Reading of the Word of God
Praise to you, o Lord, King of eternal glory
The Spirit of the Lord is upon you.
The child you shall bear will be holy.
Praise to you, o Lord, King of eternal glory
Matthew 6,7-15
'In your prayers do not babble as the gentiles do, for they think that by using many words they will make themselves heard. Do not be like them; your Father knows what you need before you ask him. So you should pray like this: Our Father in heaven, may your name be held holy, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we have forgiven those who are in debt to us. And do not put us to the test, but save us from the Evil One. 'Yes, if you forgive others their failings, your heavenly Father will forgive you yours; but if you do not forgive others, your Father will not forgive your failings either.
Praise to you, o Lord, King of eternal glory
Look down, O Lord, on your servants.
Be it unto us according to your word.
Praise to you, o Lord, King of eternal glory
The liturgy of this Lenten season gives us some of the most meaningful pages of the Gospel. They help us grow in our lives as disciples. That is why it is necessary for us to let our minds be instructed and our hearts be warmed by the words of the Gospel. Today Jesus gives us his prayer: the Our Father. First he warns us that prayer is not a matter of multiplying our words, as if their number mattered and not the heart that speaks them. He wants to show us the way to pray directly, immediately reaching God’s heart. No one else other than him could have taught us this. Jesus alone is the perfect Son who knows the Father profoundly. And so, loving his disciples with a limitless love, he teaches them the highest prayer, the one that God cannot help but hear. This is clear from its first word: “Abba,” (dad). With this simple word the one that little children say to their own fathers Jesus is doing something truly revolutionary with respect to the Jewish tradition, in which the holy name of God would never even be spoken. He is involving us in his own intimacy with the Father. It is not that he is “lowering” God; instead we are the ones who are lifted up to heaven, to the very heart of God “in heaven,” so that we can call him “father.” Even though the Father is still in “the highest heavens,” he is the one who embraces us. And so it is right to do the will of a Father like him: it is right to ask for his kingdom to come soon, the time when God’s holiness will finally be recognized. In the second part of the prayer Jesus has us ask the Father to look over our daily lives: we ask him for bread, for our body and our heart. And then we make a daring demand: “And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” It is a request that might seem harsh and unrealistic, as if human forgiveness should be the model for the divine (“as we also”). In truth it contains extraordinary human wisdom. We understand this from the following verses: “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” These words are incomprehensible for a society, like ours, in which forgiveness is rare, if not forbidden, and where resentment is a weed we cannot uproot. But perhaps this is the very reason we need to learn to pray more with the “Our Father.”
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
