Today · Saturday, November 14, 2026
Saturday of the Thirty-second week in Ordinary Time
Luke 18:1-8
Listen to the whole reading — MP3
First reading
3 John 1:5-8
Beloved, you do a faithful work in whatever you accomplish for those who are brothers and strangers. They have testified about your love before the assembly. You will do well to send them forward on their journey in a way worthy of God, because for the sake of the Name they went out, taking nothing from the Gentiles. We therefore ought to receive such, that we may be fellow workers for the truth.
Responsorial psalm
Psalms 112:1-2,3-4,5-6
Hallelujah! Blessed is the man who fears the Lord, who delights greatly in his commandments. His offspring will be mighty in the land. The generation of the upright will be blessed. Wealth and riches are in his house. His righteousness endures forever. Light dawns in the darkness for the upright, gracious, merciful, and righteous. It is well with the man who deals graciously and lends. He will maintain his cause in judgment. For he will never be shaken. The righteous will be remembered forever.
Gospel
Luke 18:1-8
He also spoke a parable to them that they must always pray, and not give up, saying, “There was a judge in a certain city who didn’t fear God, and didn’t respect man. A widow was in that city, and she often came to him, saying, ‘Defend me from my adversary!’ He wouldn’t for a while, but afterward he said to himself, ‘Though I neither fear God, nor respect man, yet because this widow bothers me, I will defend her, or else she will wear me out by her continual coming.’” The Lord said, “Listen to what the unrighteous judge says. Won’t God avenge his chosen ones, who are crying out to him day and night, and yet he exercises patience with them? I tell you that he will avenge them quickly. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”
Lectio
There is a quiet question hiding at the end of today's Gospel, and it is the one Jesus seems most interested in. He has just told a story about persistence — a widow who wears down an unjust judge by the sheer stubbornness of her return — and we expect the lesson to land on God's eagerness to answer. And it does. But then Jesus turns the whole thing around. The question is not whether God will respond; He will, and quickly. The question is whether we will still be there, still knocking, still believing, when He does. "When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?"
Notice that the widow's power is not eloquence or standing. She has neither. Her power is that she keeps coming back. This is what prayer that does not give up looks like — not a performance of patience, but a refusal to go home. And the psalm promises what sustains such a person: "Light dawns in the darkness for the upright." The faithful one is not spared the darkness; the light simply finds them there, still waiting, still standing in the place where they have been crying out.
Perhaps this is why the Third Letter of John praises those who do faithful work for strangers, who "went out for the sake of the Name." Faith that endures is rarely dramatic. It is the slow, unglamorous fidelity of people who keep showing up — at the door of the judge, at the side of the stranger, at the foot of the altar — long after the feeling of being heard has faded.
What is the one request you have brought to God so many times that you have grown tired of asking, and are tempted to stop bringing it?
Who is the "stranger" in your life right now whom you could receive or help on their journey this week, even though they can give you nothing in return?
Saint of the day
St. Lawrence O'Toole, Archbishop of Dublin (c. 1125-1180)
Ora reads this aloud, every morning, free. Ora