In Your Presence

A meditation preached by Fr. Eric Nicolai at Kintore College, Toronto, on February 21, 2026. Today’s Gospel gives us a brief snapshot of the call of Levi, or Matthew, the tax collector. Right there, at his post, doing his job, at the customs post, Jesus called him. He walked in, looked at him, and, like in slow motion, Matthew got up, and followed him (Luke 5:27). In front of the grumbling, the Lord declared: It is not those who are well who need the doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the virtuous, but sinners to repentance.’ (Luke 5)
Matthew fits into the beatitudes that Jesus later outlines as the blueprint of his followers.
Music: Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.
Thumbnail: The Sermon on the Mount (1437-1445), Blessed Fra Angelico, Convent of San Marco, Florence.

A meditation preached on February 19, 2026, at Kintore College, Toronto.
In his 2026 message for Lent, Pope Leo speaks about listening.
The willingness to listen is the first way we demonstrate our desire to enter into a relationship with someone. Then he refers to the image of Moses standing in front of the burning bush.
He says: In revealing himself to Moses in the burning bush, God himself teaches us that listening is one of his defining characteristics: “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry” (Ex 3:7). Hearing the cry of the oppressed is the beginning of a story of liberation in which the Lord calls Moses, sending him to open a path of salvation for his children who have been reduced to slavery.
This is a task we can discover during Lent, and identify some of the obstacles to proper listening.
Music: Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.

A meditation preached by Fr. Eric Nicolai at Kintore College in Toronto, on February 11, 2026, the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes.
The Lord speaks today about the kind of openness to God’s love we must have in the events of our life. He promises real resilience for us if we see his hand in our life.
Mark 7:14-23: At that time: Jesus called the people to him again and said to them, ‘Hear me, all of you, and understand: There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him.’
What truly wounds us spiritually is not what happens to us, but what we consent to interiorly. We might easily blame external circumstances: our environment, other people, temptations, past wounds. Our growth is not about managing behaviour, but educating the heart: learning to recognize interior movements and choosing which ones to welcome, which ones to reject. It was present in the heart of Bernadette Soubirous, born in January 9, 1844, in the foothills of the Pyrenees in southern France, in Lourdes. Here is the story.

Fr. Eric Nicolai preached this meditation at Ernescliff College on January 26, 2026.
Mark 3:22-30: The scribes who had come down from Jerusalem were saying, ‘Beelzebul is in him’ and, ‘It is through the prince of devils that he casts devils out.’ So he called them to him and spoke to them in parables, ‘How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot last.
Satan’s strategy: division, confusion, and counterfeit good. He wants to confuse good and evil, make it all amorphous.

The devil wants to divide. He is bothered by unity. He is irritated by a Hail Mary recited together. It is like a nuclear blast against his own cohesion. The devil always wants to scatter and divide. He wants to pit one person against the other. He wants to divide. He wants comparisons and division.
Don’t let him win. Satan wants to divide a family, the church. It Omnes unum sint.
Music: Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.
Thumbnail: St. Michael the Archangel vanquishing the devil. Lorenzo Zucchi after Stefano Torelli 1725 Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Fr. Eric Nicolai preached this meditation on retreat to priests at the Manoir de Beaujeu, in Coteau du lac, near Montreal, Canada.
At his most urgent hour, when the apostles are on retreat with their Lord in the garden, a place far away from the hubbub of the crowds, the Lord lets go a searing complaint to his priests:
“What! Could none of you stay awake with me one hour?” (Matt 26, 40) We have to stay awake with him in this retreat. The word hour is present 7 times in John. Fulton Sheen refers to each hour in detail. The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. (Jn 12, 23). The hour for us has now come to respond to his demands, to examine all the layers in which we can be his priests, and truly embrace our mission.
Thumbnail: Andrea Mantegna, Christ in the Garden of Olives 1455, egg tempera, National Gallery, London.
Music: Angelic, by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, with license.