Reading of the Word of God
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
You are a chosen race,
a royal priesthood, a holy nation,
a people acquired by God
to proclaim his marvellous works.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Titus 1, 5-9
The reason I left you behind in Crete was for you to organise everything that still had to be done and appoint elders in every town, in the way that I told you,
that is, each of them must be a man of irreproachable character, husband of one wife, and his children must be believers and not liable to be charged with disorderly conduct or insubordination.
The presiding elder has to be irreproachable since he is God's representative: never arrogant or hot-tempered, nor a heavy drinker or violent, nor avaricious;
but hospitable and a lover of goodness; sensible, upright, devout and self-controlled;
and he must have a firm grasp of the unchanging message of the tradition, so that he can be counted on both for giving encouragement in sound doctrine and for refuting those who argue against it.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
You will be holy,
because I am holy, thus says the Lord.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Paul, who might have already given Titus some indications about how to choose people to be responsible for the community, repeats them now in this Letter. He reminds him that an elder should have a good reputation and therefore should be able to govern his household and be capable of raising his children to be honest, modest, and obedient. The Church is also a family, and God entrusts it to some of his children. They are to administer it with wisdom. Elsewhere, the apostle writes that the "bishop" is supposed to be the "steward of God" (1 Cor 4:1), and in the community he is supposed to govern and administer as if he were a diligent treasurer who works in an earthly house (Lk 12:42). The pastor is called to be a faithful instrument in the service of the Lord, banishing from himself and his behaviour any form of egoism, bullying, greed, or presumption. Any behaviour contrary to the Gospel - as the apostle indicates in this part of the Letter - is a betrayal of the responsibility entrusted to the pastor by God himself. The exemplarity demanded of the pastor should be found in every member of God’s family. Every disciple, in fact, is called to feel and live the life of the whole community responsibly. The wisdom, justice, and piety that accompany the person responsible for the community should be practiced by all of the disciples, precisely because the mystery of the Church is that it is one body, one family, for which everyone is responsible, though obviously in different ways. In this context, the apostle recalls the central responsibility of the pastor, which, as for every believer, is to be faithful to the "word that is trustworthy in accordance with the teaching." The living tradition of the Church is rooted in this exhortation: one generation transmits to the next the Gospel that it has heard and lived. This uninterrupted faithfulness to the Gospel keeps the community steadfast and its witness strong.
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
