Daily Scripture, August 6, 2026

Reflection

Jesuit Father James Martin writes in his recent book Work in Progress about a time before he entered the seminary when a dear friend was killed in a car accident. It left the young Martin so upset he gave up on God completely.

Weeks later he shared his shock and grief with a young woman of faith, telling her he did not want to believe in a God who killed his friend Brad. He was done with God.

“The woman closed her eyes,” Martin writes, “opened them again, and said, ‘I’ve been spending the last few months thanking God for Brad’s life.’”

Her answer made so much sense he started going back to church and eventually joined the Jesuits.

Unfortunately, not all tragic events turn out this way. But they can be occasions for drawing closer to God.

The lesson for the three frightened men was that glory will come, but not after periods of struggle, as Jesus declared in the chapter right before this one in Matthew’s Gospel, a good chapter to read in the context of today’s Gospel.

The deeper point of the death of Brad and the thrill of the apostles’ seeing the three mighty ones is the recognition of our limits as human creatures. We are made for unity with God, the infinite one, the one with no limits. We find God, as Fr. Martin and his young woman friend did, in graced moments when we bump up against or crash into our powerlessness.

Pope Leo in his new encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, writes:

“Everything that appears as a ‘limit’—incapacity, illness, old age, suffering, vulnerability—tends to be seen primarily as a defect to be corrected, rather than as a reality through which our humanity matures and opens itself to relationship . . . . It is right to strive to alleviate the suffering that marks human life, it is also wise to acknowledge our fundamental finitude, knowing that religious experience, and in particular Christian faith, proposes that we live this ambivalence between human greatness and limitation, interpreting it in the light of our relationship with God.” (paragraph 118)

In prayer, surrounded by supportive family, friends, community members, we recognized our few skills and capacities to manage life’s twists and turns, severe suffering and fears, losses and false gains. The graced relationships with God and each other are where we feel the hand Jesus touch us: “When the disciples heard (God speaking) they fell prostrate and were very much afraid. But Jesus touched them, saying, ‘Rise and do not be afraid.’ And when the disciples raised their eyes they saw no one else but Jesus.”

May Jesus reach you today in your suffering, fear, and aloneness and raise you to see no one else but him.