Memory of the first martyrs of the Church of Rome during Nero's persecution Read more
Memory of the first martyrs of the Church of Rome during Nero’s persecution
Reading of the Word of God
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Whoever lives and believes in me
will never die.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
James 4, 7-12
Give in to God, then; resist the devil, and he will run away from you.
The nearer you go to God, the nearer God will come to you. Clean your hands, you sinners, and clear your minds, you waverers.
Appreciate your wretchedness, and weep for it in misery. Your laughter must be turned to grief, your happiness to gloom.
Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will lift you up.
Brothers, do not slander one another. Anyone who slanders a brother, or condemns one, is speaking against the Law and condemning the Law. But if you condemn the Law, you have ceased to be subject to it and become a judge over it.
There is only one lawgiver and he is the only judge and has the power to save or to destroy. Who are you to give a verdict on your neighbour?
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
If you believe, you will see the glory of God,
thus says the Lord.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
God gives grace to those who are humble. From this reality, James draws the following exhortation: "Submit yourselves therefore to God." The consequence is clear: we need to resist the devil, the spirit of division and enmity, and so drive him far from us; we need to grow closer to God so that he may get closer to us. The communion of love, the covenant between God and humanity, is rebuilt in humility. The antithesis world/God deepens in the antithesis devil/God. The world and the devil are expressions of the spirit of enmity and division, whereas God represents the spirit of unity in all creation that, when welcomed, allows us to live in friendship. The movement of getting farther from or closer to God introduces the following exhortation that has a ritual tone: "Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Lament and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy into dejection." Cleansing our hands, mourning, and weeping are requests that express the need to come closer to God with the necessary humility and contrition. This is the only way that human beings can live in communion with the Lord. James, an expert of the tradition of Israel and of Scripture, uses a language that may help all his listeners, Jews as well, to apply to themselves what they already knew of the scriptures and of the cult to the temple. Verse 10 concludes and seals the reasoning: "Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you." Again James appeals to humility as the fundamental attitude to live in communion with God and not with violence among people. As Jesus pointed out several times, God brings down the proud and exalts the humble (cf. Lk 51-52), for "all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted" (Lk 14:11). James puts us on guard against speaking evil of one another, bickering, making spiteful judgments, defaming, and slandering. These behaviours stem from being distant from God and wanting to take God’s place, or at least to be the centre of attention. We know how easy it is to judge even if only the splinter in the eye of the other. James speaks clearly to those who foolishly fall into this proud and spiteful attitude: "So who, then, are you to judge your neighbour?" He reminds us that love of God and neighbour is the essence of the law and the way to salvation. We are always free to love, because we are free from the prison of judgments that pollute our heart and make us unable to love others because they deform them and keep them at a distance.
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
