Thursday of the Twenty-third Week in Ordinary Time
Intention: For migrants and refugees arriving in the communities this District serves, that they be met with welcome rather than suspicion.
Today’s Gospel | Luke 6:27-38
Jesus said to his disciples: “To you who hear I say, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. To the person who strikes you on one cheek, offer the other one as well, and from the person who takes your cloak, do not withhold even your tunic. Give to everyone who asks of you, and from the one who takes what is yours do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you. For if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do the same. If you lend money to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, and get back the same amount. But rather, love your enemies and do good to them, and lend expecting nothing back; then your reward will be great and you will be children of the Most High, for he himself is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as also your Father is merciful.
“Stop judging and you will not be judged. Stop condemning and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven. Give and gifts will be given to you; a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing, will be poured into your lap. For the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you.”
From the Sixth Meditation for the Time of Retreat | Saint John Baptist de La Salle
If you want to accomplish your ministry as Guardian Angels for the children whom you instruct, to build up with them the body of Christ and to make them holy and perfect, you must work to inspire them with the same sentiments and to put them in the same dispositions in which Saint Paul tried to place the Ephesians through the letter he wrote to them. First, that they not sadden the Holy Spirit of God, with whom they have been marked in baptism and in confirmation as by a seal for the day of redemption. Second, you would be deserving of blame if you did not engage them to renounce their former way of life; you must, therefore, lead them with the same zeal to renounce lying and to speak the truth to their neighbor at all times. Third, you must help them to be gentle and to have a tenderness for one another, mutually forgiving, as God has forgiven them in Jesus Christ, and love one another even as Jesus Christ has loved them.
Prayer
Eternal Father, your Son asked for something unreasonable: love for the people who have made themselves our opponents. We would rather be fair than merciful, because fairness costs less. Give us the harder generosity, the kind that lends without calculating the return. Measure us the way you would have us measure others. We ask this of you who lives and reigns with your Son and the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever. Amen.