Daily Gospel Reflection for November 13, 2024

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

Today's Gospel: Luke 17:11-19

In today’s Gospel reading, only one of ten lepers healed by Jesus returns to thank the Lord for His life-changing action. Jesus highlights the one who circled back, a Samaritan, or foreigner, knowing he was propelled by the Spirit, a Spirit he would need going forward. He tells the healed man that his faith has saved him—an utterance we also hear at other points during Jesus’ healings. But this time, the words are preceded by an admonition: “Stand up and go!” Jesus is urging the man to make good on the combination of His saving work and the man’s grateful response.

Saint Francis Xavier Cabrini began life with a deficit. Born two months premature, the thirteenth child in her family in Italy, her frail health made it difficult to achieve her dream of becoming a religious sister. But after she was rejected by several orders, God made a way for her, and in that opening she heard the call to “Stand up and go!” Her missionary work founding schools in the United States became a life-saving mission in communities all over the country. She was a foreigner who, in her gratitude to God, did great things after receiving God’s healing touch and directive to get going on the work of her life.

As parents, we are the primary educators of our children. Mother Cabrini told the teachers under her guidance: “Yours is not a vain science that puffs up, but that which reforms manners, educates the heart, and forms character.” Just as her “ordinary” work helping poor families was life-changing and salvific, so is ours, making it something extraordinary.

Ponder:

Where is God calling you today, in your extraordinary ministry as a parent, to “Stand up and go”?

Pray:

Dear Lord, some days I’m inclined to believe my ministry as a parent is ordinary, and yet I hear Your calling that it is something much greater, even salvific. Help me more clearly hear, and respond to, Your life-saving urging to help form my family for heaven.

Daily Gospel 2