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
Revelation 3,1-6
'Write to the angel of the church in Sardis and say, "Here is the message of the one who holds the seven spirits of God and the seven stars: I know about your behaviour: how you are reputed to be alive and yet are dead.
Wake up; put some resolve into what little vigour you have left: it is dying fast. So far I have failed to notice anything in your behaviour that my God could possibly call perfect;
remember how you first heard the message. Hold on to that. Repent! If you do not wake up, I shall come to you like a thief, and you will have no idea at what hour I shall come upon you.
There are a few in Sardis, it is true, who have kept their robes unstained, and they are fit to come with me, dressed in white.
Anyone who proves victorious will be dressed, like these, in white robes; I shall not blot that name out of the book of life, but acknowledge it in the presence of my Father and his angels.
Let anyone who can hear, listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches."
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
The Son of Man came to serve,
whoever wants to be great
should become servant of all.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Jesus presents himself to the Church of Sardis in the fullness of his power as the one "who has the seven spirits of God." And he pronounces the harshest of judgments over it: it is a Church only in name. It deceives itself into thinking it is alive, but instead, it is about to die, drowning in indifference and coldness. If there is no love, if mercy is lacking, or if compassion is rare, any Christian community, even if it is well organized, is dead. It is not works that save but faith, that is, the total abandonment of our lives to the Lord’s will and our absolute dependence on Him and His Word. It is not by chance that the apostle reminds the community to remember the Word they received and to observe it faithfully. The Word of God needs to be listened to every day, just as a house needs its foundation every day. Jesus had repeated this fact on several occasions: "Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock" (7:24). Every community and every Christian generation is called to wake up from its torpor and to start listening vigorously to the Gospel and communicating it to the world in a language that it can understand. There are a few people to whom the apostle is speaking in particular, and he asks them to give life back to the community. These few can be understood as individual people, but they are also the part of each one of us that knows it can trust in the Lord. We all have to "dress in white," that is, to let ourselves be guided by the Gospel. We need it, and so does the world. Humanity seems to have been abandoned to its sad fate, with no more dreams or visions, left prey to the disintegrating designs of the Prince of evil. We could be experiencing something like the time of Samuel, described as being a period in which "the word of the Lord was rare in those days." Nonetheless, "the lamp of God had not yet gone out" (1 Sam 3:1-3). We are asked to stay awake and welcome the light of this lamp.
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
