EVERYDAY PRAYER

Word of god every day

Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ Read more

Libretto DEL GIORNO
Sunday, June 10

Homily

"Behold the bread of angels, the bread of pilgrims. Lead your brothers to the heavenly banquet in the joy of the saints." With these words we have prayed together on this Sunday of Corpus Domini, the feast day on which we celebrate and venerate the Lord’s presence as body. God is not an abstract idea; a vague and timeless philosophy, elusive and distant. Jesus is never a phantom; he is a body, a solid, physical body that is present today as the pilgrim who walks by our side and remains with us when evening comes. "And the word was made flesh." One cannot love God without loving his concrete body and without listening to his word, the voice of that body. The Body of the Lord is not mute, inert like an idol to be interpreted to one’s liking. It speaks, explains itself, becomes a seed and gives all of itself to whoever wants to welcome it, to whoever does not disdain love, to whoever does not flee and to whoever is not self-righteous. In the confusion and uncertainty of our life and of our world, that body continues to communicate its gospel of love, that is word, of liberation and joy: "God is with you, he gives himself to you, evil will not win, learn from me how to love!"
Let us stop and contemplate the Lord’s body: it is a body that accompanies us through the diverse stages of our life from when, with emotion, we received it for the first time. And every time we nourish ourselves of God we should feel as though it were the first time, always astonished before this love that is so great, so much so that it dwells within us. This bread will never be a commodity that we can purchase: you cannot buy it, it does not have a price for us, we who are so calculating, thinking that you cannot get something for nothing; for us who make everything a convenience, an interest, even out of life itself. This bread is a body that teaches us to love freely: it is a body of God’s love. Love is always a gift. Life is only a gift.
The Corpus Domini is the body of heaven and earth. This altar (in S. Maria in Trastevere) is placed on high at the centre of the Basilica under the eyes of Jesus and his mother, as if to indicate how this altar unites heaven and earth in this Paschal sacrifice. Jesus took the bread, broke it and gave it to his disciples. "This is my body." "This is my blood." The bread and wine, according to Jesus’ very words, are truly the "Corpus Domini," the body of Jesus. His is a body that gives totally of itself, that knows no avarice, calculus or greediness.
John Chrysostom, father of the church, bishop of Constantinople, loved to say: "If you want to honour the body of Christ, do not disdain it when it is nude. Do not honour the Eucharistic Christ with silken vestments while outside of the church you neglect this other Christ who is naked and afflicted by the cold." "Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me," Jesus said. We cannot honour the Corpus Domini on the altar and then show disdain to the same Corpus Domini in our poor brothers and sisters. We do not love a mere idea! The Gospel helps us to love human concreteness of the flesh, of the body. A human body is solid, real, like mine. It is the body of an elderly person, marked by life, with those weathered, beautiful hands. That body is God’s body: the body of an elderly who can no longer get up, who does not even ask anything, who is embarrassed, who waits for someone to talk to, who has no one who supports him, or worse, who visits him. The Body of God is the body of the poor immigrants: of women full of dreams and fears; of lost children; of men, who desperately seeking a better future, are forced to entrust themselves to traffickers who treat them like mere things to transport; bodies of men and women whose stories, faces and names that are all too often drowned forever in the sea, others do not know or want to know. God knows the names of those poor bodies. He knows the name of each one of them. He gives them warmth; he welcomes them; he protects, understands and listens to them; he caresses them, taking time to be with them. Their body is his body.
Let us love Jesus’ body in his Eucharist. Let us love, let us love the Lord’s body in the bodies of the poor and of our brothers and sisters. The others’ weakness is that of God’s. Let us go to visit those who are alone; let us honour the Corpus Domini by stopping in front of those who ask and by making them beautiful with love. Venerating his body, broken and poured out on the altar, will make us love the weakness of God’s body in the smallest of his brothers and sisters. Lord, welcome everyone in your kingdom of salvation. Remain with us, Lord.

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!