Daily Gospel Reflection
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October 21, 2025
Jesus said to his disciples:
“Gird your loins and light your lamps
and be like servants who await their master’s return from a wedding,
ready to open immediately when he comes and knocks.
Blessed are those servants
whom the master finds vigilant on his arrival.
Amen, I say to you, he will gird himself,
have them recline at table, and proceed to wait on them.
And should he come in the second or third watch
and find them prepared in this way,
blessed are those servants.”
As I read this gospel, I am reminded of the countless times I have been inspired, and I am sure it will completely change my life. A few days go by, or maybe a few weeks if I’m lucky, with this new mantra in mind, but eventually, something new occupies me, and the life-changing truth is but a thing of the past. As well-intending as I am, I forget. I get distracted. I am human.
Yet, today God calls us further. God asks us to do something so counter to our nature. God asks us to remember, no matter how long it takes, or how many distractions we face, or how distressing and difficult life becomes. God asks us to be vigilant.
How?
Rather than seek some quick fix, a few words, or a new mantra that might change me forever into the vigilant person God wants me to be, I recognize that vigilance is not something I achieve once through my actions, but in each moment through my disposition.
Vigilance is attending to the present moment. It recognizes that there is no other time to know God than right now. It is constant seeking. It surrenders.
And so I pray: God, help me to see that I am forgetful without you. Help me to see that a relationship with you is not a lesson to be learned, a box I can check off, a finish line I can reach through sheer effort. Help me to see that vigilance is a fixing of my gaze. Through my continual turning to you, God, help me to understand that my relationship with you is not something I need to wait for or to earn. May I open my heart in every moment and forever dine with you.
Prayer
Compared to what you have done for me, Abba, everything I can do for others is a mere pittance. Yet it means so much to you, and does so much in bringing about the fullness of your Kingdom. I ask of your Spirit this day the grace to “wait on someone.” A smile, a kind word, yielding on the street or in the meeting room, making peace with someone whom I’ve been holding at arm’s length, forgiving someone who has hurt me – whatever you ask me to do, may I have the grace to do it.
Saint of the Day
St. Ursula's legend has its origins in an ancient stone in a church in Cologne, Germany. How an image of this obscure German saint ended up in a stained glass window in a basilica in northern Indiana is its own unique story.
In the church of St. Ursula in Cologne, there is a stone with a Latin inscription from c. 400. The inscription indicates that a senator named Clematius received divine visions directing him to rebuild a ruined basilica on that very spot in honor of several women who had been martyred there. The visions did not specify the names of the women who were martyred.
But, as the visions seemed to indicate, a number of women had been martyred in Cologne, and they must have been highly revered by the community to have a church built in their honor. How the church had fallen into ruin was unclear. Since the church was named for a Saint Ursula, one of the women, one can deduce, must have been named Ursula.
Legend has filled in the gaps in this record. Ursula, the story goes, was the daughter of a Christian king in Britain, and betrothed to the son of a pagan king. Because Ursula wanted to remain a virgin, she asked for a three-year delay to the marriage. Thus, Ursula took her ladies-in-waiting and escaped from England. Eventually, Ursula and her companions ended up in Cologne, where they were captured by Attila and his Huns and killed for their faith around 383.
When Christopher Columbus sailed to the New World, he named the Virgin Islands in the Caribbean in honor of the virgin St. Ursula and her companions. St. Ursula is also the patron saint of the Ursuline Order of nuns, who founded schools for the education of girls and women throughout Europe. She is the patron saint of Catholic education, of students and teachers, and of the University of Paris.
When the Congregation of Holy Cross established Notre Dame, St. Ursula was one of the patrons invoked by the French priests and brothers of that order in intercession for the success of the University.
St. Ursula's relics rest in the reliquary chapel of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart. In one stained glass image from the Basilica, St. Ursula holds the flag of England in one hand, and the flowering palm of martyrdom in the other.
St. Ursula, patron saint of Catholic education—pray for us!