The psalmist offers an uplifting message of hope this Sunday, reminding us that the Lord is our light, our refuge, our salvation. Pope Francis Wednesday concluded a busy five-day journey through Mexico with an uplifting Mass of solidarity with migrants in Ciudad Juarez, on the Mexican border with the U.S.

During the Transfiguration described in this Sunday’s gospel, Moses and Elijah discuss with Jesus the painful “exodus” that he will undergo in Jerusalem. Besieged Syrians are undergoing a painful exodus of tragic proportions, provoked largely by intense Russian bombing of cities and Syrian government sieges of rebel communities.

In this Sunday’s first reading the Lord makes a covenant, an agreement with Abram and his descendents for all time. Though his time in office is limited, President Barack Obama hopes to come to agreement with the Republican-led Senate regarding a replacement for Supreme Court Antonin Scalia, who died Saturday.

A family that was devastated to learn one of their twin fetuses is unlikely to survive has drawn comfort from knowing his sister is there for him. Incredibly, a recent sonogram shows the tiny siblings holding hands in the womb.

A painting by the early 19th-century German artist Caspar Friedrich is named “The Monk and the Sea.” It’s a huge canvas, about four feet high by five feet wide. The picture is almost entirely a stormy sky. But at the horizon is the wide band of the ocean, rough-skinned with whitecaps, and in the foreground a strip of land.

“Already last year I was looking for an answer to these words, ‘I belong to you’, and finally, before leaving Poland, I found a way—a scapular. The dimension in which I accept and feel you everywhere in all kinds of situations, when you are close, and when you are far away.”

22,000 children die each day due to conditions of poverty.