Parable of the Lost Coin

Posted on November 6, 2026 by Friar Musings

Luke 15 is one of the most unique chapters in the Gospels in that it consists of three memorable parables: the Lost Sheep, the Lost Coin, and the Prodigal Son. Many commentators locate these three parables within a larger section of Luke that asks the question “who will participate in the reign of God?” (13:10-17:10). The section includes the foundational formation of the disciples – but often via the encounter with the Pharisees in which the assumptions of right relationship with God are put to the question. The Pharisees and others in the Jewish religious leadership assume folks such as tax collectors and sinners are outside the “faithful remnant” that awaits the return of the Messiah. At issue is the question of fellowship in the community of God’s people. Each encounter in this larger section seems to be an opportunity to form the disciples (and anyone who would listen) in the understanding of the reign of God. So often in this section the characters within the pericopes and parables are those who should attract respect and honor according to the conventional wisdom, yet within the parables are casualties of a reversal of values and misfortunes: “For behold, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last” (13:30). Our gospel for today proclaims:

⁸ “Or what woman having ten coins and losing one would not light a lamp and sweep the house, searching carefully until she finds it? ⁹ And when she does find it, she calls together her friends and neighbors and says to them, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found the coin that I lost.’ ¹⁰ In just the same way, I tell you, there will be rejoicing among the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

What woman who has lost one of her ten drachmas, Greek silver coins, will expend so much energy, turning her house upside down in search of this one coin in ten? Perhaps it was part of her dowry and thus had added sentimental value. In a barter society perhaps it represents that fund for a “rainy day.” There is a part of the question that begs an answer: “no one would,” but where the shepherd lost 1% of the flock, the woman lost 10%. (In the next parable the father will lose 50% of his sons…. perhaps a stretch in thought, but…)

There are some scholars who posit that Luke, as he often does, parallels the shepherd (male) story with another in which the same dynamic is operative through a female protagonist. Other commentators see a subtle difference in that in the first, the sheep wander away on their own, whereas in the second the coin is lost by the carelessness of the owner. In either case the shepherd/woman represents the church and its poor shepherding by not ensuring the Gospel is being proclaimed, the lost being found, and repentance occurring.

When the woman finds the coin, her joy is like the joy in heaven over one repentant sinner. It needs to be shared. It is too great for one person. She and the shepherd invite their friends and neighbors for the thanksgiving party. What about the other nine silver pieces and the ninety-nine sheep — are they not important, too? Surely, but the joy of the kingdom breaks out of the ordinary categories of reason and good business. What was given up as lost has been found. It is like a new life, a resurrection, and must be celebrated.

Image credit: “Searching by Lamplight” | generated by Dalle-3 with prompt “1200×675 px graphic of the Luke 15 parable of the Lost Coin in the style of Vermeer” | downloaded Nov 3 2026

Cooperating with Grace

Posted on November 4, 2026 by Friar Musings

In today’s first reading from the Letter to the Philippines, we hear: “...work out your salvation with fear and trembling. For God is the one who, for his good purpose, works in you both to desire and to work.” (2:12-13). Work out our salvation? To be clear this verse does not mean that a person can (or has to) earn their salvation, or can attain justification on their own. Salvation is a free, unearned gift of grace received through faith and baptism. But then what is St. Paul telling us in these verses?

In Catholic understanding, these verses are understood as a synergy, a cooperative relationship between divine grace and human free will in the life of the Christian. “Working out” refers to the process of justification / sanctification which is understood as the ongoing, active process of letting God’s internal grace transform your actual life, character, and daily obedience. Just as a seed must grow or a physical gift must be utilized to bear fruit, the grace God plants in the soul requires active human response and cooperation. “For God is the one who, for his good purpose, works in you both to desire and to work”. Our desire for holiness, perseverance in obedience, and capacity for good come first from God’s grace. What about human freedom? God does not override human freedom. A person must freely choose to accept, cooperate with, and act upon that grace.

It sounds like “God is on our side” so what’s with “fear and trembling”? The phrase is understood not as a state of fear and paralyzing terror over losing God’s love, but as overwhelming and reverential awe in the awareness of God’s gifts of life, love and grace. It is a disposition of deep humility and a sober awareness of our human weakness. “fear and trembling” reflects what is at stake: human pride as our weakness that can lead to rejecting or squandering God’s grace. We must be ever aware that divine help is always there for us and never fear or hesitate to ask for divine grace. It is why a life of prayer and participation in the Eucharist are so important.

It is this synergetic relationship that leads Catholics to reject a doctrine of eternal security (“once saved, always saved”). Salvation is an ongoing relationship and a dynamic reality involving human freedom. A person can theoretically turn away from God through an unrepentant life, a life of apathy or even outright rejection of God’s grace. We are called to persevere to the end in faith, love, and obedience with vigilant humility. Secure in the knowledge that God’s grace always moves first. We only need to respond.

So, cooperate with your salvation for God is the one who saves you, if you’ll let Him. He won’t save you without you.

Image credit: FrG with Canva | CC-BY-NC

Other Interests

Posted on November 3, 2026 by Friar Musings

From time to time, my dad would remind me that “every person you meet is your better in that you can learn something from them.” Good and sage advice. I wonder if he knew he was echoing Ralph Waldo Emerson who wrote: “In my walks, every man I meet is my superior in some way, and in that I learn from him.” Then again, I wonder if Emerson was influenced by today’s first reading from the Letter to the Philippians from which we heard the notable and famous passage: Christ Jesus, Who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and, found human in appearance, he humbled himself…” (Phil 2:6-8a)

I wish the reading had started a few verses before where St. Paul writes: “humbly regard others as more important than yourselves, each looking out not for his own interests, but also everyone for those of others.” (Phil 2:3) and I think that starting from that posture, the opening words of today’s first reading become easier to understand.

Jesus wasn’t looking out for his own interests in becoming human. He was looking out for all of our interests when he humbled himself, becoming one of us. Kneeling before us in service, seen most vividly at the Last Supper as he washed the disciples’ feet and asked, “Do you know what I have done for you?”

Think about it. Better yet, answer the question aloud to yourself! This is the importance He placed on each one of us. He became one of us in order to invite each one of us to that great and final banquet of our Lord described in the Gospel.

Seems like those invited had other interests: a new field, new oxen, a new wife. All good things, but not the best. John Cardinal Newman remarked that if the good keeps you from the best, then the good becomes the enemy of the best.

Need an example? Make a list of all the good things that kept you from prayer. Your favorite team’s Monday night football ran long, overtime, thrilling game, but way past your bedtime… “It’s late, I’m tired… I’ll pray tomorrow.” A long day of shuttling children to school, club practice, late night laundry for tomorrow, shopping online for the weekend’s birthday celebration.. “I’ll pray tomorrow.” Fill in the blank with your own story.

What will we say to God? Sorry, I was busy…I was too tired…Monday night football was more important. Sounds kinda’ horrible when you say it outloud: “I had other interests.”

Today’ readings form an intersection where interests, human desire, and gratitude meet – and sometimes collide. An intersection when we need to ask who am I serving? To whom am I attending? Is this thing that occupies my interests serving God and His kingdom? I am guessing that Monday Night Football is not on the list but serving your family’s interest is on the list. Either way, prayer can be short, sweet and to the point. “Lord let your servant go in peace…”

Today’s readings give insight into what it means to walk humbly in this life: to not look out for our own interest and be attentive to the invitation God sends our way every day to join Him in his mission to serve others and their interests. I am sure there is more, but it’s enough for a start.

How far

Posted on October 21, 2026 by Friar Musings

It has been my experience that people just beginning serious study of Sacred Scriptures follow a pattern: the Gospels/Acts, selected Old Testament books, and then the letters of St. Paul. One of the challenges in reading and understanding Paul is that you are often only listening to half of the conversation. Often Paul is responding to some news or correspondence he has received from the particular Christian community, e.g. Corinth and Galatia. This week’s first readings are mostly taken from the Letter to the Ephesians, a letter that lacks any personal greetings and seems, as some scholars offer, a “circular letter” meant to be received, copied and passed on to the next community. One is left to wonder if Paul is writing about a problem or whether the majestic chapters of Ephesians are meant to be an overarching message that emphasizes the unity in the church of Christ that has come about for both Jews and Gentiles within God’s household.

In the first reading today, Paul talks about “the mystery was made known to me by revelation.” He tells us the great mystery: the Gentiles would share in God’s promises. But wait a minute. Didn’t Isaiah already say that the nations would come to worship God? Didn’t God promise Abraham that all the families of the earth would be blessed through him? So what exactly was the mystery?

The surprise wasn’t simply that the Gentiles were invited but that they were no longer outsiders. “The Gentiles are coheirs [synklēronoma], members of the same Body [syssōma], and co-partners [symmetocha] in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.” The underlying Greek and its near alliteration drives the point home. They didn’t have to become someone else before they could belong to Christ. The middle word, syssōma, is especially striking. It is an unusual Greek formation, emphasizing membership in the very same body, not simply association between two communities. The emphasis isn’t merely that Gentiles may receive blessings from Israel’s God. They become equal participants in God’s promise through Christ.

Prophetic expectation was that the nations would come to Zion and worship Israel’s God. But the mystery revealed in Christ is that Jews and Gentiles are reconciled in Christ and together constitute one new humanity, sharing the same access to the Father through the Spirit. The prophets saw the nations coming to God. But they did not see the full shape of the Church as the one Body of Christ, constituted through his death and resurrection, in which Gentiles share fully in the promise without becoming Jews. All this is no longer some future event, but one that has already happened. The Church itself has become the visible expression of what God has accomplished. “So that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the principalities and authorities in the heavens.”

If God’s great mystery is that people once separated have become one in Christ, then the Church cannot proclaim that mystery while casually accepting divisions within its own life. We cannot celebrate being one Body while treating other members as though they don’t belong. And the challenge isn’t simply to be welcoming in a general sense. It is to recognize that the person whom I might regard as an outsider may already be someone Christ has made my brother or sister.

For generations, the prophets proclaimed that the nations would come to God. But in Christ, God did something more extraordinary than anyone had fully imagined. He didn’t simply invite the nations to come and visit. He made them family.

It is not that God had never hinted at what He intended to do, but that no one had yet seen just how far God’s promise would go.

And you have to wonder if God is done. How far might He go?

Image credit: “Christ at the home of Martha and Mary” | Charles de La Fosse | Private collection in a castle in Lorraine (France); Galerie Didier Chéreau, Paris | PD-US

Stranger’s No Longer

Posted on October 20, 2026 by Friar Musings

When visiting someone’s home, we are often invited in, offered a place to sit, a refreshment, and when the purpose of the visit is complete, we are thanked and escorted to the door. There is something wonderfully different in being welcomed into someone’s home; truly welcomed. The kind of welcome where someone says, “Make yourself at home.” A place where you know everyone’s “usual seats” and you might even be comfortable totally slouching in your place.

In a way, that is St. Paul’s message to the gentiles in today’s first reading. He reminds them that there was a time when they were outsiders. They were not part of the family of the covenant, not “at home” in the household of God. But then Christ came. And through his death and resurrection, Christ broke down the walls that had separated people from one another and brought them together into one family. “So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the holy ones and members of the household of God.”

Perhaps we take for granted Paul’s message, especially we cradle Catholics. We’ve always been “fellow citizens.” We regularly attend Mass in the “house of God,” our local parish church. So we might not consider that we don’t simply attend God’s house. We belong to God’s household.

A visitor might be welcomed for an afternoon. A member of the household belongs there even when things are messy, life is difficult, and even when everyone isn’t getting along. That’s what Christ has made possible. But today’s Gospel tells us something even more remarkable about the household to which we belong.

The gospel story seems unremarkable: servants waiting for their master to return from a wedding celebration. Everything is ready for his arrival so that when he knocks, they can immediately open the door. Nothing surprising or out of place there. I mean, afterall, that’s their job. But this is no ordinary household.

When the master arrives and finds his servants ready, what does he do? “Amen, I say to you, he will gird himself, have them recline at table, and proceed to wait on them.” The master becomes the servant, invites them to sit, whereupon he serves them. Clearly, that’s not how households ordinarily worked in Jesus’ day – which is precisely the point: God’s household is unlike any other household.

We belong to a household where the Master doesn’t simply demand service. He gives himself in service. Think of the scene at the Last Supper when At the Last Supper, he kneels before his disciples and washes their feet. The question He asks of them then still echoes for us today: “Do you know what I have done for you? (John 13:7) It is a question we should remember and attempt to answer each and every day.

It is a question that should echo in our being as we come forward to receive the Eucharist, because we come as members of God’s household. We bring our prayers, our gratitude, our worries, our struggles, and our desire to serve God faithfully. We arrive at the Lord’s table, and the Master serves us his servants. He gives us his own Body and Blood. The One we have come to worship becomes the One who feeds us.

Usually we hear Jesus’ command to be vigilant, to keep our lamps burning, and be at the ready for our master’s return as a warning: don’t be unprepared. But today we are called to hear the words with an additional nuance. We are not waiting for a stranger.

We are waiting for the One who has already welcomed us into his household, already given his life for us. The one who already knows us, loves us and welcomes us to his table. This changes the character of our waiting. We don’t keep our lamps burning simply because we’re afraid of being caught unprepared. We keep them burning because we are waiting for the One we love.

And while we wait, we live as members of his household, to welcome others as Christ has welcomed us. To serve as we have been served and to overcome the divisions that keep us from being one household.

In a way, I think today’s homily should come with a “spoiler alert.” So often we are encouraged and admonished to “prepare a place for Jesus”, “be ready to serve Him when he comes,” and spend our lives preparing to welcome Christ.

Spoiler alert: when He comes, we will discover that Christ has been preparing to welcome us.

Image credit: created using Dalle-3 based on the text of this post’s use of Jesus washing the disciple’s feet. Downloaded 10-19-2026

Even More

Posted on October 14, 2026 by Friar Musings

“Woe to you Pharisees!” Today’s gospel gets right to it! In our 21st century experience, we understand the phrase as one of condemnation, or at least as a warning of the coming condemnation. The phrase calls to mind the evangelical preacher admonishing the backsliding, church-skipping, no-good, no-count, reprobates who are sweating like sinners in church. Before pressing on, I would like to let you know that the expression “woe to you” appears in Greek as “ouai soi.” It arises from a Semitic expression used in the Old Testament and it took another route to the English language which captures the original sense. The expression is the Yiddish “oy vey” – a Jewish way to react when you find out how much your son’s root canal will cost. It is primarily a lament or expression of disappointment.

Is Jesus condemning the Pharisees? Possibly. He could also be expressing disappointment in how little these leaders of the faith actually understand about the God of the Covenant. Here is the cause of Jesus’ disappointment: they block the way of others to God, “locking the kingdom of God.” They are supposed to be leading people to an encounter with God. Spiritual leaders are meant to be the one who open the doors to show to the way. A reminder that our words, actions, and attitudes can either open the way to Christ for others or discourage them. Think of gossip or harsh judgment – just two of the ways love and mercy can be lost.

The scribes and Pharisees are called hypocrites because they don’t practice what they preach. Or consider yesterday’s post: “For freedom Christ set us free; so stand firm and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery.” As the post ended: “Paul begins with freedom and ends with love because, for the Christian, love is what freedom is for. Christ did not set us free so that we would have nothing more to do. He set us free so that what we do might finally be done in love.”

The leaders obsess over the externals forgetting what truly matters: faith, mercy, justice, love. As they obsess on the minor things they are missing God’s presence, the source of all holiness that makes things holy. The Gospel invites us to examine our hearts and ask: “Am I a door-opener or a gatekeeper?” “Do I focus on appearances or on God’s presence? Do my words and actions lead others toward Christ—or away from Him? Do our lives reflect the mercy and truth of Christ, so that by our example others may not find the Kingdom closed, but wide open?”

The Pharisees and scribes had so much and they did nothing…Oy vey!

We have even more..

Image credit: FrG in Canva, CC-0

The Path to Freedom

Posted on October 13, 2026 by Friar Musings

The first reading today begins: “For freedom Christ set us free; so stand firm and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery.” The larger context of his message to the Galatians is about reports he is receiving that some among them are advocating an adherence to the Law of Moses as the basis of salvation – hence his reference to slavishly following the precepts of the Law. To be clear, Paul holds that the Law is God-given and good, and he is certainly not arguing that Christians have been liberated from its moral obligations. However, Paul will go on to describe a new foundation for moral agency: the Christian is no longer trying to earn a relationship with God through obedience but is called to exercise freedom because that relationship has already been given in Christ. The key word being “exercise.” Christ has set the believer free, but that does not mean that nothing is now required of the believer. With freedom comes responsibility.

Our belief in Christ and the grace received does not eliminate human agency. Grace makes a new kind of agency possible and this is central to the life of all Christians. Paul is clear that Christian life is not passive and because Christ has accomplished salvation our actions are not irrelevant. The question is not whether our choices and actions matter, but rather, what makes them genuinely Christian.

The first reading concludes: “For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.” (Gal 5:6) The Greek is pistis di’ agapēs energoumenē meaning faith becoming effective, active or operative through love. The believer’s choices become the place where faith takes visible form. Those choices become the basis of our moral life. It is no longer “what must I do so that God will accept me” but now the basis becomes: “Because God has already loved and accepted me in Christ, how shall I now live?” The latter understands obedience as the response of a person who has been loved.

Just beyond our reading Paul admonishes the Galatians to “use this freedom as an opportunity… [to] serve one another through love.” (Gal 5:13) In other words, Christ frees us from slavery so that we may freely become servants of one another. Or put another way, this is how we are to exercise our moral agency, which is neither autonomous self-sufficiency nor passive dependence on God. It is cooperation with the Holy Spirit which transforms our capacity to decide well. We still must choose whether to forgive, whether to tell the truth, whether to be generous, whether to respond to another person’s suffering. But now those decisions can arise from a heart being transformed by grace.

Returning to Paul’s admonitions about the Law of Moses, think of this way: the Law can tell us what love requires; grace and the Spirit makes us capable of loving. This is more demanding than a secular understanding of freedom, the ability to make one’s own choices without interference. Freedom in Christ asks that we not only choose, but choose the good, especially that which is good for the other.

Christ frees us not merely from external constraints but from the powers within us that prevent us from loving as we ought. And the Spirit gradually forms a person capable of acting from love rather than fear, resentment, compulsion or self-interest. That is moral agency in its deepest Christian sense.

In the everyday choices we make when we choose whether to forgive or hold on to resentment, to speak kind words instead of gossip, to be generous and in all the small choices we make over the course of a single day. Paul asks us to consider something deeper than the choices themselves – be clear about what is moving us to make them. He admonishes us to work toward a position in life where our faith is working through love.

Paul begins with freedom and ends with love because, for the Christian, love is what freedom is for. Christ did not set us free so that we would have nothing more to do. He set us free so that what we do might finally be done in love.

Image Credit: generated by WordPress AI using the text of the post and the prompt path to the light of freedom.

The Heart as Dwelling

Posted on October 9, 2026 by Friar Musings

In today’s gospel we witness an encounter between Jesus and the people after Jesus had driven a demon out of an afflicted person. At the end of the dialogue, Jesus offers a parable: “When an unclean spirit goes out of someone, it roams through arid regions searching for rest but, finding none, it says, ‘I shall return to my home from which I came.’ But upon returning, it finds it swept clean and put in order.”

This sounds like a good thing, yes? The house has been cleaned up. Everything is orderly. What’s wrong with the house? Nothing, apparently. It’s clean, swept and orderly, but it’s also empty.

In the context of the gospel story, Jesus uses the man from whom the demon has been cast out as the source for the house in the parable. We might say that the person has reformed and cast out the bad things, the unholy things. But will that be enough?

As David Henry Thoreau commented: “Nature abhors a vacuum, and if I can only walk with sufficient carelessness I am sure to be filled.”

Apparently have been spiritually careless, the house/the person has not filled up with good, holy and true things. There exists a spiritual vacuum and when noticed by the demon, it “…brings back seven other spirits more wicked than itself who move in and dwell there, and the last condition of that man is worse than the first.” It seems that getting rid of what was there was not enough. Something needed to take its place. Nature abhors a vacuum. Apparently, according to Jesus, so does the human heart.

Moral reform is not the same as Christian conversion. Christianity cannot simply consist of removing things: I stopped doing this. I gave up that habit. I don’t hang out with those people anymore. “I’ve cleaned up life and set it in order.” All of that may be necessary. But Jesus seems to be saying that an emptied life, even a beautifully cleaned and orderly life, is still vulnerable. The Gospel isn’t simply about what leaves us when Christ enters our lives. It is about what fills us afterward.

Jesus isn’t offering generic advice about self-improvement. The context of the gospel message is the arrival of God’s Kingdom in Jesus: something stronger has arrived. The arrival of God’s Kingdom is far more than getting rid of the evil spirit. It extends to letting the Strong One in.

Yes, you’ve been baptized, confirmed, reared in the Faith, and have continued into your adult years. Those can be profound beginnings. But the house has to become a home. And that takes a lifetime to fill our lives with Christ. The Word of God is one essential means. The Eucharist another. Prayer, charity, sacramental life, Christian community: all are ways in which our lives become increasingly inhabited by Christ. Elsewhere, St. Paul gives us wonderful language for this: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.” (Col 3:16) Not visit, or drop by, but dwell.

So… hopefully you have taken care of what should not be in your life, but should be there and up to now is missing? Maybe I’ve removed anger but have I cultivated mercy? I’ve stopped gossiping but have I learned to speak words that build others up? I’ve stopped spending time with those who would lead me astray but have I developed friendships with people who draw me toward God? I have cleared out lots of things, but what have I put in their place?

Every day something is forming us, filling our minds, and shaping our desires. Something is teaching us what to love. The question isn’t whether we will be filled. The question is what we are allowing to fill us.

Jesus didn’t come merely to clean up the house.

He came to make it His home in which He dwells.

Image credit: WordPress AI based on the text of the posts | downloaded 10-9-2026 | AI-described as: A vintage Greek folk-art illustration shows a pale stone house with an open wooden doorway, pottery, and a dark figure reaching from an arched window. A group of shadowy spirits gathers among olive trees and rocks to the right, creating an eerie contrast with the warmly lit house. The image is framed by an ornate blue, gold, and rust-colored border, with radiating lines behind the Greek title Η ΟΙΚΙΑ ΚΑΙ ΤΑ ΠΝΕΥΜΑΤΑ, meaning “The House and the Spirits.”

Receiving the Spirit

Posted on October 8, 2026 by Friar Musings

In today’s readings both St. Paul and Jesus have something to say about receiving the Holy Spirit. I wondered what the Early Church Fathers might have to say about receiving the Spirit. Some use receiving the Spirit in context of a different point they are trying to make. But others have deep insight about receiving the Spirit as a key divine event in the human person. They reflect on God entering, inhabiting, sanctifying, transforming, empowering and even beginning within us the life we will possess fully, not just now, but also in eternity.

In his Catechetical Lectures, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, is addressing adults preparing for Baptism. It is not a theological treatment on pneumatology but rather a preparation for people who expected sacramentally to receive the Holy Spirit at their initiation. Cyril strives to help the people realize that receiving the Spirit means receiving Someone. In Lectures 16 and 17, he notes that the Spirit isn’t merely an influence or divine power. Rather, the Spirit acts personally. The Spirit speaks, calls, sends, teaches and sanctifies. It is an interpersonal relation.

Cyril explicitly cites our Gospel: “How much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him.” But what interests Cyril is what happens when this gift is received. Speaking about Christ breathing the Spirit upon the Apostles in John 20 and then Pentecost, Cyril sees degrees of capacity for receiving God’s gift: the Apostles genuinely receive the Spirit, and yet Pentecost brings a still greater outpouring. He paints a picture as the human person like a vessel being enlarged to receive more.

So often receiving the Spirit is depicted as something that happens once, but Cyril makes the point that receiving the Spirit is something we are continually becoming capable of receiving even more deeply. We received the Spirit sacramentally in Baptism and Confirmation. But that doesn’t mean God has exhausted what the Spirit can do within us. Cyril’s image allows the prayer of Luke 11:13 to remain meaningful for baptized Christians: “Father, give me your Holy Spirit.” Not because the Spirit is absent, but because we are not yet completely open to everything the Spirit desires to do in us.

St Irenaeus, his writings, echoes Cyril to a degree when he offers that the Spirit accustoms us to God. Irenaeus describes Christians as already receiving a portion of the Spirit with a pledge of more to come. He describes this wonderfully when he writes that: “little by little [we become] accustomed to receive and bear God.” Think about what that means: the Holy Spirit is teaching us to grow and ever be more capable of bearing a greater presence of God in our lives. For Irenaeus, salvation isn’t merely God changing our legal status. It is God gradually transforming human beings so that we become capable of sharing divine life. The Spirit dwelling within us is already the beginning of that future.

In the first reading St. Paul asks: “Did you receive the Spirit from works of the law, or from faith in what you heard?” (Gal 3:2) Often that is taken primarily as part of Paul’s argument about justification, and indeed it is. But Paul already knows they have received the Holy Spirit and so he appeals to their experience.

Then in v. 5: “Does, then, the one who supplies the Spirit to you and works mighty deeds among you do so from works of the law or from faith in what you heard?” He is making the point that something has already happened to them. Their experience, their Christian existence itself was evidence of God’s action. That is what makes rumors of their return to circumcision and Torah observance so incomprehensible to Paul. God has given you his Spirit. You have already received the thing you are trying to earn. He is asking, why are they now behaving as though God’s life must be acquired through something they accomplish?

All of this together reinforces the idea that the Spirit is gift, not achievement or reward. The Spirit is something earned by sufficient religious performance.

This is the point St. Augustine makes in his homily on Luke 11. Augustine emphasizes that Christ would not urge us so persistently to ask unless God truly desired to give: God is more willing to give than we are to receive. When you join Augustine’s thought to that from Irenaeus, it means the Spirit gradually makes us capable of receiving what God desires to give.

Consider how that might make us think differently about today’s Gospel. We hear: “And I tell you, ask and you will receive; 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. “Ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened…” and immediately begin filling in the blank. Ask for what? And we ask about of current needs and future hopes, no doubt legitimate prayers.

But consider Jesus’ words: “How much more will the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?” Jesus isn’t promising that persistent prayer eventually persuades God to give us whatever particular outcome we’re requesting. He promises something much greater: God gives us God in the Holy Spirit.

Maybe that’s why the answer to prayer sometimes doesn’t look like what we asked for. We ask God to remove a difficult situation but the Spirit gives us courage to live through it. We ask God to change someone else and the Spirit begins changing us. We ask God to show us exactly what to do but the Spirit gives us patience to wait. We ask God to take away suffering and the Spirit somehow enables us to discover Christ within it.

The gift isn’t always a changed circumstance. Sometimes the gift is a changed person within the circumstance.

May the real question is how much of me have I allowed the Holy Spirit to receive so as to change me. What parts of my life do I insist on keeping control? My decisions, relationships, plans fears…?

Maybe we over-complicate our prayer. Might it be as simple as teaching me to receive and bear God? And then “buckle up” as we let the Spirit change us.

Our Lady of the Rosary

Posted on October 7, 2026 by Friar Musings

One of the great things about teaching in the OCIA classes is the questions which come from people who are not yet baptized or people from other Christian denominations who seek to be in full communion with the Catholic Church. Sometimes they are the “big” questions about Sacraments and papal infallibility, but sometimes they are questions which ask about things we cradle-Catholics don’t think about because,… well, they have just always been there.

This past summer one of the “new” Catholics chatted with me on the sidewalk in front of Church. The conversation centered around Marian feasts and celebrations. Basically the person noticed that there were a lot of Marian celebrations – most of which they understood – but they wondered about the Memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary: why is it celebrated and how is it different from other days. And besides, the gospel for the Memorial is Luke’s account of the Annunciation, which is the event in the life of Mary the Church celebrates as a Solemnity.

So why do we celebrate the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary?

The historical origin of the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary lies in the naval Battle of Lepanto on October 7, 1571. Pope St. Pius V, a Dominican pope with a strong devotion to the Rosary, called Christians throughout Europe to pray the Rosary as a coalition fleet of Christian states, called the Holy League, confronted the Ottoman navy. After the unexpected victory of the Holy League, Pius V attributed the outcome to God’s grace obtained through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the prayers of the faithful. In thanksgiving, he established a feast called Our Lady of Victory. Two years later, Pope Gregory XIII changed the title to The Feast of the Holy Rosary. Over time the celebration was extended to the universal Church and eventually fixed on October 7, the date on which it remains today.

While Lepanto explains why there is a feast day, the feast ultimately celebrates a devotion that had already become a central means of Christian prayer: the Rosary

Most Marian feasts commemorate one of four things: events (e.g. the Annunciation), dogmas (e.g. the Immaculate Conception), Marian apparitions (e.g. Our Lady of Guadalupe), or Marian patronages (e.g. Our Lady Help of Christians). The Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary celebrates neither a dogma nor a moment in Mary’s life. Instead, it celebrates the Rosary itself as a privileged means of contemplating the mysteries of Christ.

In the Rosary, the focus is not first on Mary but on the Incarnation, the Passion, the Resurrection, and the entire mystery of salvation, as viewed through Mary’s eyes. St. John Paul II famously described the Rosary as a “compendium of the Gospel.” In that sense, the feast is almost as much a feast of Christ-centered meditation as it is a Marian feast.

Unlike many Marian feasts that direct attention to a singular privilege or event, Our Lady of the Rosary points believers to a lifelong practice of prayer. In that sense, it is perhaps the Church’s most explicitly devotional Marian feast. It honors Mary precisely because she teaches the Church how to gaze upon Christ. As Pope Paul VI wrote in Marialis Cultus, the Rosary is “a Gospel prayer, centered on the mystery of the redemptive Incarnation.” That may be the deepest reason why the feast occupies a distinctive place among all Marian celebrations: it celebrates Mary not only as one who receives grace, but as the one who leads the Church into the mysteries of her Son.