Daily Gospel Reflection
Join the Notre Dame family of faith. Receive God’s Word and a unique reflection in your inbox each day.
April 20, 2026
[After Jesus had fed the five thousand men, his disciples saw him walking on the sea.]
The next day, the crowd that remained across the sea
saw that there had been only one boat there,
and that Jesus had not gone along with his disciples in the boat,
but only his disciples had left.
Other boats came from Tiberias
near the place where they had eaten the bread
when the Lord gave thanks.
When the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there,
they themselves got into boats
and came to Capernaum looking for Jesus.
And when they found him across the sea they said to him,
“Rabbi, when did you get here?”
Jesus answered them and said,
“Amen, amen, I say to you, you are looking for me
not because you saw signs
but because you ate the loaves and were filled.
Do not work for food that perishes
but for the food that endures for eternal life,
which the Son of Man will give you.
For on him the Father, God, has set his seal.”
So they said to him,
“What can we do to accomplish the works of God?”
Jesus answered and said to them,
“This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he sent.”
Excerpts from the Lectionary for Mass for Use in the Dioceses of the United States of America, second typical edition © 2001, 1998, 1997, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Inc., Washington, DC. Used with permission. All rights reserved. No portion of this text may be reproduced by any means without permission in writing from the copyright owner. The full readings of the day from the Lectionary are available here.
Growth in our knowledge of God is a lifelong process. Saint Augustine wrote in praise of our Lord: “Our heart is restless until it rests in you…I will seek you.”
Imagine being a part of a miracle, a part of the thousands fed from essentially nothing! I believe we would all want to know more, understand more, and follow more. Yet, Jesus does these things not to amuse, but to catch our attention; to focus us on everlasting life! Will we believe only if we can personally experience a miracle? Do we need to put our hands in his lanced side or our fingers in his pierced hands? What are we looking for today to believe?
Jesus fed the people and left his disciples to ponder that event alone, in a boat, crossing the sea, and they expected to meet him on the other side. The crowd did the same. What sea are we willing to cross to meet our Lord? If the waters become choppy or downright stormy, will we turn back? It is clear that if we continue to search for Jesus, and believe in him, and partake of “the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give,” and gives freely, we will see the face of God!
So let’s get in our boats and sail, paddle, even swim if we need to in the choppy waters of life to seek Jesus because this life, this world, is not what it’s about; being with our Lord forever is the end game, and that is everything!
Prayer
Help us to realize, Lord, that the work we do today is also work that in some way gives life to others. Our work brings your kingdom closer to fulfillment and is vital to your hopes and dreams for all of us. Amen.
Saint of the Day
St. Agnes of Montepulciano became well-known for the supernatural signs that accompanied her growth in holiness.
She was born in 1268 to a wealthy family. She joined the convent in her hometown as a very young girl, and vigorously applied herself to prayer and formation. She was wise, even as a youth, and was entrusted with the role of housekeeper for the convent when she was 14.
When a new convent was opened nearby, Agnes was among those who departed to help begin the new community. She inspired a number of other young women to join that new convent, and she was chosen to lead the community as abbess. She was only 15 and had to receive special permission from the pope to take on that role at such a young age.
With such a great responsibility at hand, Agnes practiced a strict discipline with herself—for the next 15 years, she lived on bread and water alone and slept on the ground with a stone for a pillow. Only when she faced a serious illness did she relent from these disciplines.
She became well-known for her holiness, and special signs accompanied her prayer. She received several visions—holding the infant Jesus in her arms at one point, and receiving Communion from an angel in another. The nuns in her community saw her lifted two feet off the ground when she was praying. When the convent ran out of food, she could feed the whole community with a handful of bread after she had blessed it.
Most interesting of all, though, was the appearance of manna about her body when she prayed. She would sometimes be consumed in rapturous prayer, and a white, frosty-looking manna would appear on her cloak and in the place where she was kneeling. Her sisters reported that in these instances, she looked like she had been outside in a heavy snowstorm.
The people of her hometown, Montepulciano, wanted her to return to them, so she returned to found a new convent and asked that it be placed under the order established by St. Dominic. They built the convent building on a site that had previously held a brothel.
She lived at this new convent until she died and served as its prioress. Signs of holiness continued to follow her, including prophecies and healings—she miraculously resuscitated a child who had drowned. The community thrived under her guidance until she fell gravely ill at the age of 49.
When it was clear that she would die, her community became distressed, and she told them, “If you loved me, you would be glad because I am about to enter the glory of my Spouse. Do not grieve over my departure—I shall not lose sight of you. You will find that I have not abandoned you.”
Her tomb became a pilgrimage site, and Agnes’ body remained incorrupt there. The great St. Catherine of Siena visited her tomb, and it is said that when she bent down to kiss the foot of Agnes’ body, it lifted itself to meet her lips.
Relics of St. Agnes rest in the reliquary chapel in the Basilica on campus.
St. Agnes of Montepulciano, you were the prayerful nun who showed supernatural signs of holiness, pray for us!
Image Credit: Our featured image of St. Agnes of Montepulciano is available for use under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International. Last accessed February 21, 2025 on Wikimedia Commons.
.jpg){kind=link}