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
Micah 7,14-15.18-20
With shepherd's crook lead your people to pasture, the flock that is your heritage, living confined in a forest with meadow land all round. Let them graze in Bashan and Gilead as in the days of old! As in the days when you came out of Egypt, grant us to see wonders! What god can compare with you for pardoning guilt and for overlooking crime? He does not harbour anger for ever, since he delights in showing faithful love. Once more have pity on us, tread down our faults; throw all our sins to the bottom of the sea. Grant Jacob your faithfulness, and Abraham your faithful love, as you swore to our ancestors from the days of long ago.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Look down, O Lord, on your servants.
Be it unto us according to your word.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
The book of Micah ends with these words of hope. The prophet calls on God who, like a shepherd, cares for his flock, Israel: "Shepherd your people with your staff, the flock that belongs to you, which lives alone in a forest in the midst of a garden land." And he is aware that the Lord has taken care of them since he brought them out of Egypt, freeing them from the slavery of the Pharaoh. With the image of the shepherd, the prophet evokes his attentive and thoughtful care, the way he preserves the unity of the flock, which would otherwise be scattered, and how he defends the lives of the sheep even at the cost of his life. And he calls on the Shepherd to continue to act on his people’s behalf. There are two ways that this divine intervention should take form. The Lord is a shepherd who forgives: "Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over the transgression, of the remnant of your possession?" These words recall the shepherd of Psalm 23 and the book of Ezekiel (Ez 33). It is also as a shepherd who continues to love his people: "He will again have compassion upon us; he will tread our iniquities under foot. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea." The Lord is truly the good shepherd who takes care of his people, starting with forgiveness. These words resound in all their loving strength in this jubilee year of mercy. The Lord’s forgiveness, more than anything else, reveals who the God of Israel is and how distant he is from every idol. The Lord’s forgiveness is so powerful that it not only takes sin away form the human heart, but it casts it so far away that it is no longer remembered. Micah cannot seem to find the right words to describe God’s mercy. The image of the shepherd will be taken up again by Jesus: he presents himself as the shepherd who knows his sheep, calls them by name, and brings them into the fold. And if one gets lost, he leaves all the rest in the fold to go and search for it. And he binds up the wounded and heals the sick (Jn 10). Let us pray to the Lord to let us hear the voice of this good shepherd and become one flock, led by him alone and learning to live by his mercy.
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
