EVERYDAY PRAYER

Memory of the Mother of the Lord
Word of god every day
Libretto DEL GIORNO
Memory of the Mother of the Lord

Psalmody

Psalm 43

Antiphon

Arise, Lord, and come to our aid.

We heard with our own ears, O God,
our fathers have told us the story

of the things you did in their days,
you yourself, in days long ago.

To plant them you uprooted the nations :
to let them spread you laid peoples low.

No sword of their own won the land;
no arm of their own brought them victory.

It was your right hand, your arm
and the light of your face : for you loved them.

It is you, my king, my God,
who granted victories to Jacob.

Through you we beat down our foes;
in your name we trampled our aggressors

For it was not in my bow that I trusted
nor yet was I saved by my sword :

it was you who saved us from our foes,
it was you who put our foes to shame.

All day long our boast was in God
and we praised your name without ceasing.

Yet now you have rejected us, disgraced us :
you no longer go forth without our armies.

You make us retreat from the foe
and our enemies plunder us at will.

You make us like sheep for the slaughter
and scatter us among the nations.

You sell your own people for nothing
and make no profit by the sale.

You make us the taunt of our neighbours,
the laughing stock of all who are near.

Among the nations, you make us a byword,
among the peoples a thing of derision.

All day long my disgrace is before me :
my face is covered with shame

at the voice of the taunter, the scoffer,
at the sight of the foe and avenger.

This befell us though we had not forgotten you;
though we had not been false to your covenant,

though we had not withdrawn our hearts;
though our feet had not strayed from your path.

Yet you have crushed us in a place of sorrows
and covered us with the shadow of death.

Had we forgotten the name of our God
or stretched out hands to another god

would not God have found this out,
he who knows the secrets of the heart?

It is for you we face death all day long
and are counted as sheep for the slaughter.

Awake, O Lord, why do you sleep?
Arise, do not reject us for ever!

Why do you hide your face
and forget our oppression and misery?

For we are brought down low to the dust;
our body lies prostrate on the earth.

Stand up and come to our help!
Redeem us because of your love!

WORD OF GOD EVERY DAY: THE CALENDAR

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!

WORD OF GOD EVERY DAY: THE CALENDAR