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Wednesday of the
Fourth Week of Lent • Memorial of St. Cyril of Jerusalem • Lent 2026 • Year A •
Beads of Joy Blog II
✝️ Today's Mass Readings
First Reading: Isaiah 49:8-15
Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 145:8-9, 13-14, 17-18
Gospel: John 5:17-30
📖 The Gospel - John 5:17-30
Jesus responds to
criticism about healing on the Sabbath with a very profound statement. My
Father is at work until now, and I am at work. And then He opens a window into
the relationship between the Father and the Son that takes your breath away. The Son can do nothing on His own. He does only what He sees the Father doing.
Because the Father loves the Son and shows Him everything.
🙏 Gospel Reflection
My Father is at work
until now, and I am at work. That single sentence got Jesus in serious trouble
with the religious authorities, because they understood immediately that He was
claiming a relationship with God that no ordinary human being could claim. He
wasn't just saying God gave him a job to do. He was saying, " What I do, the
Father is doing. We work as one. When you see Me, you see Him.
Isaiah gives us a tenderly beautiful passage
in all of Scripture today. God speaks to His people who feel forgotten and says, " Can a mother forget the baby at her breast? Even if she could, I will not
forget you. I have carved you on the palms of my hands." That is not the
language of an employer to an employee. That is the language of a Father so in
love with His children that He has inscribed them on His very body.
The relationship Jesus describes between Himself and the Father is a model for the relationship we are invited into. Not just
servants following orders. Not just believers following rules. Children who
watch their Father working and learn to do the same. Sons and daughters who are
loved so completely that the Father shows them everything. That is the
invitation of Lent, to grow so close to the Father through prayer and sacrifice
and conversion that we start to see what He sees. And then to go do it.
💭 Reflection Question
What would it look
like for you to live today the way Jesus describes, doing only what you see God
the Father doing, saying only what you hear what God the Father is saying? How
would your day look different if you spent the first part of it simply watching
and listening?
📿 Today's Rosary - The Sorrowful Mysteries
Today's Focus
Mystery: The Carrying of the
Cross
Jesus carried the
cross, doing exactly what He described in today's Gospel, doing what He saw the
Father doing, going where the Father sent Him, even to Calvary. He did nothing
on His own. Every step was in perfect union with the Father. As you pray these
beads today, ask for that same union, to carry your own cross not alone but in
step with the Father who walks beside you.
🌹 Our Lady of Fatima - Today's Connection
Isaiah says God has
carved us on the palms of His hands, and then five chapters later in Isaiah 53, we see those hands nailed to the cross. The inscription becomes literal. Our
Lady of Fatima stood beneath those hands at Calvary and has been interceding
for them ever since. When she appeared at Fatima showing her Immaculate Heart,
she was reflecting the Father's heart that Isaiah describes today, the heart
that cannot forget, that has carved each soul into its very substance. You are
not forgotten. You are inscribed. Let that truth carry you through this
Wednesday of Lent.
🕊️ Closing Prayer
Father, You are at
work even now. Help me to stop running ahead of You today and instead watch
what You are doing. Teach me to do what I see You doing, to love what You love,
to go where You send me. I want to work the way Your Son worked, in perfect harmony
with Your Will for me in my life. 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
