EVERYDAY PRAYER

Memory of the Church
Word of god every day
Libretto DEL GIORNO
Memory of the Church
Thursday, June 14

Psalmody

Psalm 77, 40-72

Antiphon

We will speak, O Lord, of all your deeds.

How often they defied him in the wilderness
and caused him pain in the desert!

Yet again they put God to the test
and grieved the Holy One of Israel.

They did not remember his deeds
nor the day he saved them from the foe;

when he worked his miracles in Egypt,
his wonders in the plains of Zoan:

when he turned their rivers into blood,
made their streams impossible to drink.

He sent dog-flies against them to devour them
and swarms of frogs to molest them.

He gave their crops to the grub,
the fruit of their labour to the locust.

He destroyed their vines with hail,
their sycamore trees with frost.

He gave up their cattle to plague,
their flocks and herds to pestilence.

He turned on the heat of his anger,
fury, rage and havoc,

a troop of destroying angels.
He gave free course to his anger.

He did not spare them from death
but gave their lives to the plague.

He struck all the first-born in Egypt,
the finest flower in the dwellings of Ham.

Then he brought forth his people like sheep;
he guided his flock in the desert.

He led them safely with nothing to fear,
while the sea engulfed their foes.

So he brought them to his holy land,
to the mountain which his right hand had won.

He drove out the nations before them,
and divided the land for their heritage.

Their tents he gave as a dwelling
to each one of Israel’s tribes.

Still they put God to the proof and defied him;
they refused to obey the Most High.

They strayed, as faithless as their fathers ,
like a bow on which the archer cannot count.

With their mountain shrines they angered him;
made him jealous with the idols they served.

God saw and was filled with fury;
he utterly rejected Israel.

He forsook his dwelling place in Shiloh,
the tent where he lived among men.

He gave his ark into captivity,
his glorious ark into the hands of the foe.

He gave up his people to the sword,
in his anger against his chosen ones.

So war devoured their young men,
their maidens had no wedding songs;

their priests fell by the sword
and their widows made no lament.

Then the Lord awoke as if from sleep,
like a warrior overcome with wine.

He struck his foes from behind
and put them to everlasting shame.

He rejected the tent of Joseph;
He did not choose the tribe of Ephraim

but he chose the tribe of Judah,
the hill of Zion which he loves.

He built his shrine like the heavens,
or like the earth which he made firm for ever.

And he chose David his servant
and took him away from the sheepfolds.

From the care of the ewes he called him
to be shepherd of Jacob his people,
of Israel his own possession.

He tended them with blameless heart,
with discerning mind he led them.

WORD OF GOD EVERY DAY: THE CALENDAR

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!

WORD OF GOD EVERY DAY: THE CALENDAR