Reading of the Word of God
Praise to you, o Lord, King of eternal glory
The Spirit of the Lord is upon you.
The child you shall bear will be holy.
Praise to you, o Lord, King of eternal glory
Numbers 21,4-9
They left Mount Hor by the road to the Sea of Suph, to skirt round Edom. On the way the people lost patience. They spoke against God and against Moses, 'Why did you bring us out of Egypt to die in the desert? For there is neither food nor water here; we are sick of this meagre diet.' At this, God sent fiery serpents among the people; their bite brought death to many in Israel. The people came and said to Moses, 'We have sinned by speaking against Yahweh and against you. Intercede for us with Yahweh to save us from these serpents.' Moses interceded for the people, and Yahweh replied, 'Make a fiery serpent and raise it as a standard. Anyone who is bitten and looks at it will survive.' Moses then made a serpent out of bronze and raised it as a standard, and anyone who was bitten by a serpent and looked at the bronze serpent survived.
Praise to you, o Lord, King of eternal glory
Look down, O Lord, on your servants.
Be it unto us according to your word.
Praise to you, o Lord, King of eternal glory
This passage of the book of Numbers reports one of the most critical moments of the journey of the people of Israel in the desert. Brought low by fatigue, the Israelites vent all of their displeasure to God and Moses. They even regret the fact they were taken out of slavery in Egypt: "Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food" (v.5). Regret for the past arises when dreams fade, when we give up the vision and the project in which God has called us to participate. And then we retreat into ourselves and allow ourselves to be dominated by pettiness, resignation, and nostalgia for the past, and our complaints take precedence over everything and everyone. That is when poisonous snakes appear and start biting and killing people. It is not God who sends snakes; we are the ones who spread poison in the fields of life and sometimes given kill with our tongues, which become like the tongues of snakes. How often do we end up destroying each other with our words, whether as individuals or between factions and nations, and are unable to even engage in dialogue. The awareness of their sin leads the Israelites to turn to Moses and ask him to intercede for them with the Lord. And the Lord once again intervenes. He had them build a bronze serpent and set it up in the ground, so that whoever looked at it after having been bitten, would be saved. The desert that had become a place of death because of the poison that human beings spread there was transformed into a place of salvation because of the serpent raised on the pole. Listening to the final words of this biblical passage, we are directly reminded of the Cross, which in just a few days will be planted on Golgotha and which we are invited to contemplate and to welcome in our hearts. During this season of Lent, the Biblical passages that accompany us day after day are an effective aid in purifying our eyes so we can turn them towards "the one who was pierced for our salvation."
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
