Reading of the Word of God
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
The Spirit of the Lord is upon you.
The child you shall bear will be holy.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Daniel 2, 31-45
'You have had a vision, Your Majesty; this is what you saw: a statue, a great statue of extreme brightness, stood before you, terrible to see.
The head of this statue was of fine gold, its chest and arms were of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze,
its legs of iron, its feet part iron, part clay.
While you were gazing, a stone broke away, untouched by any hand, and struck the statue, struck its feet of iron and clay and shattered them.
Then, iron and clay, bronze, silver and gold, all broke into pieces as fine as chaff on the threshing-floor in summer. The wind blew them away, leaving not a trace behind. And the stone that had struck the statue grew into a great mountain, filling the whole world.
This was the dream; we shall now explain to the king what it means.
'You, Your Majesty, king of kings, to whom the God of heaven has given sovereignty, power, strength and honour-
human beings, wild animals, birds of the air, wherever they live, he has entrusted to your rule, making you king of them all -- you are the golden head.
And, after you, another kingdom will rise, not as great as yours, and then a third, of bronze, which will rule the whole world.
There will be a fourth kingdom, hard as iron, as iron that pulverises and crushes all. Like iron that breaks everything to pieces, it will crush and break all the earlier kingdoms.
The feet you saw, part earthenware, part iron, are a kingdom which will be split in two, but which will retain something of the strength of iron, just as you saw the iron and the clay of the earthenware mixed together.
The feet were part iron, part potter's clay: the kingdom will be partly strong and partly brittle.
And just as you saw the iron and the clay of the earthenware mixed together, so the two will be mixed together in human seed; but they will not hold together any more than iron will blend with clay.
In the days of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which will never be destroyed, and this kingdom will not pass into the hands of another race: it will shatter and absorb all the previous kingdoms and itself last for ever-
just as you saw a stone, untouched by hand, break away from the mountain and reduce iron, bronze, earthenware, silver and gold to powder. The Great God has shown the king what is to take place. The dream is true, the interpretation exact.'
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Look down, O Lord, on your servants.
Be it unto us according to your word.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
The second chapter of Daniel describes the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream. In Daniel dreams and visions reveal the secret of history, which is possible to understand only through the Lord. Already, in Joseph’s ordeal in Egypt (Gn 37-41) dreams had become the way through which God revealed to his faithful one the meaning of history; but it is difficult to understand them without being faithful to the Lord, without being one of his own. Even in the Gospel of Matthew a dream will be the conduit through which God reveals to Joseph what will happen to Jesus. The king Nebuchadnezzar dreams of an enormous statue made of various materials: gold, silver, bronze, iron and stone. These represented the different empires that followed each other from the seventh to fourth century before Christ: Babylonians, Medes and Persians, and Greeks. Only the man of God, the wise one who welcomes his word, is able to give an explanation of the king’s dream. In fact wisdom comes from God. His word helps to discern the signs of the times; it penetrates the happenings of history, helping to understand them. In Babylon none of the sages were able to understand the dream. "There is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries," Daniel tells the king. Whoever entrusts himself with faith to the Lord is able to understand the unfolding of history and to see into the future. The word of God mysteriously communicated to his people and welcomed with faith gives the capacity to look beyond the present. This same word renders Daniel merciful, so much so that he is able to release the wise men of Babylon from the hands of Arioch who wanted to kill them. We too bless the Lord, because he does not leave us prisoners of the dark powers of the world, but gives us his word which helps us to understand the present and the future--and in faithnot to live in fear.
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
