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 6, 12-19
Now it happened in those days that he went onto the mountain to pray; and he spent the whole night in prayer to God.
When day came he summoned his disciples and picked out twelve of them; he called them 'apostles':
Simon whom he called Peter, and his brother Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew,
Matthew, Thomas, James son of Alphaeus, Simon called the Zealot,
Judas son of James, and Judas Iscariot who became a traitor.
He then came down with them and stopped at a piece of level ground where there was a large gathering of his disciples, with a great crowd of people from all parts of Judaea and Jerusalem and the coastal region of Tyre and Sidon
who had come to hear him and to be cured of their diseases. People tormented by unclean spirits were also cured,
and everyone in the crowd was trying to touch him because power came out of him that cured them all.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Look down, O Lord, on your servants.
Be it unto us according to your word.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
In the Gospels we know of the call of five of the twelve apostles, but we don’t know anything about the vocation of the other seven. We could say that this Gospel scene fills a gap. Jesus chooses his closest co-operators who are to help him proclaim the Gospel to the world. The initiative, however, comes from the Father. Jesus, in fact, does not do anything without the Father. That is why, before making such a decision, he spends the entire night in prayer. For Jesus, and much more so for every Christian community, prayer is at the beginning of every choice and every action. We could say that prayer is the first work that Jesus accomplishes; prayer is the work that stands as the foundation of all other activities. It should be so in the life of each Christian community. When morning came, Jesus called those whom he wished to his side, one by one, by name. The community of Jesus’ disciples, each Christian community, is not anonymous; it is not a mere assembly made up of people without names and without love. We all know even through personal experience the sadness of loneliness, the anguish of not being called by name, as if we are each to be abandoned to our own fates. The community of Jesus is made up not of anonymous persons, but of brothers and sisters who know each other and call one another by name. This means that friendship and fraternity are the essence of communion. But this does not come simply from us; it is not the fruit of mutual liking. It flows out of Jesus’ call, out of obedience to his Word. We are given a new name, different from the one we have always had; it is given by Jesus himself. That is, Jesus gives us a new heart, a new task, a new history. Simon is called Peter, which means rock and foundation. The Gospel calls every disciple to a new vocation to build a new world. Each disciple, therefore, receives a new name and a new life more industrious and more dedicated to the service of love and the construction of a more just world. Jesus, after just having constituted the group of the Twelve, comes down from the mountain and immediately finds himself before a large crowd of people that had come from everywhere. For Jesus this was a rather customary scene and now, with his new disciples, he could better attend to the numerous demands and expectations of the people. This Gospel image should be applied to every Christian community. Each of us should see the multitudes of this world, the people of our own neighbourhoods, our own cities and of those farther away. All these should be present before our eyes. All, in fact, are tired, ill, needy, and often forgotten. And they should run towards us, as they ran to Jesus. From Jesus and his Gospel came a great power, a great energy which helped them to change their lives. Something similar also happens to us when we communicate the Gospel and live it with deeds of love and mercy. The crowds, seeing the Gospel visible in the Christian communities, will run to them and rejoice.
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
