EVERYDAY PRAYER

Memory of the Mother of the Lord
Word of god every day
Libretto DEL GIORNO
Memory of the Mother of the Lord


Reading of the Word of God

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia

The Spirit of the Lord is upon you.
The child you shall bear will be holy.

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia

Acts 7,1-57

The high priest asked, 'Is this true?'

He replied, 'My brothers, my fathers, listen to what I have to say. The God of glory appeared to our ancestor Abraham, while he was in Mesopotamia before settling in Haran,

and said to him, "Leave your country, your kindred and your father's house for this country which I shall show you."

So he left Chaldaea and settled in Haran; and after his father died God made him leave that place and come to this land where you are living today.

God did not give him any property in this land or even a foothold, yet he promised to give it to him and after him to his descendants, childless though he was.

The actual words God used when he spoke to him are that his descendants would be exiles in a land not their own, where they would be enslaved and oppressed for four hundred years.

"But I will bring judgement on the nation that enslaves them," God said, "and after this they will leave, and worship me in this place."

Then he made the covenant of circumcision with him: and so when his son Isaac was born Abraham circumcised him on the eighth day; similarly Isaac circumcised Jacob, and Jacob the twelve patriarchs.

'The patriarchs were jealous of Joseph and sold him into slavery in Egypt. But God was with him,

and rescued him from all his miseries by making him so wise that he won the favour of Pharaoh king of Egypt, who made him governor of Egypt and put him in charge of his household.

Then a famine set in that caused much suffering throughout Egypt and Canaan, and our ancestors could find nothing to eat.

When Jacob heard that there were supplies in Egypt, he sent our ancestors there on a first visit;

and on the second Joseph made himself known to his brothers, and Pharaoh came to know his origin.

Joseph then sent for his father Jacob and his whole family, a total of seventy-five people.

Jacob went down into Egypt and after he and our ancestors had died there,

their bodies were brought back to Shechem and buried in the tomb that Abraham had bought for money from the sons of Hamor, the father of Shechem.

'As the time drew near for God to fulfil the promise he had solemnly made to Abraham, our nation in Egypt became very powerful and numerous,

there came to power in Egypt a new king who had never heard of Joseph.

He took precautions and wore down our race, forcing our ancestors to expose their babies rather than letting them live.

It was at this time that Moses was born, a fine child before God. He was looked after for three months in his father's house,

and after he had been exposed, Pharaoh's daughter adopted him and brought him up like a son.

So Moses was taught all the wisdom of the Egyptians and became a man with power both in his speech and in his actions.

'At the age of forty he decided to visit his kinsmen, the Israelites.

When he saw one of them being ill-treated he went to his defence and rescued the man by killing the Egyptian.

He thought his brothers would realise that through him God would liberate them, but they did not.

The next day, when he came across some of them fighting, he tried to reconcile them, and said, "Friends, you are brothers; why are you hurting each other?"

But the man who was attacking his kinsman pushed him aside, saying, "And who appointed you to be prince over us and judge?

Do you intend to kill me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday?"

Moses fled when he heard this and he went to dwell in the land of Midian, where he fathered two sons.

'When forty years were fulfilled, in the desert near Mount Sinai, an angel appeared to him in a flame blazing from a bush that was on fire.

Moses was amazed by what he saw. As he went nearer to look at it, the voice of the Lord was heard,

"I am the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob." Moses trembled and was afraid to look.

The Lord said to him, "Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.

I have seen the misery of my people in Egypt, I have heard them crying for help, and I have come down to rescue them. So come here; I am sending you into Egypt."

'It was the same Moses that they had disowned when they said, "Who appointed you to be our leader and judge?" whom God sent to be both leader and redeemer through the angel who had appeared to him in the bush.

It was this man who led them out, after performing miracles and signs in Egypt and at the Red Sea and in the desert for forty years.

It was this Moses who told the sons of Israel, "From among your own brothers God will raise up a prophet like me."

When they held the assembly in the desert it was he who was with our ancestors and the angel who had spoken to him on Mount Sinai; it was he who was entrusted with words of life to hand on to us.

This is the man that our ancestors refused to listen to; they pushed him aside, went back to Egypt in their thoughts,

and said to Aaron, "Make us a god to go at our head; for that Moses, the man who brought us here from Egypt, we do not know what has become of him."

It was then that they made the statue of a calf and offered sacrifice to the idol. They were perfectly happy with something they had made for themselves.

God turned away from them and abandoned them to the worship of the army of heaven, as scripture says in the book of the prophets: Did you bring me sacrifices and oblations those forty years in the desert, House of Israel?

No, you carried the tent of Moloch on your shoulders and the star of the god Rephan, the idols you made for yourselves to adore, and so now I am about to drive you into captivity beyond Babylon.

'While they were in the desert our ancestors possessed the Tent of Testimony that had been constructed according to the instructions God gave Moses, telling him to work to the design he had been shown.

It was handed down from one ancestor of ours to another until Joshua brought it into the country that had belonged to the nations which were driven out by God before us. Here it stayed until the time of David.

He won God's favour and asked permission to find a dwelling for the House of Jacob,

though it was Solomon who actually built a house for God.

Even so the Most High does not live in a house that human hands have built: for as the prophet says:

With heaven my throne and earth my footstool, what house could you build me, says the Lord, what place for me to rest,

when all these things were made by me?

'You stubborn people, with uncircumcised hearts and ears. You are always resisting the Holy Spirit, just as your ancestors used to do.

Can you name a single prophet your ancestors never persecuted? They killed those who foretold the coming of the Upright One, and now you have become his betrayers, his murderers.

In spite of being given the Law through angels, you have not kept it.'

They were infuriated when they heard this, and ground their teeth at him.

But Stephen, filled with the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at God's right hand.

'Look! I can see heaven thrown open,' he said, 'and the Son of man standing at the right hand of God.'

All the members of the council shouted out and stopped their ears with their hands; then they made a concerted rush at him,

 

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia

Look down, O Lord, on your servants.
Be it unto us according to your word.

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia

Stephen makes an authoritative speech before the leaders of the people, the longest recorded by Acts. With his speech, Stephen wants to show the continuity of God’s intervention towards Israel till Jesus’ coming that fulfils the long liberation story. It started with the call of Abraham, and then with that of Isaac and Jacob; it continued with the story of Joseph, abandoned by his brothers and the call of Moses, chosen by God to free his people from slavery in Egypt and lead them to the promised land. In this long catechesis, Stephen stops to point out the Israelites’ repeated disobedience to the Lord, who did not stop sending prophets so that his people would not renege the covenant with God. And yet, many of them were killed so that they would stop speaking. The building of the temple meant the stable presence of the Lord among his people. It also meant, in fact, the future realities that had become true in Jesus Christ. The entire story of salvation that God fulfilled in Israel found its apex and full realization in Jesus.
At this point, Stephen interrupts his historical account and directly accuses his audience of not having recognized the "Righteous One," Jesus, and he says: "You have become his betrayers and murderers. You are the ones who received the law as ordained by angels, and yet you have not kept it." At this point, Stephen almost withdrew from the hall and from the people there, and he described aloud the vision that he was contemplating in that moment: "I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God." The Sanhedrin rejects these words categorically as soon as they heard them. "They became enraged and ground their teeth at Stephen," the author writes. Stephen’s vision was a scandal to the power of that leading group. And yet, all Stephen saw was Jesus in the fullness of his resurrection. Only the Lord Jesus, no one else, is the Saviour we are all called to contemplate. There are not plans or human structures, even if they are religious, that can save the world’s life and our lives. This uniqueness of Christ jeopardized the power of the Sanhedrin. In truth, the uniqueness of Jesus’ lordship over the lives of people endangers every human power. This is why Jesus has always raised an opposition: he breaks all roots of pride and mystification starting from those hiding in human heart. It is the sense of Christian conversion: we need to welcome the Lord Jesus, and not ourselves, as the Lord of our lives. Rejecting God’s lordship over our lives was what the members of Sanhedrin did when they caught Stephen, pulled him out of Jerusalem and killed him, like it happened to his 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