Daily Gospel Reflection for October 9, 2025

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

Today's Gospel: Luke 11:5-13

I hadn’t noticed this line in today’s Gospel reading before:

“ . . . how much more will the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?” Luke 11:13

It doesn’t say imagine how much better God’s gift will be than our human gift. It says God will give us much more of the Holy Spirit. Were we even asking for that?

The Holy Spirit is God’s presence on earth. The Father may not be giving us specifically what we prayed for, but greater access to the Spirit is of far greater value.

I’ve leared to be grateful not just for unanswered prayers but for prayers unasked. You see, I was not raised knowing Jesus. I found the teleology of sin and grace foreign. Then, when I was twenty years old, my grandfather died. He’d suffered many years with Alzheimer’s. The last time I saw him, I painfully watched as he ate cut-up pieces of banana, all to the captive audience of strangers.

His Christian faith had been his most precious possession for more than seventy years. At his funeral, family members grieved. When I finally gave in to tears, I felt lost in a sea of familiar faces with nowhere to turn. Suddenly, the pastor, a man who didn’t know me any more than my grandfather had on that last visit, stood before me and held out his arms. In the storyline of my life, this moment would be pinned and labeled the first time I felt God’s love.

Many decades have passed since that moment. I joined the Catholic Church in 2008, seeking Jesus and finding Him in the Mass. Perhaps the greatest response we could ever get to prayer is for God to see us lost at sea and reach out to pull us into His arms. 

Ponder:

Have you ever missed the gift God is offering you because you're searching for the gift you requested?

Pray:

Jesus, help me to be more aware of all the ways You're loving me through the people around me. Use me, Lord, to love those in my environment with the love only You can offer.

Copyright 2025 Natalie Hanemann