Friday, September 25, 2026
Friday of the Twenty-fifth week in Ordinary Time
Luke 9:18-22
Listen to the whole reading — MP3
First reading
Ecclesiastes 3:1-11
For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace. What profit has he who works in that in which he labors? I have seen the burden which God has given to the sons of men to be afflicted with. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in their hearts, yet so that man can’t find out the work that God has done from the beginning even to the end.
Responsorial psalm
Psalms 144:1,2,3-4
Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who teaches my hands to war, and my fingers to battle: my loving kindness, my fortress, my high tower, my deliverer, my shield, and he in whom I take refuge; who subdues my people under me. The Lord, what is man, that you care for him? Or the son of man, that you think of him? Man is like a breath. His days are like a shadow that passes away.
Gospel
Luke 9:18-22
As he was praying alone, the disciples were with him, and he asked them, “Who do the multitudes say that I am?” They answered, “‘John the Baptizer,’ but others say, ‘Elijah,’ and others, that one of the old prophets is risen again.” He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered, “The Christ of God.” But he warned them, and commanded them to tell this to no one, saying, “The Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and the third day be raised up.”
Lectio
There is a strange humility in Ecclesiastes' famous catalog of seasons. We like to imagine ourselves as the authors of our lives, choosing when to build and when to tear down, when to speak and when to keep silent. But the Preacher sees something we resist: the seasons come whether we summon them or not. He has made everything beautiful in its time — but not in *our* time, and this is the ache at the center of the passage. God has set eternity in our hearts, and yet withholds from us the map of the whole. We are given the moment, not the meaning of the moment. We must live forward while understanding, if at all, only backward.
And into this not-knowing walks Jesus, asking the question that gathers up every season into a single face: "Who do you say that I am?" Notice He asks it while praying alone, then turns to those closest to Him. Peter answers rightly — the Christ of God — but immediately Jesus reveals that even this true answer opens onto suffering, rejection, death, and only then resurrection. To know who Christ is, is to be told there is a season of the Cross that cannot be skipped. The eternity set in our hearts does not exempt us from the weeping and the mourning; it walks us straight through them toward a rising we cannot yet see.
Perhaps this is the mercy hidden in both readings: we are not asked to understand the whole plan. We are asked only to answer the question in front of us, to name who He is to us today, and to trust that the season we are in — even a bitter one — is somehow being made beautiful in a time not our own.
What season named in Ecclesiastes are you actually living right now — the weeping, the building, the letting go — and have you been fighting it because it isn't the season you wanted?
If Jesus turned to you today and asked, "Who do you say that I am?" — not who the Church says, not who you were taught, but you — what honest name would come out of your mouth this afternoon?
Saint of the day
St. Finbarr, Bishop (6th century)
Ora reads this aloud, every morning, free. Ora