Wednesday, November 4, 2026
Wednesday of the Thirty-first week in Ordinary Time
Luke 14:25-33
Listen to the whole reading — MP3
First reading
Philippians 2:12-18
So then, my beloved, even as you have always obeyed, not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God who works in you both to will and to work, for his good pleasure. Do all things without murmurings and disputes, that you may become blameless and harmless, children of God without defect in the middle of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you are seen as lights in the world, holding up the word of life; that I may have something to boast in the day of Christ, that I didn’t run in vain nor labor in vain. Yes, and if I am poured out on the sacrifice and service of your faith, I rejoice, and rejoice with you all. In the same way, you also rejoice, and rejoice with me.
Responsorial psalm
Psalms 27:1,4,13-14
The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid? One thing I have asked of the Lord, that I will seek after: that I may dwell in the Lord’s house all the days of my life, to see the Lord’s beauty, and to inquire in his temple. I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord. Be strong, and let your heart take courage. Yes, wait for the Lord.
Gospel
Luke 14:25-33
Now great multitudes were going with him. He turned and said to them, “If anyone comes to me, and doesn’t disregard his own father, mother, wife, children, brothers, and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he can’t be my disciple. Whoever doesn’t bear his own cross, and come after me, can’t be my disciple. For which of you, desiring to build a tower, doesn’t first sit down and count the cost, to see if he has enough to complete it? Or perhaps, when he has laid a foundation, and is not able to finish, everyone who sees begins to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build, and wasn’t able to finish.’ Or what king, as he goes to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? Or else, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends an envoy, and asks for conditions of peace. So therefore whoever of you who doesn’t renounce all that he has, he can’t be my disciple.
Lectio
There is a hardness to the Gospel today that we'd rather soften. Jesus watches the great crowds trailing after him and does not flatter them. Instead he speaks of building towers and waging wars — images of people caught halfway, who began something they could not finish and became a spectacle to everyone watching. He is not trying to thin the crowd for its own sake. He is asking us to look honestly at what following him will actually cost before we start, so that we do not abandon him when the ground gets steep.
And yet Paul, writing to his beloved Philippians, holds the other half of the truth in his hands. "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling" — yes, count the cost — "for it is God who works in you both to will and to work." The frightening arithmetic of the Gospel is not ours to do alone. The tower we cannot finish on our own strength is being quietly built by the One who gives us the very willingness to begin. This is why the psalmist is not paralyzed by fear: "The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?" The counting of the cost and the confidence of the heart are not opposites. They meet in the person who has handed himself over.
Paul even imagines himself "poured out as a libation" and calls it joy. That is what it looks like to renounce everything — not grim loss, but a life spent and still rejoicing, because it was never being spent into emptiness but into God.
Where in your life right now are you a half-built tower — something you began with Jesus and quietly abandoned when the cost became real, and what is the next small stone you could lay today?
Who is the person — a parent, a spouse, a child — that you are secretly placing before Christ, loving in a way that keeps you from fully following him, and what would it mean to love them in him instead?
Saint of the day
St. Charles Borromeo, Archbishop of Milan († 1584)
Ora reads this aloud, every morning, free. Ora