The prayer for the sick is held in the Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere.
Memorial of Saint Boniface (+754), bishop and martyr. He announced the Gospel in Germany and was killed in a missionary journey in Frisia.
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The prayer for the sick is held in the Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere.
Memorial of Saint Boniface (+754), bishop and martyr. He announced the Gospel in Germany and was killed in a missionary journey in Frisia.
Reading of the Word of God
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
This is the Gospel of the poor,
liberation for the imprisoned,
sight for the blind,
freedom for the oppressed.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Tobit 1,3; 2,1-8
I, Tobit, have walked in paths of truth and in good works all the days of my life. I have given much in alms to my brothers and fellow country-folk, exiled like me to Nineveh in the country of Assyria. In the reign of Esarhaddon, therefore, I returned home, and my wife Anna was restored to me with my son Tobias. At our feast of Pentecost (the feast of Weeks) there was a good dinner. I took my place for the meal; the table was brought to me and various dishes were brought. I then said to my son Tobias, 'Go, my child, and seek out some poor, loyal-hearted man among our brothers exiled in Nineveh, and bring him to share my meal. I will wait until you come back, my child.' So Tobias went out to look for some poor man among our brothers, but he came back again and said, 'Father!' I replied, 'What is it, my child?' He went on, 'Father, one of our nation has just been murdered; he has been strangled and then thrown down in the market place; he is there still.' I sprang up at once, left my meal untouched, took the man from the market place and laid him in one of my rooms, waiting until sunset to bury him. I came in again and washed myself and ate my bread in sorrow, remembering the words of the prophet Amos concerning Bethel: I shall turn your festivals into mourning and all your singing into lamentation. And I wept. When the sun was down, I went and dug a grave and buried him. My neighbours laughed and said, 'See! He is not afraid any more.' (You must remember that a price had been set on my head earlier for this very thing.) 'Once before he had to flee, yet here he is, beginning to bury the dead again.'
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
The Son of Man came to serve,
whoever wants to be great
should become servant of all.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Tobit lives far from his land, in the city that is enemy par excellence, Nineveh. But despite being in the diaspora Tobit continues to be faithful to the Law of God, while the majority of the people of Israel lived a religious apostasy practising idolatrous cults contrary to the only cult, that of the temple in Jerusalem. Tobi remained rooted in the faith of his fathers, in which he had been educated by his grandmother Deborah (this memory of his grandmother in the transmission of the faith is significant) and faithful to Jerusalem: "...I was mindful of God with all my heart" (1:12). His memory runs back to the years of his life in his homeland. And he confesses his faithfulness to the Lord: "I, Tobit, walked in the ways of truth and righteousness all the days of my life." Following the great patriarchs, he had chosen a wife from his own kinship. At the forefront of Tobit's life is the law of the Lord, from which three priorities emerge, which we will find again in the course of the book: charity towards fellow countrymen, worship (emphasised by the importance of Jerusalem and the temple) and family values. He gives his son the name Tobias, meaning "the Lord is my good," even if his current condition seems to show otherwise. But this is precisely the teaching that rises from these pages: he who is faithful to the Lord will be accompanied in his days by the angel of God and will receive his reward. The episode narrated (2:1-8) relates the story that happened on the feast of Pentecost when Tobit invited Tobias to invite a poor man to the meal prepared. A very beautiful tradition. But the sequel tells of the violent death of a Jew left unburied in the square. And Tobit gets up from the table, leaves the meal and goes to the square to take care of the dead man until he is buried. Everyone mocks him. But this man's pity becomes exemplary in overcoming the violence and neglect that make every society cruel, then and now.
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
