Thursday, May 28, 2026
Thursday of the Eighth week in Ordinary Time
Mark 10:46-52
Listen to the whole reading — MP3
First reading
1 Peter 2:2-5,9-12
as newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the Word, that with it you may grow, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious: coming to him, a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God, precious. You also, as living stones, are built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, that you may proclaim the excellence of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light: who in time past were no people, but now are God’s people, who had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy. Beloved, I beg you as foreigners and pilgrims, to abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul; having good behavior among the nations, so in that of which they speak against you as evildoers, they may by your good works, which they see, glorify God in the day of visitation.
Responsorial psalm
Psalms 100:2,3,4,5
Serve the Lord with gladness. Come before his presence with singing. Know that the Lord, he is God. It is he who has made us, and we are his. We are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, into his courts with praise. Give thanks to him, and bless his name. For the Lord is good. His loving kindness endures forever, his faithfulness to all generations.
Gospel
Mark 10:46-52
They came to Jericho. As he went out from Jericho, with his disciples and a great multitude, the son of Timaeus, Bartimaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the road. When he heard that it was Jesus the Nazarene, he began to cry out, and say, “Jesus, you son of David, have mercy on me!” Many rebuked him, that he should be quiet, but he cried out much more, “You son of David, have mercy on me!” Jesus stood still, and said, “Call him.” They called the blind man, saying to him, “Cheer up! Get up. He is calling you!” He, casting away his cloak, sprang up, and came to Jesus. Jesus asked him, “What do you want me to do for you?” The blind man said to him, “Rabboni, that I may see again.” Jesus said to him, “Go your way. Your faith has made you well.” Immediately he received his sight, and followed Jesus on the way.
Lectio
There is a tenderness running through today's readings that we might easily miss in their grandeur. Peter calls us a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation — and yet, before all that splendor, he names us as newborn babies longing for milk, as people who once were no people, who had not obtained mercy. The dignity is real, but it rests entirely on having been found, named, and gathered up when we were nothing. We do not climb our way into this house of living stones; we are placed there, one upon another, by hands gentler than our own.
Bartimaeus knows this in his body. He sits by the road, outside the procession, told to be quiet by the very crowd that surrounds Jesus. And yet his blindness has taught him the one thing the seeing often forget — that he has nothing, and so he cries out for everything. When Jesus calls, Bartimaeus casts away his cloak, the beggar's single possession, the thing he sat upon and slept beneath. He lets go of the little security he had in order to spring toward the One who called him. The question Jesus asks him is startling in its openness: *What do you want me to do for you?* Not a rebuke, not a test — an invitation to name his deepest need aloud.
This is the strange grammar of the spiritual life: we are most royal when we are most empty-handed, most seen when we admit our blindness, most His when we stop pretending we can manage on our own. The psalm tells us we are the sheep of His pasture, made by Him, belonging to Him. To know this is not to be diminished but to be brought, finally, into His marvelous light — the way Bartimaeus, healed, simply followed Jesus on the road, no longer a man beside the path but a man walking it.
If Jesus stood still today and asked you, by name, "What do you want me to do for you?" — what is the answer you have been afraid to say out loud, even to yourself?
What is the cloak you are still sitting on — the small, threadbare security you cling to — that He is quietly asking you to cast away so that you can spring toward Him unburdened?
Saint of the day
St. Germanus of Paris, Bishop (c. 496 - 576)
Ora reads this aloud, every morning, free. Ora