🌿 Tuesday, February 24, 2026
The Our Father
The Prayer That Changes Everything

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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. Specific, and very beautiful. Our Father, who art in Heaven.

Isaiah tells us today that God's word never returns to Him empty; it always accomplishes what it was sent to do. That is one of the most comforting verses in all of Scripture. When we pray those words, even when we're tired, even when we're distracted, even when our hearts feel dry as dust, those words are doing something. Our prayer is never wasted. Not one word of it.

I am drawn to the Our Father: look at the middle of it: forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Jesus even comes back to underline it after the prayer is finished. Which means every time we pray the Our Father, every decade of the Rosary, every morning, every grace before meals, we are asking God to treat us exactly the way we are treating the person we haven't forgiven yet. Let us always have a compassionate, forgiving heart.

That's the transformation this Lent is after, my friends. Not just the outward disciplines, but the deep interior work of releasing what we're holding against someone and trusting God with it. Forgiveness has the power to heal both the forgiver and the forgiven.

💭 Reflection Question

Is there someone you are praying the Our Father for this Lent, meaning, someone you say the words with, while quietly holding unforgiveness in your heart toward them? What would it take to mean every word of that prayer today?

📿 Today's Rosary - The Sorrowful Mysteries

Today's Focus Mystery: The Agony in the Garden

In Gethsemane, Jesus prayed the perfect surrender, not my will but Yours. That is the Our Father lived out to its ultimate depth. As you pray your Rosary today, let each Hail Mary be a practice in that same surrender, bringing your own will gently into alignment with the Father's.

🌹 Our Lady of Fatima - Today's Connection

Our Lady of Fatima gave the children a powerful addition to the Rosary, the Fatima Prayer, born out of her deep desire that souls pray with sincerity and urgency. She understood what Jesus is teaching today: that prayer is not about the quantity of words but the quality of the heart. As you pray the Our Father today at the beginning of each decade, pray it slowly. Mean every word. Let Our Lady pray it with you.

🕊️ Closing Prayer

Our Father, who art in Heaven, I mean every word today. Especially the hard ones. Forgive me as I forgive. Lead me not into temptation. Deliver me from evil. I trust You with all of it. Amen.

 

 

©2026 James Dacey, Jr., OFS

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Want to know more about My Spiritual Journey?
Read My Story: An Invitation To Read My Story - My Testimony

Location: Tonawanda, NY 14150, USA

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