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 37, 1-21
Zedekiah son of Josiah became king, succeeding Coniah son of Jehoiakim. Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon had made him king of Judah.
But neither he nor his courtiers nor the people of the country paid any attention to the words Yahweh spoke through the prophet Jeremiah.
King Zedekiah sent Jehucal son of Shelemiah and the priest Zephaniah son of Maaseiah to the prophet Jeremiah with this message, 'Intercede for us with Yahweh our God.'
Now Jeremiah was still moving freely among the people: he had not yet been put in prison.
Meanwhile Pharaoh's army was on the move from Egypt and the Chaldaeans besieging Jerusalem had raised the siege when they heard the news.
Then the word of Yahweh came to the prophet Jeremiah as follows,
'Yahweh, God of Israel, says this, "To the king of Judah who sent you to consult me make this reply: Is Pharaoh's army marching to your aid? It will withdraw to its own country, Egypt.
The Chaldaeans will return to attack this city; they will capture it and burn it down.
Yahweh says this: Do not cheer yourselves up by thinking: The Chaldaeans are leaving us for good. They are not leaving.
Even if you cut to pieces the whole Chaldaean army now fighting against you until there were only the wounded left, they would stand up again, each man in his tent, to burn this city down." '
At the time when the Chaldaean army, threatened by Pharaoh's army, had raised the siege of Jerusalem,
Jeremiah set out from Jerusalem for the territory of Benjamin to see about a piece of his property among the people there.
He was at the Benjamin Gate when the guard commander there, a certain Irijah son of Shelemiah, son of Hananiah, arrested the prophet Jeremiah, shouting, 'You are deserting to the Chaldaeans!'
Jeremiah answered, 'It is a lie! I am not deserting to the Chaldaeans.' But Irijah would not listen to Jeremiah and took him under arrest to the chief men.
And the chief men, furious with Jeremiah, had him beaten and shut up in the house of the scribe Jonathan, which had been turned into a prison.
Thus Jeremiah found himself in an underground vault. And there for a long time he stayed.
Later, King Zedekiah had him sent for, and the king questioned him privately in his palace. 'Is there any word from Yahweh?' he asked. 'There is,' Jeremiah answered, and added, 'you will be handed over to the king of Babylon.'
Jeremiah then said to King Zedekiah, 'What wrong have I done you, or your courtiers or this people, for you to have put me in prison?
Where are your prophets now who prophesied, "The king of Babylon will not attack you or this country"?
So now I beg you to hear me, my lord king! I beg you to approve my request! Do not have me taken back to the house of the scribe Jonathan, or I shall die there.'
King Zedekiah then gave an order, and Jeremiah was confined in the Court of the Guard and given a loaf of bread a day from the Street of the Bakers as long as there was bread left in the city. So Jeremiah stayed in the Court of the Guard.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Look down, O Lord, on your servants.
Be it unto us according to your word.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
The prophet Jeremiah is in the grip of his enemies. He is falsely accused, beaten, thrown into prison and inhumanely treated. There is a passion of Jeremiah, which prefigures the one of the Lord Jesus. The attack against Him, which comes from the blind strength of evil and injustice, leaves him totally defenceless in the hands of his rivals; the same happened in the Gospels when Jesus is victim of the power of evil, which will lead him to death. Jeremiah is at the mercy of the enemies of good and truth. The free voice of the prophet, who was calling all the people to loyalty to the divine commandments, was unbearable for them. Their struggle against the prophet was indeed an opposition to God Himself who wanted to speak to His people. On his side, Jeremiah accepts persecution and tries to keep his message alive, counting on the strength of the Word of God that, as the Apostle Paul will say, is “ sharper than any two-edged sword” (Heb 4:12). We could say that the martyrdom of Jeremiah has a slow course: he does not offer his life by shedding blood once and for all. He accepts instead to keep being a servant of the Word, fully announcing it and accepting the consequences until the end. Jeremiah is not afraid of death; neither is he afraid of those who want to make him disappear. In the book of the Revelation, regarding the martyrs of the Lamb Jesus Christ who were accused and tested by the prince of evil, it is said, “But they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they did not cling to life even in the face of death” (12:11). Jeremiah is one of them; he anticipated Jesus’ sufferings and shared with him death and triumph. The words of the First Letter of Saint Peter could be applied to him as well: They (the prophets of the First Testament) “inquiring about the person or time that the Spirit of Christ within them indicated, when it testified in advance to the sufferings destined for Christ and the subsequent glory” (1:11).
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
