Reading of the Word of God
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
This is the Gospel of the poor,
liberation for the imprisoned,
sight for the blind,
freedom for the oppressed.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Romans 15, 14-21
My brothers, I am quite sure that you, in particular, are full of goodness, fully instructed and capable of correcting each other.
But I have special confidence in writing on some points to you, to refresh your memories, because of the grace that was given to me by God.
I was given grace to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the gentiles, dedicated to offer them the gospel of God, so that gentiles might become an acceptable offering, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.
So I can be proud, in Christ Jesus, of what I have done for God.
Of course I can dare to speak only of the things which Christ has done through me to win the allegiance of the gentiles, using what I have said and done,
by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God. In this way, from Jerusalem and all round, even as far as Illyricum, I have fully carried out the preaching of the gospel of Christ;
and what is more, it has been my rule to preach the gospel only where the name of Christ has not already been heard, for I do not build on another's foundations;
in accordance with scripture: Those who have never been told about him will see him, and those who have never heard about him will understand.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
The Son of Man came to serve,
whoever wants to be great
should become servant of all.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Paul is very aware of the fact that he did not found the Christian community in Rome. Nonetheless, he still feels the responsibility of proclaiming the Gospel there, in the capital of the Roman Empire. The preaching of the Gospel is his true pride. Still he adds, "Thus I make it my ambition to proclaim the good news, not where Christ has already been named [but elsewhere]." With the words that he addresses to the Christians of Rome, he seems to want to remind the entire Church and all Christian communities of their responsibility to communicate the Gospel again, whether in lands that have been Christian for ages or in places where the Gospel has recently arrived. Wherever we are in the world, we need to go back and start with Jesus again--even now at the beginning of the third millennium. We could say that the Church’s mission is still at her beginning. It is beginning for us Christians whose lands were evangelized in ancient times, because we still have to understand the deeper meaning of many pages of the Gospel, such as the pages about peace and love for our enemies. When we concentrate on issues and problems of organization, we sometimes risk losing focus on the primacy of communicating the Gospel, which was Paul’s true "honour" and which should become the "honour" of the Church of today. In effect, there are still many places in the worldand I think about the expanses of Asiawhere the Gospel still has to be announced. This is one of the great challenges that the Christians of today need to take from this letter of Paul to the Romans. Paul, who boasted about never baptizing anyone, understood his preaching of the Gospel among pagans as a "priestly service": by communicating the Gospel he offered to God those who would welcome him.
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
