European Day of Memory of Shoah.
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European Day of Memory of Shoah.
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
Tobit 3,16-17
This time the prayer of each of them found favour before the glory of God,
and Raphael was sent to bring remedy to them both. He was to take the white spots from the eyes of Tobit, so that he might see God's light with his own eyes; and he was to give Sarah the daughter of Raguel as bride to Tobias son of Tobit, and to rid her of Asmodeus, that worst of demons. For it was to Tobias before all other suitors that she belonged by right. Tobit was coming back from the courtyard into the house at the same moment as Sarah the daughter of Raguel was coming down from the upper room.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
You will be holy,
because I am holy, thus says the Lord.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
The author, even now, demonstrates the efficacy of both Tobit’s and Sarah’s prayers: the first will be healed of his blindness, and the second will find a husband, Tobias, who will give her a child. All of this happens through the intervention of the angel Raphael. The author not only underlines the efficacy of prayer, but he also highlights how the Lord has intervened in the world by sending the angel Raphael from heaven. Of all the angels, seven are distinguished as being particularly close to God (the archangels). Scripture remembers the names of three of them: Gabriel, Raphael, and Michael (the others are given various different names), and the book of Tobit is the first biblical text to mention Raphael. Scripture presents Raphael as the angel who mediates between God and humanity, a personal helper for the just men and women who find themselves in difficulty, and as a spokesperson for God. Angels, like demons, are not an easy topic. The pages of Scripture present angels as the hand of God that enters into history to accompany men and women, showing them the path to follow in order to keep from falling into the snares set by the devil. Their presence in Scripture is an invitation to consider the concrete divine presence (in this case, represented by the angel Raphael) that accompanies men and women by becoming one of us. It is a delicate and discrete presence that never imposes itself on the liberty of the human protagonists, but which nonetheless is no less effective. We are very far from magic abstraction. The Lord intervenes in human history in a concrete and tangible way, even if it is mysterious to our eyes. It is a question of faith, not esotericism. The passage concludes the same way that the text about Sarah began (cfr. 3:7): Sarah’s and Tobit’s prayers are made simultaneously, and the Lord hears them both at the very same moment. We could say that praying in "accord" (even in time) - as Jesus himself will urge his followers to do - moves God to intervene. And God is moved even more by the invocations made by the poor, the weak, and the suffering when they ask to be saved from their condition of sadness.
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
