Memory of the saints Addai and Mari, founders of the Chaldean church. Read more
Memory of the saints Addai and Mari, founders of the Chaldean church.
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
Hebrews 1, 5-14
To which of the angels, then, has God ever said: You are my Son, today I have fathered you, or: I shall be a father to him and he a son to me?
Again, when he brings the First-born into the world, he says: Let all the angels of God pay him homage.
To the angels, he says: appointing the winds his messengers and flames of fire his servants,
but to the Son he says: Your throne, God, is for ever and ever; and: the sceptre of his kingdom is a sceptre of justice;
you love uprightness and detest evil. This is why God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness, as none of your rivals.
And again: Long ago, Lord, you laid earth's foundations, the heavens are the work of your hands.
They pass away but you remain, they all wear out like a garment.
Like a cloak you will roll them up, like a garment, and they will be changed. But you never alter and your years are unending.
To which of the angels has God ever said: Take your seat at my right hand till I have made your enemies your footstool?
Are they not all ministering spirits, sent to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation?
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Look down, O Lord, on your servants.
Be it unto us according to your word.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
The Letter has just spoken of the Son as the definitive revelation of God. The Son is the one to whom the believers must listen to and follow. For God has constituted him Lord of all creation. The Letter, with a sequence of seven quotations from the Old Testament, wants to show to Christians that the Son has brought to fulfilment all the prophecies of the Old Testament. With a Christological interpretation of the Psalms, the author composes a hymn on the glorification of Jesus that brings to mind an analogous hymn, that of the abasement of Jesus reported in the Letter to the Philippians. But here the author omits the abasement recorded by Paul and sings instead of what took place in heaven, the enthronement of Jesus as Lord of history and of the world. It describes this rising up into heaven with the ceremony of enthronement of oriental sovereigns. The rite, a true and proper liturgy, begins with the adoption of the new king on the part of God who says, “You are my Son; today I have begotten you.” Turning to the heavenly court God affirms, “I will be his Father, and he shall be my Son.” And, after having welcomed the new king, there is an invitation to the great of heaven (the angels) to prostrate themselves before the newly enthroned one: “Let all God’s angels worship him.” The Lord then confers the powers of the kingdom to Christ with the consigning of the sceptre, the royal anointing and the accession to the throne. With a spiritual reading of the Psalms, the author then reads the prefiguration of the firm and strong kingship of the Son. It is a kingship already established that waits, however, to be completed by the action of God himself with the definitive defeat of the enemy, according to the words of the psalm: “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.” The author feels the urgency of recalling the Christian community, tested by the forces of evil and becoming doubtful of the victory of God, to the awareness of the power of the risen Christ who has already defeated evil and death.
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
