Memory of St. Boniface, bishop and martyr. He announced the Gospel in Germany and was killed while celebrating the Eucharist (+754). Read more
Memory of St. Boniface, bishop and martyr. He announced the Gospel in Germany and was killed while celebrating the Eucharist (+754).
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
1 Thessalonians 3, 6-13
However, Timothy has returned from you and has given us good news of your faith and your love, telling us that you always remember us with pleasure and want to see us quite as much as we want to see you.
And so, brothers, your faith has been a great encouragement to us in the middle of our own distress and hardship;
now we can breathe again, as you are holding firm in the Lord.
How can we thank God enough for you, for all the joy we feel before our God on your account?
We are earnestly praying night and day to be able to see you face to face again and make up any shortcomings in your faith.
May God our Father himself, and our Lord Jesus, ease our path to you.
May the Lord increase and enrich your love for each other and for all, so that it matches ours for you.
And may he so confirm your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless in the sight of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Look down, O Lord, on your servants.
Be it unto us according to your word.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
The good news that Timothy conveys to Paul regarding the community in Thessalonica is for him happy and consoling news, a "gospel," as the text literally says. Paul is consoled because his labour has not been in vain and is also bearing fruit. The memory of him, with the desire to see him again, is particularly gratifying to Paul, also because they show the concrete sense of gospel communion; it is not just a bond at the psychological level, but a vital relationship which binds the community to the apostle. It is therefore not enough that a community live a busy "faith" and an active "brotherly love" (1:3); if it remains closed in upon itself it does not "stand firm in the Lord" (3:8). Only in communion with other communities does the Lord make himself fully present among the believers. The Thessalonians’ desire to meet up with Paul again (and also that of the apostle to see them again) expresses the concreteness of a communion which consists in real personal relations; it is the essential fabric of fellowship. Paul finds himself four hundred kilometres from Thessalonica, but he spares nothing in order to see them, even by means of envoys. Communion is nourished and solidified through direct and personal contacts, through which manifests itself through love, heartfelt feelings, and loving kindness. Paul, perhaps recalling the faces of the Christians of the community whom he has loved and cared for, is at a loss for what to offer God in thanksgiving. The love for those children which he has begotten to the faith immediately becomes prayer, an "insistent" plea, not only that he may see them again soon, but also that God "restore whatever is lacking in [their] faith"(3:10). Paul is very aware that the believer, as also every community, needs to continually grow in faith and love. Knowledge of Jesus requires a daily hearing of the Word of God. Paul feels the grave responsibility of helping them in this growth. He therefore prays that God will "make smooth" his path to meet them again, seeing that Satan has up to now stood in the way (2:18). But already with this letter he exhorts them to "grow," in fact, to "abound" in love mutually and with everyone, as he himself does with them. The love that God bestows on his children is like a fountain which continually overflows because it knows no limits. Whoever receives into his heart the love of God lives from Him and now already possesses the future.
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
