Divine Intimacy - Lenten Meditations for 2026 - Day 2

Start with a simple truth: remembering death can make your life burn brighter. We open Day Two of Lent by reading the daily Mass texts—Hezekiah’s plea in Isaiah 38 and the Centurion’s daring humility in Matthew 8—and let their honesty shape how we face fear, illness, and the limits we’d rather ignore. Those passages become the doorway into Divine Intimacy’s memento mori: not a fixation on endings, but a clear-eyed way to live ready, lamp lit, heart unlocked to grace.

From there, we lean into the hard question many believers carry: how do you love God’s will when it hurts, and how do you prepare your family for a faith that will be tested? Drawing on John of the Cross, we explore the startling idea of “dying of love,” where a lifetime of small surrenders ripens into a final yes. Francis de Sales’ image of becoming breadworthy through tribulation gives us language for real pain without losing hope. We talk frankly about anxiety as a spouse and parent, the ache that comes from wounds inside the Church, and why fidelity matters even when trust is strained.

This conversation stays practical. We suggest anchoring Lent with the Sorrowful Mysteries, walking the Stations of the Cross, and reading Scripture so often that its cadence steadies you. We won’t shield our kids or converts from the truth; we’ll form them to expect trials and to meet them with courage rooted in sacrament, prayer, and community. If you’re seeking a Lent that is more than good intentions—one that shapes how you love, suffer, and lead at home—this is for you.

If this resonated, share it with someone who needs courage today, subscribe for the full Lent series, and leave a review with the one practice that grounds your heart right now. Let’s walk these forty days together.

Transcript

Why We’ll Read The Day’s Mass Texts

Epistle: Hezekiah’s Plea And Mercy

Gospel: The Centurion’s Bold Faith

Divine Intimacy: Memento Mori

Readiness For Death And Daily Grace

Dying Of Love And God’s Will

The Colloquy: Embracing Suffering

Personal Fears As A Husband And Dad

Tribulation Within The Church

Blindsided Faith: From 90s To Now

SPEAKER_00 0:31

Hello, everyone, and uh welcome to our second day of Lent. Um I want to say thank you to everyone. Uh yesterday's um yesterday's video on Ash Wednesday uh has been the best uh best viewed and um most liked and commented on uh meditation we've done on the channel. So that was really awesome to see. And you know, not that uh not that I do them for views or anything like that, but it um it's encouraging to see so many people uh you know in enjoy it and and seemingly find it fruitful. So that was great to see, um, especially because uh these videos, you know, when when I put them out for 46 days straight, they tend to completely nuke us in the YouTube algorithm. Um, you know, for a lot of reasons, I'm not putting them out at the time I'm supposed to. They tend to, and because of that, they don't get enough views in the first few hours for the algorithm to push it, so then they get low view numbers, and then the algorithm punishes the whole channel when you have so many videos in a row with low view numbers and blah blah blah. Um, but it's worth it, it's worth it to me um to do these, even if it does kind of punish that punish us for I know it's worth it to Anthony. So we're gonna do them anyways, no matter what. Um, but if you guys could help us, at least try to fight it a little. Um obviously liking the videos, uh commenting, all that stuff helps. But more than anything, especially with these meditations, if you could please share them um with others, you know, on other other platforms, um, other pieces of social media with friends or family. One, it you know, hopefully other people find these fruitful and it helps them and their Lent. Um, that's more important than anything. But also two, hopefully, then it at least lessens the impact this has on the channel as a whole. But regardless of of what happens, we're doing them anyway. So so today is day two of Lent. And when I realized, or I should say, what I decided right before starting this recording was since divine intimacy, since the meditations do uh almost daily seem to at least mention the readings from the liturgy that day. I might as well just just read the readings from the liturgy, uh, from the mass. Um that way you're you guys aren't forced to go somewhere else. To read them or listen to them, you can to fully understand the meditation, you'll get it all right here. Plus, I don't think anyone would ever say that you know, too much scripture in Lent is a thing at all. So we're gonna start these out now with the you know, the the lesson or epistle uh in the gospel from the mass of the day. They are gonna be from the the traditional um liturgical uh lectionary and calendar, which I don't think is too different from the new during Lent, but just so you know, it's they're gonna be the readings from the 62 Missal. We'll do those readings and then move into divine intimacy. So it is gonna make the videos a little longer, but like I said, you can't have too much scripture and hopefully it makes them a little bit more fruitful. So without further ado, let me start here with the epistle from the mass for Thursday after Ash Wednesday. It is Isaiah 38 1 through 6. I'll throw up an image on screen and we'll get going. In those days Ezekius was sick, even to death, and Isaiah, the son of Amos the prophet, came unto him, and said to him, Thus saith the Lord, take order with thy house, for thou shalt die and not live. And Ezekiel turned his face toward the wall, and prayed to the Lord and said, I beseech thee, O Lord, remember how I have walked before thee in truth, and with a perfect heart, and have done that which is good in thy sight. And Ezekiel wept with great weeping. The word of the Lord came to Isaiah, saying, Go and say to Ezekias, Thus saith the Lord, the God of David thy father, I have heard thy prayer, and I have seen thy tears. Behold, I will add to the thy days fifteen years, and I will deliver thee in this city out of the hand of the king of the Assyrians, and that will protect it, saith the Lord Almighty. Now the gospel for today's mass is Matthew eight, five through thirteen. At that time, when Jesus had entered in Capernaum, there came to him a centurion, beseeching him and saying, Lord, my servant lieth at home sick of the palsy, and is grievously tormented. And Jesus saith to him, I will come and heal him. And the centurion making answer said, Lord, I am not worthy that thou should should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my servant shall be healed. For I am also a man subject to authority, having under me soldiers, and I say to this, Go and he goeth, and to another, come, and he cometh, and to my servant, do this, and he doeth it. And Jesus hearing this marvelled, and said to them that followed him, Amen I say to you, I have not found so great faith in Israel. And I say to you that many shall come from the east and the west, and shall sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, but the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into the exterior darkness. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. And Jesus said to the centurion, Go, and as thou hast believed, so be it done to thee. And the servant was healed at the same hour. Okay, so those were the mass readings for the day. Now we will move to divine intimacy. In the subject of today's meditation is death. Presence of God. O Lord, you have created me for yourself. Grant that I may live and die for love of you. Meditation one today, the Thursday following Ash Wednesday, we find in the liturgy another reference to death. Take order with thy house, for thou shalt die. The church wishes us to become familiar with this thought, lest being suddenly surprised by the day of death, we shall seek time for penance and not find it. The gospel, Jesus spoke of death as coming like a thief in the knife, when we least expect it, but for the watchful Christian who lives according to the words, be you then also ready. Death will not be a surprise, because it will always find him with his loins girt and lamp burning, like those faithful servants who were waiting for their master, that when he cometh and knocketh, they may open to him immediately. At that moment there will be no complaint, no fear or anxiety, because one who has always lived in expectation of the coming of the Lord will not be afraid to open the door to him at his arrival. He will go to meet him with great joy, give him a loving welcome, with all the ardor of his soul pronounce his last. Behold, I come. Although death is the last, it is not the only coming of the Lord in the life of a Christian. It is preceded by many other comings whose special purpose is to prepare us for this last. Death will then be for us in the fullest sense a coming of grace. From the moment of our baptism until the end of our life, we experience a continual succession of comings or visits from our Lord. Each sacrament we receive, each inspiration, each increase of grace is a divine visit to the soul, by means of which God always possesses it more and more, dwelling in it more fully and intimately. One who has never hesitated to open his heart to all these visits from our Lord, who has always welcomed them faithfully and lovingly, who has followed all the impulses of grace with docility, has nothing to fear from this last coming. Then the words of Jesus will sound sweetly in his ears. Well done, good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord. Meditation part two. Saint John of the Cross, in speaking of those who have reached the state of transforming union by love, declares that their death is caused more by the impetus of divine love than by natural causes. Although they seem to die from an illness or because of an of old age, their spirits are wrested away by nothing less than some loving impulse and a counter, far loftier and of greater power and strength than any in the past, for it has succeeded in breaking the web and bearing away the precious jewel of the soul. This is indeed dying of love, a precious blessed death, the true new the true nuptial meeting of the soul with God, which brings it immediately into the beatific vision. It is the way holy souls die, those souls who are prevented from seeing God face to face only because they are still imprisoned in their body. Closely related to this death of love, which is so glorious and blessed, there is another, accessible to all who sincerely love God and His holy will. As the essence of sanctity consists in always doing the will of God lovingly, even when it imposes great sacrifices and painful renouncements, so too the essence of a holy death consists in submitting oneself lovingly to the supreme sacrifice, accepting it willingly as the last expression of God's will. The deeper and more wholehearted the loving resignation with which we accept death, the more truly can it be called the death of love, precisely because it is embraced out of love of God. God is the absolute master of our life, as we should live for love of him, striving to conform in everything to his holy will, so that it becomes in everything and for everything the supreme norm of all our actions, so should we know how to die for love of him, and accept death from his hand at the hour and under the circumstances ordained by him. For whether we live, we live unto the Lord, said Saint Paul, or whether we die, we die unto the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's. Whether we are in life or in death, we are the Lord's, and because we are his we should have no desire but to live and die according to his holy will. If during our life we try to carry out God's will with the greatest love, we can surely hope that God will give us the final grace to accept death with great love also. Now the colloquy. O Jesus, agonizing on the cross, be my model at the hour of death. Although you are the creator and restorer of life, you will to undergo death and accepted it willingly in order to expiate my sins. Death has no claim on you. You are the fountain of life and immortality, in whom and by whom all creatures have life. Yet you will to subject yourself to death in order to resemble me and to sanctify my death. O death, who will henceforth fear you, since the author of life bears you in his bosom, and without doubt, everything in him is life giving. I embrace you, I clasp you in my divine Savior's heart. There, like a chick under the wing of the mother hen, I shall peacefully await your coming, secure in the knowledge that my most merciful Jesus will sweeten your bitterness and defend me against your rigors. O Jesus, from this moment I wish to employ all my powers in accepting all the circumstances and pains of my death. From this moment I desire to accept death in the place, hour, and manner in which it may please you to send it. I know very well that I must suffer and be ground by the teeth of tribulations, sorrows, privations, desolations, and sufferings, in order to become breadworthy to serve at your celestial banquet. O Christ, on the day of the general resurrection. I well know that if the grain of wheat does not fall into the ground and die, it brings forth no fruit. Therefore, with all my heart I accept the annihilation of death in order to become a new man, no longer mortal and corruptible, but immortal and glorious. And that's the meditations for today. But you know, when you're young and dumb and whatnot, um you really only have yourself to worry about. So if you're in a a state of grace, um there's not much else to be concerned with. You know, if you were to die. But um as you age, as you get married, as you have your own children, even now, you know, being in a state of grace doesn't make it to where death uh holds no anxiety. You know, now it's not so much being worried about my own the state of my own soul as it is making sure that that the the souls of my family are in a state of grace. Um even for my young children where they haven't necessarily reached the age of reason yet and have no personal sin, and obviously have been baptized and and have had original sin remitted. Um there's still that anxiety there. Uh, you know, if I were to die now, have I have I prepared them enough, you know, have I raised them enough in the faith. Um uh at this point to where there'd be no issues if I were to die or or or things of that. That's that's where the you know there's you know, 20 years older than I was as a as a kid, you know, there's a lot more anxiety there now than there was then. Um even though I've seen, you know, I've I've lived through a lot more death since then. You know, deaths of of of grandparents, of my father, watching my grandma more or less die right now. Um seeing my mom age, you know, to the point where 10, 15, 20 years, um you know, that's that's gonna be there too. Uh so even as you become more familiar with death, I don't know. My anxiety about it has increased just because the responsibilities have increased. Um so yeah, I don't I don't know. I don't know what to do about that other than keep on keeping on, I guess, continue to raise my family in the faith. Um, continue to be there as much as possible, doing what I can to get them ready for a possible death at any time. Um but one thing that stuck out to me in this reading, uh, I was in the second meditation. Or was it in no, it wasn't. It was in the colloquy. So the this colloquy, I know I said I wouldn't always say who they're from, but this colloquy was uh Saint Francis de Sale. And I um what stuck out to me in this was when he says, I know very well that I must suffer and be ground by the teeth of tribulations, sorrows, privations, desolations, and sufferings in order to become breadworthy to serve at your celestial banquet, O Christ. And that to me sounded um just a lot like what it what it is to be Catholic this you know in these days. Not that they're really any different from any other time in history. There's always been suffering and tribulations for those who who follow Christ. Um, but I I I don't think most people, most Catholics, would deny right now that uh that if you are trying to live a faithful Catholic Catholic life, there are tribulations, there are sufferings, there's privations. And a lot of it comes from our own church. And that's something that I struggle with a lot, struggle with greatly. Um something the that struggle and the feelings it engenders uh is something I have to confess a lot. Basically every confession I've had since I've you know come back to the faith um six, seven years ago now. And I don't necessarily see that getting better anytime soon, unfortunately. Uh hopefully, I mean my own personal struggles, hopefully that improves, but I mean the sufferings, um, tribulations we go through at seemingly the hands of our own church. Um all I can say is is so much of our faith tells us to expect it, to prepare ourselves for it, to struggle through it. Um something that honestly we should feel like we were warned about because we were we were warned it would be hard and difficult. You know, it reminds me um six years ago now, 2020, right? Like our church shut down our churches if I remember right, but most most of them were shut down literally during, you know, at the start of Holy Week. So Lent is a great time to to ponder on all the the subjects. Suffering that we do throughout this life to use it to prepare for death, to use it to sanctify ourselves. To to toughen up ourselves, to use it to sanctify our children and prepare them. Um, because I feel like you know, I I don't know when everyone else was raised, and don't know how many of you were raised cradle in the same time period I was, but growing up Catholic in the 90s, you know, I was um, let's see, it would have been 14 in 2002 when uh when the the sex abuse scandal started to break and stuff like that. So but then I was largely in many ways already formed growing up as a cradle Catholic. So growing up as a Catholic in the 90s, like wasn't raised raised to expect all this, wasn't raised, um, wasn't warned to expect it all, wasn't made ready for it. It was uh happy go-lucky time in the church. Um communism was gone, JP2, you know, the victor over the Soviet Union was still reigning as Pope. Sex abuse scandal hadn't broken yet, and uh for the most part, the really terrible liturgies of the 70s and 80s were starting to disappear. Um, so if you weren't raised in tradition, if you weren't raised in the TLM, if you didn't know about the struggles, you know, no, there was no one that that I knew of at that point talking about potential issues with Vatican II or all that stuff we hear about today. Um, so you know, at when you're raised at that age in that way, and then stuff you know starts to break and you start to learn more and more things, like it blindsides you. Um so all we can do is is use it to to fortify ourselves, but more than anything, make sure our own children aren't blindsided blindsided by it, make sure those converting to the church aren't blindsided by it. As Anthony likes to say, um, we are, as Catholics, the one of the most dysfunctional families out there. But we are family, and we need to be there for each other. Um, we need to give each other charity, benefit of the doubt. We need to be there to strengthen each other, especially during seasons like like Lent. Because who knows, we may all have to go to the Coliseum or to the chopping block together or to the gallows to together. You know? So yeah, happy, happy subject today, guys. Happy subject about death. Um But it's something to meditate on. Memento mori. Lent is a perfect time for it. And I can almost promise you, whatever we whatever tribulations and privations and desolations we suffer in this life, pale in comparison to pale in comparison to what our Lord gave for us on the cross and in his in his most holy passion. So meditate upon that. Pray the sorrowful mysteries when you pray the rosary. Go to stations of the cross, pray them yourself. You know, just go deep into the passion and death of our Lord these next 40 days to prepare for your own, which could happen in any any time, any moment. Anyways, that's all I have for today, everyone. Uh shall we see if tomorrow's subject is gonna be a little bit brighter and more cheerful? The proof of love. That sounds better. That sounds encouraging. Of course, we're told no no greater love hath man that you know than giving up his life or his friend. So proof of love might just be death, too. Anyways, once again, really I I appreciate all you guys watching the channel, whether you watch these meditations or not, I appreciate it. Anthony appreciates it. I hope these are fruitful. Um, I hope you enjoy them. And uh thank you so much, and I hope you all have a great day.