Reading of the Word of God
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
You are a chosen race,
a royal priesthood, a holy nation,
a people acquired by God
to proclaim his marvellous works.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Matthew 23,27-32
'Alas for you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs that look handsome on the outside, but inside are full of the bones of the dead and every kind of corruption.
In just the same way, from the outside you look upright, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.
'Alas for you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You build the sepulchres of the prophets and decorate the tombs of the upright,
saying, "We would never have joined in shedding the blood of the prophets, had we lived in our ancestors' day."
So! Your own evidence tells against you! You are the children of those who murdered the prophets!
Very well then, finish off the work that your ancestors began.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
You will be holy,
because I am holy, thus says the Lord.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
The invective spoken by Jesus against the scribes and Pharisees ends with these two last expressions of "woe to you:" the sixth and the seventh. He compares the scribes and Pharisees to tombs that are whitewashed on the outside but full of death on the inside. He changes images but continues his indictment of hypocrisy, that is, of interior corruption that is masked by external practices. The pharisaic spirit leads people to be scrupulous in their external practices, while at the same time leaving their hearts empty and distant from mercy and love. This warning also applies to the disciples. The Gospel cannot just be a series of external practices: it needs to enter the heart and transform it so that the whole of a person’s life can be raised from a life filled with cold feelings that are as cold, harsh, and numb as death. It is easy for us to become judges of others when we try to hide our own weaknesses and our need to be helped by the Lord to become better men and women. Feeling just easily makes us inhuman; recognizing our own weakness and sin, on the other hand, pushes us to be more attentive and merciful. Finally, Jesus condemns those who look to the past to justify their continued oppression of the weak and the empty but heavy practices they impose. In doing so, they continue to distance the Gospel of love from themselves and from the people. What counts is "that today we would listen to his voice" and that we change our hearts.
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
