
Filled with grace and power - 20-04-2026
Do you feel God’s grace at work in your life?
Monday of the Third week of Easter
First Reading
Acts 6,8-15.
Stephen, filled with grace and power, was working great
wonders and signs among the people.
Certain members of the so-called Synagogue of Freedmen,
Cyrenians, and Alexandrians, and people from Cilicia
and Asia, came forward and debated with Stephen,
but they could not withstand the wisdom and the spirit with which he spoke.
Then they instigated some men to say, "We have heard him
speaking blasphemous words against Moses and God."
They stirred up the people, the elders, and the scribes,
accosted him, seized him, and brought him before the Sanhedrin.
They presented false witnesses who testified, "This man never
stops saying things against (this) holy place and the law.
For we have heard him claim that this Jesus the Nazorean
will destroy this place and change the customs that Moses handed down to us."
All those who sat in the Sanhedrin looked intently at him
and saw that his face was like the face of an angel.
Responsorial Psalm
Ps 119(118),23-24.26-27.29-30.
Though princes meet and talk against me,
your servant meditates on your statutes.
Yes, your decrees are my delight;
they are my counselors.
I declared my ways, and you answered me;
teach me your statutes.
Make me understand the way of your precepts,
and I will meditate on your wondrous deeds.
Remove from me the way of falsehood,
and favor me with your law.
The way of truth I have chosen;
I have set your ordinances before me.
Gospel
John 6,22-29.
[After Jesus had fed the five thousand men, his disciples
saw him walking on the sea.] The next day, the crowd
that remained across the sea saw that there had been
only one boat there, and that Jesus had not gone along
with his disciples in the boat, but only his disciples had left.
Other boats came from Tiberias near the place where
they had eaten the bread when the Lord gave thanks.
When the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there,
they themselves got into boats and came to Capernaum looking for Jesus.
And when they found him across the sea they said to him,
"Rabbi, when did you get here?"
Jesus answered them and said, "Amen, amen, I say to you,
you are looking for me not because you saw signs
but because you ate the loaves and were filled.
Do not work for food that perishes but for the food
that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.
For on him the Father, God, has set his seal."
So they said to him, "What can we do to accomplish the works of God?"
Jesus answered and said to them,
"This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he sent."
YOUCAT Reflection
339 What does God's grace do to us?
God's grace brings us into the inner life of the Holy Trinity, into the exchange of love between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It makes us capable of living in God's love and of acting on the basis of this love.
Grace is infused in us from above and cannot be explained in terms of natural causes (supernatural grace). It makes us—especially through Baptism—children of God and heirs of heaven (sanctifying or deifying grace). It bestows on us a permanent disposition to do good (habitual grace). Grace helps us to know, to will, and to do everything that leads us to what is good, to God, and to heaven (actual grace). Grace comes about in a special way in the sacraments, which according to the will of our Savior are the preeminent places for our encounter with God (sacramental grace). Grace is manifested also in special gifts of grace that are granted to individual Christians (charisms) or in special powers that are promised to those in the state of marriage, the ordained state, or the religious state (graces of state).
