Beads of Joy Blog II (2025 - 2026)

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

June 17 Our Lady of Victories Weekday in Ordinary Time Today's Gospel: Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18 Photo created by Google AI Image Creator. Jesus spoke of all three at once: almsgiving, prayer, and fasting. The three pillars of a devout Jewish life. The things every serious believer was expected to do. And Jesus didn't question whether they should be done. He questioned why they were being done and for whom. When you give, don't announce it with trumpets. When you pray, don't stand on the street corner performing for an audience. When you fast, don't walk around looking miserable so everyone knows you're suffering. Wash your face. Comb your hair. Go about your day. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you, only  to your Father, the one who was already in the room before you. The moment a holy act gets an audience, it changes; it only becomes a performance. And a performance, however beautiful, however moving, however sincerely intended, is not ...

  Modesty: A Virtue of Many Faces Written by: James Dacey, Jr. OFS  ©2026 There’s a moment many Catholic men know, even if they don’t say it out loud. You’re at Mass, trying to keep your eyes and your heart fixed on the Lord, and someone walks past you dressed in a way that makes that more difficult than it should be, in the one place on earth where it shouldn’t happen at all. Let's focus our energy on how to solve this. It’s about recognizing that being in a holy place calls for something different than the mall, the gym, or the beach. Back in 1928, the Vicar of Rome, writing on behalf of Pope Pius XI, gave Catholic women a simple measure for modest dress: necklines no lower than two fingers below the hollow of the throat, sleeves to the elbow, hemlines past the knee. Not because the body is shameful, the Church has never taught that, but because the body is sacred, and sacred things call for reverence. The Catechism says it plainly: modesty “protects the intimate cen...