Saturday in the First Week of Lent, February 28, 2026

Matthew 5, 43-48

Jesus said to his disciples: “You have heard that it was said, You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have? Do not the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your brothers and sisters only, what is unusual about that? Do not the pagans do the same? So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

To close out the first week of Lent, the Holy Church presents as the Gospel Reading for today’s Mass this passage from the Lord’s Sermon on the Mount.  In it, the Lord Jesus teaches about the love with which we ought to love even our enemies.  As we carefully read this passage we should recollect how our Lord loved his enemies and prayed for those who persecuted him.

“You have heard that it was said, You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.”  The Lord seems to be quoting an oral admonition by the Pharisees, for it is not in the Scriptures.  In that case, he is challenging them and their pretended authority on “the seat of Moses” as well as taking on a natural human response: that of hating one’s enemies.  The Lord also sums up the attitude in an intriguing way, equating one’s neighbors with those to be loved, thus making one’s enemies outsiders, non-neighbors.  These would seem to be, especially from a Pharisaic point of view, “tax collectors and sinners”, as well as Herod and his supporters.  In this way, the Pharisees could control who was to be loved and who was to be hated: those whom the Pharisees counted as enemies.  However, the Lord says to the crowd: “But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you”, meaning that an enemy could potentially live nearby and be anyone at all.  And if we love our enemies, we love them as we love our friends.  How can we do what seems so unnatural?  We do it as we see our Father doing it: “For he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.”  

But how do we do this?  The Lord says, “Pray for those who persecute you.”  By praying for both our enemies and on those who love us, we also “cause rain to fall” on both as the Father does.  And praying for a person — for their health and total conversion to Christ — is the greatest act we can perform for a person.  We may do some other things for people who love us that we might not do for those who do not, but this comes out of prudence.  Prayer, though, comes as the one great action that love compels from us.  This does not necessarily make it easy to do, either, but we look at how our Lord forgave even those who were crucifying him and we do it, for his sake.  

“For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have?”  Here, the Lord appeals to the people’s desire for salvation.  He is saying, If you cannot love your enemies by praying for your persecutors because it is right to do so, and if you struggle to pray for them for my sake, then at least pray for them so that you may attain everlasting life.  The Lord also shows that a distinctive mark of the Christian is in praying for those who hate and persecute us.

“So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  If we were to take this verse out of context and study it, we would despair because the Father is infinite and omnipotent.  He is perfect in every possible way.  There are no limits to his presence, his power, or his knowledge.  No human can be perfect like this.  But the verse has to be read in context.  The perfection the Lord Jesus speaks of is in terms of love, and in this we can be perfect.  That is, we can love to the extent that we have the ability to love, just as the Father loves without limits.  We humans love as much as we can and God loves as much as he can.  The “amount” of love differs greatly between what God can do and what we can, but that is because we are mortals and are necessarily proscribed by limitations.  And at the same time we can love perfectly.  By his grace, we can love our neighbors (as defined by Christ and not by the Pharisees) as ourselves and we can love God with all our mind and soul.  

We should not overlook the fact that the Lord specifically speaks of those who persecute us.  At the time he said this, he was still largely unhindered by the Pharisees and Sanhedrin.  He had certainly faced some criticism and opposition from them, but not what we would call “persecution”.  This might indicate that he is speaking here primarily to his Apostles, whom he had already warned about coming persecutions; or that the Lord originally spoke these words nearer to the time of his Passion and Death, or even after his Resurrection, and that St. Matthew transposed them to the beginning of his Gospel.  At the same time, we should recognize that, as St. Thomas Aquinas points out, most of the events in the first three Gospels take place in the last year or even the last few months of the Lord’s life on earth, and so the Sermon on the Mount, in which we find them, took place towards the end of his ministry, not at its beginning, as it may appear to us.

Only with grace we can become perfect, so let us pray for this grace and pray for those who hate and persecute us and our Church.

Personal Note: My vision is maintaining itself. My next retina specialist appointment comes next Thursday. My week of duty is almost over. I have made several trips to the hospital over the last few days, starting last Sunday night, all for Last Rites. Thank you for your prayers!

Friday in the First Week of Lent, February 27, 2026

Matthew 5, 20-26

Jesus said to his disciples: “I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter into the Kingdom of heaven. You have heard that it was said to your ancestors, You shall not kill; and whoever kills will be liable to judgment. But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment, and whoever says to his brother, Raqa, will be answerable to the Sanhedrin, and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ will be liable to fiery Gehenna. Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar, and there recall that your brother has anything against you, leave your gift there at the altar, go first and be reconciled with your brother, and then come and offer your gift. Settle with your opponent quickly while on the way to court. Otherwise your opponent will hand you over to the judge, and the judge will hand you over to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison. Amen, I say to you, you will not be released until you have paid the last penny.”

The Holy Church concludes the Gospel Readings for the first weekdays of Lent with this exhortation to righteousness.  Thus, in an orderly way, the Lord teaches us of the necessity for our salvation to give alms and to fast as a preparation for the equally necessary work of praying, which he commands us to do.  In the present Reading, the Lord warns us to surpass the righteousness even of the Pharisees.

Now, the Pharisees had begun as a group which set itself apart from the other Jews in order to practice the strictest possible righteousness.  To this end, they adopted and then tried to enforce on others the purity laws which the Temple priests had to follow.  In this they went way beyond what the Law actually called for, and they wound up obsessing over washings and rituals to the detriment of their worship of God through good works, as proclaimed of the just man in Psalm 112, 9 for instance: “He has distributed freely, he has given to the poor; his righteousness endures for ever.”  The Lord, in saying, “Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter into the Kingdom of heaven”, announces that the Pharisaic project has failed.  It failed because it centered itself not on God but on what St. Paul called “works” — mindlessly following instructions without looking up to the One who gave them.  The Lord does not condemn the works themselves, for he said to the Pharisees, “Woe to you . . . hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith; these you ought to have done, without neglecting the others.”  We might ask how they could have lost sight of the God whom they seemed to serve.  St. Paul has the answer: “Israel . . . pursued the righteousness which is based on the Law did not succeed in fulfilling that Law. Why? Because they did not pursue it through faith, but as if it were based on works” (Romans 9, 31-32).  The Pharisees put all their trust for their salvation in their exact performance of the commandments of the Law — and of their own customs, rather than in faith in God.  But the Lord taught that works of charity done out of love for God — through faith — is what makes a person righteous.  It is another way in which we are taught that if we rely on ourselves we shall fail, but if we have faith in Almighty God, we shall gain life.

“You shall not kill; and whoever kills will be liable to judgment. But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment.”  The Lord teaches this as an example of what he means.  It is not obedience of the law regarding murder that justifies, for every society forbids this; but it is obeying the prohibition against rage in the heart that makes a person righteous.  It is not the outward act but the inward movement of the heart that manifests in the exterior act (or, in this case, rejection of acting) that justifies.  Another way to look at this is that an adult may be baptized by the pope on Easter Sunday in St. Peter’s Basilica, but if that adult does not renounced sin in his heart, grace does not transform him into an adopted child of God.  The person merely simulates receiving the sacrament.  The heart must conform with the will of God in order to be made righteous.  We see this clearly when the Lord describes a person going to offer sacrifice: “Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar.”  (Incidentally, the inclusion by St. Matthew of this quote about the altar reveals to us that he wrote his Gospel before the destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D. and certainly before the Jewish rebellion that began in 66 A.D.). 

“Amen, I say to you, you will not be released until you have paid the last penny.”  The Lord here refers to a state in the afterlife in which “the last penny” may be paid.  We call this state “Purgatory”.  The Lord makes no enormous revelation here for traces of the doctrine already existed in popular Jewish books of the day, such as The Book of Enoch.

And so we give alms and fast so that we might pray and our prayers be heard, the chief of which ought to be that we grow in faith and in the good works that spring from faith for the greater glory of Almighty God.

Thursday in the First Week of Lent, February 26, 2026

Matthew 7, 7-12

Jesus said to his disciples: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. Which one of you would hand his son a stone when he asked for a loaf of bread, or a snake when he asked for a fish? If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask him.  Do to others whatever you would have them do to you. This is the law and the prophets.”

The Church presents a second Gospel Reading featuring the Lord’s teachings on prayer as though to reemphasize its necessity, as yesterday’s Gospel Reading was also about prayer.  Considering the Gospel Readings as a series during this first week of Lent, it is as though the Church were presenting almsgiving and fasting as the obligatory means by which we prepared for prayer.  

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”  The Lord Jesus does not say, “Let you ask”, or “If you ask”.  The Greek text shows him using the imperative mood.  He is making a command.  Because the imperative is in the present tense, the Lord is also commanding us to pray continually, not now and then.  This asking and seeking, then, calls for perseverance on our part.  Someone may point out that God knows what we need and so we do not have to ask for it.  He might cite Matthew 6, 8: “Your Father knows what is needful for you before you ask him.”  The Lord Jesus does not say this to discourage his followers from praying but rather to give them confidence that their Father in heaven will give them what they need.  At the same time, he commands them to ask for it.  The act of asking, especially when engaged in over time, conditions us to be good and grateful receivers.  It is an acknowledgment of God’s power and supremacy and of our insufficiency and weakness.  This in turn leads us to live more fully the life to which the Lord Jesus calls us, and will make us, through our virtuous actions, part of God’s answers to the prayers of our neighbors.  The Lord commands us to pray because he knows us well and he knows that our pride often kicks at us in resistance to calling upon God.  It says to us: You are intelligent and capable enough to take care of your own needs.  You do not need to pray.  Or, maybe pray, but only when you have run out of every other option.  Our pride tells us: You are self-sufficient, you are autonomous.  Every man is an island.  You need to help yourself and not depend on anyone else.  This kind of thinking always leads to disaster, and it always has, beginning in Eden.

We are given a command, but we are also issued a promise on which we can rely: “It will be opened to you.”  That is, it will be opened to us when we are best prepared for it to be opened to us, and so the necessity to give alms and to fast.  With the help of God’s grace, these prepare us spiritually even more than working out with our bodies prepares us physically.  “Which one of you would hand his son a stone when he asked for a loaf of bread, or a snake when he asked for a fish?”  And in the case that we fast, give alms, and persevere in prayer for something that would ultimately harm us, the Lord will answer our prayer with a great good that will help us.

“Do to others whatever you would have them do to you. This is the law and the prophets.”  This verse may seem not to fit the Gospel Reading to this point, but we are reminded by the Lord’s words here of the great importance of virtuous living if we are to gain the objects for which we pray.  The Lord God is not obliged to give us anything at all, but he does so out of his wonderful mercy.  But the wicked person who expects God to give him what he wants is a fool.  What good he gains in this life comes only as an indirect consequence of the good another does for another person, so that Jesus can say that the rain falls on the just and the unjust.  

Let us obey the Lord’s command to pray continuously, thereby gaining what we need to please him and at the same time learning the language of heaven.

Personal Note: I am feeling a little better overall although I still struggle in the mornings. Next Thursday I go back to the retina specialists to have them check the progress in my left eye, but today I will be able to take my day off. I try to sleep in on my day off, and to spend a few hours at the public library, translating. During this period of diminished eyesight translation takes more time and greater effort, but I find great joy in sitting at the feet of teachers like St. Albert the Great and learning about Jesus from them.

Wednesday in the First Week of Lent, February 25, 2026

Luke 11, 29-32

While still more people gathered in the crowd, Jesus said to them, “This generation is an evil generation; it seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it, except the sign of Jonah. Just as Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites, so will the Son of Man be to this generation. At the judgment the queen of the south will rise with the men of this generation and she will condemn them, because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and there is something greater than Solomon here. At the judgment the men of Nineveh will arise with this generation and condemn it, because at the preaching of Jonah they repented, and there is something greater than Jonah here.”

The guesthouse where I am spending the week is quite large and lies on a wide property.  The chapel is quite beautiful, with an altar actually large enough to offer Mass on.  So many modern altars, like the one at my current assignment, are too small and oddly shaped.  The house does have internet, but it does not extend up to the bedrooms.  I’ll be able to post reflections as usual.  We got in late last night when our connecting flight was delayed a few times, and so I am only posting now.

Jesus seems to speak of the “sign of Jonah” more than once during the course of his public life.  On another occasion when he does, he points to the three days and nights during which Jonah resided within a great fish, eventually to be spewed onto the land.  Then, the Lord meant the sign to refer to his time among the dead before his Resurrection.  Here, he indicates Jonah as a sign to the Ninivites.  What did the Ninivites see?  What caused them to convert?  When Jonah came among them, he was a foreigner speaking a foreign language.  He came as an ordinary man, not as one who stood out in any way, except perhaps by his clothing.  As one man, though, he took upon himself the enormous task of going through the whole city of Nineveh, which took days to cross on foot, crying out to the people to repent, or the city would be destroyed.  Perhaps God enabled Jonah to speak Assyrian for this purpose.  At any rate, the people, and most importantly, the king, understood the message and took it to heart.  Indeed, they acted so quickly that it was almost as though they were predisposed to look for a prophet who would speak to them in this way.  Now, Nineveh was the capital of a great empire st the time.  It was girded by thick walls and filled with commerce of all kinds.  The people worshipped many gods and the king was thought to be semi-divine himself.  It was the Rome of its time. (The city of Rome was founded at about this time).  

Jesus compares himself, for the sake of the Jews, with Jonah.  Jesus, too, came amongst the people to whom he was sent as a foreigner — from heaven — but he appeared as one of them, even speaking their language.  He, too, preached repentance, but whereas the Ninivites repented st the word of a stranger who did not worship their gods, the Jews resisted repenting at the word of one of their own who did worship their God and claimed to speak for him.  And while a message of repentance would have sounded strange to the people of Nineveh, the Jews had a long history of prophets calling them back to their covenant with God.  Also, Jonah performed no miracles to underscore and confirm his message.  Jesus had performed many miracles, even raising the dead as signs that God had ratified his.  And yet the Jews resisted, rejected, and ultimately killed the Lord Jesus.  The Lord’s invoking Jonah is a striking indictment of the Jews of his time.  

The message for us is to be as the Ninivites, who acted as one would have expected the Jews to have done.  With the word of God ringing in our ears at the very least on Sunday at Mass, with the knowledge of our religion which most of us have learned from childhood, with truth about God fully revealed to us in Jesus Christ, we have far less excuse than the ancient Jews to resist the Lord’s urgent message for us to repent.  

Personal Note: My vision continues to maintain itself. My health in general is fairly good. The tumor causes problems, especially in the morning when the nausea and vertigo are strong. I am very grateful for your prayers!

Tuesday in the First Week of Lent, February 24, 2026

Matthew 6, 7-15

Jesus said to his disciples: “In praying, do not babble like the pagans, who think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them. Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.  This is how you are to pray:  Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.  If you forgive men their transgressions, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you do not forgive men, neither will your Father forgive your transgressions.”

Jesus says, “In praying, do not babble.”  The Greek word translated here as “babble” actually means to stammer or stutter, that is, to speak unintelligibly or without meaning.  Since the gods to whom the pagans prayed did not exist, this was a fitting way for the pagans to speak.  But in praying to the true and living God, one must take care to speak with at least as much dignity and respect as for speaking to an earthly monarch.  

Having addressed the question of how to pray, the Lord Jesus next tells us what to pray.  The prayer he teaches is the one we call The Lord’s Prayer, or, the Our Father.  It is a short, concise, very direct prayer.  Not a word in it is wasted or could be taken out of it.  No word inserted in it could improve it.  With this prayer, the believer asks for all that is necessary to live a life pleasing to God, and for protection against persecution and the devil. 

We ought to understand this prayer given to us by our Lord better than we do so that we can pray it with greater understanding and devotion.  The English translation we use today goes back before the year 1540 and many of the words and some of the grammar has changed since then.  Here is a translation from the Latin and Greek that is hopefully clearer:

“Our Father, who is in heaven,

may your name be sanctified:

may you kingdom come,

may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread,

and forgive us our sins

as we forgive those who sin against us,

and do not put us to the test

but deliver us from the evil one.”

A couple of notes: That this is meant primarily as a public prayer is clear from the use of “our” Father.  The main request is for the second coming of Christ for judgment.  The petitions under this one are for help in preparing for it.  “Daily bread” is in the version in Luke’s Gospel, not in Matthew’s.  In Matthew’s, Christ directs us to ask for “super-substantial bread” (the Greek word is invented for the occasion).  We might understand this as “super-abundant” bread, both in terms of quantity and quality — i.e. “the Bread of the angels”.  The “test” here is that about which Jesus spoke in Luke 22, 31: “Satan has asked to sift you like wheat.”  This is persecution, which separates the faithful from the unfaithful.  “Deliver us from the evil one.”  By strengthening us against temptation.

Personal Note: My left eye is still holding up, for which I am very grateful. Thank you for your continued prayers!

Monday in the First Week of Lent, February 23, 2026

Matthew 25, 31-46

Jesus said to his disciples: “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit upon his glorious throne, and all the nations will be assembled before him. And he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will place the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. Then the king will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.’ Then the righteous will answer him and say, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? When did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? When did we see you ill or in prison, and visit you?’ And the king will say to them in reply, ‘Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.’ Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the Devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, a stranger and you gave me no welcome, naked and you gave me no clothing, ill and in prison, and you did not care for me.’ Then they will answer and say, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or ill or in prison, and not minister to your needs?’ He will answer them, ‘Amen, I say to you, what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me.’ And these will go off to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”

It is useful to compare the readings selected in the Lectionary for a given day with the readings found in the traditional Latin Missal because we can gain insight from the choices as to what is emphasized in the Mass for that day or feast.  Here, we see the Gospel Reading for the traditional Mass for the Monday after the First Sunday in Lent and that from the current Lectionary are the same, namely, Matthew 25, 31-46.  This helps us to see what the Church wants us to understand: the necessity of almsgiving in the Christian life,  in this section of the Gospel of St. Matthew, the Lord has entered Jerusalem for the last time and he is teaching the people about both the coming destruction of Jerusalem and the end of the world, with the judgment to follow.  While the Prophets had spoken of a judgment at the end and the apocryphal Jewish works popular at the time so so as well, only Jesus provides details as to what it would entail, and what would make up the criteria by which God would judge the human race.  Jesus tells the people that this is not about the Gentiles being condemned and the children of Abraham being glorified, but about an individual’s life: the practice of  commandments anyone could carry out, for, as St. James would summarize, “James 1:27 (D-R): “Religion pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to visit the fatherless and widows in their tribulation and to keep one’s self unspotted from this world.”  

The Lord carefully enumerates the behavior that would be rewarded: feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, greeting the stranger, clothing the naked , visiting prisoners.  He himself did this when he fed those hungry for his teaching and even those physically hungry for being with him for days at a time; when he gave drink to the thirsty, as he showed the woman at the well: “The water that I will give him shall become in him a fountain of water, springing up into life everlasting” (John 4, 14); when he welcomed tax collectors, prostitutes, and sinners and ate with them, and healed even the Gentiles; when he clothed with the robe of salvation the naked thief who hung on the cross beside him on Golgotha and confessed his belief in him; and when he visited the prisoners in limbo after he died on the Cross and led the righteous among them into heaven.  And, no less, the Lord looks upon us and sees that we are hungry, thirsty, strangers, naked, and locked in prisons of our own making, and he gives his alms to us in his great mercy.

We in turn ought to look upon our family members, relatives, friends, neighbors, and colleagues as those in need of alms and helping them.  We give them alms first of all through prayer, for whatever else any of us needs, we all stand in need of grace.  Then we seek through prudence to understand the true needs a person has and doing something about it.  In this way we continue the work of the Lord Jesus, or, he continues his work through us.

Personal Note: My left eye has stopped hurting from the injection and is improving gradually. Meanwhile I’m having trouble with the tumor, which saps my stamina and causes nausea. It’s been a bit of a struggle today. I appreciate your prayers!

The First Sunday of Lent, February 22, 2026

Matthew 4, 1–11

At that time Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. He fasted for forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was hungry. The tempter approached and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become loaves of bread.” He said in reply, “It is written: One does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.”  Then the devil took him to the holy city, and made him stand on the parapet of the temple, and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down. For it is written: He will command his angels concerning you and with their hands they will support you, lest you dash your foot against a stone.” Jesus answered him, “Again it is written, You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test.” Then the devil took him up to a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in their magnificence, and he said to him, “All these I shall give to you, if you will prostrate yourself and worship me.” At this, Jesus said to him, “Get away, Satan! It is written: The Lord, your God, shall you worship and him alone shall you serve.”  Then the devil left him and, behold, angels came and ministered to him.

The Evangelist describes the Lord’s temptations by the devil, which took place on the Eve of his ministry to mankind for us to learn about the Lord and his power over the devil but also to teach us about temptations.

We learn, for instance, that we can be tempted anywhere at any time: for Adam and Eve were tempted in the lush Garden of Eden and the Lord in the rocky wilderness of Judea.  We learn also that the devil is very persistent.  He tempts our Lord not once but three times, and probably over a period of time.  These temptations were not over in a few minutes.  We are also tempted in every condition in which we can be: strong, as in Adam and Eve in Eden; and weak and famished as the Lord in the wilderness.  We are tempted primarily regarding three basic things: pride, presumption, and the desire for indulgence.  You and I may be sons and daughters of God through adoption, but we cannot consider ourselves entitled to do whatever we wish because of it; God will protect us from evil, but not from the consequences we face when we seek it out; and the world and its peoples do not belong to us: they belong to Almighty God.  Something else we learn from this Gospel Reading about temptation is how to suffer it: we do not argue with the devil but simply refuse to do his bidding.  The Lord rebukes him with Scripture so as to preserve the righteousness of the Holy Scriptures against the devil’s misuse of them, but we are to then do as he did: walk away from his machinations.  We are to say: “Get away, Satan!”  And then we should move ourselves too.  Again, when the devil leaves us, the angels minister to us.  They bind up the wounds we may suffer in overcoming evil and obtain for us graces to protect us against further temptations.

We should also note that the devil does this at the very onset of the Lord’s ministry.  We are thereby warned that whenever we have committed to understate some holy work, whether to volunteer in charitable work, to receive a new sacrament, or to follow one’s vocation to the Priesthood or the religious life, the devil will fight against us.  He will use persuasion, threats, and even arrange for some kind of outside trouble to keep us from doing the will of God in this way.  We should not be dismayed by this when it happens, but rather encouraged.  Despite himself, the devil confirms that we are doing the right thing.

Personal note: Thanks again for your prayers! There is gradual but steady improvement. Connected with the injections is risk of infection (which would result in blindness) so please continue praying. Reading and writing is still somewhat difficult and exhausting but I’m doing the best I can. Fortunately we live in an era in which machines can read to us and rake dictation. I’m still learning how to make use of this technology.