EVERYDAY PRAYER

Sunday Vigil
Word of god every day
Libretto DEL GIORNO
Sunday Vigil
Saturday, November 7


Reading of the Word of God

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia

Whoever lives and believes in me
will never die.

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia

Romans 16, 3-9.16.22-27

My greetings to Prisca and Aquila, my fellow-workers in Christ Jesus,

who risked their own necks to save my life; to them, thanks not only from me, but from all the churches among the gentiles;

and my greetings to the church at their house. Greetings to my dear friend Epaenetus, the first of Asia's offerings to Christ.

Greetings to Mary, who worked so hard for you.

Greetings to those outstanding apostles, Andronicus and Junias, my kinsmen and fellow-prisoners, who were in Christ before me.

Greetings to Ampliatus, my dear friend in the Lord.

Greetings to Urban, my fellow-worker in Christ, and to my dear friend Stachys.

Greet each other with the holy kiss. All the churches of Christ send their greetings.

I, Tertius, who am writing this letter, greet you in the Lord.

Greetings to you from Gaius, my host here, and host of the whole church. Erastus, the city treasurer, sends greetings to you, and our brother Quartus.

And now to him who can make you strong in accordance with the gospel that I preach and the proclamation of Jesus Christ, in accordance with that mystery which for endless ages was kept secret

but now (as the prophets wrote) is revealed, as the eternal God commanded, to be made known to all the nations, so that they obey in faith:

to him, the only wise God, give glory through Jesus Christ for ever and ever. Amen.

 

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia

If you believe, you will see the glory of God,
thus says the Lord.

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia

This chapter, which appears as a series of different passages listed together, truly displays the concrete communion that Paul highlighted in the last part of the letter. The long list of names not only represents the great number of friends the apostle had; in fact though Paul had not been in Rome yet he knows many of the members of that community. We know that he had met Aquilas and Priscilla in Corinth, following the edict of Claudius who decreed the expulsion of the Jews, or at least part of them, from Rome, and that clearly was not in act any longer at the time of the letter. We do not know in which circumstances the apostle met the other people but their mention serves to make him be further loved by a community he did not establish but to which he shows to be connected by special bonds of communion. Here the importance of fraternity in the Church and the variety of ways in which friendships are woven emerges. The story of Christian fraternity is never the story of anonymous masses. In the Church, communion is always rooted in personal encounters between disciples, relationships between individual people. Everyone has a name and a story, and everyone is loved and cared for personally. This is the challenge that the Christian communities of our time need to accept in order to defeat the anonymity to which our society seems to condemn everyone. This explains the apostle’s recommendation about those who cause scandals: they should be warned, and, just as the weak should not be neglected, they should be helped. The bond with the Gospel makes the community strong and capable of "crushing" the prince of evil and understanding the "mystery" of love that has been revealed to it.

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