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Friday of the Fourth
Week of Lent • Day of Abstinence • Lent 2026 • Year A • Beads of Joy Blog II
✝️ Today's Mass Readings
First Reading: Wisdom 2:1a, 12-22
Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 34:17-18, 19-20, 21, 23
Gospel: John 7:1-2, 10, 25-30
📖 The Gospel - John 7:1-2, 10, 25-30
Jesus travels through
Judea as the authorities are seeking to kill Him. He goes up to Jerusalem for
the feast and begins to teach. The crowd wonders, is this the one they want to
kill? And yet here He is, speaking openly. And Jesus says, " You know me, and you
know where I come from. But the one who sent me is true. And no one arrested
Him because His hour had not yet come.
🙏 Gospel Reflection
His hour had not yet
come. That phrase appears again and again in John's Gospel like a slow drumbeat
getting closer, His hour, His hour, not yet His hour. And when it finally
comes, it will be the most important hour in all of human history. But not yet.
Today He teaches, they plot, they reach out to arrest Him, and something holds
them back. The sovereign timing of God is so absolute that no human plan can
move it forward or backward by a single moment.
The Book of Wisdom is extraordinary in
today's first reading; it reads like a playbook written by evil itself, listing
every strategy used against the just person. Let us beset the just one. He is
obnoxious to us. He claims to have knowledge of God. Let us condemn him to a
shameful death. These words were written centuries before the crucifixion, and
they describe it exactly. Which tells us something profound: the cross was not
an accident or a tragedy. It was a plan, God's plan, hidden in plain sight in
the Scriptures for those with eyes to see.
As we move deeper into Lent and closer to
Holy Week, the shadow of the cross begins to fall across every reading. Jesus
moves carefully now. He teaches but watches. He reveals but withholds. He is
walking toward His hour with full awareness of what it will cost, and He goes
anyway. That is the love we are following into Holy Week. His eyes are wide open,
fully knowing what to expect. But he goes anyway.
💭 Reflection Question
As Holy Week
approaches, what does it mean to you personally that Jesus walked toward the
cross with His eyes fully open, that it was not confusion or tragedy but a
completely willing surrender? How does that change the way you receive what He
did?
📿 Today's Rosary - The Sorrowful Mysteries
Today's Focus
Mystery: The Death of Jesus on
the Cross
Today's Gospel shows
Jesus moving steadily toward His hour while forces gather against Him. As you
pray the fifth Sorrowful Mystery today, hold the full weight of what that hour
cost, and the full wonder that He chose it freely, completely, for love of you.
His hour came. And it changed everything.
🌹 Our Lady of Fatima - Today's Connection
Our Lady of Fatima
showed the children a vision of hell to help them understand what Jesus's
willing death on the cross was saving souls from. She wept at Fatima because
she had stood at the cross and watched that willing surrender and she knew its
price and its worth better than anyone. As you abstain today and draw closer to
Holy Week, let her help you enter the coming days with the gravity and
gratitude they deserve. His hour is almost here. Walk toward it with her.
🕊️ Closing Prayer
Lord Jesus, You
walked toward Your hour with Your eyes open. You saw the cross coming, and you
kept walking, for love of me. As Holy Week approaches, give me the grace to
receive that gift with the full weight of gratitude it deserves. Walk me
through these final days of Lent with my eyes open, too. Amen.
©2026 James Dacey, Jr., OFS
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