Daily Gospel Reflection
Join the Notre Dame family of faith. Receive God’s Word and a unique reflection in your inbox each day.
September 5, 2026
While Jesus was going through a field of grain on a sabbath,
his disciples were picking the heads of grain,
rubbing them in their hands, and eating them.
Some Pharisees said,
“Why are you doing what is unlawful on the sabbath?”
Jesus said to them in reply,
“Have you not read what David did
when he and those who were with him were hungry?
How he went into the house of God, took the bread of offering,
which only the priests could lawfully eat,
ate of it, and shared it with his companions?”
Then he said to them, “The Son of Man is lord of the sabbath.”
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.
This gospel passage confirms what I knew growing up in an Italian family: food and feeding people is a love language. Every Sunday, for generations, my family has gathered the young and the old around our dinner table to eat our traditional Italian meal.
The meal is consistent—Genoa salami and fontina cheese, penne and gravy, peas and onions, bread and cannoli for dessert— but the faces vary. The starting number of plates is 23, and it rises from there. Anyone who has cooked a meal can agree feeding people is work: shopping, cutting, garnishing, simmering for hours, table setting, clearing, cleaning, laundering the napkins, and more.
The Pharisees saw the labor the disciples were undertaking and criticized them for tending to the fields to eat on the day of rest. Jesus responds with the story of David, who nourished his companions with the bread in the temple, which only the priests could lawfully eat.
David was running away from King Saul at this time, but the Lord provided the highest grade of food to him and his companions and, in doing so, demonstrated God’s compassion. Humans need food, literally and spiritually. The story of David reminds me that in the everyday act of cooking and sharing a meal comes the opportunity to satisfy the human need for physical nourishment and the spiritual need to be a servant for others.
Food provides many opportunities to live as David did. The simple act of feeding people or inviting someone who is lonely to the table to share a meal is meant to be practiced all the time. I wonder if the real meaning behind breaking bread with another is why, after years of eating the same meal, I always look forward to the next Sunday.
Prayer
God of truth and justice, you call us to hold your law firmly in our hearts—not only its words, but its spirit. Help us to let your law of love be imprinted on our hearts so that it may not be a second thought, but a fundamental norm. We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Saint of the Day
Next to Pope St. John Paul II, Mother Teresa is perhaps the most famous holy person of modern times. It should be no surprise, therefore, that the two were friends and often visited one another.
Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu was born 1910 to Albanian parents living in Macedonia. Her father, a businessman, died when she was eight, and his absence cast the family into poverty. She found solace in her faith, and was very active in her Jesuit parish as a young girl.
When she turned 18, she followed a call to enter religious life and entered a community of sisters in Ireland, taking the name Sister Mary Teresa after St. Therese of Lisieux. A year later, she was on her way to India, where her work with the outcast would inspire the world.
She was assigned to a community in Calcutta where she taught at a school for girls. In time, she was named the principal of the school, and became known for her charity, unselfishness, and courage. She had a reputation for diligence and working hard, and she had a natural mind for organization and administration.
She experienced a profound encounter with Christ in 1946 while she was on her way to her annual retreat. She was riding on a train when she received some source of inspiration, a “call within a call,” as she put it. She was consumed with Jesus’ love for every person, and the desire to offer that love to others became a motivating force in her life from that moment on.
She left her community and established her own religious community of sisters, known as the Sisters of Charity. She understood Jesus to be calling her and others to offer his love to the poor and neglected.
She entered the slums of Calcutta and began to visit families, where she washed the wounds of children, cared for those who were abandoned and sick, and nursed those who were dying. She began each day by receiving Communion and then went out to the streets with a rosary to encounter “the unwanted, the unloved, the uncared for.”
By the 1950s other women had begun to join her in this work, and she started to send some to other parts of India. Eventually, the order would expand to include brothers and priests and would come to serve people on every continent. Today, some 4,500 members participate in her work in more than 130 countries.
With the emergence of global media technology, her story was shared with the world and many were drawn to her compassion. She received many honors for her work, including the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, which she humbly accepted “for the glory of God and in the name of the poor.”
After her death, it came to light that Mother Teresa was troubled by a long experience of dryness in prayer. About the time that she started the Sisters of Charity, she sought God in prayer and longed to feel the presence of Jesus in her spiritual life, but only found emptiness. She felt abandoned, and this feeling of separation led her to a more profound union with God—she was united with Jesus in his suffering and in his desire for love, and with the abandonment experienced by the poor people she served.
Mother Teresa died on this date in 1997, and is buried in the mother house of the Missionaries of Charity—her tomb is a place of pilgrimage and prayer today. She was canonized in 2016.
Mother Teresa made a visit to Notre Dame in 1974 to speak at a meeting of pastoral and social ministry leaders—a photo of her speaking hangs near the side entrance to the Basilica. A stained glass image of her stands in the chapel in Geddes Hall, and she is also depicted in a statue that stands in Visitation Hall, which houses the Institute for Educational Initiatives. She is also pictured here with Father Theodore Hesburgh, C.S.C., president emeritus of the University.
Notre Dame students have the opportunity to join in Mother Teresa’s work through the Institute for Social Concerns, which sponsors International Summer Service Learning Programs around the world, including Calcutta. Students serve at a center for the destitute and dying, a school for children with developmental disabilities, and centers for female prisoners and orphans.
St. Teresa of Calcutta, you gave your life to radiating the love of Jesus to the abandoned—pray for us!
To learn even more about Saint Teresa of Calcutta, watch this video lecture from the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame.