Prayer for the sick

The prayer for the sick is held in the Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere.

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

Galatians 1,6-12

I am astonished that you are so promptly turning away from the one who called you in the grace of Christ and are going over to a different gospel- not that it is another gospel; except that there are trouble-makers among you who are seeking to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we ourselves or an angel from heaven preaches to you a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let God's curse be on him. I repeat again what we declared before: anyone who preaches to you a gospel other than the one you were first given is to be under God's curse. Whom am I trying to convince now, human beings or God? Am I trying to please human beings? If I were still doing that I should not be a servant of Christ. Now I want to make it quite clear to you, brothers, about the gospel that was preached by me, that it was no human message. It was not from any human being that I received it, and I was not taught it, but it came to me through a revelation of Jesus Christ.

 

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia

The Son of Man came to serve,
whoever wants to be great
should become servant of all.

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia

Paul writes to the "churches of Galatia" - the central region of present Turkey - by pointing out in a special way that his authority as an apostle. He writes because he is worried about the error in which they have fallen. Some bad teachers, in fact, had convinced them to pass to anther Gospel different from the one he had preached, namely, that salvation is given only by faith in Jesus, the only Saviour. Paul is firmly decided to preserve the integrity of the "Gospel of Christ." The apostle says that he himself is the first to obey what he received from Jesus. Therefore what the bad teachers want people to believe about him in order to discredit him, saying that he wants merely "human approval," is false. The apostle decisively claims to want only God's approval, precisely because he preaches only what he has received as a gift from Jesus. If it were not so, the apostle writes that he "would not be a servant of Christ." For Paul, Christ's envoys are called to serve him, that is, to administer the richness and novelty of faith in Christ as the only saviour. Those who do not accept faith in reality do not accept Jesus as their saviour. It is not a matter of mere doctrine, but of choosing to trust only in Jesus who saves. Being a "servant of Christ" means obeying him and fulfilling the task he entrusts to every disciple. For Paul, the task is above all "to communicate the Gospel," as he writes to the Corinthians: "If I proclaim the gospel, this gives me no ground for boasting, for an obligation is laid on me, and woe betide me if I do not proclaim the gospel!"