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
Matthew 23, 23-26
'Alas for you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You pay your tithe of mint and dill and cummin and have neglected the weightier matters of the Law-justice, mercy, good faith! These you should have practised, those not neglected.
You blind guides, straining out gnats and swallowing camels!
'Alas for you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of cup and dish and leave the inside full of extortion and intemperance.
Blind Pharisee! Clean the inside of cup and dish first so that it and the outside are both clean.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Look down, O Lord, on your servants.
Be it unto us according to your word.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
This Gospel passage continues Jesus’ invective against the scribes and Pharisees, the first part of which we have already heard in previous days. This fourth “invective” centres on overturning values. Jesus denounces the hypocrisy of paying the tithe destined for maintaining the temple while neglecting to practice what is most important: namely, the application of justice, mercy, and faith. In the past the obligation to tithe fell only on the three most important products of the earth: grain, wine and oil, as well as the first born cattle (Dt 14:22 ff). But the Pharisees, with their meticulous precepts, had extended it to other, less significant, products. And so Jesus denounces their meticulousness, their attention to minutia while the central precepts are ignored like justice, the respect of each person’s dignity; mercy, love for everyone and in particular for the poorest; faith, abandonment of one’s life to God. One cannot “... strain out a gnat but swallow a camel!” says Jesus. How many times do we too worry about small things while we swallow camels! There is need for more interiority, for a more vigorous spiritual life. There is also an ulterior reprimand against the behaviour of the Pharisees. They undermine the indispensable relationship between the heart and deeds, between the interior and the exterior. Believers cannot live in a divided waythat is, behave correctly in some exterior practices and then putrefy in the heart. The accusation Jesus directed toward those who behave like whitened tombs echoes here. Life flows from the heart of human beings. All life depends on the heart from which, as Jesus repeats, come the thoughts and behaviours of men and women. If the heart is filled with love, then gestures of love will flow from it. If, on the contrary, the heart is inhabited by envy, rancour, hate, pride, love of self, then bitter and evil fruits will quickly be forthcoming for ourselves and for others. The believer is called to grow interiorly. This happens by cultivating prayer, listening with attention and frequency to the Scriptures, and practicing love for the weakest, not by forgetting laws and customs. Jesus asks us is to start from a heart inhabited by the love of God. It is in the heart that we decide the way of good and evil.
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
