Memory of St. Boniface, bishop and martyr. He announced the Gospel in Germany and was killed while celebrating the Eucharist (754). Read more
Memory of St. Boniface, bishop and martyr. He announced the Gospel in Germany and was killed while celebrating the Eucharist (754).
Reading of the Word of God
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
You are a chosen race,
a royal priesthood, a holy nation,
a people acquired by God
to proclaim his marvellous works.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Hebrews 4, 14-16; 5,1-10
Since in Jesus, the Son of God, we have the supreme high priest who has gone through to the highest heaven, we must hold firm to our profession of faith.
For the high priest we have is not incapable of feeling our weaknesses with us, but has been put to the test in exactly the same way as ourselves, apart from sin.
Let us, then, have no fear in approaching the throne of grace to receive mercy and to find grace when we are in need of help.
Every high priest is taken from among human beings and is appointed to act on their behalf in relationships with God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins;
he can sympathise with those who are ignorant or who have gone astray, because he too is subject to the limitations of weakness.
That is why he has to make sin offerings for himself as well as for the people.
No one takes this honour on himself; it needs a call from God, as in Aaron's case.
And so it was not Christ who gave himself the glory of becoming high priest, but the one who said to him: You are my Son, today I have fathered you,
and in another text: You are a priest for ever, of the order of Melchizedek.
During his life on earth, he offered up prayer and entreaty, with loud cries and with tears, to the one who had the power to save him from death, and, winning a hearing by his reverence,
he learnt obedience, Son though he was, through his sufferings;
when he had been perfected, he became for all who obey him the source of eternal salvation
and was acclaimed by God with the title of high priest of the order of Melchizedek.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
You will be holy,
because I am holy, thus says the Lord.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
The second part of the Letter opens with a statement intended to hearten Christian readers who are experiencing a difficult moment in their life due to strong opposition from an environment hostile to the Gospel. The author writes that they have “a great high priest who has passed through the heavens.” The title of “high priest”, already above given to Jesus (2:17), is now being developed in a broader way. It is urgent to strengthen the confidence of Christians in the help of God. The Letter therefore invites the believers to come close with confidence and without fear to the Lord, certain of being heard because we have a “high priest” who understands us, even more, who is full of compassion for us and who knows how to present to God our lives which have become harder. Jesus knows well our difficulties and our weaknesses because he himself “in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.” The Letter insists that his compassion for us stems from the fact that he has come to dwell among us and has known in his own flesh our weakness, save for sin. But he has not scorned us. Indeed, he has made his weakness our weakness in order to liberate us from it. We may say that he understood our weakness from within; and, in his compassion, he has carried this weakness in his body up into heaven. For this reason the author exhorts: “Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness.” Not only will we be heard but also will be succoured and helped by God. The author inserts Jesus in the line of priests, who receive that ministry through family membership. The author does not place him in the descendants of Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the other prophets, but in that of Aaron. Jesus has been constituted as priest, inheriting this ministry from God, by whom he has been generated as Son (1:4f.). Therefore he affirms that he “did not glorify himself in becoming a high priest,” but it has been entrusted to him by the One who said to him: “You are my Son, today I have begotten you.” And Jesus exercised his priesthood on this earth, “in the days of his flesh,” offering “prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears to the one who was able to save him from death.” The author pauses on the absolute gratuitousness of Jesus’ love for us: “Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered.” Compassion is the reason of the mystery of love; he has come among us to save us. As every priest, he was “chosen from among mortals [and] put in charge of things pertaining to God on their behalf, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins.” The extraordinary thing about this mystery is in the fact that while any other priest, taken from among men, is marked by sin, Jesus, despite his being immune from sin, is made thus by God so that we may be liberated from sin, from which He was immune. And all of this out of love. This extraordinary “mercy” of Jesus continues to open heaven to us.
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
