Tuesday of Holy Week gets painfully honest about discouragement, betrayal, and the gap between who we think we are and who we really are. We sit with Judas and Peter at the same table and face the choice to run from mercy or run toward it.
• discouragement in Isaiah as truthful spiritual experience rather than weakness
• fruitfulness in God’s eyes as different from visible success and outcomes
• God expanding a small mission into a universal one and wasting nothing
• Jesus deeply troubled at the table and still offering intimacy to Judas
• “and it was night” as a spiritual step into darkness
• Peter’s sincere love paired with overconfidence and the promise of denial
• the human heart holding both Judas and Peter tendencies
• the practical call to small fidelity, humility, and staying present when it gets hard
• the defining difference after failure: running from mercy or toward mercy
Ask yourself Am I running towards mercy or am I running into the darkness?

Thank you for listening! Visit us at www.saintaugustinechurch.org

Holy Week stops being a story we remember and becomes a love we receive when we let the Passion get personal. We wrestle with the Palm Sunday crowd, our own mixed hearts, and practical ways to walk with Jesus all week long.
• Palm Sunday crowds and the “Catholic memory” that draws people back
• The Passion as the cornerstone of faith and an emotional mirror
• Jesus walking toward Calvary with full knowledge of our sin
• Moving from “Jesus saves the world” to “Jesus saves me”
• The Hosanna-to-crucify tension inside every disciple
• Peter, the martyrs, and the fear of failing under pressure
• Holy Week as God’s love first, not our performance
• Practical ways to participate: daily Mass, Tenebrae, Holy Thursday, adoration, seven churches
• Good Friday opportunities: confession, Stations, veneration, Seven Last Words
• Easter as transformation and mission, not just a celebration
Please pray also, everyone, for the people who are in the OCIA that will be receiving sacraments this weekend.

Thank you for listening! Visit us at www.saintaugustinechurch.org

Holy Week slows our pace and sharpens our focus as we watch God’s power show up as gentleness rather than domination. We sit with Mary’s costly love and Judas’s careful objections until the question lands on us: are we loving Jesus or managing him?
• Monday of Holy Week as a threshold to the Passion
• Isaiah’s servant as a picture of gentle strength
• Jesus at table in Bethany with Lazarus present
• Mary’s extravagant anointing as fearless devotion
• Judas’s “responsible” argument as a mask for control
• The danger of being near Jesus but far in heart
• The fragrance of real love that changes a room
• The call to stop negotiating and give ourselves fully

Thank you for listening! Visit us at www.saintaugustinechurch.org

Holy Week begins as something personal, not symbolic, because the Passion is not only about what happens to Jesus but what happens inside us. We face the hard truth of how quickly we can praise God and then push him away, and we decide whether we will walk with Christ all the way to the cross.
• the Palm Sunday turn from Hosanna to Crucify Him
• refusing to distance ourselves from the crowd
• Jesus seeing our inconsistency and coming anyway
• the cross as a deliberate and chosen act of love
• the question of staying close when it costs something
• Holy Week as something we enter, not watch
• a single line to carry all week: He didn’t turn back
I urge you to come on Holy Thursday, not just to see the washing of the feet, to hear about the Eucharist, where he gives himself to us. Come on, Good Friday. Don't avoid the cross. Stand right in front of it. Come to the vigil, not just celebrate Easter experience, but how we see the darkness breaking into the light. Or the light breaking into the darkness.

Thank you for listening! Visit us at www.saintaugustinechurch.org

Friends can watch for your misstep, truth can provoke resistance, and faith gets real the moment it costs you something. We connect Jeremiah’s suffering to Jesus’ confrontation in the Gospel and challenge ourselves to stop delaying the surrender we already know we need.
• Jeremiah’s pain of being opposed by people who know him
• The Gospel conflict escalating from whispers to stones
• Resistance rising when truth becomes clear and light exposes hidden things
• The difference between not understanding and refusing to accept
• Questions for self-examination about sins, habits, relationships, and delayed decisions
• Trusting God as a mighty champion instead of chasing comfort and approval
• Choosing a side because neutrality is not an option
• Real freedom coming from a life ordered to the Father
So today, don't just admire Christ. Don't just listen, choose, stand, trust, because the same God who stood with Jeremiah is the same Father who was with the Son, is now with you.

Thank you for listening! Visit us at www.saintaugustinechurch.org

Jesus speaks the line that ends the debate: “Before Abraham came to be, I am,” and we face the real weight of what that claim means. We connect that moment to Abraham’s covenant and name change, then ask where we hear Christ’s word but refuse to keep it.
• Jesus’ “I am” as a direct claim to divinity
• Why familiarity can dull the shock of the Gospel
• God’s covenant with Abram and the meaning of a changed name
• Identity reshaped by God’s call rather than self-definition
• Faith as trusting God’s word without full understanding
• Abraham as a model of obedience and surrender
• “Keeping” Christ’s word versus agreeing with it
• The ways we resist by reinterpreting, softening, and delaying
• A personal examination of where we live outside the covenant
• Surrender as the path to becoming who we’re meant to be

Thank you for listening! Visit us at www.saintaugustinechurch.org

We focus on the Annunciation through one phrase that ties the readings together: God is with us, not as an idea but as a real presence that asks for trust. We contrast Ahaz’s resistance with Mary’s surrender and let the question land where it belongs: am I with Him, willing to say a real yes in daily life?
• the thread running through the readings: God is with us
• Ahaz facing fear and refusing trust while sounding humble
• why fear can disguise itself as humility and delay surrender
• the Incarnation as God coming through a person in obedience
• Mary’s question “How can this be?” as honest faith
• “Nothing will be impossible for God” and the importance of consent
• the turning point: Mary’s “Let it be done to me”
• God inviting cooperation rather than forcing His plan
• the demanding side of God’s presence: changed priorities and purified relationships
• the central challenge: not only believing God is with me but choosing to be with Him
Behold, I am the servant of the Lord. Let it be done to me according to your word.

Thank you for listening! Visit us at www.saintaugustinechurch.org

Jesus refuses soft language and tells the truth: without faith in who he is, we remain in sin and its deadly spiritual consequences. We connect the desert story of the bronze serpent to the Cross and ask what it looks like to stop minimizing sin and finally look at Christ for healing.
• Jesus’ warning as direct diagnosis rather than condemnation
• The Israelites’ complaints as a mirror of our own impatience
• Sin as spiritually deadly rather than a mere weakness
• God’s simple remedy and the call to look
• The bronze serpent as a foreshadowing of the Cross
• Why we avoid the truth that looking requires humility
• A personal examen of what we justify or ignore
• Believing enough to change rather than staying comfortable

Look, believe, and live in Him.

Thank you for listening! Visit us at www.saintaugustinechurch.org