Friday of the Thirty-second Week in Ordinary Time
Intention: That all people will learn how to come together in generosity and trust to restore our nation’s spirit of community.
Today’s Gospel | Luke 17:26-37
Jesus said to his disciples: “As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be in the days of the Son of Man; they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage up to the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. Similarly, as it was in the days of Lot: they were eating, drinking, buying, selling, planting, building; on the day when Lot left Sodom, fire and brimstone rained from the sky to destroy them all. So it will be on the day the Son of Man is revealed. On that day, someone who is on the housetop and whose belongings are in the house must not go down to get them, and likewise one in the field must not return to what was left behind. Remember the wife of Lot. Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses it will save it. I tell you, on that night there will be two people in one bed; one will be taken, the other left. And there will be two women grinding meal together; one will be taken, the other left.” They said to him in reply, “Where, Lord?” He said to them, “Where the body is, there also the vultures will gather.”
From the Second Meditation for the Time of Retreat | Saint John Baptist de La Salle
Consider that it is a practice only too common for working people and the poor to allow their children to live on their own, roaming all over like vagabonds, as long as they are unable to put them to some work. These parents have no concern to send their children to school, because their poverty does not allow them to pay teachers, or else, obliged as they are to look for work outside the home, they have to abandon their children to fend for themselves.
God has had the goodness to remedy so great a misfortune by the establishment of the Christian Schools, where the teaching is offered free of charge and entirely for the glory of God, where the children are kept all day, learn reading, writing, and their religion, and are always busy, so that when their parents want them to go to work, they are prepared for employment.
Prayer
Eternal Father, for many people, the world is a hard place. Only they truly know the weight of the hardships that they must bear each day. We pray for a spirit of compassion and justice for ourselves and for our society. May we view the poor and the marginalized not with judgement but with respect, finding ways to stand with them and advocate for them. Make within us open, caring, and humble hearts. We ask this of you who lives and reigns with your Son and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.