Beads of Joy Blog II (2025 - 2026)

🌿 Friday, February 27, 2026 Leave Your Gift at the Altar Photo created by James Dacey, Jr. using Co-Pilot. Friday of the First Week of Lent • Day of Abstinence • Lent 2026 • Year A • Beads of Joy Blog II ✝️ Today's Mass Readings First Reading: Ezekiel 18:21-28 Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 130:1-2, 3-4, 5-7, 7-8 Gospel: Matthew 5:20-26 📖 The Gospel - Matthew 5:20-26 Jesus takes the commandment thou shalt not kill and digs all the way down beneath it. He says, it's not just the act of murder that breaks the law. Anger. Contempt. The word you muttered under your breath. The cold silence you've been giving someone for weeks. That's where it starts, then He says, before you bring your gift to the altar, go make it right first. 🙏 Gospel Reflection This Gospel is one of the most challenging things Jesus ever said, precisely because it is so impossible to hide from. Most of us can honestly say we've never committed murder. But anger? Contempt? The relationship we'...

🌿 Thursday, February 26, 2026 Ask, Seek, Knock Jesus Is Already at the Door Photo created by James Dacey, Jr. using Co-Pilot. Thursday of the First Week of Lent • Lent 2026 • Year A • Beads of Joy Blog II ✝️ Today's Mass Readings First Reading: Esther C:12, 14-16, 23-25 Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 138:1-2, 2-3, 7-8 Gospel: Matthew 7:7-12 📖 The Gospel - Matthew 7:7-12 Jesus makes one of the most breathtaking promises in all of the Gospels: ask, and it will be given to you, seek, and you will find, knock, and the door will be opened. Not maybe. Not if you're good enough. Will be. Every time. 🙏 Gospel Reflection Queen Esther understood desperate prayer. In today's first reading, she is alone before God, no crown, no royal robes, covered in ashes, fasting for three days, terrified, and she pours out her heart in one of the most raw and honest prayers in all of Scripture. She wasn't performing. She was begging. And God heard her. That is the kind of prayer Jesus ...

🌿 Wednesday, February 25, 2026 The Sign of Jonah When God Gets Your Attention Photo created by James Dacey, Jr. using Co-Pilot. Wednesday of the First Week of Lent • Lent 2026 • Year A • Beads of Joy Blog II ✝️ Today's Mass Readings First Reading: Jonah 3:1-10 Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 51:3-4, 12-13, 18-19 Gospel: Luke 11:29-32 📖 The Gospel - Luke 11:29-32 The crowd is pressing in on Jesus, demanding a sign, something spectacular to prove He is who He says He is. And Jesus looks at them and says, you want a sign? Here's your sign. Jonah. And something greater than Jonah is standing right here in front of you. 🙏 Gospel Reflection Jonah is one of my favorite stories in all of Scripture. What gets me about Jonah is how completely reluctant he was. God called him to go to Nineveh and preach repentance, and Jonah ran in the exact opposite direction. He wanted nothing to do with the Ninevites. But God was not about to let him off the hook. And so, He arrange...

🌿 Tuesday, February 24, 2026 The Our Father The Prayer That Changes Everything Photo created by James Dacey, Jr. using Co-Pilot. Tuesday of the First Week of Lent • Lent 2026 • Year A • Beads of Joy Blog II ✝️ Today's Mass Readings First Reading: Isaiah 55:10-11 Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 34:4-5, 6-7, 16-17, 18-19 Gospel: Matthew 6:7-15 📖 The Gospel - Matthew 6:7-15 Jesus sits His disciples down and teaches them how to pray. Not with long speeches and impressive words, but simply, honestly, from the heart. And He gives them, and us, the most perfect prayer ever spoken: Our Father. 🙏 Gospel Reflection There is something so tender about this moment in Matthew 6. The disciples came to Jesus and essentially said, teach us to pray like you do. They had watched Him slip away to pray in the early morning hours, in the desert, on the mountaintop, and they wanted to be like Him. And Jesus didn't give them a theology lecture. He gave them a very meaningful, powerful prayer. Spec...

🌿 Monday, February 23, 2026 Love Your Neighbor - Starting Today Photo created by James Dacey, Jr. using Co-Pilot. Monday of the First Week of Lent • Lent 2026 • Year A • Beads of Joy Blog II ✝️ Today's Mass Readings First Reading: Leviticus 19:1-2, 11-18 Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 19:8, 9, 10, 15 Gospel: Matthew 25:31-46 📖 The Gospel — Matthew 25:31-46 Jesus pulls back the curtain on the last day and shows us something that should stop all of us in our tracks, because of the way we treat the hungry, the thirsty, a stranger, the sick, the prisoners, that is how we treated Him. Every single one of them. We must remember, “What you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me.” 🙏 Gospel Reflection This Gospel hits differently during Lent. Because we come into these forty days thinking about our own spiritual growth, our prayer, our fasting, our personal conversion. And then Jesus turns it completely outward and says, you want to find me? Go look at the person i...

🌿 Sunday, February 22, 2026 Forty Days in the Desert Photo created by James Dacey, Jr., using Co-Pilot. First Sunday of Lent • Year A • Lent 2026 • Year A • Beads of Joy Blog II ✝️ Today's Mass Readings First Reading: Genesis 2:7-9; 3:1-7 Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 51:3-4, 5-6, 12-13, 17 Second Reading: Romans 5:12-19 Gospel: Matthew 4:1-11 📖 The Gospel - Matthew 4:1-11 The Spirit leads Jesus into the desert, not away from God, but deeper into Him. For forty days He fasts, He prays, He is tempted. And every single time the enemy comes with a beautiful, reasonable sounding lie, Jesus answers with the Word of God. He doesn't argue. He doesn't negotiate. He just speaks the truth, and the devil leaves. 🙏 Gospel Reflection Here is something very powerful that I read in today’s gospel, it says the Spirit led Jesus into the desert. Not the devil. Not bad luck. Not circumstance. The Holy Spirit brought Him there. Which means the desert, the hard season, the ...

🌿 Saturday, February 21, 2026 Get Up and Follow Jesus - Leave Everything Photo created by James Dacey, Jr. using Co-Pilot. Saturday After Ash Wednesday • Memorial of St. Peter Damian • Lent 2026 • Year A • Beads of Joy Blog II ✝️ Today's Mass Readings First Reading: Isaiah 58:9b-14 Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 86:1-2, 3-4, 5-6 Gospel: Luke 5:27-32 📖 The Gospel - Luke 5:27-32 Jesus walks past a tax collector's booth, looks at a man named Levi sitting there, a man despised by his own community, a man everyone had written off, and says two words: Follow me. And Levi got up, left everything, and followed Him. Just like that. 🙏 Gospel Reflection I never get tired of this story. Never. Because Levi wasn't looking for Jesus. He wasn't at the synagogue praying. He wasn't in a posture of holy seeking. He was sitting at his tax collector's booth doing what he always did, and Jesus walked by and called him anyway. That is such a God move. He doesn't ...