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

John 17, 1-11

After saying this, Jesus raised his eyes to heaven and said: Father, the hour has come: glorify your Son so that your Son may glorify you;

so that, just as you have given him power over all humanity, he may give eternal life to all those you have entrusted to him.

And eternal life is this: to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

I have glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do.

Now, Father, glorify me with that glory I had with you before ever the world existed.

I have revealed your name to those whom you took from the world to give me. They were yours and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word.

Now at last they have recognised that all you have given me comes from you

for I have given them the teaching you gave to me, and they have indeed accepted it and know for certain that I came from you, and have believed that it was you who sent me.

It is for them that I pray. I am not praying for the world but for those you have given me, because they belong to you.

All I have is yours and all you have is mine, and in them I am glorified.

I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep those you have given me true to your name, so that they may be one like us.

 

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia

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

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia

The Gospel takes us back to the upper room. Once the dinner is over, before going out to the Garden of Olive Trees, Jesus prays a long prayer that seems to conclude the "spiritual testament" that he wants to entrust to his disciples. Jesus lifts his eyes towards the Father of heaven. Till then, He had been speaking to the disciples; now the moment had come for him to speak directly to God. And he begins with a name that is uniquely his: "Father." He had already used this name twice before: once just before the resurrection of Lazarus and a second time when the two Greeks were introduced to him. Now his "hour" has come, the moment for which he came to earth. And he asks the "Father" to "glorify him", that is, to complete the mission for which the Father had sent him among men and women. He then presents to the Father the disciples whom he had chosen, loved, and taken care of, making them friends and heirs of the very love that exists between Himself and the Father. This was his "work," the commitment the Father entrusted him, that is to gather those disciples and communicate to them the Father’s love and allow them to enter the eternal life: "And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent." That work is to be entrusted to them and to all disciples who will follow from generation to generation, including us. Jesus knows them well and knows how weak they are. This is why he prays to the Father to protect them: "I am asking on their behalf." We too are included in Jesus’ prayer. Jesus knows that evil will try to tear them from his hands in every way, as the devil and his servants did with him. Jesus asks the Father to keep them and he also indicates the way to be subtracted to the evil one: "so that they may be one, as we are one." The very same communion that there between the Father and the Son is the guarantee for the disciples to be able to oppose the evil one and continue the work of liberation that the Son started and that must be brought to completion.

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