Prayer for the unity of the Churches. Particular memory of the Orthodox Churches.
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Prayer for the unity of the Churches. Particular memory of the Orthodox Churches.
Reading of the Word of God
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
The Spirit of the Lord is upon you.
The child you shall bear will be holy.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Luke 24,44-49
Then he told them, 'This is what I meant when I said, while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses, in the Prophets and in the Psalms, was destined to be fulfilled.'
He then opened their minds to understand the scriptures,
and he said to them, 'So it is written that the Christ would suffer and on the third day rise from the dead,
and that, in his name, repentance for the forgiveness of sins would be preached to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.
You are witnesses to this.
'And now I am sending upon you what the Father has promised. Stay in the city, then, until you are clothed with the power from on high.'
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Look down, O Lord, on your servants.
Be it unto us according to your word.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
The words we have heard are part of chapter 24 of Luke’s Gospel, chosen as the theme for the prayer for Christian unity which began yesterday. This year we want to remember the centenary of the international missionary Congress held in Edinburgh, considered to be the official beginning of the modern ecumenical movement. The scandal that the divisions among Christians provokes in mission lands impelled some missionaries from the Protestant world to gather together to try to understand Jesus’ command that there be unity among all the disciples. The witness of the Gospel increasingly demands, in fact, overcoming the scandal of division. "To be witnesses of the Gospel" is the topic chosen for the prayer, and it is the heart of the mission that the risen Christ entrusts to his Church, as is evident precisely in the whole chapter 24 of Luke’s Gospel. "You shall be witnesses of all this," Jesus tells the disciples before ascending to heaven. He said it Easter morning to the women at the tomb, he repeated it to the two from Emmaus and, at the end of the day, he delivered it as a primary task of their mission to the Eleven gathered together in the upper room. The Easter witness is in effect the heart of the Christian mission. In the mystery of Easter, the wounds of division smart even more bitterly. There is no doubt that the growth of passion for witnessing the Gospel of love until the extreme ends of the earth will help Christians to again find that fraternity that is born precisely from the mystery of the Lord’s death and resurrection. The prayer that sees Christians gathered as a single spiritual cathedral already contains, in a way, the overcoming of the distances that separate us. Yes, we await the Spirit which will reunite that which we have separated. The Holy Spirit, which the Lord has promised to his disciples, "will also clothe us too" with that love which makes us grow in unity.
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
