5 May 2026 (Tuesday) | Tuesday of the 5th week of Eastertide | Easter Weekday | Tuesday of Fifth Week of Easter

5 May 2026 (Tuesday)

Tuesday of the 5th week of Eastertide.

Easter Weekday.
Tuesday of Fifth Week of Easter.

First Reading: Acts 14: 19-28
Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 145:10-11, 12-13ab, 2 ℟. 12 or: ℟. Alleluia.
Gospel acclamation: Alleluia: Luke 24: 46, 26
Gospel: John 14: 27-31a
Liturgical year 2026 (Cycle A/II)
Liturgical color: White or Gold.

The Word of the day is a daily podcast featuring the readings in the Vatican liturgical calendar accompanied by a commentary from one of the Popes of recent times.

Readings from the Bible of the Roman Catholic Church:

First Reading : Acts 14:19‐28

(Reader) A reading from the Acts of the Apostles.

Some Jews arrived from Antioch and Iconium, and turned the people against the apostles. They stoned Paul and dragged him outside the town, thinking he was dead. The disciples came crowding round him but, as they did so, he stood up and went back to the town. The next day he and Barnabas went off to Derbe.
  Having preached the Good News in that town and made a considerable number of disciples, they went back through Lystra and Iconium to Antioch. They put fresh heart into the disciples, encouraging them to persevere in the faith. ‘We all have to experience many hardships’ they said ‘before we enter the kingdom of God.’ In each of these churches they appointed elders, and with prayer and fasting they commended them to the Lord in whom they had come to believe.
  They passed through Pisidia and reached Pamphylia. Then after proclaiming the word at Perga they went down to Attalia and from there sailed for Antioch, where they had originally been commended to the grace of God for the work they had now completed.
  On their arrival they assembled the church and gave an account of all that God had done with them, and how he had opened the door of faith to the pagans. They stayed there with the disciples for some time.

(Reader) The Word of the Lord.
(All) Thanks be to God.

Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 145:10-11, 12-13ab, 2 ℟. 12 or: ℟. Alleluia.

Your friends, O Lord, shall make known the glorious splendour of your reign.
or
Alleluia!
All your creatures shall thank you, O Lord,
  and your friends shall repeat their blessing.
They shall speak of the glory of your reign
  and declare your might, O God,
to make known to men your mighty deeds
  and the glorious splendour of your reign.
Your friends, O Lord, shall make known the glorious splendour of your reign.
or
Alleluia!
Yours is an everlasting kingdom;
  your rule lasts from age to age.
Your friends, O Lord, shall make known the glorious splendour of your reign.
or
Alleluia!
Let me speak the praise of the Lord,
  let all mankind bless his holy name
  for ever, for ages unending.
Your friends, O Lord, shall make known the glorious splendour of your reign.
or
Alleluia!

Gospel acclamation: Alleluia: Luke 24: 46, 26
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
46, 26 Christ had to suffer and to rise from the dead, and so enter into his glory.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
(25. Then he said to them, 'You foolish men! So slow to believe all that the prophets have said! 26. Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer before entering into his glory?' 27. Then, starting with Moses and going through all the prophets, he explained to them the passages throughout the scriptures that were about himself. 44. Then he told them, 'This is what I meant when I said, while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses, in the Prophets and in the Psalms, was destined to be fulfilled.' 45. He then opened their minds to understand the scriptures, 46. and he said to them, 'So it is written that the Christ would suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, 47. and that, in his name, repentance for the forgiveness of sins would be preached to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 48. You are witnesses to this.)

Gospel : John 14:27‐31

(Reader) A reading from the holy Gospel according to John.
(All) Glory to you, O Lord.

Jesus said to his disciples:
‘Peace I bequeath to you, my own peace I give you,
a peace the world cannot give,
this is my gift to you.
Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid.
You heard me say: I am going away, and shall return.
If you loved me you would have been glad to know that I am going to the Father,
for the Father is greater than I.
I have told you this now before it happens,
so that when it does happen you may believe.
I shall not talk with you any longer,
because the prince of this world is on his way.
He has no power over me,
but the world must be brought to know
that I love the Father
and that I am doing exactly what the Father told me.’

(Reader) The Gospel of the Lord.
(All) Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.

For our reflection today:

The words of the Popes.

The peace Jesus gives to us at Easter is not the peace that follows the strategies of the world, which believes it can obtain it through force, by conquest and with various forms of imposition. This peace, in reality, is only an interval between wars: we are well aware of this. The peace of the Lord follows the way of meekness and mildness: it is taking responsibility for others. Indeed, Christ took on himself our evil, sin and our death. He took all of this upon himself. In this way he freed us. He paid for us. His peace is not the fruit of some compromise, but rather is born of self-giving. This meek and courageous peace, though, is difficult to accept. Before his final Passover, Jesus says to his disciples: “Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid” (Jn 14:27). Yes, because while worldly power leaves only destruction and death in its wake, his peace builds up history, starting from the heart of every person who welcomes it. Easter is therefore the true feast of God and humanity, because the peace that Christ gained on the cross in giving himself is distributed to us. Therefore, the Risen Christ, on Easter Day, appears to the disciples, and how does he greet them? “Peace be with you!” (Jn 20:19-21). This is the greeting of Christ victorious, the Risen Christ. (Pope Francis, General audience, 13 April 2022)

POPE FRANCIS
GENERAL AUDIENCE
Paul VI Audience Hall Wednesday, 13 April 2022

The peace of Easter
Dear brothers and sisters, good morning!

We are in the middle of Holy Week, which lasts from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday. Both these Sundays are characterized by the feast that takes place around Jesus. But they are two different feasts.

Last Sunday, we saw Christ solemnly entering Jerusalem, as though for a feast, welcomed as the Messiah: cloaks (cf. Lk 19:36) and branches cut from trees (cf. Mt 21:8) were laid before him on the ground. The exultant crowd loudly blesses “the King who comes”, and acclaims “Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” (Lk 19:38). Those people there celebrate because they see Jesus’ entry as the arrival of a new king, who would bring peace and glory. That was the peace those people were waiting for: a glorious peace, the fruit of royal intervention, that of a powerful messiah who would liberate Jerusalem from the Roman occupation. Others probably dreamed of the re-establishment of a social peace and saw Jesus as the ideal king, who would feed the crowd with bread, as he had already done, and would work great miracles, thus bringing more justice into the world.

But Jesus never speaks of this. He has a different Passover ahead of him, not a triumphant Passover. The only thing that he is concerned about in the preparation of his entry into Jerusalem is to ride “a colt tied, on which no-one has ever yet sat” (v. 30). This is how Christ brings peace into the world: through meekness and mildness, symbolized by that tethered colt, on which no-one had ever sat. No-one, because God’s way of doing things is different to that of the world. Indeed, just before Passover, Jesus explains to the disciples, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you” (Jn 14:27). They are two different approaches: the way the world gives us peace, and the way God gives us peace. They are different. The peace Jesus gives to us at Easter is not the peace that follows the strategies of the world, which believes it can obtain it through force, by conquest and with various forms of imposition. This peace, in reality, is only an interval between wars: we are well aware of this. The peace of the Lord follows the way of meekness and mildness: it is taking responsibility for others. Indeed, Christ took on himself our evil, sin and our death. He took all of this upon himself. In this way he freed us. He paid for us. His peace is not the fruit of some compromise, but rather is born of self-giving. This meek and courageous peace, though, is difficult to accept. In fact, the crowd who exalted Jesus is the same that a few days later would shout, “Crucify him!” and, fearful and disappointed, would not lift a finger for him.

In this regard, a great story by Dostoevsky, the so-called Legend of The Grand Inquisitor , is always relevant. It tells of Jesus who, after several centuries, returns to Earth. He is immediately welcomed by the rejoicing crowd, who recognizes and acclaims him. “Ah, you have returned! Come, come with us!”. But then he is arrested by the Inquisitor, who represents worldly logic. The latter interrogates him and criticizes him fiercely. The final reason for the rebuke is that Christ, although he could, never wanted to become Caesar, the greatest king of this world, preferring to leave mankind free rather than subjugate it and solve its problems by force. He could have established peace in the world, bending the free but precarious heart of man by force of a higher power, but he chose not to: he respected our freedom. “Hadst Thou taken the world and Caesar’s purple, Thou wouldst have founded the universal state and given universal peace” (The Brothers Karamazov , Milan 2012); and with a lashing sentence he concludes, “For if anyone has ever deserved our fires, it is Thou”. Here is the deception that is repeated throughout history, the temptation of a false peace, based on power, which then leads to hatred and the betrayal of God, and much bitterness in the soul.

In the end, according to the story, the Inquisitor “longed for [Jesus] to say something, however bitter and terrible”. But Christ  reacts with a gentle and concrete gesture: “He suddenly approached the old man in silence and softly kissed him on his bloodless aged lips”. Jesus’ peace does not overpower others; it is not an armed peace, never! The weapons of the Gospel are prayer, tenderness, forgiveness and freely-given love for one’s neighbour, love for every neighbour. This is how God’s peace is brought into the world. This is why the armed aggression of these days, like every war, is an outrage against God, a blasphemous betrayal of the Lord of Passover, a preference for the face of the false god of this world over his meek one. War is always a human act, to bring about the idolatry of power.

Before his final Passover, Jesus says to his disciples: “Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid” (Jn 14:27). Yes, because while worldly power leaves only destruction and death in its wake — we have seen this in recent days — his peace builds up history, starting from the heart of every person who welcomes it. Easter is therefore the true feast of God and humanity, because the peace that Christ gained on the cross in giving himself is distributed to us. Therefore, the Risen Christ, on Easter Day, appears to the disciples, and how does he greet them? “Peace be with you!” (Jn 20:19-21). This is the greeting of Christ victorious, the Risen Christ.

Brothers, sisters, Pasqua , [Italian word for Easter] signifies “passage”. This year above all, it is a blessed occasion to pass from the worldly god to the Christian God, from the greed that we carry within us to the charity that sets us free, from the expectation of a peace brought by force to the commitment to bear real witness to the peace of Jesus. Brothers and sisters, let us place ourselves before the Crucified One, the wellspring of our peace, and ask him for peace of heart and peace in the world.

Jonathan Fabian Ginunggil,
Pelayan Atasan Tertinggi / Most High Servant,
Yesus, Maria, Yusuf Pelayanan Kasih / Jesus, Mary, Joseph Ministry of Love 
(Blessed and Saints and the Nine Choirs of Angels)

My vocation is Blessed and Saints.

"I am the most humble of all the Saints in Heaven" Mary, Mother of God."

"I am the handmaid of the Lord, said Mary ‘let what you have said be done to me."

Mother Mary is the most humble Saint in Heaven and she is also the Mother of God for us all
(Luke 1:38)