 |
| Photo created by James Dacey, Jr using Co-Pilot. |
Friday of the Second
Week of Lent • Day of Abstinence • Lent 2026 • Year A • Beads of Joy Blog II
✝️ Today's Mass Readings
First Reading: Genesis 37:3-4, 12-13a, 17b-28a
Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 105:16-17, 18-19, 20-21
Gospel: Matthew 21:33-43, 45-46
📖 The Gospel - Matthew 21:33-43, 45-46
Jesus tells the
parable of the vineyard tenants, a landowner who plants everything, leases it
out, and sends servants to collect the fruit. The tenants beat one servant,
kill another, and stone a third. Finally, the owner sends his own son. They kill
him, too. And Jesus asks: What will the owner do? Then He quotes the Psalm, the
stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.
🙏 Gospel Reflection
Joseph and Jesus. Two
stories, centuries apart, played in the same key. Joseph, the beloved son,
wrapped in his father's coat of many colors, was thrown into a pit by his own
brothers and sold for pieces of silver. Jesus, the beloved Son, was thrown out of
the vineyard by the tenants and killed. The Church places these two stories
side by side so we cannot miss the connection. What looks like abandonment and
betrayal is actually the beginning of the most extraordinary reversal God has
ever orchestrated.
Here is the thing about the stone the
builders rejected: it doesn't just survive being rejected. It becomes the most
important piece of the whole structure. The cornerstone is what everything else
is aligned to. It bears the weight of the entire building. In both readings, the
very person they threw away became the person without whom nothing could stand.
How many times in our
own lives has God taken what felt like rejection, failure, or loss, and used it
as the cornerstone of something we couldn't have imagined? My car accident on
the Garden State Parkway in 1983 looked like pure disaster. It became the
foundation of a life poured out for God and Our Lady. The moments in life that
felt like being thrown in the pit, they have a way of becoming the very thing
God uses most.
That is the Lenten promise hiding inside
today's dark and difficult readings. The cross looked like rejection. It became
the cornerstone of all salvation. Your pain, your losses, your moments of being
overlooked or thrown aside, place them before the Lord today. He is the God who
takes rejected stones and builds cathedrals.
💭 Reflection Question
What is the 'rejected
stone' in your own story, the wound, the failure, the loss that you have
struggled to make sense of, and can you offer it to God today as a cornerstone
in His hands rather than a wound in yours?
📿 Today's Rosary - The Sorrowful Mysteries
Today's Focus
Mystery: The Crucifixion and
Death of Jesus
Today's parable ends
at the death of the son thrown from the vineyard. But we pray these beads,
knowing the rest of the story, that the rejected stone rose on the third day
and became Lord of all. As you pray the fifth Sorrowful Mystery today, hold
both the darkness of the cross and the promise of what it became.
🌹 Our Lady of Fatima - Today's Connection
Our Lady stood
beneath the cross when the cornerstone was being rejected by the world. She did
not run. She did not despair. She stood, in faith, in love, and in total
surrender, while everything looked like failure and loss. At Fatima, she showed
her Immaculate Heart as a heart that had absorbed every rejection, every wound,
and kept beating with love. When you feel like a rejected stone today, run to
that heart. She knows exactly what it feels like. And she knows exactly what
God can build from it.
🕊️ Closing Prayer
Lord, You take what
the world throws away and build it into something eternal. Take my rejected
stones today, my failures, my wounds, my losses, and place them where You need
them. I trust the Architect. I trust the plan. Jesus, I trust in You. Amen.
©2026 James Dacey, Jr., OFS
________________________________________________
Want to know more
about My Spiritual Journey?
Read My Story: An Invitation
To Read My Story - My Testimony
