Divine Intimacy - Lenten Meditations for 2026 - Day 14

What if your spiritual life looks busy on the outside but runs on empty within? Today we walk through Elijah and the widow, where a last handful of meal turns into daily bread, and we sit with Jesus’ words in Matthew 23 that challenge our craving for status, titles, and the appearance of holiness. The throughline is humility: the quiet reordering that places God first, neighbors next, and our image in last place.

We dig into the naming differences between the Douay-Rheims and most modern Bibles to ground the reading, but the heart of the conversation lives in Divine Intimacy’s claim that without Christ we can do nothing—not even a small, supernatural act. Actual grace is not optional equipment for saints; it is the power that lets any of us love well, repent honestly, and serve without fanfare. That levels the field between scholar and laborer and exposes a trap many of us know too well: mistaking knowledge about faith for friendship with God.

I share a personal confession about choosing footnotes over prayer and how Lent is nudging me back to first things: praying with my family, embracing my vocation as a husband and father, and letting study serve love rather than replace it. We talk about practical choices that nudge the soul into honesty—making a careful sign of the cross, praying before reading, serving before speaking—and the freedom that comes when we stop performing and start depending. If your jar feels nearly empty, take heart; humility makes space for grace, and grace is what fills the jar.

If this resonates, follow the show, share it with someone who needs a gentle reset, and leave a quick review to help more listeners find it. What’s one small practice you’ll trade for prayer this week?

Transcript

Welcome And Lent Day Fourteen

SPEAKER_00 0:31

Good morning, everyone. And welcome to day fourteen of Lentier. We're two weeks through Lentier now. Um, even though we are still in the middle of the second week of Lent. Tuesday of the second week of Lent. Um, but yeah, we will get into the mass readings and divine intimacy.

SPEAKER_01 0:59

And uh, as I do every day, I'll throw up an image on screen so there's nothing to watch. You can just listen. So you can either have this on YouTube or any of the audio podcast apps. Without further ado, though, I'll throw up an image on screen and we will get going.

SPEAKER_03 1:21

So, let's see here.

Why Kings And Samuel Differ By Name

Gospel: Woes Against Showy Religion

SPEAKER_01 1:28

We go to the mass readings for the day. So Tuesday of the second week of Lent here. We'll start with the day's lesson, which is from Third Kings, which if you your your missile or Bible might call it First Kings, uh, I think. Um I forget exactly how it's uh how it's set up here, but anyways, um third Kings seventeen, eight through sixteen. In those days the word of the Lord came to Elias the Thesbite, saying, Arise and go to Sarepta of the Sidonians, and dwell there, for I have commanded a widow woman there to feed thee. He arose and went to Sarepta, and when he was come to the gate of the city he saw the widow woman gathering sticks, and he called her and said to her, Give me a little water and a vessel that I may drink. When she was going to fetch it, he called after her, saying, Bring me also, I beseech thee, a morsel of bread in thy hand. And she answered, As the Lord thy God liveth, I have no bread, but only a handful of meal and a pot, a little oil and a cruise. Behold, I am gathering two sticks that I might go in and dress it, for me and my son, that we may eat it and die. And Elijah said to her, Fear not, but go and do as thou hast said, but first make for me one of the same meal a little hearth cake, and bring it to me, and after make for thyself and thy son. For thus saith the Lord the God of Israel, the pot of meal should shall not waste, nor the cruise of oil be diminished, until the day wherein the Lord will give rain upon the face of the earth. She wet she went and did according to the word of Elias, and he ate in she and her house, and from that day the pot of meal wasted not, and the cruise of oil was not diminished, according to the word of the Lord, which he spoke in the hand of Elias. And yeah, as I was saying, um the the Dewey Reams, um, which is the Bible that the the traditional readings that that the English traditional readings are taken from, um has first kings, second kings, third kings, and fourth kings. Now, in most Bibles, most Protestant Bibles, and some of the um Catholic Bibles that are translated from like the Masoretic text, um what the Dewey Reims calls first and second Kings would be called first and second Samuel. So in like a Bible from the Masoretic text, so all the Protestant Bibles and most of your um most of your cat your your newer Catholic Bibles have first Samuel, first Samuel, 2nd Samuel, 1 Kings, 2nd Kings. The Dewey Reams in anything from the Latin Vulgate or Septuagint um just calls it 1 Kings, 2nd Kings, 3rd Kings, Fourth Kings. So a little confusing because in your average, what I'm gonna say average Bible, you know, that we have here in America, 1 Kings and 2nd Kings is not 1 Kings and 2nd Kings in the Dewey Reems. 1 Kings and 2nd Kings is 3rd Kings and Fourth Kings. But anyways, a little tidbit there. Uh okay, today's gospel. Today's gospel is the gospel of Matthew chapter 23 1 through 12. At that time Jesus spoke to the multitudes and to his disciples, saying, The scribes and the Pharisees have sit in on the chair of Moses. All things therefore what whatsoever they shall say to you, observe and do. But according to their works do ye not, for they say and do not, for they bind heavy and insupportable burdens, and lay them on men's shoulders, but with a finger of their own they will not move them. And all their works they do for to be seen of men, for they make their philactor phylacteries broad, and enlarge their fringes, and they love the first places at feast, the first chairs in the synagogues and salutations in the marketplace, and to be called by men rabbi. But be not you called rabbi, for one is your master, and all you are brethren, and call none your father upon earth, for one is your father, who is in heaven. Neither be ye called masters, for one is your master, Christ. He that is the greatest among you shall be your servant, and whosoever shall exalt himself shall be humbled, and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 6:50

I will switch over to Divine Intimacy now, and we will get going on that here. Give me just a moment to hold that up.

Grace Needed For Every Good Act

Personal Struggle: Knowledge Versus Prayer

Knowing One’s Place As Vocation

Closing And Schedule Updates

SPEAKER_01 7:14

So, divine intimacy for Tuesday of the second week of Lent. Our place. Oh my God, help me to know you and to know myself. I know that you are he who is, and I am he who is not. Meditation one. Among all the creatures in which we take pleasure and toward which our nature seems to be attracted the most, self undoubtedly holds the first place. There is no one, no matter how limited in talents and good qualities, who does not love his own excellence, and who does not try in one way or another to make it shine forth to himself and to others. It is for this reason that we often spontaneously exaggerate our own worth, and as a result are demanding and pretentious. This makes us haughty and arrogant, as well as difficult in our relations with others. Humility is the virtue which keeps within just limits the love of one's own excellence. Whereas self-esteem often induces us to make ourselves too evident or to occupy a place which is higher than our due, humility keeps us in our own place. Humility is truth. It tends to establish in truth both our intellect by making us know ourselves as we would really are, and our life by inclining us to take in relation to God and to man our proper place and no other. Humility makes us realize that in the sight of God we are only his little creature, entirely dependent upon him for our existence and for all our works. Having received life from God, we cannot subsist even one moment independently of him. He who gave us existence by his creative action maintains life in us by his conserving action. In addition, we cannot perform the slightest act without God's cooperation, in the same way that a machine, even a perfect one, cannot make any motion until it is started by the one who made it. It is very true that, unlike the machine, our acts are neither mechanical nor compulsory, but are conscious and free. Yet we cannot move even a finger without the const the concurrence of the divine artist. It follows then that everything we possess in the order of being, qualities, gifts, capacities, and everything we have accomplished in the order of action is not ours, but all, in one way or another, are gifts of God. All our acts performed with God's help. What hast thou that thou hast not received? And if thou hast received it, why dost thou glory as if thou hadst not received it? Meditation two in the supernatural order, where everything depends on grace, the words of Jesus, without me you can do nothing, are more strictly verified. Although in baptism, sanctifying grace raised us to the supernatural order, and then fused virtues made us capable of producing supernatural acts, still Saint Paul says, No man can say the Lord Jesus but by the Holy Ghost. In order to perform even the tiniest supernatural act, we need God's help. We need actual grace which prevents us by its inspirations and accompanies us in the act until it is accomplished. The great theologian who has profoundly studied Catholic doctrine has an absolute has as absolute a need of actual grace in order to put into practice the most insignificant point of Catholic doctrine, or to produce a single act of the love as of the love of God as does the peasant who knows nothing beyond his catechism. Even a saint, one who has received so many favors and divine lights and has attained to a heroic virtue, cannot perform the smallest virtuous act without the help of actual grace. How total then must be our dependence upon God? We are very far from the truth if, trusting in our own knowledge or long practice in the spiritual life, we believe that our lights or our virtues are sufficient to make us act like good Christians. No, Saint Paul warns us. Our sufficiency is from God. Without God we cannot think or speak or desire any good, for it is God who worketh in you both to will and to accomplish according to his good will. Of ourselves then we have only one capacity, which belongs to our limited nature, injured by original sin, the capacity to fail in our duties into sin. If we take away from ourselves what is of God, we will find that of ourselves we are nothing, or rather less than nothing, for nothingness is incapable of offending God while we have the sad capability. O omnipotent Father, God of truth, God of love, permit me to enter into this cell of self-knowledge. I admit that of myself I am nothing, and that all the being and goodness in me comes solely from you. Show me my faults, that I may detest my malice, and thus I shall flee from self-love, and find myself clothed again in the nuptial the nuptial robe of divine charity, which I must have in order to be admitted to the nuptials of life eternal. Give me, O my God, a thorough knowledge of myself. Let me be really convinced that I am nothing and that you are everything. Do not let me think that I am anything more than the nothing I am. Let me do nothing more for myself but all for you. Grant that no creature may think any more about me, do anything more for me, give me anything more, but let all be done for you and given to you. And may my nothingness be reduced to nothing in the eyes of all creatures and in yours, my God, that you, the all, may be all, in all and through all. Reveal my nothingness to me, O Lord, reveal it so well that not only shall I understand it, but I shall also have a practical, profound conviction of it. You know how painful that is to my proud nature. My intellect cannot resist the evidence of truth, and is obliged to admit that I am nothing, have nothing, and can do nothing without you. Yet my ego is always trying to attribute something to itself, to take the credit for this or that, to take as much pleasure in it as if it were its own. Help me, O Lord, to triumph over this pride, which, as you see, steals your gifts and makes my life sterile by preventing me from reaching the abundance of your graces. Grant that I may know my nothingness, O Lord, for the more I recognize it with simplicity and humility of heart, the more you will take pleasure in being my all. You are all, I am nothing. You, he who is, and I he who is not. Glorify yourself then in my nothingness. May your love and grace triumph in this nothing, but may your mercy also triumph, for I am a nothing which has sinned. Okay. That is that is our readings for mass and our meditations from divine intimacy for today. Um one of the parts that really stood out to me here in divine intimacy was when um when it says here the great theologian who has profoundly studied Catholic doctrine has an absolute has as absolute a need of actual actual grace in order to put into practice the most insignificant point of Catholic doctrine, or to produce a single act of the love of God, as does the peasant who knows nothing beyond his catechism. That's something that um that I need to be reminded of especially and have needed to be reminded of basically my whole life. Um I am someone who definitely makes has a tendency to make the fake faith simply just um an intellectual exercise. I have a tendency um not so much to believe, but to act as though knowledge of the faith as in in terms of knowledge of facts about the faith, uh historical, theological, you know, whatever. I I act as though knowledge about facts of the faith is a spiritual life by itself. And it's not, it just it just isn't. Um as divine intimacy tells us there. You could have the greatest theologian. Um I don't want to phrase it like that, because the the great theologians to be a to be a theologian wasn't just to know about the faith, it was to to practice the faith and to pray. But you could have the most um knowledgeable person in the world about the Catholic Church, and they are and as it says there, they need grace from God in order to perform the smallest act of Catholicism, you know, to they are in as much in need of grace to make um a good sign of the cross as the uh the the person who knows nothing more about the Catholic Church than than the the mo the most basic thing and um and that's something I need to be reminded of because I love to learn about the faith, which is a good thing, of course. But um in most cases, if I had uh 20 minutes of free time and was given the choice to either spend those 20 minutes reading obscure facts about a saint or about the history of the church, or you know, it's 20 minutes to read about some obscure theological point or had 20 minutes to pray. In most cases, I would at the very least have a strong temptation to take those 20 minutes to read about some random fact about the church instead of pray, and that's um that's not great. So uh that's something I need to work on. Um you know, to uh it mentions there how we need to know our place, like yes, knowing knowing things about the church is a good thing, but I am not a theologian. I am you know I I do not work in the the the curia. Uh I will not be assisting at any ecumenical councils or anything like that. I am a layman, I am a husband, I am a father. Um I need I need to know my place. And it my time would be much better spent praying for my family and with my family than it is spent um reading the 20 copies of the Trad of Ox catechisms back there that I have on my shelf. So that's what I'm taking away from today's readings. I know uh I know not everyone is like me, so if if that doesn't help you, I apologize, but I can only take away what I can take away, guys. Um yeah, so Tuesday, second week of Lent. Uh tomorrow should be a normal normal sh episode like this. And then Thursday will probably be normal as well because we're not leaving till later in the day. But Friday, Saturday, Sunday, then um will be done from somewhere else uh with probably lower video and audio quality just to warn you all. Um yeah, so anyways, thank you all. I will see you tomorrow, and I hope you have a good day today. Oh well, we don't want that outro. That was the Guns and Rosaries outro. Okay, this outro. Here we go. Bye everyone, but I'm gonna go.