EVERYDAY PRAYER

Memory of the Saints and the Prophets
Word of god every day
Libretto DEL GIORNO
Memory of the Saints and the Prophets
Wednesday, March 20


Reading of the Word of God

Praise to you, o Lord, King of eternal glory

You are a chosen race,
a royal priesthood, a holy nation,
a people acquired by God
to proclaim his marvellous works.

Praise to you, o Lord, King of eternal glory

Jeremiah 18,18-20

'Come on,' they said, 'let us concoct a plot against Jeremiah, for the Law will not perish for lack of priests, nor advice for lack of wise men, nor the word for lack of prophets. Come on, let us slander him and pay no attention to anything he says.' Pay attention to me, Yahweh, hear what my adversaries are saying. Should evil be returned for good? Now they are digging a pit for me. Remember how I pleaded before you and spoke good of them, to turn your retribution away from them.

 

Praise to you, o Lord, King of eternal glory

You will be holy,
because I am holy, thus says the Lord.

Praise to you, o Lord, King of eternal glory

"Just like the clay in the potter's hand, so are you in my hand." These words recall humanity's creation. The Lord shaped the first human being out of clay and breathed the spirit of life into him. And the human became a living being (Gen 2:7). We cannot forget that the perpetual condition of every man and every woman is marked by the fact that they were made out of dust. But God does not despise the dust that is humanity. On the contrary, he values it. He is like a potter who continues to shape each of us, giving us his spirit of life so that we grow "in his image, according to his likeness." The Lord does not disdain our poverty and our fragility. He never stops bending down over us and continues to work in us so that we continue to grow as his children, his witnesses. We truly are, as Paul says, "vessels of clay." Nonetheless, the Lord continues to pour the breath of life, the breath of his Holy Spirit, into our hearts through his word. That breath was not given once and for all at the beginning. It is given to us every day by the Lord to sustain us on the path towards the fullness of life. Jeremiah reminds us of the great responsibility we have to choose to follow the Lord. Those who follow the way of the Lord and not the stubbornness of their heats will be blessed. How sad it is to continue to follow ourselves and listen to ourselves after all of the love and forgiveness we have received from the Lord! And yet is the great love that can be had on earth. As if challenging them to find love, the Lord asks his people, "Ask among the nations: Who has heard the like of this? ... But my people have forgotten me... they have stumbled in their ways, in the ancient roads." We often turn back in life, because if we do not listen, we do not stay as we are, we go back, and we become worse. This is what happens when we forget what we have received, and we go back to following our own individual paths. We understand the prophet's prayer, who asks for God's help with the struggles of his vocation. Let us ask the Lord for strength, in order to continue to communicate the strength of his love and his forgiveness.

WORD OF GOD EVERY DAY: THE CALENDAR

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!

WORD OF GOD EVERY DAY: THE CALENDAR