EVERYDAY PRAYER

Memory of the Saints and the Prophets
Word of god every day
Libretto DEL GIORNO
Memory of the Saints and the Prophets
Wednesday, April 26


Reading of the Word of God

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia

You are a chosen race,
a royal priesthood, a holy nation,
a people acquired by God
to proclaim his marvellous works.

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia

John 3,16-21

For this is how God loved the world: he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. For God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but so that through him the world might be saved. No one who believes in him will be judged; but whoever does not believe is judged already, because that person does not believe in the Name of God's only Son. And the judgement is this: though the light has come into the world people have preferred darkness to the light because their deeds were evil. And indeed, everybody who does wrong hates the light and avoids it, to prevent his actions from being shown up; but whoever does the truth comes out into the light, so that what he is doing may plainly appear as done in God.'

 

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia

You will be holy,
because I am holy, thus says the Lord.

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” With this sentence, John offers us a synthesis of his Gospel. God has never been so close to humanity as when he made himself equal to us. What other proofs could be greater than his friendship with us and his immense concern for our future, which are far greater than the concern we show for ourselves and for others? We often operate under the appearance of love, which is false: in reality, it is only an expression of self-preservation and egoism, the exact opposite of the way of being of the Son, who considered his own life to have value in so far as it was spent for others and not preserved for itself. This is the eternal life about which Jesus spoke to Nicodemus; this is the love, an unmeasured and free love given to us from Jesus’ crucifixion and through his resurrection, which sheds light on the entire world. The light of Jesus’ passion for humanity—a passion lived out from its depths—reveals the dark corners of the heart’s hardness and exposes the narrow judgments that often make our existence miserable, rendering us incapable of bearing the good fruits of love and mercy. Indeed, the Son did not come to condemn the world; it is not from the world’s humiliation that Jesus draws his satisfaction. On the contrary, when the world allows the light of the Gospel to illuminate it, even life’s miseries find welcome in the Lord and, by him, are transfigured. More knowledgeable of our need for salvation and no longer blind in the darkness of egoism, let us seek in Jesus the path that leads to the true life and follow him along the road from Golgotha to the splendour of his resurrection. Indeed, this is what it means to “do what is true:” it is about concretely living out that love without boundaries, that love which God planted in each one of our hearts. The Lord Jesus came to gather us up in his dynamic love that permits us from now on to call ourselves, notwithstanding our weakness and misery, “children of the Resurrection.”

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