Reading of the Word of God
Praise to you, o Lord, King of eternal glory
You are a chosen race,
a royal priesthood, a holy nation,
a people acquired by God
to proclaim his marvellous works.
Praise to you, o Lord, King of eternal glory
1 Timothy 1, 12-17
I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has given me strength. By calling me into his service he has judged me trustworthy,
even though I used to be a blasphemer and a persecutor and contemptuous. Mercy, however, was shown me, because while I lacked faith I acted in ignorance;
but the grace of our Lord filled me with faith and with the love that is in Christ Jesus.
Here is a saying that you can rely on and nobody should doubt: that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. I myself am the greatest of them;
and if mercy has been shown to me, it is because Jesus Christ meant to make me the leading example of his inexhaustible patience for all the other people who were later to trust in him for eternal life.
To the eternal King, the undying, invisible and only God, be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen.
Praise to you, o Lord, King of eternal glory
You will be holy,
because I am holy, thus says the Lord.
Praise to you, o Lord, King of eternal glory
Paul thanks the Lord because he considered him worthy to preach the Gospel, made him strong and called him to serve him, three things that Paul does not forget, especially in the recurring difficulties of his ministry. In the second letter to the Corinthians for example Paul writes, "Therefore, since it is by God’s mercy that we are engaged in this ministry, we do not lose heart" (4:1). His thanksgiving is much more heartfelt as he recalls the kind of life he had before and the gratuitousness by which he was saved. Paul acknowledges that the Lord "granted him mercy" for he called him while he was "a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence." When Paul appears in front of Agrippa he sums up with these words his life before his radical change: "I not only locked up many of the saints in prison, but I also cast my vote against them when they were being condemned to death. By punishing them often in all the synagogues I tried to force them to blaspheme; and since I was so furiously enraged at them, I pursued them even to foreign cities." (Acts 26:l0ff.). Paul asks himself how God could have chosen him in spite of all that. But it is exactly God’s extraordinary mercy that Makes Jesus say, "For God all things are possible" (Mt 19:26) even the radical change of our life. Paul lives it out as if it were a miracle, having been deemed worthy of serving the Gospel. Paul knows well that the only reason for his mission comes from above, as it is for every disciple. Paul, in any case, does not justify his past life on the basis of his ignorance of the Gospel. He acknowledges that he had let himself be led by the blind force of evil, which always leads to unjustified and unjustifiable violence. Therefore, his gratitude to God is all the greater for the gift received "in superabundant measure." From that moment the apostle lives a new life in communion with Christ, from whom he draws the strength of faith and the urgency of love. He does not forget his past life, which he has now renounced, but its memory becomes a motive for humility and gratitude to the Lord. He describes himself as "the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God" (1 Cor 15:9), and as "the very least of all the saints" (Eph 3:8). He has now become an example for the disciples of all times. He is the clear evidence that no one is so far from God that he cannot be reached by God’s mercy. The confession of praise ends in a prayer of thanksgiving and praise. How can one not give the greatest honour to the Lord, who shows such great love to sinners?
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
