Daily Gospel Reflection
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September 11, 2026
Jesus told his disciples a parable:
“Can a blind person guide a blind person?
Will not both fall into a pit?
No disciple is superior to the teacher;
but when fully trained,
every disciple will be like his teacher.
Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye,
but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own?
How can you say to your brother,
‘Brother, let me remove that splinter in your eye,’
when you do not even notice the wooden beam in your own eye?
You hypocrite! Remove the wooden beam from your eye first;
then you will see clearly
to remove the splinter in your brother’s eye.”
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.
During the summer of 2025, while working as a summer RA and getting ready to begin my final year at Notre Dame, I had a conversation with my coworker Kirsten Tiangco that stayed with me. She told me about her experience going through OCIA and eventually entering the Catholic church.
What caught my attention was that, like me, she had not grown up in a particularly religious environment. By that point, I had already spent several years living at Notre Dame and going to Mass in Stanford Hall, but I still felt like someone standing at the edge of the faith, watching and learning from a distance. Hearing Kirsten’s story made me wonder whether it was finally time for me to stop simply observing and allow myself to become part of this greater spiritual process.
Today’s gospel makes me think about that decision differently. Jesus says that “no disciple is superior to the teacher,” reminding me that becoming a disciple begins with being willing to learn. When I finally decided to enter OCIA, I was not doing so because I suddenly understood Catholicism better or had all of my questions answered. In many ways, it was the opposite. I was admitting that there was still so much I did not know and so much I wanted to understand.
Perhaps that is also why Jesus speaks so much about seeing clearly. Sometimes faith begins by recognizing the limits of our own vision. OCIA became an opportunity for me to let others guide me, ask questions I had carried for years, and, more importantly, to see faith from a different perspective. I am still learning what it means to be a disciple, but maybe being a disciple begins precisely there: with the willingness to be taught.
Prayer
Christ our Teacher, you invite us to give our whole selves to you, not holding any part back. Give us the grace to remove anything in our lives that holds us back from giving ourselves to you in trust and love. Help us overcome the obstacles to grace that exist within and around us, that we might be wholly one with you. And help us to support and encourage others as they seek to follow you more fully. Amen.
Saint of the Day
St. John Gabriel Perboyre would never have considered becoming a priest until he accompanied a younger brother to the seminary and decided to stay, himself.
He was born to faithful farming parents in 1802, in the shadow of the French Revolution and its devastation of the Church. Five of the family’s eight children eventually entered religious life.
As an adolescent, John displayed no extraordinary signs of holiness, but that changed when, in 1816, his parents asked him to accompany his younger brother, Louis, to a seminary founded by their uncle that formed Vincentians, priests who followed the example of St. Vincent de Paul. His parents wanted John to make sure Louis settled in and acclimated to the new life; John discovered that the new life spoke to him as well, and he joined his brother as a seminarian.
John proved to be a bright student, and was promoted to positions of responsibility within his order after he was ordained in 1825. He had a clear desire to serve in the foreign missions, especially China, where Christians were suffering and encouraging the faith. But the Vincentians in France needed him, and he was in poor health, so his requests were denied.
Louis was chosen for the missions in China, but died during his voyage there. John immediately asked to take his place, and received permission to go. He arrived in Macao in 1835 to study the Chinese language, and proceeded to Ho-Nan and Hubei regions to serve the poor there. He helped his order rescue and care for abandoned children—he taught them through stories he told in his broken Chinese.
In 1839, the provincial governor instituted a violent persecution of Christian priests and catechists, and the missionaries in Hubei went into hiding. John was betrayed, arrested, and questioned—authorities wanted him to trample a crucifix and reveal where the other missionaries were hiding. He refused and was tortured horribly, being branded on the face and cut deeply to his bones. On this date in 1840, after a year of captivity and torture, he was strangled on a cross with seven other common criminals.
As a result of his martyrdom, the British government negotiated a clause in the 1842 Treaty of Nanking that required any apprehended missionary to be handed over to the custody of his nation’s diplomatic representatives. John was canonized a saint in 1996.
St. John Gabriel Perboyre, you followed your passion to spread the Gospel and died with faith—pray for us!
Image Credit: Our featured image of St. John Gabriel Perboyre is available for use under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. Last accessed April 3, 2025 on Wikimedia Commons.
