Reading of the Word of God
Praise to you, o Lord, King of eternal glory
Whoever lives and believes in me
will never die.
Praise to you, o Lord, King of eternal glory
Luke 5, 27-32
When he went out after this, he noticed a tax collector, Levi by name, sitting at the tax office, and said to him, 'Follow me.'
And leaving everything Levi got up and followed him.
In his honour Levi held a great reception in his house, and with them at table was a large gathering of tax collectors and others.
The Pharisees and their scribes complained to his disciples and said, 'Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?'
Jesus said to them in reply, 'It is not those that are well who need the doctor, but the sick.
I have come to call not the upright but sinners to repentance.'
Praise to you, o Lord, King of eternal glory
If you believe, you will see the glory of God,
thus says the Lord.
Praise to you, o Lord, King of eternal glory
The Gospel passage shows us Jesus who once again leaves the house. It is an invitation that we too go out of our protective habits, and above all to not live for ourselves but for others. Jesus is walking down the street when he meets a tax-collector named Levi. He too, like other tax-collectors, is considered a public sinner, not fit for the Gospel, we could say. But for Jesus no one is unfit for the Gospel, not even the greatest of sinners. No sooner does he see him than he calls him, and that tax collector, immediately, like the other first disciples did, gets up, leaves the tax booth and begins to follow Jesus. What counts for the disciples is not the point in which we find ourselves, but readiness to hear the call and to follow it. Levi, once he had gotten up and become a disciple, is no longer the same person. He is different inside his heart. And he shows it: he wants his friends too (tax-collectors and sinners, whom everyone should avoid according to Pharisaic prescriptions) to meet Jesus as he had. In truth, all these who perhaps more than others feel the need to be loved; they intuit how precious the Lord’s love is and go to find him and gather around him. The banquet feast expresses well the joy of being in Jesus’ company. He has truly come to seek the poor and sinners. And they are aware of it. Today, Levi the tax collector, together with all the others, is before us so that we may imitate their readiness to gather around the Lord and taste the joy of being saved. In this spiritual path of Lent they remind us of the urgency of turning with our heart to Jesus and following him in his journey towards Easter.
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
