This includes 40 one-page homilies that follow the Catholic lectionary readings for the daily mass in Lent plus Ash Wednesday.
All feasts, solemnities, and memorials are included.
Sundays are not included in this bundle.
You will receive immediately by email daily mass homilies.
Each homily is one-page, single spaced that follow the Catholic lectionary for the Daily Mass
A Sample
Do You Want to Be Well?
The Text: John 5:1–16
Kate Gilgan admitted that she was battling alcoholism. Her memory was so foggy and denial so deep that she had forgotten the day she lost custody of her six-year-old son. The court deemed her unfit to parent, and she would need to earn her parental rights back. She endured numerous supervised visits with her son, and started living a sober life. But as she admitted, she tried too hard to parent. She overfunctioned, and her son resisted. Six years later, her son told her that he didn’t love her any more. So Kate made a decision. As she wrote, “I stopped thinking that love was something I had to prove with court documents. I stopped chasing every possible way to make him see that I had changed. I started focusing on actually changing.”[1] Kate’s journey mirrors another conversation Jesus had in John 5. Jesus asks a question that seems almost unnecessary but proves deeply revealing: “Do you want to be well?”
Jesus encounters a man who has been ill for thirty-eight years, lying near the pool of Bethesda. We don’t know his journey to get there, but we do know that he, like Kate, was cut off from friends and family.
The pool was believed to have healing powers when its waters were stirred, and many sick people gathered there, waiting for a chance at restoration. The man explains his condition not with complaint, but with resignation. He has no one to help him into the pool, and every time the water stirs, someone else arrives first. Years of waiting have shaped his expectations.
Instead of offering immediate sympathy or explanation, Jesus asks a direct and unsettling question: “Do you want to be well?” On the surface, the answer seems obvious. Yet Jesus knows that healing will require more than movement of limbs; it will require movement of the heart. To be healed means letting go of old patterns, excuses, and even identities shaped by suffering.
In one of his journals, the poet T.S. Eliot reflected that human beings often cling to familiar suffering because change requires courage. Jesus’ question at the pool carries the same weight: are we willing to step into a new future, even when it feels uncertain? Jesus does not tell the man to wait for better conditions. He does not require the stirring of the water. He simply says, “Rise, take up your mat, and walk.” The command is both healing and commissioning. The mat that once symbolized limitation now becomes a testimony carried through the streets.
Helen Keller insisted, “Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened.” The man at the pool is not healed despite his long suffering, but through an encounter that calls him beyond it. As we continue our Lenten journey, today’s Gospel invites honest reflection. Do we truly want to be well? Are we willing to rise when Christ calls, even if it means leaving familiar ground behind?
Kate eventually regained her son’s trust and confidence. She wrote, “Love is found in the quiet choice to stay steady, to heal without needing to be seen, to love without demanding love in return.” May we hear Jesus’ question not as an accusation, but as an invitation. And may we have the courage this Lent to rise, take up what once held us down, and walk into the healing life God longs to give.
[1] Kate Gilgan, NY Times, “Earning Her Son’s Trust,” 11/23/2025.
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