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
Song of Songs 6, 1-3
CHORUS: Where did your lover go, O loveliest of women? Which way did your lover turn so that we can help you seek him?
BELOVED: My love went down to his garden, to the beds of spices, to pasture his flock on the grass and gather lilies.
I belong to my love, and my love to me. He pastures his flock among the lilies.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Look down, O Lord, on your servants.
Be it unto us according to your word.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
The lover has ended her love song, and the chorus asks, "Where has your beloved gone...that we may seek him with you?" She quickly responds: he is with her; he has come to her and is now going down to "his" garden, that is, to the arms of his beloved. The garden, as we have seen, is a symbol of the beloved woman. The long search is over. The author does not describe how the encounter took place; it is enough for him to allude to the scene of their embrace. The beloved man goes down "to pasture his flock in the gardens, and to gather lilies," that is, to nourish himself with love and its fruits. This represents the communion of life, the communion of goals, passions, and destinies, which is established between the Groom and the Bride, between the Lord and Israel, between Jesus and the Church. This is the meaning of this statement: "I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine." Notwithstanding the possible ambiguity inherent in the question the "daughters of Jerusalem" ask at the beginning of the passage, the relationship is clearly unique. This is the second time in the Song that the beloved claims as her own the promise that the Lord made to his people: "The Lord will be my God, and I will be his people." The prophet Jeremiah writes, "The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah...I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people" (Jer 31:31-33). Both Israel and the Church make the words of the bride their own. It is a mysterious bond that ties together these two religious traditions. What unites Israel and the Church is the exclusivity of their love for God. The Lord and Israel, Christ and the Church, are bound to one another. Neither of the two can live without the other. Gregory of Nyssa makes this comment: "The purified soul is allowed to have nothing in it but God." Neither of the two "can" live without the other. If the Lord wants to pasture his flock, he will do it among the lilies of his people, and if Judaism and the Church are to exist, they will allow the Lord, and no one else, into their pastures. Yes, both Israel and the Church can only exist in so far as they recognize and profess the uniqueness and exclusivity of their covenant with the Lord.
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
