Prayer for the unity of the Churches. Particular memory of the Churches and ecclesial communities (Lutheran, Reformed, Methodist, Baptist, Pentecostal).
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Prayer for the unity of the Churches. Particular memory of the Churches and ecclesial communities (Lutheran, Reformed, Methodist, Baptist, Pentecostal).
Reading of the Word of God
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
This is the Gospel of the poor,
liberation for the imprisoned,
sight for the blind,
freedom for the oppressed.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Tobit 2,1-8
In the reign of Esarhaddon, therefore, I returned home, and my wife Anna was restored to me with my son Tobias. At our feast of Pentecost (the feast of Weeks) there was a good dinner. I took my place for the meal;
the table was brought to me and various dishes were brought. I then said to my son Tobias, 'Go, my child, and seek out some poor, loyal-hearted man among our brothers exiled in Nineveh, and bring him to share my meal. I will wait until you come back, my child.'
So Tobias went out to look for some poor man among our brothers, but he came back again and said, 'Father!' I replied, 'What is it, my child?' He went on, 'Father, one of our nation has just been murdered; he has been strangled and then thrown down in the market place; he is there still.'
I sprang up at once, left my meal untouched, took the man from the market place and laid him in one of my rooms, waiting until sunset to bury him.
I came in again and washed myself and ate my bread in sorrow,
remembering the words of the prophet Amos concerning Bethel: I shall turn your festivals into mourning and all your singing into lamentation.
And I wept. When the sun was down, I went and dug a grave and buried him.
My neighbours laughed and said, 'See! He is not afraid any more.' (You must remember that a price had been set on my head earlier for this very thing.) 'Once before he had to flee, yet here he is, beginning to bury the dead again.'
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
The Son of Man came to serve,
whoever wants to be great
should become servant of all.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
The passage takes us back in relation to the preceding episode. The narrator is trying to depict Tobit as another Job: even greater misfortunes are added to the ones he has already suffered. On the feast of Pentecost, the day when the Israelites remember the gift of the Law, Tobit asks his son, Tobias, to invite some poor people to the festive dinner, as required by the Mosaic Law (cfr. Deut 16:11). After he goes out, the son returns and says that there has been another execution and that the corpse of a strangled Jew is lying in the middle of the street. Without wasting any time, Tobit gets up from the table, leaves the banquet, goes to the place where the Jew is lying, and buries him. After completing the burial, he cannot go back inside his house because he first has to observe all of the purification rituals prescribed by the law (cfr. Num 19:14-16). This act of love will be the cause of Tobit’s trouble. To understand what is happening, Tobit cites the same words spoken by the prophet Amos against Bethel, which describe his situation: "I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation" (Am 8:10). The text translates into the passive voice ("shall be turned") a verb that is in the active voice ("I will change") and that is spoken directly by the mouth of God in Amos. But Tobit knows well that it is not God who sends evil; here, his attitude is similar to Job’s. Obviously this does not eliminate the bitterness of knowing that he has fallen into misfortune, even though he has helped the poor. Instead of helping him, his neighbours mock him for his excessively charitable behaviour. Their reaction is emblematic: they maintain that Tobit needs to become shrewder; that is, he needs to look out for himself more and not waste time burying the dead. It is a cynical and selfish attitude, and, unfortunately, a common one, which leads people to mock those who act with mercy.
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
