11 February 2026
Defilement comes from within, from hearts that harbor evil, not hands that skip washing. The real pollution is internal, invisible, socially acceptable.
We sanitize our outsides while rotting from within, performing purity while nursing hatred. Jesus names the shadow we prefer to project onto others.
12 February 2026
A Gentile woman talks back to Jesus, and he changes his mind, or reveals it. She refuses dismissal, turns his metaphor against him, demands crumbs from the children’s table.
Faith looks like persistence, like arguing with God, like refusing to accept exclusion. Sometimes the outsider teaches the insider about the width of grace.
13 February 2026
Ephphatha: be opened. Ears and tongue loosened by touch and spit, common elements made sacramental. Jesus sighs, groans, as if healing costs him something.
The deaf man speaks plainly because someone spoke intimately to his condition. Transformation requires contact, presence, the willingness to be touched by another’s pain.
14 February 2026
Four thousand hungry people, seven loaves, again abundance from scarcity. Jesus keeps feeding multitudes in deserted places as if to say: this is what the kingdom does.
Compassion doesn’t calculate odds or ration resources. When we offer what little we have, grace multiplies it beyond our arithmetic.
15 February 2026
Jesus doesn’t abolish the law but fulfills it, takes it deeper than behavior into being. Righteousness isn’t rule-following but heart-transformation; the letter kills but the Spirit gives life.
Murder begins with contempt, adultery with lustful looking. God cares less about our compliance than our conversion.
16 February 2026
Pharisees demand signs while standing before the Sign. They want proof while rejecting Presence; evidence while denying the Evident.
Jesus sighs deeply, refuses, leaves. Some blindness is chosen, some deafness willed. Grace won’t force itself on those committed to suspicion.
17 February 2026
The disciples fret about bread in the boat while traveling with the Bread of Life. They’ve witnessed miraculous feedings but still panic over provisions.
We’re all like this, anxious about scarcity while surrounded by abundance. Jesus asks: Do you still not understand? Faith is remembering what Love has already done.