Daily Gospel Reflection for August 19, 2025

Join us as we reflect, ponder, and pray together inspired by today's Gospel.

My colleagues and I like to talk about the spiritual “2 x 4 moments” in life. These are the few times that God’s message is so obvious that it is like being hit in the head by a 2 x 4 wood plank!

Today’s Gospel passage is a 2 X 4 scripture. Jesus has an unabashed preferential option for the poor. There is no ambiguity. There is no rationalization. Entering the Kingdom of God is reserved for those who are poor, are vulnerable, and those who live alongside them in solidarity.

After college, I volunteered for a year teaching at a low-income high school through a Catholic volunteer program. The students where I served often existed at the cross section of poverty, racism, and systemic gang violence. I may have been the one in the front of the classroom echoing academic facts, but they were the true teachers.

In the back of my classroom stood a prayer altar where the students and I would begin class together. Daily prayer intentions taught me so much about the lives of my students - everything from upcoming soccer matches, to hopes for unemployed parents or struggling family businesses, to college and career aspirations, to interpersonal narratives.

During one such prayer, a student fell apart, gasping through huge, gulping, uncontrolled sobs. Her college-bound brother had been killed in a drive-by shooting the day before. He simply had been wearing the wrong colors at the wrong place and time. We held her and prayed throughout the days and the weeks that followed.

Months later, an uncle of another student was released from incarceration. I had never experienced the raw and unbridled joy that flooded the classroom that morning. Only then did I truly understand what it means that the last will be first.

Ponder:

How can we combat against the temptation to sin inherent in the wealth, comfort, and status in our own lives?

Pray:

Jesus, in Your unfailing compassion, You remind us that the first will be last and the last will be first. Please inspire us to discern how to continuously live in solidarity with the most poor and vulnerable of society.

CM DGR daily sq