EVERYDAY PRAYER

Memory of the Saints and the Prophets
Word of god every day
Libretto DEL GIORNO
Memory of the Saints and the Prophets
Wednesday, October 8


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

Luke 11, 1-4

Now it happened that he was in a certain place praying, and when he had finished, one of his disciples said, 'Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.'

He said to them, 'When you pray, this is what to say: Father, may your name be held holy, your kingdom come;

give us each day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins,

for we ourselves forgive each one who is in debt to us. And do not put us to the test.'

 

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia

You will be holy,
because I am holy, thus says the Lord.

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia

More than once in the Gospel of Luke it is written that Jesus went off in secluded places to pray, often at night. It was an extraordinary experience for the disciples to see Jesus pray, and they watched him carefully. In the passage we heard, Luke tells us that after Jesus had prayed one of the disciples approached him and asked him on everyone’s behalf: “Lord, teach us to pray.” This is a beautiful question that we need to make our own. Indeed we dearly need to learn how to pray, to pray just as Jesus himself prayed, with the same trust and the same intimacy that he had with his Father in heaven. Jesus turned to the Father like the Son he truly was. The thing that is extraordinary and absolutely inconceivable to the human mind is the idea that we could address God with the same words Jesus used, with the same feelings Jesus had for Him. In essence, Jesus wants us to join him in his prayer as Son. The first word that he puts on their lips is “abba”, daddy, the tender name that children used for their fathers. And he immediately makes it clear that the Father he is talking about is common to us all, “our” Father, in fact, the Father of a family of brothers and sisters, not an anonymous being who stands far off from life in some disembodied Olympus. Jesus wants his disciples to be gathered together in a single family, God’s family, his Father’s family. The first attitude required in prayer is that we recognize ourselves as sons and daughters, children who entrust themselves completely to our shared Father. Much more than the multiplication of words, prayer is an act of trust and self-abandonment in God. It is the words that rise from the heart that reach God and His heart. Jesus then puts on our lips words of praise for the Father. We ask for his name to be praised and for his kingdom to come soon to humanity. This is precisely the reason why the Father sent the Son to earth. There is an urgent need for the Kingdom, and the disciples need to understand this need and invoke it. Men and women are subjected to many forms of tyranny, more or less visible but nonetheless irresistible. We need the kingdom of God to come quickly - the kingdom of love, of justice and of peace. Finally, Jesus has us ask for bread for our daily lives and mutual forgiveness: bread and forgiveness, two essential dimensions of our life, especially now, when poverty seems to be increasing along with a spirit of conflict and violence. This prayer, which has moved through Christian hearts for centuries, is a precious treasure that should continue to mark out the hours and the days of our lives.

WORD OF GOD EVERY DAY: THE CALENDAR

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!

WORD OF GOD EVERY DAY: THE CALENDAR