many times that you half believe it: I am too far gone. I am not worth the effort. Nobody reaches for someone like me. When you read the Gospel of Matthew this morning, a leper walks straight toward Jesus and says five very powerful words in his request: Lord, if you are willing . He simply comes as he is and leaves the rest to the Lord. And Jesus does something they weren’t expecting. He reaches out and touches him, and He says, I am willing. Be clean. That touch is the whole gospel in one gesture. Under the law, touching a leper made you unclean. Jesus touches the leper, and he is healed. That is not just a miracle of th...
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June 25 - Thursday Divine Motherhood of Our Lady Declared at the Council of Ephesus Weekday in Ordinary Time Gospel: Matthew 7:21-29 Image created using Google AI Image Creator. Today’s Gospel closes the Sermon on the Mount with a warning about the difference between hearing and doing: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father.” Jesus continues with the two builders, one on rock, one on sand, a firm foundation, especially in our faith, is so important. It’s possible to say all the right words about faith and still be building on sand, going through the motions, sounding and looking devout, without the actual doing in your life. The storms of ordinary life are what expose the foundation, not the words we used to describe it beforehand. Build on rock today by doing one thing your faith actually asks of you, not just saying that you believe it. Don’t make it a performance of devotion; instea...
Location: Tonawanda, NY 14150, USA
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  Celebrating 43 Years: The Years Before the Beads This is another part of our Rosary Makers Ministry story that has not been told yet. This was the very beginning, when I started in 1983, and the Holy Spirit entered my heart, and from that moment on in my life, everything changed. This is what happened in the beginning years after that experience, back when the only technology I had was a stamp, a typewriter, and an incredible positive hope that the mail would get there. A Teenager With a Mailing List I finished high school in 1983, the same year my whole faith caught fire. I won’t retell that part, if you’ve read this blog for a while, you already know My Story . What you don’t know is what I did with it. I started writing letters to dioceses. I reached out, asking about parishes, about anyone, anywhere, who might be doing anything with the Rosary. And the response was outstanding. The diocese sent me a list of every single church across the boroughs of New York City, incl...
Location: Tonawanda, NY 14150, USA
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June 24 - Wednesday Our Lady of Clos Evrard Trier, Germany (1449) The Nativity of Saint John the Baptist - Solemnity Gospel: Luke 1:57-66, 80 Image created by Google AI Image Creator. Today’s Gospel is the birth of John the Baptist, and what stuns everyone present isn’t the birth itself, but Zechariah, struck mute for nine months over his disbelief, suddenly able to speak again the instant he insists, in writing and then aloud, that the baby’s name is John, exactly as the angel commanded. Obedience restores his voice. We sometimes lose our own voice the same way Zechariah did, doubting what God has clearly told us, staying silent out of disbelief or fear, until the only way forward is simple obedience to what we already know is true. Conviction and confidence often return the moment we stop arguing with what God has already said. Say the thing you’ve been silently doubting today, the way Zechariah finally wrote “John is his name” instead of arguing for the familiar, expecte...
Location: Tonawanda, NY 14150, USA
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June 23 - Tuesday Our Lady Justinienne at Carthage (6th Century) Weekday in Ordinary Time Gospel: Matthew 7:6, 12-14 Image created by Google AI Image Creator.   Today’s Gospel strings together three short, sharp teachings: don’t throw what’s holy to those who’ll trample it, treat others exactly as you’d want to be treated, and enter through the narrow gate, because the wide road that looks easier leads somewhere you don’t want to go. Three angles on the same demand: live deliberately, not by default. The easy road is always more crowded, the path of least resistance, the comfortable compromise, treating people only as well as they treat us first. The Golden Rule and the narrow gate both ask something less convenient: choosing the harder, more deliberate way simply because it’s right, not because it’s easy. Make a dramatic change in your life if you haven’t already, and choose the narrow gate in every single one of your decisions instead of the wide one, and treat oth...
Location: Tonawanda, NY 14150, USA
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June 22 - Monday Our Lady of Perpetual Help Sts. John Fisher, Bishop, and Thomas More, Martyrs Gospel: Matthew 7:1-5 Image created by Google AI Image Creator.   Today’s Gospel is about the danger of confident judgment: “Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own?” Jesus isn’t forbidding all discernment; He’s exposing how easily we magnify someone else’s small fault while staying blind to our own much larger one. We do this constantly. We’re quick to criticize a coworker’s mistake while quietly excusing our own. We judge a stranger’s parenting from one glimpse while knowing every hidden reason behind our own shortcuts. The plank is always lighter when it’s ours, and the splinter always looks bigger when it belongs to someone else. Remove your own plank before you comment on anyone else’s splinter today. Let self-examination come before judgment and let humility replace the quiet superiority that creeps into how...
Location: Tonawanda, NY 14150, USA
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June 21 Our Lady of Matarieh at Grand Cairo Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time Today's Gospel: Matthew 10:26-33 Photo created by Google AI Image Creator.   He knew exactly what they were afraid of. Jesus was sending His disciples out into a world that was not going to welcome them. He knew what was coming: the resistance, the rejection, the moments when standing up for what you believed would cost you something real. And before they took a single step, He looked at them and said, Do not be afraid. Then He dismantled the fear piece by piece. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them falls to the ground without your Father knowing it. Even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid. You are worth more than many sparrows. God tracks sparrows. God counts hairs. If He maintains that level of attention to the smallest details of creation, do you honestly believe He loses track of you the moment things get uncomfortable? The moment someone p...
Location: Tonawanda, NY 14150, USA
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June 20 Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Weekday in Ordinary Time Today's Gospel: Matthew 6:24-34 Photo created by Google AI Image Create.   Jesus named the enemy nobody wanted to admit they had. No one can serve two masters. You cannot serve both God and money. The moment money becomes the thing you organize your life around, it has become your god, whether you call it that or not. And a god like that only takes your heart and your life focus away from Jesus. That so-called “security,” aka your god, allows you to live your life in such a way that you don’t need anyone in your life, telling you anything you don’t want to hear. You can simply avoid everyone without a care, so be it, because you can go anywhere you wish for as long as you want. Hence, sadly, you become your own god. And then Jesus did something remarkable. He didn't follow the warning with a lecture. He followed it with a deeply insightful parable. Look at the birds of the air. They do not sow or rea...
Location: Tonawanda, NY 14150, USA
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June 19 Our Lady of the Monte Senario Weekday in Ordinary Time Optional Memorial: St. Romuald, Abbot Today's Gospel: Matthew 6:19-23 Photo created by Google AI Image Creator.   Jesus made it very simple. Do not store up treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and thieves break in and steal. Store up treasures in heaven instead. And then He said the line that explains everything: For where your treasure is there your heart will be also. In life your treasures lead, and your heart follows. Which means if you want to know where your heart actually is, not where you think it is, not where you'd like it to be, instead look at what you're holding onto. Look at what you can't let go of. That will tell you everything you need to know about what you deem as treasure in your life. The eye is the lamp of the body. What you look at shapes what you become. A healthy eye, one fixed consistently on eternal things, fills the whole body with light. An eye fixed o...
Location: Tonawanda, NY 14150, USA
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June 18 Our Lady of the Aqueduct Weekday in Ordinary Time   T oday's Gospel: Matthew 6:7-15 Photo created by Google AI Image Creator. They asked Him to teach them how to pray. And He sat down and gave them the most perfectly constructed prayer in human history. Eight petitions. Each one unites you with God the Father. Together covering everything a human being could ever need to bring before God. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven, give us this day our daily bread, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Read it slowly. Every part of this prayer says something extraordinary. That the God who spoke the universe into existence wants to be called Father. By you, exactly as you are, standing in your kitchen or driving down the highway or walking alone on a Tuesday afternoon with nothing but sky overhead a...
Location: Tonawanda, NY 14150, USA
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