Households of Faith

Good News Reflection for

32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
November 8, 2026

Wisdom 6:12-16
Ps 63:2-8
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
Matthew 25:1-13

Trusting an illogical God

This Sunday’s Gospel reading shows us what it means to be truly foolish. We believe in Christ — good! We pray — good! We put time into our faith growth and we value opportunities for more faith formation — very wise! And we say that we trust God — wonderful!

But what happens when God doesn’t answer our prayers fast enough? What if we need Christ’s loving embrace or his protection from evil and yet we’re suffering with no end in sight? Where is Jesus then?

Usually, God’s timing is not ours. We think we have the right idea about how soon God should intervene when we ask for his help. Right now is a good time for it, right? Of course! But perhaps not from God’s perspective. (Why do we want to leave God in charge anyway, if he doesn’t see things our way, huh?)

When we despair over unanswered prayer, the reality behind it is that we’re emotionally unprepared for any timing that’s different from what we think it should be. The foolish bridesmaids thought the groom would arrive before their lamps burned out. They thought they understood the situation. Do we?

Furthermore, if God’s plans are illogical — if they don’t make sense to us — we distrust them. And then we get ourselves into the mess of trying to handle things apart from God.

We cannot trust our logic. We cannot trust our perception or our understanding of the situations we’re in. The sooner we decide to enjoy the absurdity of being a Christian, the sooner we will find out that God’s ways are awesomely much, much better than anything we can imagine!

Questions for Personal Reflection:
What have you resisted doing because it doesn’t make sense? What can you do, where can you turn, to whom can you go for help in discerning whether or not it’s God’s plan for you?

Questions for Community Faith Sharing:
How do you know when an illogical plan is really what God wants you to do? What’s happened in your life that has taught you to trust the Holy Spirit’s surprises? Share a lesson you learned when you weren’t ready for God’s plan because you didn’t believe it.

Good News Reflection for

Solemnity of All Saints
November 1, 2026

Revelation 7:2-4, 9-14
Ps 24:1-6
1 John 3:1-3
Matthew 5:1-12a

Your own sainthood

YOU are a saint. Don’t argue with me, I know you’re a saint, because a saint is anyone who’s either in heaven or on their way to heaven by following Christ. In the Apostle’s Creed we say, “I believe in the communion of saints….” That includes you! It’s the whole community of Christ-followers.

As followers of Christ, we have been redeemed from the power of sin. We have been reborn as “saints” and are no longer “sinners.” Yes, we do sin every day; we have not yet perfected our sainthood. So we grow in holiness by becoming more and more who we truly are. This is life as an earthly saint.

Look at today’s first reading. We could see this as a huge prayer meeting in heaven, but it’s not just about the after-life. You, right now, are part of that “great multitude” when you worship God enthusiastically. Every time we praise God, we’re joining ourselves to the whole communion of saints, including our loved ones who left earth in the Lord’s arms.

We’re also united to them after our sins are absolved in the mercy of God through the Sacrament of Reconciliation, for then we, too, have “washed our robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” Until the next time we sin, we’re on the Lord’s mountain, standing in a holy place, because our hands are sinless, our hearts are clean, and we are not desiring what is vain (as the responsorial Psalm says).

The same unity occurs when we receive the Eucharist after making a heartfelt journey through the prayers of repentance and requests for forgiveness that the Church provides during each Mass. (Oops, until we get mad at the guy in the parking lot who briefly blocks our escape from church into the world.)

As the second reading points out, we are saints because we are God’s children. The saints in heaven have the advantage of being free from evil, while we live in a sin-filled world. But notice how we become pure: The hope (i.e., belief in God’s promise) that eventually we’ll behave like Christ all the time should energize us to purge our lives of unholiness now. This hope is based on knowing that Christ redeems us from sin, the Father forgives us, and after death, whatever clean-up still remains to be done, it will be accomplished thanks to purgatory.

The Gospel reading reminds us that we are saints because we are blessed. Isn’t anything that God blesses made holy? Therefore, any person whom God blesses is made holy by his love: the poor in spirit, those who mourn and receive the Holy Spirit’s comfort, the meek who submit to God’s will, and so on down the list of beatitudes. Meditate on each blessing and notice your sainthood and the challenge to become more saintly by improving how you live the truth of each beatitude.

The Church canonizes saints so we can have role models and so we know they’re available for prayer support to assist us on our journey to heaven. We should not compare our lives to theirs, however, for we all have different circumstances in which to grow in holiness. We can only compare ourselves to what we used to be like. Meanwhile, we can pray with the saints and accept their spiritual guidance.

Questions for Personal Reflection:
How have you grown in holiness over the years? Choose one way to grow in holiness this week.

Questions for Community Faith Sharing:
Who is your favorite Saint in heaven? Why? Name someone you know who is a good model of saintliness. What is holy about that person?

Good News Reflection for

30th Sunday in Ordinary Time
October 25, 2026

Exodus 22:20-26
Psalm 18:2-4, 47, 51
1 Thessalonians 1:5c-10
Matthew 22:34-40

Whole-hearted love

This Sunday’s Gospel reading reminds us that we cannot love God without loving ourselves and others, but God must always come first. And this is only possible if we fully open our hearts and our lives to receive the unconditional, amazing love that God has for us.

When we have difficulty loving God with all our heart, mind and soul all the time, every day, every moment, no matter what’s going on, it’s usually because we’re spending too much time focused on other people and/or on our own plans and wishes! And it’s because we don’t truly understand that God is loving us with all of his heart, mind, and soul. 

Yes, we must focus on others in order to love them. And yes we must focus on our own needs so that we can love others as much as we love ourselves. Our own needs are important and we are responsible for seeing that our needs get met; otherwise we don’t have enough to share with others – enough energy, enough enthusiasm, enough kindness, enough patience, etc. Likewise, we can’t focus so much on ourselves that we neglect the needs of others.

So the question then becomes: What are the priorities? In other words: How much time should we spend alone with God? How much time should we spend nurturing ourselves? How much of our time and needs and wants should be sacrificed for the sake of others?

Interestingly, we find the right balance only after we put God first and make our relationship with him our highest priority. This divine friendship is what heals us in our unmet needs. It’s what empowers us to love others even when they are difficult to love. And we don’t have to be alone with God all day to have intimacy with him.

We love him first and foremost simply by relying on him for success in loving others and ourselves. As long as we keep turning to him for guidance, healing and strength, we are loving him with all our heart, mind and soul all the time, every day, every moment, no matter what’s going on.

Questions for Personal Reflection:
How good are you at setting priorities and keeping God at the top? What puts your priorities out of order? What can you do to increase God’s role in your everyday life?

Questions for Community Faith Sharing:
Describe some of the techniques you’ve used to increase God’s priority in your everyday life. How has focusing on your relationship with God helped you to be more loving to yourself and kinder toward others?

Good News Reflection for

29th Sunday in Ordinary Time
October 18, 2026

Isaiah 45:1, 4-6
Psalm 96:1, 3-5, 7-10
1 Thessalonians 1:1-5b
Matthew 22:15-21

The image engraved on our hearts

In this Sunday’s Gospel reading, when Jesus asks the Pharisees to tell him whose image was engraved on the coin owed for the census tax, he uses it to teach a lesson about the image that should be engraved upon our hearts. Our hearts should belong to God and to God alone.

The Romans believed that their emperors were divine. Therefore, to possess Roman coins meant carrying around the graven image of a human god. The Pharisees knew this when they challenged Jesus.

Paying the census tax to Caesar symbolized more than just submission to a foreign government. It had religious connotations. If Jesus was a true prophet, he should speak up against Jews possessing pagan coins. If he was a true messiah, he should deliver them from the oppression and taxes of the foreign government – or so they thought.

We don’t know how they happened to have the Roman coin that they showed to Jesus. If they pulled it out of their own purses, which is likely, it revealed their hypocrisy. However, Jesus wasn’t just interested in exposing their hypocrisy; he wanted to make a point about the True Messiah.

If we belong to God, Jesus is engraved upon our hearts. We have been rescued from the destruction of sin by the Messiah. We have let him deliver us from the oppression of evil that was caused by our sins.

Whose image do others see when they look at your life? When people see you, do they see Jesus engraved upon you? To the extent that they do, that’s the extent to which you belong to the kingdom of God!

Questions for Personal Reflection:
How do you know that others see Jesus in your life? What’s the evidence? What have they told you about yourself that is also a description of Christ?

Questions for Community Faith Sharing:
What are some of the ways in which Jesus has come into your life and changed you from within? How has that changed the way you live? How does this evangelize others?

Good News Reflection for

28th Sunday in Ordinary Time
October 11, 2026

Isaiah 25:6-10a
Psalm 23:1-6
Philipians 4:12-14,19-20
Matthew 22:1-14

How to handle fakers

In this Sunday’s Gospel reading, Jesus addresses the problem of fakers, i.e., people who try to win his friendship by being religious and showing up for the banquet of the Eucharist (Mass) while refusing to enter into a genuine relationship with God.

You know the type: They are friendly as long as it works to their own advantage. They do good deeds but only when it’s convenient. They perform Catholic rituals perfectly during Mass but at home they don’t even take time to pray. Their faith is so shallow that distractions easily keep them away from Mass. When a priest sins, they leave Catholicism. When their relationship with you requires sacrifice or repentance, they abandon you.

Those who have a genuine relationship with God are identified by the presence of God’s love within them radiating outward and blessing others, especially when it’s not easy to love.

Jesus shows us in today’s parable how to handle the fakers. The invitation to join the party is open to everyone, but when people want only the fun of being a child of God and they ignore the hard work of sharing his love with others, God sets up boundaries against them.

Think of the people you’ve invited to your banquet table, i.e., into a healthy, Godly relationship, but they’ve tried to reshape it according to their unhealthiness and immorality. We should love them but not within harmful circumstances. We should do our own part to make the relationship healthy, but when others do not do their part, they’ve already abandoned the relationship.

God asks us to carry the cross of doing everything possible to invite them to repentance, conversion, and healing. However, healthy boundaries need to remain in place, and when our efforts are fruitless, eventually God says it’s time to let go and move on.

And always, we’re to go back out into the byroads to find those who genuinely value Godly friendships.

Questions for Personal Reflection:
How many Godly, healthy friendships do you really have? Where can you go to find more people who want to be in a holy, Christ-centered, faith-building relationship with you?

Questions for Community Faith Sharing:
What makes a friendship truly good? How do you know when the time has come to say no to an unhealthy, unholy relationship? How have you handled it? Where have you gone to find support and healing and growth?

Good News Reflection for

27th Sunday in Ordinary Time
October 4, 2026

Isaiah 5:1-7
Psalm 80:9, 12-16, 19-20 (with Is 5:7a)
Philipians 4:6-9
Matthew 21:33-43

The fruits of Heaven in our lives today

“The kingdom of God is given to those who produce its fruit.” That’s the moral of the story that Jesus gives us in this Sunday’s Gospel reading. And what is this kingdom of God, given to us while we’re still on earth? What are its fruits, which we produce during our earthly lives?

Anything we do in imitation of Christ is a fruit that has grown as a result of following Christ on our journey toward heaven. If we love as he loves, forgive as he forgives, minister to others, teach the truth, and heal the hurting, we are living in the kingdom of God now.

When I ask Catholics if they believe they’re going to heaven, most feel very uncertain, either because they’re afraid they might lose their salvation through some future grave sin, or because they’re afraid it’s not humble enough to answer with a firm “yes.”

Granted, we do not imitate Christ perfectly. Most of us will need to spend time in Purgatory being purged of whatever is unheavenly about us, but when the purging is finished, we’ll be fully alive in the wonderfulness of God. If we make it to Purgatory, of course we’ll reach the glories of heaven. And if our desire to be Christ-like is genuine, then of course our sins will never be so “grave” that we turn completely away from Christ. Of course we’ll gladly embrace him when he comes for us at the moment of our death.

Whatever you do because of Christ and out of love for Christ, this is evidence that you are living in and will eternally live in God’s kingdom.

Questions for Personal Reflection:
What good fruits are you producing in your life now? List them; get out a pen and start writing them down. During the week, as you think of more good fruits, add those to the list.

Questions for Community Faith Sharing:
Look at the list you produced for the above question. How do these fruits give evidence of God’s goodness within you? How do they provide the kingdom of God for the benefit of others? How do they assure you that you are truly a heaven-bound follower of Christ?

© 2026 by Terry A. Modica, Good News Ministries, GNM.org

Used by permission. T