Memorial of Blessed Giuseppe Puglisi, priest of the Church of Palermo, who was killed by mafia in 1993. Read more
Memorial of Blessed Giuseppe Puglisi, priest of the Church of Palermo, who was killed by mafia in 1993.
Reading of the Word of God
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Whoever lives and believes in me
will never die.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Acts 17,22-34
So Paul stood before the whole council of the Areopagus and made this speech: 'Men of Athens, I have seen for myself how extremely scrupulous you are in all religious matters, because, as I strolled round looking at your sacred monuments, I noticed among other things an altar inscribed: To An Unknown God. In fact, the unknown God you revere is the one I proclaim to you. 'Since the God who made the world and everything in it is himself Lord of heaven and earth, he does not make his home in shrines made by human hands. Nor is he in need of anything, that he should be served by human hands; on the contrary, it is he who gives everything -- including life and breath -- to everyone. From one single principle he not only created the whole human race so that they could occupy the entire earth, but he decreed the times and limits of their habitation. And he did this so that they might seek the deity and, by feeling their way towards him, succeed in finding him; and indeed he is not far from any of us, since it is in him that we live, and move, and exist, as indeed some of your own writers have said: We are all his children. 'Since we are the children of God, we have no excuse for thinking that the deity looks like anything in gold, silver or stone that has been carved and designed by a man. 'But now, overlooking the times of ignorance, God is telling everyone everywhere that they must repent, because he has fixed a day when the whole world will be judged in uprightness by a man he has appointed. And God has publicly proved this by raising him from the dead.' At this mention of rising from the dead, some of them burst out laughing; others said, 'We would like to hear you talk about this another time.' After that Paul left them, but there were some who attached themselves to him and became believers, among them Dionysius the Aeropagite and a woman called Damaris, and others besides.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
If you believe, you will see the glory of God,
thus says the Lord.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Paul starts his speech in the important square of the Areopagus in Athens by speaking about a pagan altar devoted to the Unknown God, which he noticed while walking through the city. The apostle affirms that he came to announce the name of that God, who was therefore no longer unknown. The learned Athenians paid close attention to Paul, who was succeeding in maintaining the interest of his demanding listeners. Referring to their culture, Paul was seeking to put them in dialogue with the Gospel. We could say that the apostle had succeeded in engaging with the sensitivity of his listeners, which was obviously important, but the heart of the Gospelthat is, Jesus’ victory over evil and death, required a leap in comparison to the logic argument of the “unknown god.” Paul had to proclaim the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, and this implied a discontinuity between the accepted cultural horizon and the horizon of faith, between the Gospel and reason. When the issue is welcoming the scandal of the cross and the God of Jesus, the encounter moves on to a plane different from that of the simple rational logic. We do not know if the words of Paul to the Corinthians followed this defeat, “I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God to you in lofty words or wisdom. My speech and my proclamation were not with plausible words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power” (1 Cor 2:1-4). The heart of the Christian proclamation, Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, is an extraordinary and unexpected gift that the Lord gave to humanity and that is “beyond” the expectation of reason, though it is not against it. Perhaps the apostle hoped that those wise people, who believed that the soul was immortal, would also welcome the mystery of the resurrection of the flesh. Paul brought the Athenians to the threshold, but right at that point, they interrupted him, “We will hear you again talk about this.” Paul was greatly disappointed, but he remembered Jesus’ words, “I bless you Father, for hiding these things from the learned and the clever and revealing them to the little children” (Mt 11:25-27).
Prayer is the heart of the life of the Community of Sant'Egidio and is its absolute priority. At the end of the day, every the Community of Sant'Egidio, large or small, gathers around the Lord to listen to his Word. The Word of God and the prayer are, in fact, the very basis of the whole life of the Community. The disciples cannot do other than remain at the feet of Jesus, as did Mary of Bethany, to receive his love and learn his ways (Phil. 2:5).
So every evening, when the Community returns to the feet of the Lord, it repeats the words of the anonymous disciple: " Lord, teach us how to pray". Jesus, Master of prayer, continues to answer: "When you pray, say: Abba, Father". It is not a simple exhortation, it is much more. With these words Jesus lets the disciples participate in his own relationship with the Father. Therefore in prayer, the fact of being children of the Father who is in heaven, comes before the words we may say. So praying is above all a way of being! That is to say we are children who turn with faith to the Father, certain that they will be heard.
Jesus teaches us to call God "Our Father". And not simply "Father" or "My Father". Disciples, even when they pray on their own, are never isolated nor they are orphans; they are always members of the Lord's family.
In praying together, beside the mystery of being children of God, there is also the mystery of brotherhood, as the Father of the Church said: "You cannot have God as father without having the church as mother". When praying together, the Holy Spirit assembles the disciples in the upper room together with Mary, the Lord's mother, so that they may direct their gaze towards the Lord's face and learn from Him the secret of his Heart.
The Communities of Sant'Egidio all over the world gather in the various places of prayer and lay before the Lord the hopes and the sufferings of the tired, exhausted crowds of which the Gospel speaks ( Mat. 9: 3-7 ), In these ancient crowds we can see the huge masses of the modern cities, the millions of refugees who continue to flee their countries, the poor, relegated to the very fringe of life and all those who are waiting for someone to take care of them. Praying together includes the cry, the invocation, the aspiration, the desire for peace, the healing and salvation of the men and women of this world. Prayer is never in vain; it rises ceaselessly to the Lord so that anguish is turned into hope, tears into joy, despair into happiness, and solitude into communion. May the Kingdom of God come soon among people!
For the sick, in memory of the dead, for peace
