Monday, May 11, 2026
Monday of the Sixth week of Easter
John 15:26-27,16:1-4
Listen to the whole reading — MP3
First reading
Acts 16:11-15
Setting sail therefore from Troas, we made a straight course to Samothrace, and the day following to Neapolis; and from there to Philippi, which is a city of Macedonia, the foremost of the district, a Roman colony. We were staying some days in this city. On the Sabbath day we went outside of the city by a riverside, where we supposed there was a place of prayer, and we sat down, and spoke to the women who had come together. A certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple, of the city of Thyatira, one who worshiped God, heard us; whose heart the Lord opened to listen to the things which were spoken by Paul. When she and her household were baptized, she begged us, saying, “If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house, and stay.” So she persuaded us.
Responsorial psalm
Psalms 149:1-2,3-4,5-6,9
Praise the Lord! Sing to the Lord a new song, his praise in the assembly of the saints. Let Israel rejoice in him who made them. Let the children of Zion be joyful in their King. Let them praise his name in the dance! Let them sing praises to him with tambourine and harp! For the Lord takes pleasure in his people. He crowns the humble with salvation. Let the saints rejoice in honor. Let them sing for joy on their beds. May the high praises of God be in their mouths, and a two-edged sword in their hand; to execute on them the written judgment. All his saints have this honor. Hallelujah!
Gospel
John 15:26-27,16:1-4
“When the Counselor has come, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will testify about me. You will also testify, because you have been with me from the beginning. You didn’t choose me, but I chose you, and appointed you, that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain; that whatever you will ask of the Father in my name, he may give it to you. “I am the true vine, and my Father is the farmer. Every branch in me that doesn’t bear fruit, he takes away. Every branch that bears fruit, he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. You are already pruned clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Remain in me, and I in you. As the branch can’t bear fruit by itself, unless it remains in the vine, so neither can you, unless you remain in me.
Lectio
There is a quiet phrase in the first reading that is easy to walk past: "whose heart the Lord opened to listen." Lydia does not open her own heart. She is a woman of some means, a merchant in purple cloth, capable and self-directed by any worldly measure — and yet the moment of her turning is not something she manufactures. The Lord opens what she could not open herself. And once opened, she cannot keep the grace to herself; she immediately presses her house upon Paul, almost overwhelming him with hospitality. Grace received becomes grace poured out. The receiving and the giving are one motion.
This is exactly what Jesus describes when He says, "You did not choose me, but I chose you." We so often imagine our faith as our own achievement, our own decision, our own grip on God. But the Gospel and Lydia both tell us the truth is gentler and stranger than that: we are chosen, opened, appointed. The branch does not decide to bear fruit by straining. It bears fruit by remaining — by staying joined to the vine, by not wandering off in search of a life it thinks it must construct alone. Lydia's whole conversion, and her whole ministry, begins with a heart she did not open and ends with a door she cannot help but throw wide.
And so the invitation of this Easter Monday is not to try harder but to remain, and to trust that what has been opened in you will naturally overflow into the people around you — that your fruit is not something you produce but something that grows through you when you stay close.
Where in your life right now are you straining to open a door — a healing, a decision, a change of heart — that only the Lord can open, and what would it look like to stop forcing it and simply wait on Him?
Whose house or table have you been keeping the Lord away from, and who is the one person this week you could invite in, as Lydia did, letting your own received grace spill over into hospitality?
Saint of the day
St. Mammertus, Archbischop († c. 477)
Ora reads this aloud, every morning, free. Ora