Saturday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time
Intention: For students returning to Lasallian schools this week, that they find in their classrooms teachers who know their names and expect good things of them.
Today’s Gospel | Luke 6:1-5
While Jesus was going through a field of grain on a sabbath, his disciples were picking the heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands, and eating them. Some Pharisees said, “Why are you doing what is unlawful on the sabbath?” Jesus said to them in reply, “Have you not read what David did when he and those who were with him were hungry? How he went into the house of God, took the bread of offering, which only the priests could lawfully eat, ate of it, and shared it with his companions?” Then he said to them, “The Son of Man is lord of the sabbath.”
From the Twelfth Meditation for the Time of Retreat | Saint John Baptist de La Salle
For people, and even children, are endowed with reason and must not be corrected like animals, but like reasonable persons. We must reprove and correct with justice, by helping the children to recognize the wrong they have done, and what correction the fault they have committed deserves, and we must try to have them accept it. Also, since they are Christians, we must be disposed to make the reproof or correction in such a way that God may be pleased with it, and that the children accept it as a remedy for their fault, and as a means of becoming more wise.
Prayer
Eternal Father, your Son defended hungry people against those who had turned a good law into a weapon. Keep our rules in their place, as servants of the people they were written for. When we are tempted to enforce a policy against a person, slow us down. Give us the sense to ask first what someone actually needs. We ask this of you who lives and reigns with your Son and the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever. Amen.