Memory of the stigmata of St. Francis. He became like the Lord and received the signs of Jesus' wounds on Mount Verna. Read more
Memory of the stigmata of St. Francis. He became like the Lord and received the signs of Jesus’ wounds on Mount Verna.
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
Jeremiah 32, 26-44
The word of Yahweh was addressed to me as follows,
'Look, I am Yahweh, God of all humanity. Is anything impossible to me?
'So, Yahweh says this, "I shall hand this city over to the Chaldaeans and to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and he will capture it;
the Chaldaeans attacking this city will enter it, fire it and burn it to the ground, with the houses on whose roofs incense has been offered to Baal and libations poured to other gods, to provoke my anger.
For the people of Israel and Judah alike have done nothing but what displeases me since they were young. (The people of Israel in fact have done nothing but provoke my anger by their actions, Yahweh declares.)
Yes, from the day when this city was built until today, it has been such cause of anger and wrath to me that I mean to remove it from my sight,
on account of all the wickedness the people of Israel and the people of Judah have done to provoke my anger; they, their kings, their chief men, their priests, their prophets, the people of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem.
They turned to me their backs, never their faces; and though I taught them so urgently, so untiringly, they would not listen and accept correction.
Instead, they set up their Horrors in the Temple that bears my name to defile it,
and built the high places of Baal in the Valley of Ben-Hinnom, to burn their sons and daughters alive in honour of Molech: a thing I have never ordered, that had never entered my thoughts -- that they would cause Judah to sin by anything so loathsome!
"So now, this is what Yahweh, God of Israel, says about this city of which you now say: By means of sword, famine and plague, it is already within the king of Babylon's clutches:
Look, I shall gather them in from all the countries where I have driven them in my anger, my fury and great wrath. I shall bring them back to this place and make them live in safety.
Then they will be my people, and I shall be their God.
I shall give them singleness of heart and singleness of conduct so that they will always fear me, for their own good and that of their children after them.
I shall make an everlasting covenant with them, never to cease in my efforts for their welfare, and I shall put respect for me in their hearts, so that they will never turn away from me again.
My joy will lie in them and in doing them good, and I shall plant them firmly in this country, with all my heart and soul.
For Yahweh says this: Just as I have brought this complete and total disaster on this people, so I shall bring them all the good things I have promised them.
Fields will again be bought in this country of which you now say: It is a wasteland without human or animal, already in the clutches of the Chaldaeans.
People will buy fields, pay money, draw up deeds, seal them and have them witnessed in the territory of Benjamin, in the districts round Jerusalem, in the towns of Judah, of the highlands, of the lowlands and of the Negeb. For I shall bring back their captives, Yahweh declares." '
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Look down, O Lord, on your servants.
Be it unto us according to your word.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
The people’s sins were heavy and repeated. During the centuries of history of the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah, the people’s infidelities and forgetfulness of the Lord grew in an alarming manner: “They have turned their backs to me, not their faces” (v. 33), the Lord laments. The people learned to follow their own path and not to trust in the Lord’s will. And when the Lord corrected them, they would not listen but continued to follow their own ways. Sin often finds us stubborn and persevering in error until we become slaves to ourselves. We have all had this sad experience. We do not listen to the cry for help of the poor and the oppressed, perhaps walking past as we look the other way, then our sin passes all bounds. In Jerusalem, the leaders of the city offered human sacrifices to the god Molech, imagining that the blood of children would have brought them all sorts of good! True religion and true humanity cannot accept the shedding of innocent blood like the blood of children. And we note with sadness that innocent blood is still spilled on the altars of self-interest today. Just as it did then, sin reaches intolerable limits. At the time of the prophet Jeremiah, the end of the Jerusalem meant the end of a world that could no longer continue with such injustice and cruelty. Is there any alternative to the destruction of a world that as a matter of fact does not want a future? God himself gives us the answer, “Is anything too hard for me?” (v. 27). God’s merciful power is unstoppable and invincible. Believers can change and hope for a new future in so far as they follow the Word of the Lord and allow the Lord to work in their hearts. The Lord says, “I will give them one heart and one way” (v. 39). Here is where the world begins to change. We must accept the love of the Lord in our hearts, and the world will change.
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
