Today the Armenian Church remembers the massacre during the First World War in which more than one million Armenians were killed. Read more
Today the Armenian Church remembers the massacre during the First World War in which more than one million Armenians were killed.
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
Titus 3, 8-11
This is doctrine that you can rely on. I want you to be quite uncompromising in teaching all this, so that those who now believe in God may keep their minds constantly occupied in doing good works. All this is good, and useful for everybody.
But avoid foolish speculations, and those genealogies, and the quibbles and disputes about the Law -- they are useless and futile.
If someone disputes what you teach, then after a first and a second warning, have no more to do with him:
you will know that anyone of that sort is warped and is self-condemned as a sinner.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Look down, O Lord, on your servants.
Be it unto us according to your word.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
In these last instructions, Paul urges Titus to remind the believers of the greatness of the gift they have received from God. This awareness should drive them to "devote themselves to good works." The exemplarity of Christians is not based on a simple effort of goodwill, but on being Jesus’ disciples, that is, his imitators. Therefore their life is not only "excellent," that is, holy and good, but also "profitable to everyone." Through their behaviour, Christians make this world more beautiful and human. Because of this, the lives of Christians matter to the world. They are the source of a new humanism, a new way people can relate to one another, and a new way of life. The apostle has this perspective so close to his heart that he tells Titus to concentrate on it and not to get lost in unprofitable and useless things. Too often we give in to the temptation to multiply our commitments without any purpose or rule, squandering our days and especially risk living in an irrelevant and noisy superficiality. Paul puts Titus on guard against "stupid controversies," that is, abstract speculations and quarrels about ritual precepts. All of that is to be avoided. Only a truly evangelical life that reveals itself in good works is truly "profitable" for men and women (3:8). This is what we have to devote ourselves to. False doctrines, on the contrary, are worthless and even harmful. Titus - and every Christian - needs to hold the good of the community in his or her heart above all else. Those who let themselves be distracted from this attention, end up letting themselves be dominated by their instincts and crushed by them. In this way they are almost forced to persevere in their sin. They remain disobedient and exclude themselves from common life and therefore from salvation.
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
