May 24th through May 30th 2026
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(May 24, 2026: Pentecost)
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“Each of us hears them speaking in our own tongue about the marvels that God has accomplished.”
Despite the fact that they were speaking to many people from many languages and many cultures, the apostles were understood by all of their listeners as they proclaimed the marvels that God had accomplished.
How was this possible?
Enflamed by the power of the Holy Spirit, the apostles were speaking the language of the heart. They were speaking with enthusiasm. They were speaking with gratitude. They were speaking with praise and thanksgiving. They were speaking from the core. They were speaking from the soul.
In short, they were speaking the universal language - the language of the heart.
We are most human - we are most divine - when we speak the language of the heart, when we speak the language of love, when we speak and listen from the soul, when we are grounded in the Word-Made-Flesh.
As we know all too well from our own experience, there is more to communication than meets the eye, or for that matter, even the tongue or the ear. Communicating is often a lot easier said than done. We frequently misunderstand one another. We frequently presume to know what others are thinking or feeling. We frequently use the same words for which there are different meanings. We frequently have different ways of saying the same thing. We frequently hear, but we frequently fail to listen. We are always talking, but talking is not the same as communicating or speaking from one heart to another.
St. Francis de Sales tells us that the Holy Spirit comes to inflame the hearts of believers. When we speak and listen from hearts enflamed with joy, truth and gratitude, conflict gives way to understanding, confusion gives way to clarity, estrangement gives way to intimacy, hurt gives way to healing, frustration gives way to forgiveness, violence gives way to peace and sin gives way to salvation.
Francis de Sales offers this observation:
“Speak always of God as God, that is, reverently and devoutly, not with ostentation or affectation, but with a spirit of meekness, charity, and humility. Distill as much as you can of the delicious honey of devotion and of divine things imperceptibly into the ears of now one person and then of another. Pray to God in your soul that it may please God to make this holy dew sink deep into the hearts of those who hear you. It is wonderful how powerfully a sweet and amiable proposal of good things attracts to hearts of hearers.”
Today, how might we need to speak, to listen and to practice the language of love?
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(May 25, 2026: Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church)
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“When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple there whom he loved, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son.” Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his home.”
“Pope Francis very recently declared that a new obligatory memorial is to be celebrated in honor of our Blessed Mother under the title: Mary, Mother of the Church (Mater Ecclesiae). Fittingly, this memorial will take place on the Monday following Pentecost Sunday. The decree was signed on February 11th (the Memorial of Our Lady of Lourdes) and released on March 3rd, 2018, by the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments.”
“Mary was present at the beginning of the Church: when Jesus entrusted the beloved disciple to Her at the foot of the Cross (cf John 19:25-27) and in the Cenacle, when the Holy Spirit descended on the Apostles, and all those gathered with them, at Pentecost (Acts 1:14).”
“This title of Our Lady, has its origins in early Church Fathers: St. Ambrose in the 4th century, whose Mariology Fr. Hugo Rahner rediscovered and brought to light, St. Augustine, ‘[who said] that Mary is the mother of the members of Christ, because with charity she cooperated in the rebirth of the faithful into the Church, while [Pope St. Leo the Great said] that the birth of the Head is also the birth of the body, thus indicating that Mary is at once Mother of Christ, the Son of God, and mother of the members of his Mystical Body, which is the Church’ [from Pope Francis’ decree].”
“So, what’s the purpose of this decree promulgating this obligatory memorial? According to the Vatican News, Cardinal Robert Sarah said, ‘the Holy Father wishes to promote this devotion in order to “encourage the growth of the maternal sense of the Church in the pastors, religious and faithful, as well as a growth of genuine Marian piety’.” (https://catholicexchange.com/mary-mother-church)
Speaking of “genuine Marian Piety”, Francis de Sales has this to say about “well-ordered devotion” to the Blessed Virgin Mary in his Treatise on the Love of God:
“A man who invites only one of his friends to visit him in no way offends the others. However, if he invites all of them, and then gives the chief places to those of lower rank while putting more honorable guests at the very bottom places, does he not offend both groups? He offends one group because he degrades them against reason and the other group because he makes fools of them! So, too, when we perform an action with a single reasonable motive, no matter how slight it might be, there is no offense against reason. However, a man who wants to have many motives must rank them according to their quality; otherwise, he commits a sin, for disorder is a sin, just as sin is disorder. A man who desires to please God and our Lady does what is very good, but one who would like to please our Lady as much as God or more than God would commit an intolerable breach of order. To each end we must give its proper rank, and consequently supreme rank to the end of pleasing God.” (Book XI, Chapter 13, p. 236)
There is absolutely no question that the Blessed Virgin Mary holds a uniquely special place in the Catholic Church, in the world and in the universe itself! At the end of the day, however, all glory and honor belong to God.
And God alone.
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(May 26, 2023: Philip Neri, Priest)
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“Be holy yourselves in every aspect of your conduct…”
When it comes to pursuing a holy life, Francis de Sales says that our efforts need to be “universal” in nature. Our attempts at growing in devotion (his term for holiness) must affect every aspect of our lives and not just some of them. In the beginning of his Introduction to the Devout life, Francis observed:
“One person sets great value on fasting and believes himself to be leading a very devout life, so long as he fasts rigorously, yet all the while his heart is full of bitterness. Another person will not moisten their lips with wine, perhaps not even with water, in their great abstinence, but does not hesitate to steep those same lips in their neighbor’s blood, through slander and detraction. Still another individual reckons themself as devout because they repeat many prayers daily, although at the same time they do not refrain from all manner of angry, irritating, conceited or insulting comments among family and neighbors. Another person freely opens their purse in almsgiving but closes their heart to all gentle and forgiving feelings towards those who are opposed to them. Yet another one is ready enough to forgive their enemies but will never pay their rightful debts to others unless forced to do so. All these people may be conventionally considered ‘holy’, but in truth they are in no sense actually devout at all…”
However we attempt to pursue a devout or holy life, may our strategies help promote ongoing conversion not merely in some of who we are, but the universe inside of us: body, soul, spirit, mind, heart, attitude and action!
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(May 27, 2026: Wednesday, Eight Week in Ordinary Time)
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“Whoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant…”
In his reflection upon this selection from the Gospel of Mark, William Barclay makes the following observation:
“The basic trouble in the human situation is that people wish to do as little as possible and to get as much as possible. It is only when they are filled with the desire to put more into life more than they take out of it. That life for themselves and for others will be happy and prosperous. Rudyard Kipling has a poem called Mary’s Son which is advice on the spirit in which a person should work:
‘If you stop to find out what your wages will be,
And how they will clothe and feed you,
Willie, my son, don’t you go to the Sea,
For the Sea will never need you.’
‘If you ask for the reason of every command,
And argue with people about you,
Willie, my son, don’t you go on the Land,
For the Land will do better without you.’
‘If you stop to consider the work that you’ve done,
And to boast what your labor is worth, dear,
Angels may come for you, Willie my son,
But you’ll never be wanted on earth dear!’
“The world needs more people whose ideal is service; that is to say, it needs people who have realized what sound sense Jesus spoke.”
And the sound sense that Jesus continues to speak today.
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(May 28, 2026: Thursday, Eight Week in Ordinary Time)
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“Once you were no people, but now you are God’s people…”
In his Introduction to the Devout Life, Francis de Sales makes this observation even more personal in his Meditation on Our Creation:
“Consider that a certain number of years ago you were not yet in the world and that your present being was truly nothing. My soul, where were you at that time? The world had already existed for a ong tme but of us there was as yet nothing.”
“God has drawn you out of that nothingness to make you who you are now and has done so solely out of his own goodness and without need of you.”
“Consider the nature God has given you. It is thr highest in this visible world: it is capable of eternal life and of being perfectly united to his Divine Majesty.” (IDL, Part I, Chapter 9, pp. 52-53)
You used be nobody. Now you are somebody, but someone even more! You are a unique person created in the image and likeness of God! How might you express your gratitude for the gift of that life today?
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(May 29, 2026: Friday, Eighth Week in Ordinary Time)
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“Therefore, I tell you, all that you ask for in prayer, believe that you will receive it and it shall be yours.”
“If a man prays to God and perceives that he is praying, he is not perfectly attentive to his prayer. He diverts his attention from the God to whom he prays in order to think of the prayer by which he prays…A man in fervent prayer does not know whether he prays or not, for he does not think of the prayer he makes but of God to whom he makes it.” (TLG, Book VII, Chapter 6, p. 32)
Today, here’s a question for you. When you “ask the Father for anything” in Jesus’ name, upon what do you focus - that for which you ask or the person from whom you ask it?
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(June 30, 2026: Saturday, Eight Week in Ordinary Time)
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“Build yourselves up in your most holy faith; pray in the Holy Spirit…”
In his commentary on this selection from the Letter of Jude, William Barclay observes:
“A good person builds up his or her life on the foundation of faith. That is to say, the life of the Christians founded, not on something manufactured by oneself but on something received from another. There is a chain in the transmission of faith. The faith that comes from Jesus to the apostles; it came from the apostles to the church; and it comes from the church to us. There is something tremendous here. It means that the faith we hold is not merely someone’s personal opinion; it is a revelation which came from Jesus Christ and is preserved and transmitted within the church, always under the care and guidance of the Holy Spirit, from generation to generation.
How might we build up that faith of – and in – Jesus Christ for ourselves and others just today?
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