EVERYDAY PRAYER

Prayer of the Christmas season
Word of god every day
Libretto DEL GIORNO
Prayer of the Christmas season
Saturday, January 3


Reading of the Word of God

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia

Glory to God in the highest
and peace on earth to the people he loves.

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia

1 John 2, 29-3,6

If you know that he is upright you must recognise that everyone whose life is upright is a child of his.

You must see what great love the Father has lavished on us by letting us be called God's children -- which is what we are! The reason why the world does not acknowledge us is that it did not acknowledge him.

My dear friends, we are already God's children, but what we shall be in the future has not yet been revealed. We are well aware that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he really is.

Whoever treasures this hope of him purifies himself, to be as pure as he is.

Whoever sins, acts wickedly, because all sin is wickedness.

Now you are well aware that he has appeared in order to take sins away, and that in him there is no sin.

No one who remains in him sins, and whoever sins has neither seen him nor recognised him.

 

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia

Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia

John exhorts his disciples to “abide” in Jesus, to remain in communion with him, to never break away from him. It is a theme that is particularly dear to the apostle whom “Jesus loved”, and it often appears in the pages of his Gospel and this letter. For John it is a specific characteristic of Christian love. He had always been with Jesus from the beginning, and he must have felt especially bitter after fleeing from Jesus when he was captured in the garden of olives. For John, abiding with that Teacher is the substance of salvation. He will not abandon him again, and he will stand under his cross. The apostle can reassure Christians that by “abiding” with Jesus they will have nothing to fear, not even the last judgment (the parousia); they are already saved, since they have been “born of him.” In the Prologue to the Gospel, we read: “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God” (Jn 1:12-13). Therefore we are children of God not in mere words but in reality, if, obviously, we remain united with Jesus, the first-born Son. The apostle is very aware that this is the heart of the mystery of God's love, and urges his readers to contemplate it: “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.” The love of God, which saves us from sin and death, makes Christians “incomprehensible” to the violent and self-centred mentality of this world. It is true that the Gospel is inherently foreign to the mentality of the world. And yet this love is exactly what the world needs, a love that asks Jesus' disciples to give heroic witness. Throughout the history of the Church, there have always been Christians who have witnessed to this love to the point of shedding their blood. But the time will come when the mystery of love will be revealed. Then Christians, who now see as in a mirror, will see the Lord “face to face”, as Paul says to the Corinthians (1 Cor 13:12).

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