EVERYDAY PRAYER

Memory of the Church
Word of god every day
Libretto DEL GIORNO
Memory of the Church
Thursday, March 7


Reading of the Word of God

Praise to you, o Lord, King of eternal glory

I am the good shepherd,
my sheep listen to my voice,
and they become
one flock and one fold.
.

Praise to you, o Lord, King of eternal glory

1 Corinthians 10, 1-13

I want you to be quite certain, brothers, that our ancestors all had the cloud over them and all passed through the sea.

In the cloud and in the sea they were all baptised into Moses;

all ate the same spiritual food

and all drank the same spiritual drink, since they drank from the spiritual rock which followed them, and that rock was Christ.

In spite of this, God was not pleased with most of them, and their corpses were scattered over the desert.

Now these happenings were examples, for our benefit, so that we should never set our hearts, as they did, on evil things;

nor are you to worship false gods, as some of them did, as it says in scripture: The people sat down to eat and drink, and afterwards got up to amuse themselves.

Nor, again, are we to fall into sexual immorality; some of them did this, and twenty-three thousand met their downfall in one day.

And we are not to put the Lord to the test; some of them put him to the test, and they were killed by snakes.

Never complain; some of them complained, and they were killed by the Destroyer.

Now all these things happened to them by way of example, and they were described in writing to be a lesson for us, to whom it has fallen to live in the last days of the ages.

Everyone, no matter how firmly he thinks he is standing, must be careful he does not fall.

None of the trials which have come upon you is more than a human being can stand. You can trust that God will not let you be put to the test beyond your strength, but with any trial will also provide a way out by enabling you to put up with it.

 

Praise to you, o Lord, King of eternal glory

I give you a new commandment,
that you love one another.

Praise to you, o Lord, King of eternal glory

The apostle urges the community not to give in to a false sense of security, that is, not to imagine it is enough to belong to the Church. It is not enough to call oneself a Christian, or to participate in religious rituals, or even to get caught up in works, in order to be saved. It was not even enough for the Israelites to belong to the people of God, to be covered by the cloud, to cross the sea, and to eat the same “spiritual food” and drink from the same “rock” in order to be saved from death when they gave in to murmuring and the convenient pursuit of their individual wellbeing. So we need to be careful not to consider ourselves safe and secure: “We must not indulge in sexual immorality…We must not put Christ to the test…And… do not complain…” (v. 8-10). With great frankness Paul says, “So if you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall.” We are all invited to recognize our weakness and fragility. And we need to ask the Lord for help every day. In the Our Father prayer – according to the most accurate translation – Jesus has us say, “Do not abandon us in the time of trial.” In effect, the apostle Paul is reassuring us that the Lord always sustains us so we can overcome temptation. His support comes to us through the grace of the Spirit given to our hearts, which is our “strength,” but also through the company of brothers and sisters, who are a precious help given to us so we can live according to the Gospel and escape from the chains of sin. The love that the Lord and our brothers and sisters have for us is the guarantee of our stability. All that is asked of us is to let ourselves be loved and let ourselves be helped. Those who think they can stand and act on their own condemn themselves to ruin.

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