Reading of the Word of God
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
I am the good shepherd,
my sheep listen to my voice,
and they become
one flock and one fold.
.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Ezekiel 36,23-28
I am going to display the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, which you have profaned among them. And the nations will know that I am Yahweh -- declares the Lord Yahweh -- when in you I display my holiness before their eyes. For I shall take you from among the nations and gather you back from all the countries, and bring you home to your own country. I shall pour clean water over you and you will be cleansed; I shall cleanse you of all your filth and of all your foul idols. I shall give you a new heart, and put a new spirit in you; I shall remove the heart of stone from your bodies and give you a heart of flesh instead. I shall put my spirit in you, and make you keep my laws, and respect and practise my judgements. You will live in the country which I gave your ancestors. You will be my people and I shall be your God.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
I give you a new commandment,
that you love one another.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
In the Our Father, Jesus taught us to say: "Hallowed be thy name." Why do we need to hallow - sanctify - God’s name if God is already holy? Those who sanctify God’s name take part in God’s holiness; that is, they enter into communion with God, the almighty and merciful Lord. In the spiritual tradition of the East, the prayer of the Holy Name is strongly emphasized. It is also called the "prayer of the heart," and it is the constant repetition of the words "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." It is also known as the prayer of the Russian pilgrim: a man who was looking for someone to teach him how to pray, but could not find anyone. Finally he met a starets (spiritual father) who tells him, "All you need to do is repeat the prayer of Jesus with faith in the power of resurrection of this Name." When John and Peter met a paralyzed man on the steps of the Temple, they said to him, "In the name of Christ Jesus of Nazareth, stand up!" and he was healed (see Acts 3:1-10). Let us sanctify the name of Jesus and entrust ourselves to him. Let us sanctify him in our every day lives by joining with him to perform the same miracles he performed. The Lord will purify our hearts and gather us from our scattered lives to make us his people, the people of the renewed covenant. So indeed he tells us: "You shall be my people, and I will be your God." These words indicate the special relationship between God and his people, Israel, and, through Jesus, with us in the new covenant of his blood. We need to be purified in our thoughts, our feelings, and the actions that we perform, because some times our hearts turn to stone, too. They became hard towards others, especially towards pain and suffering and towards the poor. Our heart is often cluttered with our thoughts and worries. With his Word, the Lord gives us a heart of flesh, a heart like his, capable of compassion and mercy. He puts his Spirit within us so we will learn to live according to his Word and not according to our feelings. Therefore let us call on the name of the Lord in prayer so that we can receive the gift of a heart of flesh.
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
