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
Proverbs 1, 8-19
Listen, my child, to your father's instruction, do not reject your mother's teaching:
they will be a crown of grace for your head, a circlet for your neck.
My child, if sinners try to seduce you, do not go with them.
If they say, 'Come with us: let us lie in ambush to shed blood; if we plan an ambush for the innocent without provocation,
we can swallow them alive, like Sheol, and whole, like those who sink into oblivion.
We shall find treasures of every sort, we shall fill our houses with plunder;
throw in your lot with us: one purse between us all.'
My child, do not follow them in their way, keep your steps out of their path
for their feet hasten to evil, they are quick to shed blood;
for the net is spread in vain if any winged creature can see it.
It is for their own blood such people lie in wait, their ambush is against their own selves!
Such are the paths of all who seek dishonest gain: which robs of their lives all who take it for their own.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Look down, O Lord, on your servants.
Be it unto us according to your word.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
This passage compares teaching wisdom to a father’s and mother’s instruction, because to us God is like a father and a mother. He is like a father who would like to be heard by his children, and like a mother who teaches her children to walk and who nourishes them. God’s word is nourishment, satisfying whoever receives it. In a world that orphans so many people, God passionately devotes himself to each one of us as his children. This is who we are to God: his children; and we are always his children, even when we grow distant from him. Throughout the Bible it is clear that the covenant between God and his people begins with listening. "Listen, Israel," the Lord asks in Deuteronomy (6:4). The prophets also often invite the people to listen. Those who do not listen to the Lord listen only to themselves. They end up ignoring God’s teaching and consider it useless for their life. God’s teaching-his word-is something precious, like the garland and pendants that adorn a woman: they will be "a fair garland for your head, and pendants for your neck." Why so much insisting upon listening? Evil insinuates itself in the life of believers and easily seduces them. Listening requires resolve, because those who do not listen to the Word of God easily allow themselves to be taken in by deceptive individuals who want to drag them into a life dominated by money: the thing on which all violence thrives. Our society lives according to greed, obsession and an insatiable desire for wealth and possessions, and it proposes this as a model for living. This passage seems to suggest that we are ready to do everything to gain money and wealth, even plotting against the innocent. These reflections are not far from the reality of our society, where the dictatorship of materialism provokes an insatiable thirst for money, which leads to injustice and violence. But, the destiny of those who live this way is marked forever. This is the teaching from the wise who listens to God’s voice: "They hurry to shed blood. ... yet they lie in wait-to kill themselves! and set an ambush-for their own lives! Such is the end of all who are greedy for gain; it takes away the life of its possessors." In the end, those who systematically pursue their own interest and gain deceive themselves and are dominated by it. They think they are free, but in reality they are oppressed.
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
