Reading of the Word of God
Praise to you, o Lord, King of eternal glory
The Spirit of the Lord is upon you.
The child you shall bear will be holy.
Praise to you, o Lord, King of eternal glory
Isaiah 55, 10-11
For, as the rain and the snow come down from the sky and do not return before having watered the earth, fertilising it and making it germinate to provide seed for the sower and food to eat,
so it is with the word that goes from my mouth: it will not return to me unfulfilled or before having carried out my good pleasure and having achieved what it was sent to do.
Praise to you, o Lord, King of eternal glory
Look down, O Lord, on your servants.
Be it unto us according to your word.
Praise to you, o Lord, King of eternal glory
These verses conclude the second part of the book of Isaiah, which begins at chapter 40, about the work of a prophet that lived during the Babylonian exile. The time after the exile was a difficult time for Israel. Many were the doubts and uncertainties after what the people had experienced. They were times of poverty but also of hope. What could the life of the people base itself against after having lived the bitter experience of exile? The Word of God had to return to being the basis of the people’s history and the deep root that nourished their faith. Yes, the faith in the Lord and his help had to return to being the strength and hope of that people, as it must also be today for the entire Christian community and for every single believer. The Word of God, in fact, has an incredible strength to change thingseven if we continue to be sceptics. God himself sent this word so that it would have an effect, so that it would change history and hearts. The prophet confirms it: like the rain and snow that irrigate and make the earth fertile, so it is with the Word of God. When it is listened to and welcomed in the heartthis is the meaning of the parable of the sowerit produces much fruit. For this reason we should ask ourselves: do we listen to the Lord who speaks? The apostle Paul affirms with clarity that “faith is born of listening” (Rom 10:17). When we continue to always repeat our habits, when we have a hard time changing our life on the path of love, when we continue to be prisoners of our egocentrism, when we let ourselves be caught by our habit to blame others and justify ourselves, shouldn’t we instead ask ourselves: am I listening to the Lord who is speaking to me? Am I allowing his Word to penetrate my heart and give it life? Am I like Mary that “kept” the Word of God in her heart? How many times, instead, our heart is full of worries, of anxieties, of obstacles, of bad feelings, of passions that suffocate the Word of God that at times we even listen to! Shouldn’t we let ourselves be guided more by the Gospel and imitate the Lord Jesus? And when we say we are listening to the Gospel but we are not able to put it in practice, let’s ask ourselves if we are really listening, if we have an open and attentive heart. Many times in the Gospel it says that the seed of the Word will have its effect in any event. Trusting in this Gospel conviction, what is asked of us is to not ever neglect listening to the Word of God. It will certainly have an effect. The prophet affirms that the Word of God did not return to him, “empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” Let us ask the Lord to give us a heart that is ready to listen, so that the conversion God asks each of us in this time may be realized and we may become renewed women and men according to God’s thinking.
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
