October 5, 2026
Monday of the Twenty-seventh Week in Ordinary Time
or Optional Memorial of Saint Faustina Kowalska
Gospel: Luke 10:25-37

Today is Monday of the Twenty-seventh Week in Ordinary Time. The Church celebrates the Optional Memorial of Saint Faustina. According to the recently published Missal: Saint Faustina Kowalska (1905–1938) was born in the village of Głogowiec, Poland. At the age of eighteen, she felt the call to religious life and went to Warsaw to enter a convent. After a long period of discernment and working briefly as a housekeeper, she received the habit in 1926, becoming a Sister of Our Lady of Mercy. She lived in convents in Krakow, Płock, and Vilnius (Lithuania), humbly serving as a cook, porter, and gardener. She is best known for the visions she received from the Lord, recorded in her Diary, and for her promotion of devotion to the Divine Mercy. Suffering from tuberculosis, she died in Krakow on October 5, 1938, and was canonized by Saint John Paul II in 2000.

Today, the passage from the Holy Gospel according to Luke presents us with Jesus’ Parable of the Good Samaritan. Let us try to understand it.

First, Saint Luke tells us that a lawyer stood up to test Jesus, saying, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” He replied, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this and you will live.” But he, wishing to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” (Cf. Lk 10:25–29)

When I meditate on this passage, I often think of some brothers and sisters in the Church who always want to show off their biblical knowledge, intending to humiliate those siblings who are ignorant of God’s Word. They fail to recognize who their true neighbor is. In their eyes, only those who share their ambitions are their neighbors, while the marginalized, and those they consider unworthy, are not their neighbors.

Today, through the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Cf. Lk 10:30–36), Jesus invites us to discern through contemplation who our neighbor is, and what we should do to become a neighbor to others. He further tells us that Christians are called not only to be children of God and to pride themselves on professing faith in Christ, but also to live out God’s love for the world and to bring God’s love to it. Therefore, let us constantly discover our neighbors in life, and strive to become neighbors to others according to His holy will.

On this Optional Memorial of Saint Faustina, let us unite our hearts and minds and offer our prayers to God:

O God, who in a wondrous manner revealed the inexhaustible riches of your mercy to Saint Maria Faustina, grant, we beseech you, that by looking with trust upon the pierced side of your Son we may be strengthened to show mercy one to another and, at length, sing forever of your mercy in heaven. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,God, forever and ever.

©Totus Tuus 2026
Cum Approbatione Ecclesiastica