At that time: Again Jesus entered the synagogue, and a man was there with a withered hand. And they watched Jesus, to see whether he would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse him. And he said to the man with the withered hand, ‘Come here.’ And he said to them, ‘Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?’ But they were silent. And he looked round at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, and said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ He stretched it out, and his hand was restored. The Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.

My good Jesus, You love me infinitely. You have shown me this a thousand times, above all by giving Your life for me in a terrible Passion…
What causes You suffering? In this Gospel You tell us: “grieved by the hardness of their hearts.” My hardness of heart grieves You. And I do not want You to suffer in the slightest—I want You to delight in me. Yet I know I have a hardened heart, because so often I do not look at my spouse with Your eyes: I speak harshly, accuse, judge, fail to excuse…
Sometimes I do not even notice this hardness of heart, and that is worse still—because it is there, it hurts You, and if I do not see it, I cannot fight against it.
Please help me to recognise the hardness of my heart, to be truly attentive and to discover it in my daily life. If I think I hardly have any, then I have a great deal—because it lies behind every sin.
Heal me, Lord, with the medicine of the heart: Your Word.
“Listen: you shall love the Lord your God above all things, and your neighbour as yourself.”
“Deny yourself, take up your cross each day.”
“Pray, pray.”
A path of prayer and sacraments, of humility and purification of heart. To seek only Your Will, to flee from my own—because my will must never be the measure.
Thank You, Lord. With You, I will succeed.

Applied to Married Life

Martha: Andrew, please forgive me for the way I’ve been this week. I’ve just come from confession and spent a long time with the Lord, and I can see clearly again. Forgive me. I’ve been overwhelmed with work and barely prayed at all—and now I see the harm I’ve caused you. Without prayer, I cannot listen to the Lord. I end up listening only to myself, judging you, seeing everything from my side alone, speaking badly to you… and then justifying myself, thinking I’m right after all I do. Evil blinds me. It strikes me how, as soon as I drift even a little from the Lord, everything starts to fall apart.
Andrew: I love you very much. Hearing this fills me with joy. These days I’ve tried to help you more, to encourage you not to neglect prayer, to avoid reacting badly… and it felt as though nothing worked, as though nothing helped. Forgive me too, because I didn’t always put myself fully in your place. It’s so clear: when we neglect daily prayer, the Lord cannot guide us because we are no longer listening—and then we know very well who does guide us. And without our couple prayer, it becomes harder to see each other’s hearts, to share our intimacy… and we know who takes advantage of that.
Martha: Yes. Please, let’s help each other to be truly disciplined about this. Not a single day without prayer—so that we may learn to live with Jesus and in Jesus. He loves us so much!

Mother,

please help us to persevere in prayer. We want to live in you and, through you, in your Son.
Blessed and praised be the Lord! Glory to God!

How many rules imposed by society do we follow? Whom do we really want to please—God or people?
If we stop to think about it, the world constantly tells us what we should do, what we should think, how we should behave, how we should dress… and very often we go along with it simply to fit in, so as not to look “odd” or out of place.
We need to put our priorities in order: to know who our Lord truly is and to follow Him, shaping our lives according to His will. The same is true in marriage. We should not feel embarrassed about going to Mass, praying together, holding hands, showing affection, or even renouncing certain plans because they do not seem right. We are called to show the grace of being children of God and the beauty of the sacrament of marriage and family life.

Applied to Married Life

Mary: Darling, Lucy has invited me to spend four days at her beach house over Holy Week, with all the girls.
John Paul: What a great plan! Which days would it be? I could organise myself to work from home and look after the children. That way you could rest a bit and switch off.
Mary: I’m not sure this is what I should do. I’m going to Mass and I’ll place it in prayer—then I’ll be able to see things more clearly.
(After returning from Mass)
John Paul: Mary, I don’t know what the Lord said to you, but I’ve prayed about it too, and I think it would be better if you didn’t go. Holy Week is always a time we live as a family, in prayer, preparing ourselves for the Lord’s Passion. And also, as an example for the children, I don’t think it would be the best thing… don’t you agree?
Mary: Oh, John Paul, how I love you! The Lord showed me exactly the same thing. I love my friends very much, but these days are meant to be lived as a family, in prayer, uniting ourselves to His Passion. It’s also good for the children to see that following the Lord sometimes means saying no to certain plans. I’m not saying the plan is bad, or that anything wrong would happen—but right now, it’s simply not what I should do.

Mother,

help us to discern what the Lord wants for our lives, for our marriage, and for our family—and give us the strength to do it. Blessed be the Lord!

At that time: John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. And people came and said to Jesus, ‘Why do John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?’ And Jesus said to them, ‘Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day. No one sews a piece of unshrunken cloth on an old garment. If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins — and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins.’

In today’s Gospel, Jesus presents Himself as the Bridegroom. This image is not merely symbolic: it reveals the way God relates to us and, very concretely, it sheds light on our conjugal vocation. Where the Bridegroom is present, there is joy, communion, and shared life.
When Jesus is asked why His disciples do not fast, He replies from the logic of love: when spouses are together, love is not lived through absence or deprivation, but through presence and celebration. Fasting makes sense when there is distance; love flourishes when there is encounter. In married life, this reminds us that the relationship cannot be sustained solely by sacrifice or rules, but by a change of perspective—learning to look at one another as God looks at us, and to rediscover the beauty of our marriage.
Jesus also warns that the days will come when the Bridegroom is taken away. This speaks of moments of crisis, silence, wounds, or routine that may appear in marriage. In those times, love is purified and expressed as fidelity, waiting, and self-gift, rather than immediate emotion. Fasting then becomes learning to love even when the closeness of the other is not “felt”.
This Gospel invites spouses to ask themselves: Do we celebrate one another’s presence as a gift? Do we know how to pass through times of absence without ceasing to love? Are we willing to renew ourselves so that love may remain new wine?
Christ, the faithful Bridegroom, walks with married couples so that their love does not wear out, but is transformed each day into a deeper and more fruitful covenant.

Applied to Married Life

Mother,

From the Gospel according to Mark 2:13-17

Jesus went out along the sea.
All the crowd came to him and he taught them.
As he passed by, he saw Levi, son of Alphaeus,
sitting at the customs post.
Jesus said to him, “Follow me.”
And he got up and followed Jesus.
While he was at table in his house,
many tax collectors and sinners sat with Jesus and his disciples;
for there were many who followed him.
Some scribes who were Pharisees saw that Jesus was eating with sinners
and tax collectors and said to his disciples,
“Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
Jesus heard this and said to them,
“Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do.
I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.”

Today we see Jesus’ call to Matthew, just as a few days ago the Gospel showed us the call of Peter and Andrew, and of James and John, while they were busy with their daily tasks: some casting their nets into the sea, others mending their nets, Matthew seated at the customs post. The Lord chooses all of them. He takes the initiative, prepares the way, goes out to meet them and invites them to follow Him, not frightened by the state in which they are, because He has come to heal the sick and to save us.

The Lord has chosen each one of us, and He comes out to meet us in the reality of our everyday lives. He does not look at how we are now, but at what we are called to become. It is up to us to be attentive and open to the call He makes to us, and to respond either by leaving our attachments behind and following Him immediately, like the disciples, or by placing conditions, like those who said to Him: “let me first go and bury my father”, or “let me first say farewell to my family”. They clung to their attachments and were unable to follow Jesus.

Spouses, are we attentive enough to recognise God’s call, and willing to follow Him, to let go of our attachments? For in order to truly follow the Lord in our marital vocation, we must be genuinely ready to leave everything behind so as to give ourselves completely to God, by giving ourselves body and soul to the person He has placed at our side, and to the fulfilment of our mission: to represent the Love of the Triune God in this world and to collaborate in the salvation of our spouse. Is there anything more beautiful? Is there any better plan? Then let us be attentive to His call — and to the mission!

Frank: Hi, Peter has called me and told me they already have a date for the next retreat and that they are looking for a team. He asked whether we could go. What do you think?
Laura: Us again?… Frank, we were already at the last one just four months ago. Remember it was a bit of a challenge… organising the children for the whole weekend, my parents… and besides, now that you and I are doing so well, maybe it would be better to plan something as a family.
Frank: Yes, that would be lovely, Laura, and we can do that another weekend. But they’ve called us for this retreat… after everything that we’ve received, I think now it’s our turn to help, rather than to get comfortable.
Laura: Yes, it’s true that we should help, but… us again?
Frank: And remember how much good it did us. We realised things we hadn’t seen during our own retreat… and the joy of seeing other couples discovering the beauty of their sacrament…
Laura: Oh Frank… it’s just that I feel a bit reluctant to go out… we’re so comfortable right now.
Frank: You know the saying… if you snooze, you lose.
Laura: Ha, ha, ha… you’re right. If we get comfortable, we go backwards.
Frank: That’s what they told us: whoever is not building, is destroying.
Laura: I thank God for you, for pulling me along and drawing me out of my comfort zone. I love you.

Mother,

teach us always to be attentive to God’s call, as You were, and willing to follow Him and to fulfil His will. Blessed and glorious are You, Mother! Praised be the Lord for ever!

From the Gospel according to Mark 2:1-12

When Jesus returned to Capernaum after some days,
it became known that he was at home.
Many gathered together so that there was no longer room for them,
not even around the door,
and he preached the word to them.
They came bringing to him a paralytic carried by four men.
Unable to get near Jesus because of the crowd,
they opened up the roof above him.
After they had broken through,
they let down the mat on which the paralytic was lying.
When Jesus saw their faith, he said to him,
“Child, your sins are forgiven.”
Now some of the scribes were sitting there asking themselves,
“Why does this man speak that way? He is blaspheming.
Who but God alone can forgive sins?”
Jesus immediately knew in his mind what
they were thinking to themselves,
so he said, “Why are you thinking such things in your hearts?
Which is easier, to say to the paralytic,
‘Your sins are forgiven,’
or to say, ‘Rise, pick up your mat and walk’?
But that you may know
that the Son of Man has authority to forgive sins on earth”
–he said to the paralytic,
“I say to you, rise, pick up your mat, and go home.”
He rose, picked up his mat at once,
and went away in the sight of everyone.
They were all astounded
and glorified God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this.”

The Lord heals the paralysed man of both his physical and spiritual infirmity through the faith of the four people who carried him. Would we be capable of doing the same for a marriage that is paralysed? Faith is very important here. The Lord Himself tells us in another passage of the Gospel that if we had faith the size of a mustard seed, we could move mountains. All we need to do is trust in Him and offer our small part, so that He may accomplish His great work — in us, and in the many marriages and families around us who are in difficulty.
Lord, increase our faith!

Peter: Oh Lucy, the people responsible for the Charity office of our Diocese have contacted me to ask whether we would accompany a marriage that needs mentors.
Lucy: And what did you say?
Peter: That I needed to speak with you first and that we would respond after praying about it. They insisted a little, saying that we have received so much, that we have been preparing for some time now at the Nazareth School with solid formation; and that they trust that, with God’s help, we will be able to do it.
Lucy: Well, let’s place it in prayer. To be honest, it feels a bit overwhelming.
(After praying together as a couple)
Lucy: The Lord has shown me everything He has done in our marriage through the Marital Love Project. It is a joy to contemplate how we have grown over these years since we attended the retreat and, above all, since we began our formation through the catecheses of Saint John Paul II. I see the answer clearly.
Peter: He has shown me too how much good we can do by sharing this treasure. So… shall we take the step?
Lucy: Let’s go forward! Let us trust in the Lord, who with our little help will accomplish great works.

Mother,

You are our model and our guide in faith. Do not turn Your gaze away from us, and lead us by the hand into His presence. Blessed and praised be the Lord!