AUGUST 11, 2026 MSGR. DAVID REILANDER
Saint Claire was important in my vocation, Saint Claire, Saint Francis, Saint Dominic.
Young people are attracted to them because, at their own young age, they chose to be with the Lord. They chose to be little ones of the Lord, and they showed that in their poverty and their complete dependence upon him.
“Be like little children.” Does that mean be childish? No. Be childlike. Well, what are children like? They are totally dependent. If you tell them something, they believe it 100%.
The word of the Lord, we are told, is sweet like honey. Well, how can words be like honey? One is communication, the other is food. Well, it’s a metaphor. The sweetness of the word of the Lord is sweet because it brings a good taste.
In other words, we find wisdom, we find comfort, we find direction, and most importantly, we find salvation in the word of God. That is very sweet. What is sweet? Honey is sweet. And so, the Lord gives to us a very good metaphor.
Depend on the Lord. How? I don’t see the Lord anywhere. So, how would I depend on the Lord? Well, what do you have before you that the Lord has given to you? And that is the word.
So, when we listen to the scriptures, God is addressing his little ones. “Yeah, but I don’t always understand everything that’s in the Bible.” That’s okay, neither do I. It’s a very big book. And I’m not a scripture scholar. I don’t read Biblical Hebrew or Greek. But I do the best I can.
Of course, a very good tool today is, if you don’t understand something in the Bible, Google it. What do they call one of those other things? A browser, I don’t know. I’m not up on this sort of thing. So, I say Google it. Not that I favour Google. But you can find out a lot.
When I’m writing articles or I’m preparing homilies, sometimes, I’ll go to the internet, whatever browser, and I’ll look it up. There are great resources there.
In the first reading, we hear, “Roll up the scroll and eat it.” Well, today, we have paper, books. But thousands of years ago, they would use parchment or animal skins, and they would roll them up. And so, they had scrolls.
Eat, consume the word of God, and it will be sweet to you.
St. Claire, whom we celebrate today, did just that. She was like Mary, the sister of Martha. She would sit at the feet of the Lord before a crucifix and contemplate the words that God gave to us through the prophets, through the scripture writers, through the fathers of the church and mothers, and she would think about what these things meant.
A very good thing that you can do is do a daily reading. Again, you can find it on the internet. For example, take the readings of the Mass and each day, spend five minutes thinking about what those words mean, what they mean to you.
If you don’t understand, say, “Lord, I don’t get what you’re saying here. Inform me.” And let the words of the Lord become like honey to you.
