Divine Intimacy - Lenten Meditations for 2026 - Day 7

A city trembles at Jesus entering Jerusalem, money changers scatter, and prayer reclaims the Temple—then Isaiah reminds us that God’s word never returns empty. That collision of images frames a hard truth we often dodge: we grieve material losses faster than we grieve the loss of grace. We walk through Isaiah 55 and Matthew 21 before opening Divine Intimacy to explore how charity unites us to God while sin unravels that union, not as theory but as lived reality that shapes how we react, choose, and love.

We talk candidly about why our instincts are upside down—why a totaled car or a hospital scare can feel bigger than mortal sin—and how to retrain the heart. Monthly confession even without grave sin, a nightly examen that names patterns and near occasions, and a daily act of contrition begin the reset. From there, charity becomes fire: it purifies faster and deeper than fear, and it makes our sacrifices mysteriously fruitful for others. The saints understood this solidarity; their burning love helped convert souls because love destroys sin more effectively than punishment alone.

Formation spreads outward. Parents can build a home that hates sin more than loss by tying small fasts to real intercession and by teaching kids that reconciliation restores friendship with God. With Ember Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday upon us, we offer simple, concrete steps: abstain from meat, add a fast you can keep, and pray for priests, seminarians, and future vocations. Along the way there’s a quick behind-the-scenes note about fixing the mic and asking you to flag audio issues—because details matter when the goal is clearer prayer and deeper attention to the Word that always bears fruit.

If this resonates, subscribe, share the episode with a friend who needs a nudge back to confession, and leave a review telling us one practice that helps you love God more and hate sin better.

Transcript

Seventh Day Of Lent Begins

SPEAKER_00 0:31

Good morning, everyone. Welcome now to the seventh day of Lent. We are Tuesday. We are now on Tuesday in the first week of Lent. And uh I just want to say thank you to everyone for not letting me know that I've been using the wrong microphone for I don't even know how long. Yesterday I went to uh went to listen through um went to listen through what I had recorded. I I did so on my on audio podcast later in the day, and man, it sounded terrible, and I had no idea why. No idea why until I start up the computer this morning to record this and realize that instead of recording from my nice actual studio microphone here, it is recording from the little microphone up on the monitor a foot and a half away. So um, guys, if it sounds like crap, you have to tell me. You have to tell me. I had no idea. It might have been for the last week or more. I'm not sure. Anyway, so I apologize for that. Hopefully, hopefully, this sounds much better. You know, when it's just a conversation with with Anthony, it's probably not as noticeable, but when it's um a recording of me reading all by myself, um I bet that sounded terrible. So I apologize. And of course, this will probably sound terrible too, but for other reasons. The reason being I feel like I'm getting sick. So I apologize for that, guys. But, anyways, uh without further ado, here we're gonna get going. We're gonna start with the readings from mass today and then jump into divine intimacy. So I'll put up an image on screen, won't be anything to watch. You just listen to my terrible sick voice. Okay, here we go. Okay, the epistle for Tuesday of the first week of Lent comes from Isaiah 55, six through eleven. In those days the prophet Isaiah spoke, saying, Seek ye the Lord while he may be found. Call upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unjust man his thoughts, and let him return to the Lord, and he will have mercy on him and to our God, for he is bountiful to forgive. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are exalted above the earth, so are my ways exalted above your ways, and my thoughts above your thoughts, and as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and return no more thither, but soak the earth and water it, and make it to spring, and give seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be, which shall go forth from my mouth, it shall not return to me void, but it shall do so whatsoever I please, and shall prosper in the things for which I sent it, saith the Lord Almighty. In today's gospel is Matthew twenty-one ten through seventeen. At that time, when Jesus was come into Jerusalem, the whole city was moved, saying, Who is this? And the people said, This is Jesus the prophet from Nazareth of Galilee. And Jesus went into the temple of God and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the money changers, and the chairs of them that sold doves, and he saith to them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves. And there came to him the blind and the lame in the temple, and he healed them. And the chief priests and scribes seeing the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying in the temple, and saying, Hosanna to the son of David, were moved with indignation, and said to him, Hearst thou what they hearest thou what these say? And Jesus said to them, Yea, have you never read, out of the mouth of infants and of sucklings, thou hast perfected praise? And leaving them he went out of the city into Beth Bethania and remained there.

SPEAKER_01 5:02

Okay, and now on to divine intimacy.

Sin’s Effects And Christ’s Passion

We Don’t Hate Sin Enough

Forming Conscience And Confession

Training Children To Hate Sin

Closing Notes And Ember Days

SPEAKER_00 5:08

Sin the presence of God. O Jesus crucified, give me the grace to understand the great malice of sin. Meditation one The essence of Christian perfection consists in union with God by charity. While charity, by conforming our wills to God's, unites us to Him, grave sin, which directly opposes His will, produces the opposite effect. In other words, charity is the force uniting man to God, and sin the force drawing him away. Serious sin is therefore the greatest enemy of the spiritual life, since it not only injures it but destroys it and its constituent elements, charity and grace. This destruction, this spiritual death, is the inevitable result of sin, the act by which man voluntarily detaches himself from God, the one source of life, charity and grace. As the branch cannot live if it is separated from the trunk, neither can the soul live if separated from God. God, the cause of every being, is always present in the soul of the sinner, in the same way in which he is present in all creatures. Yet he is not there as a father, as a guest, as the trinity which offers itself to be offers itself to the soul to be known and loved. Hence, the sinner, though created to be the temple of the Blessed Trinity, has voluntarily made himself incapable of dwelling with the three divine persons, and has barred his own road to union with God. He has, so to speak, obliged God to break all ties of friendship with him, because he has preferred the temporal fleeting good of a miserable creature, a selfish satisfaction and earthly pleasure, instead of the sovereign good. This is this is the malice of sin, which rejects the divine gift and betrays its creator, father, and friend. Oh, why can we not realize that sin is a pitched battle fought against God with all of our senses and the faculties of the soul? The stronger the soul is, the more ways it invents to betray its king. Meditation two. If we wish to have a better understanding of the evil of mortal sin, we must consider its disastrous effects. One single sin instantly changed Lucifer, the angel of light, into an angel of darkness, into the internal enemy of God. A single sin deprived Adam and Eve of the state of grace and friendship with God, taking away all their supernatural gifts, and condemning them to death together with the rest of mankind. One single sin was enough to make an abyss between God and man, to deprive the whole human race of any possibility of union with God. The passion of Jesus is a further proof of the great malice and the destructive power of sin. The lacerated members of Christ, to sorrowful death on the cross, proclaim that sin is a form of deicide. Jesus, the most beautiful of the sons of men, through sin, became the despised and most abject of men, a man of sorrows. He was bruised for our sins, so that from the sole of his foot unto the top of his head, there is no soundness therein. Sin made Christ a martyr and brought him to his death. Still we must understand that Christ went to his passion and death because it was his own will, for by means of it he wished to vanquish death and restore divine friendship to man. Jesus, our head, invites us, his members, to unite with him in his work of destroying sin, to destroy it in ourselves down to the very roots, that is in our evil inclinations, and to destroy it likewise in his other members by allowing him to work in us. This is the law of solidarity, for the misfortune of one is the misfortune of others. Each sin is a burden on the whole world and disturbs the equilibrium of God's plan. Therefore, every Christian, and more especially, every soul consecrated to God, must throw himself ardently into the battle against sin and fight it with the proper weapons, penance, expediatory prayer, and most of all, love. When the love of charity is perfect, it destroys sin more efficaciously than the fire of purgatory. In this we see why the saints were able to convert so many souls. God used the fire of their charity to do away with sin in sinners. O my God and my true strength, how is it, Lord, that we are cowards in everything save in opposing thee? To this the children of Adam devote all their energies. Were not reason so blind, the combined energies of all men put together would not suffice to make them bold enough to take up arms against their creator, and maintain a continual warfare against one who in a moment could plunge plunge them into the depths. But because reason is blind, they act like madmen courting death, for they imagine that this death will bring them new life. They act in short like people bereft of reason. O incomprehensible wisdom, in truth thou needest all the love which thou hast for thy creature to enable thee to endure such folly, and to await our recovery, and to seek to bring it about by a thousand kinds of means and remedies. How is it, my good? How is this? Who gives us the strength? O Lord, what hardness of heart, oh what folly and blindness? We are distressed if we lose anything, the merest trifle. The why are we not distressed at losing the great treasure which is the majesty of God, and a kingdom in which our fruition of Him will be endless? Why is this? Why is this? I cannot fully I cannot understand it. Do thou, my God, cure such great folly and blindness? The loss of so many souls hurts me so much that I am beside myself. I cry to thee, Lord, and beseech thee to give me the means of contributing to the winning of souls by my prayers. Since I am not good for anything else, it seems to me that I would willingly sacrifice a thousand lives to save even one of the many souls which are being lost. I believe, Lord, that you treasure one soul that we gain for you by our prayers and works, thanks to your mercy, more than all other services that we can render you. So there are our readings and meditations for today. Um so sin. One thing is for certain, and that is we do not hate sin enough. You know, and um I think I think that becomes clear when you when you think about how you react to to sin compared to other things. You know when hypothetically say you get into a car accident, total your car. Right? Like I mean obvious uh everyone's gonna react to that in different ways. Um but for the most part that is a bad day. You know, uh that that that sucks. Um whether you get angry or whether you cry or or or what have you. You're gonna react to that probably pretty strongly. You know, and it might be um that's my alarm, sorry guys. Those of you who have gone uh through these with me in the past know that you're gonna hear that uh at least a few number of times here. Um you're gonna react pretty strongly, right? To to something like having your car totaled. How does that compare to how to react, how we react when um when we commit a mortal sin? Right? Or, you know, let's say what we hear of a family member you know getting put in the hospital because of some sort of injury, right? We react pretty strongly to that. Um, you know, that's a terrible thing. But how do we react when that same family member commits a mortal sin? That we know of, not that we know of all of them, but but um in many many cases we react far more strongly to to um bad things happening in the material life, in the material world, than we do to than we react to to someone ourselves or others, um, literally cutting themselves off from God entirely. And if you think about just how incredibly backwards that is, you know what who cares if you lose your lose your your vehicle compared to losing, you know, the the life of God in you. We've just um we've just been conditioned so much to to not even consider or worry about uh about sin compared to you know bad things that may happen uh in the in our material lives. And I I don't even necessarily really know how to how to fix that or change that because like I said, we've all been conditioned to it throughout our whole lives. Most people, I mean, most Catholics, let alone it yeah, other Christians or other religions, um consider sin at all. You know, I mean how many times have you know those those of you who are on Twitter um or other social media where you engage with with Protestants, especially American like evangelicals, um, often most of them don't even believe that they can commit sin or the most of them really don't even believe in sin itself, they're so antinomian. Um a lot of that has infected uh Catholicism too, unfortunately. But um I don't know how to I don't really know how to fix it other than frequent confession, you know, uh confession at least once a month. Whether or not you've you've committed mortal sin, um confession offers great graces to overcome venial sin as well. But uh but frequent confession, daily examination of conscience will uh allow you to become more aware of yourself and your weaknesses, it will allow you to become more aware of um you know uh near occasions of sin and and it will help you, you know, recognize uh sin as you commit it instead of having to wait for your you know examination of conscience. So doing a daily examination of conscience at night is another great practice. Um prayer, obviously, daily acts of contrition. Um there's there's lots of things we can do to become more aware of sin in our lives, to to condition ourselves to hate it more and more. Um, you know, King St. Louis IX um is famous for saying, and there's many different records of of how he said it, but more or less the gist is that he he said that his son would he would rather his son um die a thousand like a thousand martyrs death deaths compared to committing a single mortal sin. We need to act that way with our own lives and with the way with the lives of our children, too. You know, if you are a parent, you need to instill this awareness and this hatred of sin into your children. Um you know, that's how we break this the the conditioning cycle. Is we we have to condition our own children to to hate sin far more than we were conditioned to hate it in our own lives. That's how we break that cycle, and that's how we we start to start to heal the world and get it back to normal. Um normal being the way it was and should be, uh, as far as um but yeah, that's what I have for you today. Hopefully today sounded much better sound quality-wise, even if I'm sniffling. Um, but yeah, if you guys if something sounds off when I do this, you have to let me know. Uh because what I what I hear, um, my my headphones are directly connected to this. So even if the the recording is getting sound from a different source, I'm hearing it through this no matter what. Um, as I do these, so it's it sounds great to me right now, but if it's recording off the microphone a foot and a half that way, that's just this little dot, as opposed to this thing, then I won't know it unless I go back and listen to them. And I just don't have time every day to go back and listen to to them and other things. So so yes, let me know. Anyways, thank you all. I hope you have a great day, and I'll see you tomorrow for Ember Wednesday. I believe, if I'm not mistaken, that tomorrow is Ember Wednesday, and then Friday and Saturday are Ember Friday and Ember Saturday. So um, tomorrow, Friday and Saturday are are days of extra penance and prayer. Um they are day, they are not canonically any longer, but they are days of fasting and abstinence as well. So I don't know what you're doing for your Lenten fasting and abstinence and penance. But if you're not already um abstaining from meat, uh obviously everyone needs to be abstaining from meat on Fridays, that is canonically required during Lent. But if you're not already abstaining from meat outside of those, abstain from meat tomorrow, Friday, and Saturday. If you're not already doing extra fasting, then fast tomorrow, Friday, and Saturday. And then also do uh pray extra for your priest. And for seminarians and for vocations these Ember days as well. But anyways, thank you all. Hope you have a great day. And I'll see you tomorrow on Ember Wednesday.