Reading of the Word of God
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
The Spirit of the Lord is upon you.
The child you shall bear will be holy.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Luke 9, 51-56
Now it happened that as the time drew near for him to be taken up, he resolutely turned his face towards Jerusalem
and sent messengers ahead of him. These set out, and they went into a Samaritan village to make preparations for him,
but the people would not receive him because he was making for Jerusalem.
Seeing this, the disciples James and John said, 'Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven to burn them up?'
But he turned and rebuked them,
and they went on to another village.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Look down, O Lord, on your servants.
Be it unto us according to your word.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
With this passage, Luke begins the central narrative of his Gospel: Jesus’ journey with his disciples towards Jerusalem which will end with Jesus’ ascension to heaven and his return to the Father. Until now, Jesus had remained in Galilee, but he knew that the Gospel, even at the cost of his life, also needed to be preached also in Jerusalem, in the heart of the people of Israel. The disciples wanted to stop him, but Jesus "decisively" - so writes the evangelist - set off for the holy city. He did not remain in known and comfortable places, which was protection from his enemy. He did not fall into the temptation presented by the tranquillity of the status quo as so often happens to so many of us, when we even take cover with the excuse of our borders, our diocese, our parish, our neighbourhood, and so forth. The Gospel does not stand limitations or provincialism, even if this means difficulty or clashes. From the beginning, Jesus found hostility and rejection, but they did not stop him. Obedience to the Father and the urgency of the Gospel were the absolute priority in his life. Jesus therefore decisively, that is, obeying God willingly and radically, heads out towards Jerusalem. The evangelist notes that he sent ahead of him some disciples to prepare his entry. The first stage was in a village of Samaria. The disciples, coming upon a village, find themselves before a sharp rejection on the part of the Samaritans of that village. They did not want him to go to Jerusalem, so much was the hostility towards the Jewish capital. James and John -justifiably irritatedwould have the whole village exterminated. But Jesus responds with love to the coldness of those who did not want to receive him, and he harshly rebukes, Luke tells us, the violent "zeal" of the two disciples. Once again the Gospel vision of life which Jesus proposes to us emerges clearly: there are no enemies to destroy, but only people to be loved. And the disciples are in any case called to continue their mission of preparing human hearts to receive the Lord, knowing that He does not want the death of the sinner but that he repent and live.
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
