Saturday of the Thirty-second Week in Ordinary Time
Intention: That all Americans will make today a time of reconciliation and healing and rededicate ourselves to the national work of building a better country and a better world.
Today’s Gospel | Luke 18: 1-8
Jesus told his disciples a parable about the necessity for them to pray always without becoming weary. He said, “There was a judge in a certain town who neither feared God nor respected any human being. And a widow in that town used to come to him and say, ‘Render a just decision for me against my adversary.’ For a long time the judge was unwilling, but eventually he thought, ‘While it is true that I neither fear God nor respect any human being, because this widow keeps bothering me I shall deliver a just decision for her lest she finally come and strike me.’” The Lord said, “Pay attention to what the dishonest judge says. Will not God then secure the rights of his chosen ones who call out to him day and night? Will he be slow to answer them? I tell you, he will see to it that justice is done for them speedily. But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”
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, we have so much for which to be thankful to you, especially all of the times when you have walked with us and stayed with us in our times of need. Yet, so often we are too caught up in ourselves to stop and give you thanks. Teach us to be grateful for your presence at work in us, transforming us, renewing us, saving us. May we be channels of that presence to others, making space in this world for your healing and justice. We ask this of you who lives and reigns with your Son and the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever. Amen.