Reading of the Word of God
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
This is the Gospel of the poor,
liberation for the imprisoned,
sight for the blind,
freedom for the oppressed.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Matthew 22, 34-40
But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees they got together
and, to put him to the test, one of them put a further question,
'Master, which is the greatest commandment of the Law?'
Jesus said to him, 'You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.
This is the greatest and the first commandment.
The second resembles it: You must love your neighbour as yourself.
On these two commandments hang the whole Law, and the Prophets too.'
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
The Son of Man came to serve,
whoever wants to be great
should become servant of all.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
This Gospel passage places us in the climate of fierce controversy that surrounded Jesus and the various factions of Jerusalem. Jesus had just replied to the Sadducees in an argument about the resurrection of the dead. After the Sadducees had been defeated by Jesus’ responses, the Pharisees appear. The violence of evil continues to test every generation of Christians to try to lead them far from God and from the teachings of the Gospel. The Pharisees organized themselves and put Jesus to the test once again. One of them asks him about the heart of the Law: "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?" Jesus’ response is immediate and clear: love of God and love of neighbour together form the hinge upon which hang "all the law and the prophets." The various religious traditions within Judaism had codified 613 precepts, 365 of which were negative and 248 of which were positive. A notable number of prescriptions, even if not all of them have equal value. It was clear however which held primacy: "Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might" (Deut 6:4-5). The precept to love your neighbour is also well known. The originality of Jesus’ answer does not lie in calling to mind both commandments, but in binding them together tightly to the point of unifying them. The commandment to love your neighbour is absorbed into the first and greatest commandment to love God totally and completelyfor it belongs to the same unifying and fundamental category. Jesus affirms that the path that arrives to God intersects necessarily with the path that leads us to others. Both the legalism of the Pharisees and ritual spiritualism are defeated in their roots. Love for God and love for neighbour contain the entire Law. Jesus was the first to observe this double commandment and he remains the greatest example we can follow to love God and neighbour. Jesus did not put anything before his love for the Father, not even his own life. He gave everything for his love for men and women, even his life. And the first people he loved were the poor and weak: he healed and protected them. By defending them, we defend God. The evangelist John even says that "we have passed from death to life because we love one another" (1 Jn 3:14). But not only. God does not seem to compete with love for men and women; in a certain sense he does not insist on the reciprocity of love, although obviously it should exist. Jesus does not say: "Love me as I have loved you," but: "Love one another as I have loved you."
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
