About Today
Thursday 16 April 2026
Thursday of the 2nd week of Eastertide
The Lord has truly risen, alleluia.
Year: A(II). Psalm week: 2. Liturgical Colour: White.
Other saints: St Bernadette Soubirous (1844 - 1879)
Hexham & Newcastle, Liverpool, Slovenia: 16 Apr
France: 18 Feb
She was born in 1844 to a destitute family in Lourdes, in France. On 11 February 1858 she went down to the river Gave with her sister and a friend, to look for firewood and bones. There she received the first of a series of visions of the Mother of God which led to Lourdes becoming a place of pilgrimage and healing. In 1866 she became a nun at Nevers, where she died on 16 April 1879.
It is a rule of the Church that saints are to be celebrated for what they are and what they do – to serve as examples of heroic virtue for us all – and not merely for what happens to them. There is no way that we can all go off and have visions of Our Lady, and the world would be a madhouse if we tried. So what of Bernadette? What heroic virtue has she that we should imitate? There are two: suffering, and humility.
Bernadette was seriously ill with asthma all her life and she died young; but she never let illness be an excuse for anything – how many times do we, feeling a little unwell, use that as an excuse for being bad-tempered or simply not doing what we ought?
To move away from Bernadette for a moment: imagine that you are a poor working-class boy with little education who happens to be good at kicking a ball about. Within a few years you find yourself earning more, annually, than your father earned in his entire lifetime. You receive attention, adulation, status – all that you could possibly desire. People emulate you. They hang on your every word. How would you feel? How would you act?
Next, imagine that you are a poor girl – not even working-class, because your father hardly ever has any work – poor in a way that we can hardly conceive of – unintelligent and uneducated, and suddenly something happens to you. Overnight you are famous. People come in crowds to see you (sometimes the police have to control them). Everyone treats you with respect and admiration. They hang on your every word and ask you, over and over, questions about even the tiniest detail of your experience. They press coins into your family’s hands. You shut yourself up in a convent far from home, but even there you are constantly visited by bishops and other eminent persons who just want a quick look at you.
Wouldn’t that turn your head? Just a little? Wouldn’t you think that there must be something about you that made you worth seeing? However tiny that something was?
Here is Bernadette’s response, in conversation with one of the nuns:
“What do you do with a broom?”
“Why, sweep with it, of course.”
“And then?”
“Put it back in its place.”
“Yes. And so for me. Our Lady used me. They have put me in my corner. I am happy there, and stay there.”
Saint Bernadette Soubirous is patron saint of the sick, and rightly so. But if there is to be a patron saint of celebrities and footballers, Bernadette would be a wise choice for that task too.
(Note: St Bernadette’s feast is celebrated on 16 April by most of the world but on 18 February in France. Some people called “Bernadette” celebrate their name-day on 11 February, which is the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes and the date of the first vision).
Today's gospel reading John 3:31-36 He who comes from heaven is above all.
He who comes from above is above all. He who is of the earth belongs to the earth and speaks in an earthly way. He who comes from heaven is above all. He bears witness to what he has seen and heard, yet no one receives his testimony. Whoever receives his testimony sets his seal to this, that God is true. For he whom God has sent utters the words of God, forhe gives the Spirit without measure. The Father loves the Son and has given all things intohis hand. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shallnot see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.
Reflection on the painting
In today’s Gospel, we hear the voice of John the Baptist, a man who understood his place in the story of salvation with remarkable clarity. Just before this passage, he declares of Jesus, “He must increase, but I must decrease.” And here, he continues by pointing to Jesus as the one who comes from above; one who stands beyond all others. John recognises that Jesus comes from heaven, that the Father pours out the Spirit upon him without measure, and that everything has been entrusted into his hands. None of this, John knows, can be said of himself. His greatness lies precisely in this humility: he sees clearly who Jesus is, and he steps aside.
We never quite grasp the fullness of who Christ is. The closer we draw to him, the more were raalise how much further there is to go. The more we see, the more we sense what we have not yet seen. And so the words of John remain a life long prayer: that Christ may increase in us, and that we may decrease. But this is not about losing ourselves. Quite the opposite. The more Christ grows within us, the more we become who we are truly meant to be: our deepest, truest selves can only be shaped through his presence in us.
In this striking painting by Leonardo da Vinci, now in the Louvre Museum (where another Da Vinci hangs, the Mona Lisa), John the Baptist is shown emerging from darkness, his body softly modelled in that characteristic Leonardo sfumato technique. What immediately captures our attention is his gesture: one hand rests on his heart, while the other points upward, beyond the frame, beyond himself. It is a simple movement, yet so theologically correct. John does not draw attention to himself, he always points beyond him. It is almost avisual echo of his words in today's Gospel.
There is something mysterious, even slightly unsettling, in his expression, a half-smile, a knowing look, as if he sees something we do not yet see. The dark background removes all distraction, so that only the figure and the gesture remain. Everything in the painting serves that single purpose: to guide our eyes upward. This work was already part of the royal collection of Louis XIV in Versailles before entering the Louvre.
Saint John the Baptist, Painting by Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), Painted between 1513 until 1516,Oil on Panel
© Musée du Louvre, Paris
Thursday of the 2nd week of Eastertide
The Lord has truly risen, alleluia.
Year: A(II). Psalm week: 2. Liturgical Colour: White.
Other saints: St Bernadette Soubirous (1844 - 1879)
Hexham & Newcastle, Liverpool, Slovenia: 16 Apr
France: 18 Feb
She was born in 1844 to a destitute family in Lourdes, in France. On 11 February 1858 she went down to the river Gave with her sister and a friend, to look for firewood and bones. There she received the first of a series of visions of the Mother of God which led to Lourdes becoming a place of pilgrimage and healing. In 1866 she became a nun at Nevers, where she died on 16 April 1879.
It is a rule of the Church that saints are to be celebrated for what they are and what they do – to serve as examples of heroic virtue for us all – and not merely for what happens to them. There is no way that we can all go off and have visions of Our Lady, and the world would be a madhouse if we tried. So what of Bernadette? What heroic virtue has she that we should imitate? There are two: suffering, and humility.
Bernadette was seriously ill with asthma all her life and she died young; but she never let illness be an excuse for anything – how many times do we, feeling a little unwell, use that as an excuse for being bad-tempered or simply not doing what we ought?
To move away from Bernadette for a moment: imagine that you are a poor working-class boy with little education who happens to be good at kicking a ball about. Within a few years you find yourself earning more, annually, than your father earned in his entire lifetime. You receive attention, adulation, status – all that you could possibly desire. People emulate you. They hang on your every word. How would you feel? How would you act?
Next, imagine that you are a poor girl – not even working-class, because your father hardly ever has any work – poor in a way that we can hardly conceive of – unintelligent and uneducated, and suddenly something happens to you. Overnight you are famous. People come in crowds to see you (sometimes the police have to control them). Everyone treats you with respect and admiration. They hang on your every word and ask you, over and over, questions about even the tiniest detail of your experience. They press coins into your family’s hands. You shut yourself up in a convent far from home, but even there you are constantly visited by bishops and other eminent persons who just want a quick look at you.
Wouldn’t that turn your head? Just a little? Wouldn’t you think that there must be something about you that made you worth seeing? However tiny that something was?
Here is Bernadette’s response, in conversation with one of the nuns:
“What do you do with a broom?”
“Why, sweep with it, of course.”
“And then?”
“Put it back in its place.”
“Yes. And so for me. Our Lady used me. They have put me in my corner. I am happy there, and stay there.”
Saint Bernadette Soubirous is patron saint of the sick, and rightly so. But if there is to be a patron saint of celebrities and footballers, Bernadette would be a wise choice for that task too.
(Note: St Bernadette’s feast is celebrated on 16 April by most of the world but on 18 February in France. Some people called “Bernadette” celebrate their name-day on 11 February, which is the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes and the date of the first vision).
Today's gospel reading John 3:31-36 He who comes from heaven is above all.
He who comes from above is above all. He who is of the earth belongs to the earth and speaks in an earthly way. He who comes from heaven is above all. He bears witness to what he has seen and heard, yet no one receives his testimony. Whoever receives his testimony sets his seal to this, that God is true. For he whom God has sent utters the words of God, forhe gives the Spirit without measure. The Father loves the Son and has given all things intohis hand. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shallnot see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.
Reflection on the painting
In today’s Gospel, we hear the voice of John the Baptist, a man who understood his place in the story of salvation with remarkable clarity. Just before this passage, he declares of Jesus, “He must increase, but I must decrease.” And here, he continues by pointing to Jesus as the one who comes from above; one who stands beyond all others. John recognises that Jesus comes from heaven, that the Father pours out the Spirit upon him without measure, and that everything has been entrusted into his hands. None of this, John knows, can be said of himself. His greatness lies precisely in this humility: he sees clearly who Jesus is, and he steps aside.
We never quite grasp the fullness of who Christ is. The closer we draw to him, the more were raalise how much further there is to go. The more we see, the more we sense what we have not yet seen. And so the words of John remain a life long prayer: that Christ may increase in us, and that we may decrease. But this is not about losing ourselves. Quite the opposite. The more Christ grows within us, the more we become who we are truly meant to be: our deepest, truest selves can only be shaped through his presence in us.
In this striking painting by Leonardo da Vinci, now in the Louvre Museum (where another Da Vinci hangs, the Mona Lisa), John the Baptist is shown emerging from darkness, his body softly modelled in that characteristic Leonardo sfumato technique. What immediately captures our attention is his gesture: one hand rests on his heart, while the other points upward, beyond the frame, beyond himself. It is a simple movement, yet so theologically correct. John does not draw attention to himself, he always points beyond him. It is almost avisual echo of his words in today's Gospel.
There is something mysterious, even slightly unsettling, in his expression, a half-smile, a knowing look, as if he sees something we do not yet see. The dark background removes all distraction, so that only the figure and the gesture remain. Everything in the painting serves that single purpose: to guide our eyes upward. This work was already part of the royal collection of Louis XIV in Versailles before entering the Louvre.
Saint John the Baptist, Painting by Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), Painted between 1513 until 1516,Oil on Panel
© Musée du Louvre, Paris