Tuesday, October 20, 2026
Tuesday of the Twenty-ninth week in Ordinary Time
Luke 12:35-38
Listen to the whole reading — MP3
First reading
Ephesians 2:12-22
that you were at that time separate from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of the promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off are made near in the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who made both one, and broke down the middle wall of partition, having abolished in his flesh the hostility, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man of the two, making peace; and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross, having killed the hostility thereby. He came and preached peace to you who were far off and to those who were near. For through him we both have our access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God, being built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the chief cornerstone; in whom the whole building, fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together for a habitation of God in the Spirit.
Responsorial psalm
Psalms 85:8-9,10-11,12-13
I will hear what God, the Lord, will speak, for he will speak peace to his people, his saints; but let them not turn again to folly. Surely his salvation is near those who fear him, that glory may dwell in our land. Mercy and truth meet together. Righteousness and peace have kissed each other. Truth springs out of the earth. Righteousness has looked down from heaven. Yes, the Lord will give that which is good. Our land will yield its increase. Righteousness goes before him, And prepares the way for his steps.
Gospel
Luke 12:35-38
“Let your waist be dressed and your lamps burning. Be like men watching for their lord, when he returns from the marriage feast; that, when he comes and knocks, they may immediately open to him. Blessed are those servants, whom the lord will find watching when he comes. Most certainly I tell you, that he will dress himself, and make them recline, and will come and serve them. They will be blessed if he comes in the second or third watch, and finds them so.
Lectio
Paul writes to people who once lived "without hope and without God in the world," and then, with a turn of phrase that should never lose its shock, he says: but now. But now you who were far off have been brought near. Notice how the nearness is not something we achieved by climbing toward God. The wall did not come down because we scaled it; it came down because Christ tore it apart in his own flesh. Peace, Paul insists, is not a treaty we negotiate. Peace is a person. He is our peace. And the strange grammar of the Gospel says the same thing from another angle: the master returns from the wedding feast, finds his servants awake, and then — this is the part that undoes you — he ties his own apron on and waits on them. The one we are told to watch for turns out to be the one who serves.
So the waiting Jesus asks of us is not the tense vigilance of a servant afraid of being caught idle. It is the alertness of someone who has been made near, who belongs now to the household, who has stopped being a stranger. The lamp stays lit not out of dread but out of love — because someone is coming whom we actually want to see, and who, astonishingly, wants to sit us down and feed us. To keep the lamp burning is simply to keep loving the one who is coming, to refuse to let that love go dark in the long hours of the second and third watch, when nothing seems to be happening and the house is quiet.
Most of us have a place in our lives where we still feel like a stranger and a foreigner — some room in the household of God we have not dared to believe is ours. The whole letter is an argument against that exile. You are no longer far off.
Where in your life do you still stand as if you were "far off," waiting to earn a nearness that Christ has already given you in his blood?
Whose face are you keeping the lamp burning for right now — and has your waiting for them curdled into anxiety, or is it still love?
Saint of the day
St. Paul of the Cross, Priest (1693-1775)
Ora reads this aloud, every morning, free. Ora