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
Ephesians 3, 14-21
This, then, is what I pray, kneeling before the Father,
from whom every fatherhood, in heaven or on earth, takes its name.
In the abundance of his glory may he, through his Spirit, enable you to grow firm in power with regard to your inner self,
so that Christ may live in your hearts through faith, and then, planted in love and built on love,
with all God's holy people you will have the strength to grasp the breadth and the length, the height and the depth;
so that, knowing the love of Christ, which is beyond knowledge, you may be filled with the utter fullness of God.
Glory be to him whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine;
glory be to him from generation to generation in the Church and in Christ Jesus for ever and ever. Amen.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Look down, O Lord, on your servants.
Be it unto us according to your word.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Confronted with the revelation of the incomprehensible richness of Christ, Paul "bows his knees before the Father" and prays for the Ephesians. He asks God that the Spirit may strengthen them and fortify their interior being. The Spirit is the force of God that operates in the depth of the heart, the place of our choices, decisions, and thoughts. It is in our heart, in fact, that change begins; it is here that Christ descends with his word and his grace. At the outset of his preaching, Jesus invited Christians to an inner life: "But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you" (Mt 6:6). To ask the Father for the strength of the Spirit means to ask for a more profound compliance with Christ so that we may be led by the transforming force of his love. Christ’s presence opens the heart and mind to communion with our brothers and sisters. In fact, Christ pushes Paul to live, think and act as he himself lived and acted. The substance of Christ’s dwelling within us is love; it is the "agape," the infinite horizon towards which we progress. The Letter effectively expresses this concept through the image of a plant (to be rooted) and of construction (to be founded). The apostle also prays for the Christians of Ephesus that they may understand together "with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth" of the love of Christ. The mystery of God can only be understood in love, in a life of discipleship and testimony that is lived in community "with all the saints." To know the mystery (which includes listening to the Word) reveals a very important ecclesiastical dimension: the same truths are shared and, most of all, the same truths are lived out together. Through reciprocal love, the brother or sister becomes a mediator of the knowledge of Christ. It is through fraternity that the Spirit works for our interior growth. For this reason, living in unity with our brothers and sisters is indispensable to knowing Christ. Paul’s prayer ends with one last request: to be filled with the fullness of God. In the beginning of the Letter, Paul talks about the fullness (pleroma) of the Church, which is filled with the fullness of Christ (1:23). Now the believers are called to participate in the fullness of God: the Father is the final destination towards which Christ wants to bring us. Once this aim is achieved and we will have been brought into the Father’s womb, Christ will have completed his work of reconciliation so that the Father may be all in all, just as Paul wrote, "When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to the one who put all things in subjection under him, so that God may be all in all" (1 Cor 15:28). The apostle ends with a word of praise: the unity of humankind is the glory of God, the revelation of his love which will always be over-abundant, beyond our comprehension and beyond our expectations. May we, therefore, give glory to Him "in the Church and in Christ Jesus."
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
