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Monday of the Fourth
Week of Lent • Year A • Beads of Joy Blog II
✝️ Today's Mass Readings
First Reading: 2 Kings 5:1-15ab
Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 42:2-3; 43:3-4
Gospel: Luke 4:24-30
📖 The Gospel - Luke 4:24-30
Jesus stands in the
synagogue at Nazareth and says the thing that many don’t like: God has always
reached beyond the comfortable and the familiar to heal the outsider, the
foreigner, the unexpected one. And the crowd's reaction tells us everything
about how hard that truth is to receive.
🙏 Gospel Reflection
Naaman's story is a
favorite of mine in Scripture because it is so completely human. Here is a
great man who is a decorated military commander. Powerful, respected, used to
getting things done his way, but he has leprosy. And a little slave girl, a
captive, someone with no power whatsoever, tells him there is a prophet in
Israel who can heal him. And eventually, after all the circumstances and letters
from kings and chariots and silver and gold, he ends up standing at the door of
Elisha's house, and Elisha doesn't even come out to meet him. He just sends a
message. Go wash seven times in the Jordan.
And Naaman is furious. This is not how it was
supposed to go. He expected drama, ceremony, something worthy of his
importance. Instead, he gets a muddy river and a simple instruction. And it
almost cost him his healing. His own servants had to talk him down, if the
prophet had told you to do something great and difficult, would you not have
done it? How much more this simple thing?
That is one of the quietly devastating
questions in all of Scripture. We resist the simple obedience. We want the
dramatic gesture, the grand sacrifice, the impressive spiritual achievement.
But God keeps sending us to the Jordan. Pray your Rosary today. Go to
confession often. Read the Gospel daily. Be kind to the difficult person in
your life. Simple and unglamorous, but it is utterly life-changing.
Jesus makes the same point in the Gospel today;
God's grace has always spilled over the edges of what people expected and
landed on the ones nobody was watching. The widow of Zarephath. Naaman the
Syrian. The outsiders, the foreigners, the unexpected recipients of God's
extravagant mercy. Lent is the season to stop being furious about how God
chooses to work and just go wash in the Jordan.
💭 Reflection Question
Where in your Lenten
journey are you still waiting for God to do something grand and dramatic, when
He might simply be asking you to go wash in the Jordan of a very ordinary,
unglamorous act of obedience?
📿 Today's Rosary - The Sorrowful Mysteries
Today's Focus
Mystery: The Agony in the
Garden
In Gethsemane, Jesus
performed the most unglamorous act of obedience in all of history, simply
saying yes to the Father's will in the dark, with no audience, no fanfare, no
recognition. It's at the Jordan. That is where healing begins. As you pray
these beads today, ask for the grace of simple, unglamorous surrender.
🌹 Our Lady of Fatima - Today's Connection
Our Lady's request at
Fatima was strikingly simple: pray the Rosary daily, make small sacrifices,
wear the Brown Scapular, and go to confession. Nothing grand. Nothing
spectacular. Just the Jordan of daily faithful practice. Like Naaman's servants
wisely observed, if she had asked something great and difficult, wouldn't we do
it? How much more these simple things. Let Our Lady's gentle simplicity speak
to you today. Go wash. Seven times if needed.
🕊️ Closing Prayer
Lord, I stop waiting
for the dramatic gesture today. Whatever Jordan You are asking me to step into,
however simple, however unglamorous, I go. I trust that Your healing is in the
ordinary act of obedience. Here I am, Lord. Send me to the river to be healed.
Amen.
©2026 James Dacey, Jr., OFS
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