In the beginning of the first Toy Story Buzz LightYear was excited about all of his power. He had the power of lasers, and flight, and the power of a star command ship that he talked to through his monitors. He had lots of gadgets and stuff and a mission.

The problem was, it wasn’t real. It was all fake. But when he dropped his mask and breathed the real air, he grew to realize that it was only in cooperation with his friends that he had real powers and a true mission, and he was more powerful and capable of more heroic deeds than he ever dreamed.

I see you, landed here. You crossed a galaxy of dumb hard work to get here. You took classes, you did the work, you went to practice, you played the games, ran and swam the meets, put on the shows, competed. You tried new things, made new friends, and strengthened your old friendships as well.

You moved on when you needed to. You picked up where you left off when you could. You persevered, you got extra help, you were kind.

Remember just for a second that time you were really kind. When you were the one person your friend could talk to about the difficult thing. When you were nice to someone who needed it just then. When you protected someone who was weaker than you. When you stood up for someone. Remember that time?

That was when you had the most power.

You don’t need fancy things, an image, or a glossy mask to be powerful. In fact, those things keep you from being as powerful as you truly are.

There are so many things you can do this summer to gather all of your strength for your next adventure.

You can do the summer reading.

You can read for fun. You can make art. You can build something.

You can decide to get into the best shape of your life.

You can go to church with your family.

You can open your heart to God in prayer.

You can work on your friendships, spend time with people, and be helpful, creative, and kind.

Because Jesus says in John 13:15, “There is no greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

And in John 3: “By this we know what love is: Jesus laid down His life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.”

How are we laying down our lives? How are we living for the sake of others? We have a whole summer ahead of us to practice friendship, to be good listeners, to be models of Christ’s love for us to our family and our friends.

When you are good friends, when you are kind and encourage others to be kind, it’s only then when you are powerful at all. It is then, in fact,  when you are more powerful than you can ever dream.

So pray with me:

God sometimes I swear we got it twisted

We think we’re not enough so we need a bunch of stuff just let me list it

Iphone ipad a car and some money

The right shoes the right pants the right hair the right honey

We don’t even know that our thinking’s not right

That star command’s broke and our laser’s just a light

That our pride is our downfall

That our ego makes our life fall

And the darkness comes like nightfall

Till your blessings dawn like rainfall

And wash away our shortfalls.

Clean.

With you, my God, the sky’s the limit

Let me take a deep breath and just wait a minute

Your greatest gift to us is our friendships with one another

Flow through us Holy Spirit through every sister every brother

Flow through us, body, soul and mind

Help us to be healthy, help us to be kind

Bless grownups here who love us, we remember them too

Let them have the time to rest and renew

Give them time by the pool and some really good food

So they come back in August in a really good mood

Bless our freshmen as they have the best summer of their lives

Bless our sophomores as they sharpen their minds to edges like knives

Bless our juniors, so they may have the courage and the nerve

Bless our seniors as they leave to serve

We all belong together, we’re like birds of a feather

All we need is love nothing else whatsoever

We’ll be back together soon on the other side of whenever,

St. John Baptist de La Salle . . . . . .Pray for us

Live Jesus in our hearts . . . . forever!