Memory of St. Joseph the worker and World Labour Day
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Memory of St. Joseph the worker and World Labour Day
Reading of the Word of God
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Whoever lives and believes in me
will never die.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
John 14,7-14
If you know me, you will know my Father too. From this moment you know him and have seen him.
Philip said, 'Lord, show us the Father and then we shall be satisfied.' Jesus said to him,
'Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? 'Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father, so how can you say, "Show us the Father"?
Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? What I say to you I do not speak of my own accord: it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his works.
You must believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe it on the evidence of these works.
In all truth I tell you, whoever believes in me will perform the same works as I do myself, and will perform even greater works, because I am going to the Father.
Whatever you ask in my name I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.
If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
If you believe, you will see the glory of God,
thus says the Lord.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Like the one we listened to yesterday, this gospel passage continues Jesus’ speech to the disciples in the upper room. Jesus tells them that He is the way to reach the Father in heaven. They will not be alone: all they have to do is follow his word and they will be able to know the Father. As if to bring the speech to a definitive end, Philip asks: "Show us the Father, and we will be satisfied." Jesus responds with a sorrowful rebuke: "Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father." Here we are entering into the heart of the Christian faith and of all religious seeking. We encounter God, the creator of heaven and earth, through Jesus. "No one has ever seen God," John writes in his first Letter (4:12). It is Jesus who reveals him to us. If we want to see God’s face, all we have to do is look at Jesus; if we want to know God’s thoughts, all we have to know is the Gospel; if we want to understand how God acts, we just need to observe Jesus’ behaviour. The Father of heaven is close to the lives of men and women, just as Jesus was: he is a God who makes the dead rise, who becomes a child to be close to us, who weeps over his dead friend, who walks on human roads, who stops, who heals, and who is moved with compassion for all. He is truly the Father of all. If we are bound to Jesus we will do the same works he does. Indeed, Jesus says we will do even greater ones. We normally do not think about these words very much, and if we happen to come across them they seem exaggerated. But to see God’s words as an exaggeration is to deny the strength of the Word of God. The Gospel has its own, internal strength: it contains the very Word of God, which always creates life and love. If we nourish ourselves with the words of the Gospel our prayer itself will become deeper and more powerful: it will go straight to God’s heart. And God will almost yield to our words, full of the word we have heard.
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
