EVERYDAY PRAYER

Sunday Vigil
Word of god every day

Sunday Vigil

Remembrance of Saint Therese of Lisieux (+1897), a Carmelite nun with a deep sense of mission of the Church. Read more

Libretto DEL GIORNO
Sunday Vigil
Saturday, October 1

Remembrance of Saint Therese of Lisieux (+1897), a Carmelite nun with a deep sense of mission of the Church.


Reading of the Word of God

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia

Whoever lives and believes in me
will never die.

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia

Job 42,1-3.5-6.12-16

This was the answer Job gave to Yahweh: I know that you are all-powerful: what you conceive, you can perform. I was the man who misrepresented your intentions with my ignorant words. You have told me about great works that I cannot understand, about marvels which are beyond me, of which I know nothing. Before, I knew you only by hearsay but now, having seen you with my own eyes, I retract what I have said, and repent in dust and ashes. Yahweh blessed Job's latter condition even more than his former one. He came to own fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen and a thousand she-donkeys. He had seven sons and three daughters; his first daughter he called 'Turtledove', the second 'Cassia' and the third 'Mascara'. Throughout the land there were no women as beautiful as the daughters of Job. And their father gave them inheritance rights like their brothers. After this, Job lived for another one hundred and forty years, and saw his children and his children's children to the fourth generation.

 

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia

If you believe, you will see the glory of God,
thus says the Lord.

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia

Job meets with God personally. He understands that nothing is impossible with God. This is the recognition of a man of faith who relies on God's love even in difficult times, when everything seems impossible. This is why Job acknowledges that he dared to deal with things that exceeded his capacity, that he could not understand. For who can understand the divine mystery without listening to God's word? Job spoke at length, but now he understands that God is not far away and that his prayer should give room to God's presence and word. "I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you," says Job. Many times we know God by the hearing of the ear or we claim to know Him because we have heard of Him since childhood, or perhaps because we have an idea of Him by what we heard. But who knows the God of the Bible? We can know God only when we meet Him. He is a person who comes to meet each one, who talks to everyone, who listens to whoever turns to Him. He is not a God who is known by hearsay. The central question of the Bible is how to meet God. The very biblical pages are the best place for this meeting to happen. The meeting will be fulfilled with the Lord Jesus. He will say: "Who has seen me has seen the Father." The book of Job ends as it opened. There is an unfathomable mystery, before which no one can claim to have understood everything. Job's restitution to his initial condition is the sign of God's blessing for every man and woman who continually turns to Him and does not lose hope in the benevolent presence of the Lord.

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