Friday of the Third Week of Easter
Intention: That we may be a people of life, speaking for the dignity and needs of all people, especially the poor, the oppressed, the exploited, the misunderstood, and the forgotten.
Today’s Gospel | John 6:52-59
The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his Flesh to eat?” Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink his Blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats my Flesh and drinks my Blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my Flesh is true food, and my Blood is true drink. Whoever eats my Flesh and drinks my Blood remains in me and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever.” These things he said while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.
From the Ninth Meditation for the Time of Retreat | Saint John Baptist de La Salle
The zeal you are obliged to have in your work must be so active and so alive that you can tell the parents of the children entrusted to your care what is said in Holy Scripture: Give us their souls; keep everything else for yourselves, that is, what we have undertaken is to work for the salvation of their souls. It is also the only reason you have committed yourselves to take the responsibility to guide and to instruct them.
Tell the parents also what Jesus Christ said about the sheep of which he is the shepherd and which must be saved by him: I came, he said, that they might have life and have it to the full. For this had to have been the kind of ardent zeal you felt for the salvation of those you must instruct when you were led to sacrifice yourselves and to spend your whole life to give these children a Christian education and to procure for them the life of grace in this world and eternal life in the next.
Prayer
Eternal Father, your Son gives himself to us every day in the sacrament of the Eucharist. Only in him can we find the food that our souls need. We pray in thanks that he calls us to gather around his table to this, your kingdom’s feast. Feed and nourish us, Lord, so that in and through this bread and wine your love may meet us and complete us in the power of your presence. Fill us with zeal to care for the souls of all who you have entrusted to our care, that they may know fullness of life in you. We ask this of you who lives and reigns with your Son and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.