Reading of the Word of God
Praise to you, o Lord, King of eternal glory
Whoever lives and believes in me
will never die.
Praise to you, o Lord, King of eternal glory
Micah 7,14-15.18-20
With shepherd's crook lead your people to pasture, the flock that is your heritage, living confined in a forest with meadow land all round. Let them graze in Bashan and Gilead as in the days of old! As in the days when you came out of Egypt, grant us to see wonders! What god can compare with you for pardoning guilt and for overlooking crime? He does not harbour anger for ever, since he delights in showing faithful love. Once more have pity on us, tread down our faults; throw all our sins to the bottom of the sea. Grant Jacob your faithfulness, and Abraham your faithful love, as you swore to our ancestors from the days of long ago.
Praise to you, o Lord, King of eternal glory
If you believe, you will see the glory of God,
thus says the Lord.
Praise to you, o Lord, King of eternal glory
The passage from Micah that we heard is taken from a true liturgy of hope, in which God and Israel speak to each other in a unique dialogue. First the prophet pleads with the Lord to intervene for his people and repeat the miracles of the Exodus: "As in the days when you came out of the land of Egypt, show us marvellous things" (v. 15). He tries to remind God why he is obliged to intervene. There is one underlying reason: God’s mercy. And Micah composed a very brief but intense hymn to mercy: "Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over the transgression of the remnant of your possession? He does not retain his anger forever, because he delights in showing clemency" (v. 16). Then, as if addressing the people, the prophet offers a short meditation meant to inspire hope: "He will again have compassion on us" (v. 19) assures the prophet. He presents how God exercises mercy with two powerful images: "He will tread our iniquities under foot" (v. 19), and then, addressing God, "You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea" (v. 19). The Lord will send our iniquities and our sins to the bottom of the sea. How can we not be moved by such great love - we can all conclude - and how can we not let ourselves be loved by a God who is ready not only to forget our sins, but destroy them? God forgives Israel’s sins because he committed himself to their "ancestors from the days of old." That is why he will once again reveal his faithfulness and his benevolence. And all of this will appear in its fullness when God sends His Son into the world in order to take the entire weight of our sins on his shoulders and destroy them once and for all on the cross. The face of Jesus is the face of the mercy that saves.
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
