Beads of Joy Blog II (2025 - 2026)

Trust: Even when... Jesus Sleeps in the Storm A Reflection on Mark 4:35-41 The disciples had witnessed Jesus heal the sick, cast out demons, and teach with an authority that left crowds astonished. Yet when the wind began to howl, and the waves crashed over their boat, they forgot everything they had seen. Fear erased their memory of who was sleeping in the stern. This is the paradox of our faith journey: we can know Jesus intimately through prayer, receive Him in the Eucharist, and still panic when life's storms arrive. The disciples' fear reveals something profound about human nature. We often trust Jesus with our souls but struggle to trust Him with the circumstances that are in our lives. Their question, "Do you not care that we are perishing?" echoes in our own hearts during trials. Yet Jesus was never unaware of the storm. He was present in the boat, and His peace in the midst of chaos was itself a lesson they needed to learn. Today, we celebrate St. John Bo...

  Building Your Legacy Beyond the Grave Photo Created by James Dacey Jr using Co-Pilot What Are You Building That Will Last Beyond The Grave? Let me ask you something, and I want you to really sit with this: If everything you own disappeared tomorrow, your house, your car, your bank account, every possession you've accumulated, what would remain of you? Not what people would remember about what you had. What would remain of who you were? I've been thinking about this a lot lately. Maybe it's because I'm getting older. Maybe it's because I've watched too many people spend their whole lives chasing things that turned to dust the moment they took their last breath. Or maybe it's because I've walked that road myself, building, accumulating, striving for things that I thought would make me happy, make me secure, make me somebody, only to realize that none of it was coming with me when this life ended. Here's the truth we all know but rarely want t...

The Light That Multiplies A Reflection on Mark 4:21-25 Jesus teaches us something extraordinary in today's Gospel: light is meant to shine, and what we have is meant to grow. When He asks if anyone brings a lamp only to hide it under a basket, He's revealing a profound truth about our faith. The light of Christ that we receive through Baptism, through the Eucharist, through prayer, isn't a private treasure to keep locked away in our hearts. It's a living flame meant to illuminate the darkness around us. Every time we pray, every act of kindness, every moment we choose truth over compromise, these are ways the lamp is placed on the lampstand. The question isn't whether we have received light from Jesus, but whether we're allowing that light to shine where others can see it. Here's where the mystery deepens and connects to something beautiful: Jesus tells us that nothing is hidden except to be made visible, and whatever measure we give will be the measure we...

The Soil of Our Heart A Reflection on Mark 4:1-20 Today we celebrate St. Thomas Aquinas, the brilliant Dominican friar who spent his life exploring the deepest mysteries of God with both his mind and his heart. How fitting that on his feast day, we encounter Jesus teaching about seeds and soil, because Thomas understood something profound: our faith is meant to grow. In this parable, Jesus describes four types of soil: the hard path, the rocky ground, the thorn-infested earth, and the rich, fertile soil. Each represents a different condition of the human heart. The seed, God's Word, is always the same. The difference lies entirely in how we receive it. Thomas Aquinas received God's truth like that good soil, allowing divine wisdom to take root so deeply that his writings continue to nourish the Church centuries later. The beauty of the Rosary connects perfectly to this parable. When we pray the mysteries, whether Joyful, Luminous, Sorrowful, or Glorious, we are doing exactly ...

A Family of Faith A Reflection on Mark 3:31-35 In today's gospel, we encounter a moment that might initially seem puzzling or even harsh. Jesus's mother and relatives are standing outside, asking for him, yet he responds by gesturing to those gathered around him and declaring, "Here are my mother and my brothers. Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother." This isn't a rejection of Mary or his family, far from it. Rather, Jesus is revealing something profound about the nature of discipleship and the universal call to holiness. He's showing us that God's family extends beyond bloodlines, that we're all invited into an intimate relationship with him through obedience to the Father's will. Mary herself, the perfect disciple, exemplifies this truth better than anyone, for she became the Mother of God precisely because she said yes to doing God's will. The beauty of the Rosary becomes even clearer when we consider this passa...

When Love Looks Like Madness A Reflection on Mark 3:22-30 The scribes who came down from Jerusalem had a problem. They witnessed Jesus casting out demons, healing the sick, and liberating people from spiritual bondage, yet they couldn't accept what was right before their eyes. Instead of recognizing God's power at work, they made an astonishing claim: Jesus was working through the prince of demons. This wasn't just a misunderstanding; it was a deliberate choice to call good evil and light darkness. Jesus responds with perfect logic, a kingdom divided against itself cannot stand, so why would Satan cast out Satan? But beneath this reasoning lies something even more profound: the scribes had become so hardened in their hearts that they could look directly at divine love in action and see only evil. This is what makes blasphemy against the Holy Spirit unforgivable, not because God refuses to forgive, but because a heart that calls goodness evil, has closed itself off from re...

Walking Out of Darkness A Reflection on the 3 rd Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year A The prophet Isaiah speaks to a people crushed by despair, living in a land of "gloom" and "deep darkness." But then comes his stunning promise: "The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light." When Matthew tells us about Jesus beginning his ministry in Galilee, he's showing us that this ancient promise is now happening before our eyes. Jesus doesn't start his work in the religious center of Jerusalem, but in Galilee of the Gentiles, a place many considered spiritually backwards and unimportant. This tells us something beautiful about God's way of working: He enters into our darkness right where we are, not where we think we should be. The light doesn't wait for us to find it; it comes searching for us in our confusion, our divisions, and our deepest struggles. When Jesus calls Simon, Andrew, James, and John, they leave everything immediately t...

The Wisdom of Divine Love A Reflection on Mark 3:20-21 Jesus returns home, and immediately the crowds press in with such urgency that He and His disciples cannot even pause to eat. His own family, hearing of this and the growing controversy surrounding His ministry, comes to take charge of Him. They say He is "out of his mind." Consider the profound sorrow in this moment. The very people who knew Jesus from childhood, who witnessed His growth in wisdom and grace, now question His judgment. They observe the crowds, the intensity, the way He pours Himself out completely for others, and they believe something has gone terribly wrong. Yet what appears as excess to human eyes is actually the perfect expression of divine love. Jesus reveals to us that when we surrender ourselves entirely to God's will, when we allow His purposes to direct our every moment, others may struggle to understand. They may believe we have lost our sense of proportion, that our devotion has become un...

We Are Called By Name A Reflection on Mark 3:13-19 When Jesus went up the mountain to call his twelve apostles, he wasn't holding job interviews or looking for the most qualified candidates. He called them by name, fishermen, a tax collector, zealots, ordinary men with different backgrounds, different temperaments, different weaknesses. This is the beautiful mystery of God's call: it's personal. Jesus didn't send out a general announcement saying, "whoever wants to follow me, come along." No, he "summoned those whom he wanted," Mark tells us. Each man heard his own name spoken by the voice of God himself. This is how Jesus still works today. He knows your name. He knows your story. And he's calling you, specifically you, to follow him and to be sent out into the world. What's striking is that Jesus called these twelve "to be with him" before he sent them out to preach and drive out demons. Mission comes second; relationship come...

The Hidden Healer Revealed A Reflection on Mark 3:7-12 Today's Gospel shows us Jesus withdrawing to the sea, yet the crowds press in on Him from every direction. People travel from Galilee, Judea, Jerusalem, Idumea, beyond the Jordan, and even from Tyre and Sidon, a breathtaking geography that reveals something profound. Jesus doesn't just attract the religiously observant or the culturally similar. He draws everyone: Jews and Gentiles, the ritually pure and the outcast, those who follow the Law and those who've never heard it. What magnetizes them isn't His teaching in this moment, but His healing touch. The sick push forward desperately, and even the unclean spirits, those forces of darkness that recognize divine authority, fall down and proclaim the truth: "You are the Son of God." Yet Jesus orders them to silence. He will reveal His identity in His own time, in His own way, through the ultimate act of love on the Cross. On this Day of Prayer for the Lega...

Jesus Heals on the Sabbath A Reflection on Mark 3:1-6 The synagogue encounter reveals something profound about Jesus's heart: he cannot bear to see suffering continue when he has the power to heal. The Pharisees watch him closely, not with hope but with suspicion, waiting to accuse him of breaking the Sabbath law. Yet Jesus doesn't shrink back or calculate the political cost. Instead, he asks a piercing question: "Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?" Their silence speaks volumes. Jesus looks at them with grief, their hardness of heart, and how they've twisted God's law into a tool of oppression rather than mercy. Then he heals the man's withered hand. The Pharisees immediately plot his death, revealing the tragic irony: they condemn Jesus for healing on the Sabbath while they themselves plot murder on that same holy day. Today’s Gospel shows us that love cannot wait for a more convenient time. The Sabbath was ma...

The Lord of the Sabbath and Every Day A Reflection on Mark 2:23-28 In today's Gospel, the Pharisees confront Jesus because his disciples are picking grain on the Sabbath. To us, this might seem like a trivial complaint, but to the Pharisees, it represented a serious violation of God's law. Jesus responds by reminding them of David, who ate the sacred bread reserved for priests when he and his men were hungry. Jesus isn't dismissing God's law; he's revealing its true purpose. The Sabbath was given as a gift to humanity, not as a burden. God created rest for our benefit, to restore us and draw us closer to him. When Jesus declares that "the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath," he's showing us that he has authority over all religious practices because he understands their deepest meaning. He knows that God desires mercy and relationship more than rigid rule-following. And if Jesus is truly Lord of the Sabbath, then he is Lord of every single day, Mo...

New Wine, New Wineskins:  A Call to Transformation A Reflection on Mark 2:18-22 (MLK Day) In today's Gospel, Jesus speaks of new wine and new wineskins, teaching us that the Good News He brings cannot simply be patched onto our old ways of living. The religious leaders questioned why Jesus's disciples didn't fast like everyone else, and Jesus responded with images that reveal something profound: God's grace is not meant to be contained by our rigid expectations. Just as new wine needs fresh wineskins to expand and ferment properly, the life Jesus offers requires hearts that are open, flexible, and ready to be transformed. This doesn't mean abandoning what is good and true, Jesus came to fulfill the Law, not destroy it. Rather, it means allowing God's love to reshape us from within, making us new creations capable of holding the abundant life He pours into us. On this day when we honor Martin Luther King Jr., we see a powerful example of this Gospel principle...