MONDAY OF THE 3RD WEEK OF LENT - 2026

DAILY HOLY MASS READINGS

My soul is waiting for the Lord,
I count on his word,
because with the Lord there is mercy
and fullness of redemption. PS 129:5, 7

2 KINGS 5:1-15

My Soul's Beloved, 

There is much You say to us through this passage in Sacred Scripture. Naaman was not a Jew; he had leprosy; he was a man who enjoyed his king's favor; he was successful in war, and this was because the Lord granted him victory. He enjoyed the king's favor only because God had blessed him with success in battle. You, O Lord our God, work in mysterious ways, and while we may not always view the crosses sent our way as a blessing, You have the power to draw immense good from them. The little Jew girl was taken as a slave, and young though she was, she knew the power of the God of Israel and made it known to her mistress that if her master would only go there, he would be healed. 

Naaman not only believed what the girl said but also acted on it. Loading himself with money and gifts, he went to Israel, the king of Israel, however, was unhappy, for unlike the slave girl, he had forgotten the God he worshipped had power to heal. He was afraid that the king of Aram was spoiling for a fight with him and tore his garments. When the prophet Elisha heard of it, he reminded the king that God was alive and His power to perform miracles was given to His prophet. So the proud and haughty Naaman was sent to the prophet, and when he sent a messenger to meet him, saying, ‘Go and bathe seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will become clean once more,’ he was affronted and angry. He expected to be treated with pomp and circumstance; instead, his pride was wounded, and he felt insulted and dismissed after receiving instructions on what he should do. Ranting and raving before his servants, he was gently reminded by them,  ‘My father, if the prophet had asked you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? All the more reason, then, when he says to you, “Bathe, and you will become clean.”’ Reason and common sense won the day; he did as he was told, and humility and obedience obtained for him the healing he longed for.

Beloved Jesus, our souls are scarred with the sin of leprosy, yet so many of us refuse, like Naaman, to receive the simple and effective remedy of healing in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. They lack the humility to do as You ask and show themselves to the priest and hear those consoling words after showing him our wounds, "I absolve you from your sins. Go in peace." 

Naaman was healed completely, and he returned home determined to worship the God of Israel, the true God, and Him alone. Thank You, Beloved, for the gift of faith in the Church You founded, for salvation is found in her alone.

Naaman, army commander to the king of Aram, was a man who enjoyed his master’s respect and favour, since through him the Lord had granted victory to the Aramaeans. But the man was a leper.
Now on one of their raids, the Aramaeans had carried off from the land of Israel a little girl who had become a servant of Naaman’s wife. She said to her mistress, ‘If only my master would approach the prophet of Samaria. He would cure him of his leprosy.’
Naaman went and told his master. ‘This and this’ he reported ‘is what the girl from the land of Israel said.’
‘Go by all means,’ said the king of Aram ‘I will send a letter to the king of Israel.’
So Naaman left, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold and ten festal robes. He presented the letter to the king of Israel. It read: ‘With this letter, I am sending my servant Naaman to you for you to cure him of his leprosy.’ When the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his garments. ‘Am I a god to give death and life,’ he said ‘that he sends a man to me and asks me to cure him of his leprosy? Listen to this, and take note of it and see how he intends to pick a quarrel with me.’
When Elisha heard that the king of Israel had torn his garments, he sent word to the king, ‘Why did you tear your garments? Let him come to me, and he will find there is a prophet in Israel.’
So Naaman came with his team and chariot and drew up at the door of Elisha’s house. And Elisha sent him a messenger to say, ‘Go and bathe seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will become clean once more.’
But Naaman was indignant and went off, saying, ‘Here was I thinking he would be sure to come out to me, and stand there, and call on the name of the Lord his God, and wave his hand over the spot and cure the leprous part. Surely Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, are better than any water in Israel? Could I not bathe in them and become clean?’ And he turned round and went off in a rage.
But his servants approached him and said, ‘My father, if the prophet had asked you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? All the more reason, then, when he says to you, “Bathe, and you will become clean.”’
So he went down and immersed himself seven times in the Jordan, as Elisha had told him to do. And his flesh became clean once more like the flesh of a little child.
Returning to Elisha with his whole escort, he went in and stood before him. ‘Now I know’ he said ‘that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel.’

PSALM 41(42):2-3,42:3-4

My soul is thirsting for God, the God of my life: when can I enter and see the face of God?

Like the deer that yearns
for running streams,
so my soul is yearning
for you, my God.

My soul is thirsting for God,
the God of my life;
when can I enter and see
the face of God?

O send forth your light and your truth;
let these be my guide.
Let them bring me to your holy mountain,
to the place where you dwell.

And I will come to the altar of God,
the God of my joy.
My redeemer, I will thank you on the harp,
O God, my God.

My soul is thirsting for God, the God of my life: when can I enter and see the face of God?

LUKE 4:24-30

My Soul's Beloved, 

People define us by what they knew of us a long time ago. While we have grown, evolved, and are now quite different, their view of us is frozen, and more often than not, they refuse to change their perspective and accept us for who we are in the here and now. Often, when we change for the better, our lives become an irritant to them; they dislike what their conscience is telling them, hence they lash out at the one who reminds them of who and what they really are. This is just what You experienced when You returned to Your hometown in Nazareth.  

The people who came to the synagogue watched You grow from a child to manhood, working alongside Your father, Joseph. They knew Your mama Mary. Some of the women in the area were her friends, and now that You had returned, even though they heard of the miracles You were performing in the neighboring towns, they still refused to really see You. 

This is true of our own experiences, Lord. We freeze people in their past sinful lives, we recall their past when we see them again, perhaps decades later, and we refuse to see them as they have now evolved into the saintly and godlike people they have grown to be. We spread calumny and ostracise them, and like Your townsfolk were prepared to do, drag them to the top of a high cliff, throw them off, and destroy them. You slipped away. It was, perhaps to their eternal loss, that they rejected You.

Jesus came to Nazara and spoke to the people in the synagogue: ‘I tell you solemnly, no prophet is ever accepted in his own country.
‘There were many widows in Israel, I can assure you, in Elijah’s day, when heaven remained shut for three years and six months and a great famine raged throughout the land, but Elijah was not sent to any one of these: he was sent to a widow at Zarephath, a Sidonian town. And in the prophet Elisha’s time there were many lepers in Israel, but none of these was cured, except the Syrian, Naaman.’
When they heard this everyone in the synagogue was enraged. They sprang to their feet and hustled him out of the town; and they took him up to the brow of the hill their town was built on, intending to throw him down the cliff, but he slipped through the crowd and walked away.

3RD SUNDAY IN LENT - 2026

DAILY HOLY MASS READINGS

Lord, you are really the saviour of the world:
give me the living water, so that I may never get thirsty. JN4:42, 15

EXODUS 17:3-7

My Soul's Beloved,

Just like the people in the desert who complained ceaselessly at every hardship they face, we too, when troubles come, as they do so often, fail to suffer with patience and with faith. When our children or those we love are faced with great trials, instead of praying, praising, thanking, and trusting You, we lose heart, become despondent, are troubled, and complain constantly to anyone who will hear. If our prayers are not answered as quickly as we desire and in the manner we desire, we become dispirited, our hearts are heavy, gloom settles heavily on our countenance, and we lose our joy and our peace. We quickly forget all the times when You have blessed us abundantly and far more than we deserve in the time of our tribulation.

Loving Lord, I too am guilty of forgetting past blessings, mercies, and Your munificence, even when I was undeserving. Help me to count my blessings daily and to praise You for every one of them. If I constantly recall Your goodness to me, when the time comes for You to lay a cross on me or on those I love, I will bear them with patience, knowing that in the end, when the purpose of the trial is fulfilled, You will bless, heal, renew, restore, strenghten, purify, and make whole, filling us once more with numerous blessings joy and peace according to Your riches and mercy. Thank You, Lord.

Tormented by thirst, the people complained against Moses. ‘Why did you bring us out of Egypt?’ they said. ‘Was it so that I should die of thirst, my children too, and my cattle?’
Moses appealed to the Lord. ‘How am I to deal with this people?” he said. ‘A little more and they will stone me!’ the Lord said to Moses, ‘Take with you some of the elders of Israel and move on to the forefront of the people; take in your hand the staff with which you struck the river, and go. I shall be standing before you there on the rock, at Horeb. You must strike the rock, and water will flow from it for the people to drink.’ This is what Moses did, in the sight of the elders of Israel. The place was named Massah and Meribah because of the grumbling of the sons of Israel and because they put the Lord to the test by saying, ‘Is the Lord with us, or not?’

PSALM 94(95):1-2,6-9

O that today you would listen to his voice! ‘Harden not your hearts.’

Come, ring out our joy to the Lord;
hail the rock who saves us.
Let us come before him, giving thanks,
with songs let us hail the Lord.

Come in; let us bow and bend low;
let us kneel before the God who made us:
for he is our God and we
the people who belong to his pasture,
the flock that is led by his hand.

O that today you would listen to his voice!
‘Harden not your hearts as at Meribah,
as on that day at Massah in the desert
when your fathers put me to the test;
when they tried me, though they saw my work.’

O that today you would listen to his voice! ‘Harden not your hearts.’

ROMANS 5:1-2,5-8

My Soul's Beloved, 

Thank You Father, Son, and Holy Spirit for creating me and for every member of my family. We were created for an eternal destiny of joy in Your presence. Our first parents not only robbed us of our inheritance, but there was no way that we could find our way back to You and receive what You had always intended to give. Their sin cut us off from grace forever, and we were condemned to live apart from You, who are the source and giver of life.

You have revealed to us,  O Eternal Word of the Father, that God so loved the world that He gave You, His only Son, to redeem and save us, or else we would perish forever.  Were it not for Your fiat to Your Father's will, Beloved, we would be wanderers on the face of the earth like Cain, the Israelites wandering for 40 years in the wilderness, and like the people of God who, over and over again, were taken into captivity by their enemies.

Thank  You, Father, for willing our redemption, thank You, Son of God, for saying yes to the will of Your Father, and thank You, Holy Spirit love between the Father and Son, for only divine love could make it possible. 

Through our Lord Jesus Christ, by faith we are judged righteous and at peace with God, since it is by faith and through Jesus that we have entered this state of grace in which we can boast about looking forward to God’s glory. And this hope is not deceptive, because the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit which has been given us. We were still helpless when at his appointed moment Christ died for sinful men. It is not easy to die even for a good man – though of course for someone really worthy, a man might be prepared to die – but what proves that God loves us is that Christ died for us while we were still sinners.

JOHN 4:5-42

My Soul's Beloved, 

While remaining God, becoming man through the incarnation, You experienced the gamut of human emotions. You were hungry, thirsty, tired, angry, sad, disappointed, frustrated, joyful, filled with pity, compassion, tender love, and on occasion, You wept. In today's Sunday Gospel, taken from the evangelist John, we are told of the encounter between You and the Samaritan woman at the well. It was noon when You and the disciples reached the town of Sychar in Samaria. It was noon, and You were hot and tired from the journey. The disciples left You seated by the well and went into the town to buy food. This encounter was planned in eternity. Though the unhappy woman did not know it, her life was about to change forever. She was privileged to recognize You as the Messiah and become the first evangelist to carry the Good News to everyone in the town who had rejected her and made her life a misery because she was a public sinner. 

It is a great blessing, Lord, that nothing is hidden from You, which means that when we approach You in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, You are already there waiting for us, just as You waited for the Samaritan woman at the well. When we are humble, contrite, and repentant, and resolve firmly, with the help of Your grace, to sin no more, You cast all our sins behind Your back and remember them no more. 

Thank You, Beloved, for this healing Sacrament of mercy and grace. Grant that we make frequent use of it, so even if death comes suddenly and unexpectedly, we will be in a state of grace and need have no anxiety or fear of being separated from You forever.

Beloved, our hideous past, all our faults and failings, all our grievous sins are as nothing when God heaps on us His mercy and love. You sought her out, Lord, just as You seek all who are lost, and having found us, You heal us, wash away all our guilt, and restore us once again as members of God's family.

Jesus came to the Samaritan town called Sychar, near the land that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well is there and Jesus, tired by the journey, sat straight down by the well. It was about the sixth hour. When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, ‘Give me a drink.’ His disciples had gone into the town to buy food. The Samaritan woman said to him, ‘What? You are a Jew and you ask me, a Samaritan, for a drink?’ – Jews, in fact, do not associate with Samaritans. Jesus replied:
‘If you only knew what God is offering
and who it is that is saying to you:
Give me a drink, you would have been the one to ask,
and he would have given you living water.’
‘You have no bucket, sir,’ she answered ‘and the well is deep: how could you get this living water? Are you a greater man than our father Jacob who gave us this well and drank from it himself with his sons and his cattle?’ Jesus replied:
‘Whoever drinks this water
will get thirsty again;
but anyone who drinks the water that I shall give
will never be thirsty again:
the water that I shall give
will turn into a spring inside him,
welling up to eternal life.’
‘Sir,’ said the woman ‘give me some of that water, so that I may never get thirsty and never have to come here again to draw water.’ ‘Go and call your husband’ said Jesus to her ‘and come back here.’ The woman answered, ‘I have no husband.’ He said to her, ‘You are right to say, “I have no husband”; for although you have had five, the one you have now is not your husband. You spoke the truth there.’ ‘I see you are a prophet, sir’ said the woman. ‘Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, while you say that Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship.’ Jesus said:
‘Believe me, woman,
the hour is coming
when you will worship the Father
neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.
You worship what you do not know;
we worship what we do know:
for salvation comes from the Jews.
But the hour will come
– in fact it is here already –
when true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth:
that is the kind of worshipper the Father wants.
God is spirit,
and those who worship
must worship in spirit and truth.’
The woman said to him, ‘I know that Messiah – that is, Christ – is coming; and when he comes he will tell us everything.’ ‘I who am speaking to you,’ said Jesus ‘I am he.’
At this point his disciples returned, and were surprised to find him speaking to a woman, though none of them asked, ‘What do you want from her?’ or, ‘Why are you talking to her?’ The woman put down her water jar and hurried back to the town to tell the people. ‘Come and see a man who has told me everything I ever did; I wonder if he is the Christ?’ This brought people out of the town and they started walking towards him.
Meanwhile, the disciples were urging him, ‘Rabbi, do have something to eat; but he said, ‘I have food to eat that you do not know about.’ So the disciples asked one another, ‘Has someone been bringing him food?’ But Jesus said:
‘My food is to do the will of the one who sent me,
and to complete his work.
Have you not got a saying:
Four months and then the harvest?
Well, I tell you:
Look around you, look at the fields;
already they are white, ready for harvest!
Already the reaper is being paid his wages,
already he is bringing in the grain for eternal life,
and thus sower and reaper rejoice together.
For here the proverb holds good:
one sows, another reaps;
I sent you to reap a harvest you had not worked for.
Others worked for it;
and you have come into the rewards of their trouble.’
Many Samaritans of that town had believed in him on the strength of the woman’s testimony when she said, ‘He told me all I have ever done’, so, when the Samaritans came up to him, they begged him to stay with them. He stayed for two days, and when he spoke to them many more came to believe; and they said to the woman, ‘Now we no longer believe because of what you told us; we have heard him ourselves and we know that he really is the saviour of the world.’