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Eventide & Altar

The evening of life is not decline. It is deepening.

Daily reflections for Catholics who have spent decades at the altar - and are still becoming saints.

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What’s ready for you every morning

Today's Readings

First Reading, Psalm, Gospel — referenced and linked

Reflection

A substantive meditation on the day’s scripture

The Rosary Today

The mysteries of the day, connected to the readings

Prayer of the Faithful

Intercessions you can carry to Mass or pray at home

Something to Do

A concrete way to live the reflection today

Five minutes. Every morning.

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This is what’s waiting for you every morning. Read the full reflection.

Yesterday's Reflection

Saturday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time

Today's Readings

Read today’s readings at USCCB

Reflection

O God, why have you cast us off forever? Why does your anger smolder against the sheep of your pasture? The honest question of the psalm is not faithlessness - it is the prayer of people who remember the covenant and are asking where it went. Look to your covenant. Do not overlook the clamor of those who hate you. Let not the afflicted turn away disgraced.

Worn out from weeping are my eyes; within me all is in ferment. The Lamentations poet has been weeping for the ruin of Jerusalem and the suffering of the children. The grief is not to be hurried. But the instruction is still: cry out to the Lord. Pour out your heart like water. Lift up your hands.

He took away our infirmities and bore our diseases. Matthew quotes Isaiah 53 to explain what Jesus has been doing in this evening of healing - the servant of the Lord absorbing the suffering of the many. The healing of the centurion's servant, Peter's mother-in-law, the many brought at evening - all of it the fulfillment of the bearing and the taking away.

The Rosary Tonight

The Joyful Mysteries trace the beginning of the bearing - the Incarnation is the taking-on of our nature so that the taking-away of our infirmities can happen from the inside. Pray them tonight as a meditation on what the bearing of disease and infirmity looks like from the moment it was assumed.

Prayer of the Faithful

For those crying through the ruins tonight - whose eyes are worn out from weeping - that the pouring-out-of-the-heart would be received by the Lord who looks to his covenant, we pray to the Lord.
For those with the centurion's faith who have trusted the word across distance, that the healing would come to the place they cannot go, we pray to the Lord.
In this Sacred Heart month, for the heart that bears our infirmities and carries our diseases so that we do not have to carry them alone, we pray to the Lord.

Something to Do

He took away our infirmities and bore our diseases. Name one infirmity or disease - physical, emotional, spiritual - that you have been carrying alone. Give it to the one who bears it tonight. Not managing it - handing it to the bearer.