About Today
Monday 9 March 2026
Monday of the 3rd week of Lent
(optional commemoration of Saint Frances of Rome, Religious)
Christ the Lord was tempted and suffered for us. Come, let us adore him.
Or: O that today you would listen to his voice: harden not your hearts.
Year: A(II). Psalm week: 3. Liturgical Colour: Violet.
St Frances of Rome (1384 - 1440)
She was born in Rome in 1384 and was married at the age of 13. Although she had wanted to be a nun, she was happily married for 40 years and had three sons. She distributed gifts to the poor and ministered to the sick. She was remarkable for her humility and detachment, her obedience and patience in adversity (including her husband’s banishment, the death of two of her sons from plague, and the loss of all her property). She was a mystic and contemplative, part of the great flourishing of mysticism in that period, and after her husband’s death she retired to a convent she had founded, where she died on 9 March 1440. See the articles in the Catholic Encyclopaedia and Wikipedia.
Today's gospel reading
Luke 4:24-30 All in the synagogue were filled with wrath
When Jesus came to Nazareth, he said to the people in the synagogue: ‘Truly, I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his home town. But in truth, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heavens were shut up three years and six months, and a great famine came over all the land, and Elijah was sent to none of them but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.’ When they heard these things, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath. And they rose up, and drove him out of the town, and brought him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they could throw him down the cliff. But passing through their midst, he went away.
Reflection on the Old Master Print
We all know the experience of anger. It is something we encounter regularly in our lives. At times, our own anger reveals what is happening within us. We may react sharply, only to realise later that it comes from stress, fatigue, frustration or inner tension. At other moments, anger is stirred by something outside us such as a word spoken, an action taken, a situation that feels unjust, our children that don't behave... Often, it is a mixture of both: what is within us and what comes from beyond us meeting in one strong reaction: anger.
In today’s Gospel, we hear that the people in the synagogue at Nazareth were filled with anger toward Jesus. Their reaction seems to arise both from what he said and from what was already present inside their hearts. Jesus points to two prophets who brought God’s help not to Israelites, but to outsiders: a widow from Sidon and a man from Syria, lands traditionally seen as hostile to Israel. This challenges their expectations and unsettles them. Their understanding of God was limited, while Jesus reveals a God whose love reaches far beyond the Jewish boundaries and divisions. As the Son, he knows the Father fully, and shows that God’s care extends to all. This wider vision of God’s love is both liberating and, for some, deeply uncomfortable, even provoking anger.
Our striking print, made in the 18th century after a drawing by Charles Le Brun, focuses entirely on the expressive power of the human face. Le Brun, a leading French Baroque artist and court painter to Louis XIV, was deeply interested in how emotions could be visually represented. He studied facial expressions almost scientifically. Here, anger is rendered with intensity: the man’s eyes are wide open, almost bulging, the nostrils flared, and the mouth tightly drawn downward, as if struggling to contain a surge of emotion. His beard and hair seem to echo the agitation within, adding to the sense of inner turbulence. Artists like Le Brun understood that anger is not just seen in one feature, but in the whole face, in the tension of the muscles, the sharpness of the gaze, the tightening of the lips. The result is a powerful drawing: we immediately recognise the emotion of anger, almost feeling it ourselves.
The face of a bearded man expressing Anger (la Colère),
Print of a drawing after Charles le Brun (1619-1690),
Original drawing circa 1670,
Crayons of paper, issued as an 18th century print
© Wellcome Collection, London
Monday of the 3rd week of Lent
(optional commemoration of Saint Frances of Rome, Religious)
Christ the Lord was tempted and suffered for us. Come, let us adore him.
Or: O that today you would listen to his voice: harden not your hearts.
Year: A(II). Psalm week: 3. Liturgical Colour: Violet.
St Frances of Rome (1384 - 1440)
She was born in Rome in 1384 and was married at the age of 13. Although she had wanted to be a nun, she was happily married for 40 years and had three sons. She distributed gifts to the poor and ministered to the sick. She was remarkable for her humility and detachment, her obedience and patience in adversity (including her husband’s banishment, the death of two of her sons from plague, and the loss of all her property). She was a mystic and contemplative, part of the great flourishing of mysticism in that period, and after her husband’s death she retired to a convent she had founded, where she died on 9 March 1440. See the articles in the Catholic Encyclopaedia and Wikipedia.
Today's gospel reading
Luke 4:24-30 All in the synagogue were filled with wrath
When Jesus came to Nazareth, he said to the people in the synagogue: ‘Truly, I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his home town. But in truth, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heavens were shut up three years and six months, and a great famine came over all the land, and Elijah was sent to none of them but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.’ When they heard these things, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath. And they rose up, and drove him out of the town, and brought him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they could throw him down the cliff. But passing through their midst, he went away.
Reflection on the Old Master Print
We all know the experience of anger. It is something we encounter regularly in our lives. At times, our own anger reveals what is happening within us. We may react sharply, only to realise later that it comes from stress, fatigue, frustration or inner tension. At other moments, anger is stirred by something outside us such as a word spoken, an action taken, a situation that feels unjust, our children that don't behave... Often, it is a mixture of both: what is within us and what comes from beyond us meeting in one strong reaction: anger.
In today’s Gospel, we hear that the people in the synagogue at Nazareth were filled with anger toward Jesus. Their reaction seems to arise both from what he said and from what was already present inside their hearts. Jesus points to two prophets who brought God’s help not to Israelites, but to outsiders: a widow from Sidon and a man from Syria, lands traditionally seen as hostile to Israel. This challenges their expectations and unsettles them. Their understanding of God was limited, while Jesus reveals a God whose love reaches far beyond the Jewish boundaries and divisions. As the Son, he knows the Father fully, and shows that God’s care extends to all. This wider vision of God’s love is both liberating and, for some, deeply uncomfortable, even provoking anger.
Our striking print, made in the 18th century after a drawing by Charles Le Brun, focuses entirely on the expressive power of the human face. Le Brun, a leading French Baroque artist and court painter to Louis XIV, was deeply interested in how emotions could be visually represented. He studied facial expressions almost scientifically. Here, anger is rendered with intensity: the man’s eyes are wide open, almost bulging, the nostrils flared, and the mouth tightly drawn downward, as if struggling to contain a surge of emotion. His beard and hair seem to echo the agitation within, adding to the sense of inner turbulence. Artists like Le Brun understood that anger is not just seen in one feature, but in the whole face, in the tension of the muscles, the sharpness of the gaze, the tightening of the lips. The result is a powerful drawing: we immediately recognise the emotion of anger, almost feeling it ourselves.
The face of a bearded man expressing Anger (la Colère),
Print of a drawing after Charles le Brun (1619-1690),
Original drawing circa 1670,
Crayons of paper, issued as an 18th century print
© Wellcome Collection, London