EVERYDAY PRAYER

Memory of the Mother of the Lord
Word of god every day

Memory of the Mother of the Lord

Feast of the Immaculate Conception of Mary Read more

Libretto DEL GIORNO
Memory of the Mother of the Lord

Feast of the Immaculate Conception of Mary


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 1, 26-38

In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth,

to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the House of David; and the virgin's name was Mary.

He went in and said to her, 'Rejoice, you who enjoy God's favour! The Lord is with you.'

She was deeply disturbed by these words and asked herself what this greeting could mean,

but the angel said to her, 'Mary, do not be afraid; you have won God's favour.

Look! You are to conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you must name him Jesus.

He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David;

he will rule over the House of Jacob for ever and his reign will have no end.'

Mary said to the angel, 'But how can this come about, since I have no knowledge of man?'

The angel answered, 'The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will cover you with its shadow. And so the child will be holy and will be called Son of God.

And I tell you this too: your cousin Elizabeth also, in her old age, has conceived a son, and she whom people called barren is now in her sixth month,

for nothing is impossible to God.'

Mary said, 'You see before you the Lord's servant, let it happen to me as you have said.' And the angel left her.

 

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia

Look down, O Lord, on your servants.
Be it unto us according to your word.

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia

As Christmas draws near, the Liturgy offers us this feast in honour of Jesus’ mother. The Virgin Mary becomes for us an example of how to live in this Advent season, an example of how to wait for the Lord who is to be born among us. The Gospel of Luke shows us a girl from a little town in Galilee, Nazareth, on the edge of the Roman Empire. She was a girl like any other, living an ordinary life in her village and yet, the Lord’s gaze had come to rest on her. With today’s feast we remember Mary’s conception without sin; that is, she was unmarked by the original guilt of humanity and exempt from the dramatic estrangement from God that is the lot of Adam, Eve, and every one of us. It is an ancient feast that was called "the Conception of Mary"; but when Pius IX, in 1854, proclaimed the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, the feast took on this new name.
Mary was undoubtedly a young girl like any other and yet the Lord’s gaze had come to rest on her in a very special way, and she was not marked by the distance that original sin signifies. From the beginning she had been chosen to be Jesus’ mother. Therefore the one who was going to become the mother of the Son of God could not be far from God. So she received the gift of being born "immaculate," without sin and stain. It was not a merit but a grace. The Lord prepared her to be a worthy dwelling place for his Son. The Son’s love protected the mother. Mary’s mystery is not completely foreign to us. Just as God looked on her at the moment of her conception, God has also looked on us.
The Apostle Paul writes, "He chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love" (Eph 1:4). Like Mary, we were chosen by God before creation, and we were chosen to be holy and immaculate. It is not by accident that the Apostle says, "He chose us" and not, "We chose him." We are the fruit of God’s love; God thinks of us in his heart and we come into the light. Parents take part in this process of love. Our name begins in God’s heart and remains there forever. That is why we believe that life is holy, from the beginning and forever. The Lord never forgets our names; woe to those who want to erase them! Every man and woman is in God’s heart.
On today’s feast we contemplate how great God’s love is and what marvels he is able to work through us if we do not betray his predilection as Mary did not betray it. She never distanced herself from this love: formed to become Jesus’ mother, Mary fully accepted her vocation. It was not easy, nor was her acceptance guaranteed.
When the angel said that she was full of grace, Mary was perplexed. Mary did not think highly of herself. Contrary to the high esteem we have of ourselves she felt herself to be nothing in front of God. The essence of original sin is in thinking oneself disconnected from God and far from his love. And this is at the origin of evil in the world. At the words of the angel, Mary did not exalt herself. Instead, the evangelist writes that she was perplexed. So it should be for us each time we listen to the Gospel; we should not be exalted rather listen to Another. We need to let the Lord touch our hearts; that is what it means to be perplexed. The angel comforts Mary, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God. And now, you will conceive a son... and [you] will name him Jesus" (v. 30). To tell the truth, these words upset her even more, in part because she had not yet gone to live with Joseph. But the angel adds, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you" (v. 35). Mary listens to the angel and obeys, "Here am I, the servant of the lord; let it be with me according to your word." The girl from Nazareth, the first to be loved by God, is also the first to answer "yes" to God’s call. Mary stands before us, before the eyes of our hearts, so that by contemplating her we can imitate her and we, too, can receive the tender embrace of the Son that fills our hearts and our lives.

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