SATURDAY OF THE 4TH WEEK OF LENT - 2026

DAILY HOLY MASS READINGS

Blessed are those who,
with a noble and generous heart,
take the word of God to themselves
and yield a harvest through their perseverance. LK 8:15

JEREMIAH 11:18-20

My Soul's Beloved, 

You are the Lamb of God who went humbly and meekly to Your most excruciatingly painful death by crucifixion. Your enemies took satanic delight in pouring on You every insult, every blasphemy, every cruelty that hell could think of, and You bore it all in silence. You are the example we need to follow in a world that hates goodness, beauty, and truth, and You, O Lord, are the embodiment of all three.

Grant us the grace to walk in Your footsteps on our own journey to Calvary. Our sufferings, humiliations, and sorrows are but a speck in comparison to Your most ignominious, torturous, and painful death. Your vengeance on Your enemies is mercy, forgiveness, absolution, and pardon to all who desire it. You do not desire the death of the wicked but that all turn away from their sins and be saved. Grant, O Lord, that we imitate You and offer the same kind of 'vengeance' that You offer by forgiving wholeheartedly all those who sin against us. 

Jesus, meek and humble of heart, make my heart like unto thine. 

The Lord revealed it to me; I was warned. O Lord, that was when you opened my eyes to their scheming. I for my part was like a trustful lamb being led to the slaughter-house, not knowing the schemes they were plotting against me, ‘Let us destroy the tree in its strength, let us cut him off from the land of the living, so that his name may be quickly forgotten!’
But you, the Lord of Hosts, who pronounce a just sentence,
who probe the loins and heart,
let me see the vengeance you will take on them,
for I have committed my cause to you.

PSALM 7:2-3,9-12

Lord God, I take refuge in you.

Lord God, I take refuge in you.
From my pursuer save me and rescue me,
lest he tear me to pieces like a lion
and drag me off with no one to rescue me.

Give judgement for me, Lord; I am just
and innocent of heart.
Put an end to the evil of the wicked!
Make the just stand firm,
you who test mind and heart,
O just God!

God is the shield that protects me,
who saves the upright of heart.
God is a just judge
slow to anger;
but he threatens the wicked every day.

Lord God, I take refuge in you.

JOHN 7:40-52

My Soul's Beloved, 

To this day, people want to put God in constraints and will not allow God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, to be God, transcendent, immutable, above every other power, who is power itself. We human beings are bound by God's laws, but You, O Lord, are outside the Law and can do as You will. But many like the Pharisees who questioned Nicodemus say like them, ‘Are you a Galilean too? Go into the matter, and see for yourself: prophets do not come out of Galilee.’  

Who are we but Your creatures O Lord, who dare to question the Creator, the Redeemer, and the Sanctifier and yet Christians and non-Christians alike dare to tell God that He cannot have a Son, that His Son was only a Man, that Mary, Your Virgin Mother was not sinless, that St. Joseph had other children with her, and that the Holy Spirit is the all-powerful love between the Father and the Son in whom all things come to be according to the Will of God and the Word of the Father.

You are who You say You are, and we believe, my Lord.

Several people who had been listening to Jesus said, ‘Surely he must be the prophet’, and some said, ‘He is the Christ’, but others said, ‘Would the Christ be from Galilee? Does not scripture say that the Christ must be descended from David and come from the town of Bethlehem?’ So the people could not agree about him. Some would have liked to arrest him, but no one actually laid hands on him.
The police went back to the chief priests and Pharisees who said to them, ‘Why haven’t you brought him?’ The police replied, ‘There has never been anybody who has spoken like him.’ ‘So’ the Pharisees answered ‘you have been led astray as well? Have any of the authorities believed in him? Any of the Pharisees? This rabble knows nothing about the Law – they are damned.’ One of them, Nicodemus – the same man who had come to Jesus earlier – said to them, ‘But surely the Law does not allow us to pass judgement on a man without giving him a hearing and discovering what he is about?’ To this they answered, ‘Are you a Galilean too? Go into the matter, and see for yourself: prophets do not come out of Galilee.’