08/30/2026
+ A Reflection on the Sunday Readings +
By Br. Steve Herro, O. Praem.
This weekend’s Sunday scriptures do not present a rosy picture. As another Norbertine used to say, “Life is not all sweetness and light.”
We meet an exhausted prophet Jeremiah in the First Reading. He complains to God after being imprisoned in stocks (Jeremiah 20: 7, 9b), “‘You duped me, O LORD, and I let myself be duped; you were too strong for me, and you triumphed…I grow weary holding it in, I cannot endure it….’” And Jesus reminds his closest disciples in the Gospel (Matthew 16: 24-25), ‘“Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.’”
We recently celebrated the Memorial of Franciscan priest St. Maximilian Kolbe (August 14) and anniversary of the ex*****on of James Foley (August 19). As described by Robert Ellsberg in Give Us This Day, August 2026, Kolbe sacrificed his life for another selected concentration camp prisoner when he told the authorities to execute himself instead of the husband and father doomed to die. Starved for two weeks, he was poisoned by carbolic acid and died on August 14, 1941.
Ellsberg also describes the life of James Foley, a 21st century Christian martyr. Ellsberg describes Foley: In August 2014, nearly two years after his abduction in war-ravaged Syria, the American journalist James Foley was beheaded by militants of the Islamic State of Iraq (ISIS). Among his fellow hostages, he was remembered for small acts of kindness, sharing his rations and sustaining their spirits amid mock ex*****ons and frequent waterboarding. Why, many wondered, would anyone subject himself to such danger?
The answer lay in his sense of vocation: to stand with those who were suffering and to use his skills to let the world know of their plight. That commitment was in turn rooted in the deeper experience of his upbringing in a devout Catholic family and his Jesuit education at Marquette.
It is likely that Kolbe and Foley were captured by the N***s and ISIS, respectively, because of their demonstrative Christian faith. They probably questioned God while incarcerated just like Jeremiah did. And they also bore the Christian cross just as Jesus demanded of his followers before he died and demands of us today.
***
The Norbertine Community invites you to join us in St. Norbert Abbey Church for morning prayer (Lauds), Mass, and evening prayer (Vespers). Our regular daily schedule is as follows:
* Lauds: Weekdays, 7:30 am | Saturdays, 8 am | Sundays, 9 am
* Mass: Weekdays, 4:30 pm | Saturdays, 8:30 am | Sundays, 10 am
* Vespers: Weekdays, 5 pm | Weekends, 5 pm
For more information about St. Norbert Abbey, please visit www.norbertines.org.
