Feast of the Assumption Read more
Second Reading
1 Corinthians 15, 10-27
but what I am now, I am through the grace of God, and the grace which was given to me has not been wasted. Indeed, I have worked harder than all the others -- not I, but the grace of God which is with me.
Anyway, whether it was they or I, this is what we preach and what you believed.
Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you be saying that there is no resurrection of the dead?
If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ cannot have been raised either,
and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is without substance, and so is your faith.
What is more, we have proved to be false witnesses to God, for testifying against God that he raised Christ to life when he did not raise him -- if it is true that the dead are not raised.
For, if the dead are not raised, neither is Christ;
and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is pointless and you have not, after all, been released from your sins.
In addition, those who have fallen asleep in Christ are utterly lost.
If our hope in Christ has been for this life only, we are of all people the most pitiable.
In fact, however, Christ has been raised from the dead, as the first-fruits of all who have fallen asleep.
As it was by one man that death came, so through one man has come the resurrection of the dead.
Just as all die in Adam, so in Christ all will be brought to life;
but all of them in their proper order: Christ the first-fruits, and next, at his coming, those who belong to him.
After that will come the end, when he will hand over the kingdom to God the Father, having abolished every principality, every ruling force and power.
For he is to be king until he has made his enemies his footstool,
and the last of the enemies to be done away with is death, for he has put all things under his feet.
But when it is said everything is subjected, this obviously cannot include the One who subjected everything to him.
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
