Feast of the Black Christ of Esquipulas in Guatemala, venerated throughout all of Central America. Read more
Feast of the Black Christ of Esquipulas in Guatemala, venerated throughout all of Central America.
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
Romans 6, 12-14
That is why you must not allow sin to reign over your mortal bodies and make you obey their desires;
or give any parts of your bodies over to sin to be used as instruments of evil. Instead, give yourselves to God, as people brought to life from the dead, and give every part of your bodies to God to be instruments of uprightness;
and then sin will no longer have any power over you -- you are living not under law, but under grace.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Look down, O Lord, on your servants.
Be it unto us according to your word.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Paul affirms that sin no longer has complete dominion over the lives of the disciples. They are given sufficient strength and energy to oppose it. Thus the apostle urges his readers to choose between the slavery of earthly desires - which characterize the old self - and obedience to God and the Spirit - the characteristic of the new self that is born from a union with Jesus. Those who subject themselves to sin become its slaves. Those who instead choose to offer themselves to God obtain salvation by vigilantly and perseveringly keeping watch over all those things that now belong to the past. The life of the believer is always a struggle between these two forces, the same struggle that Jesus experienced when he fought evil until he defeated it. With his death and resurrection, Jesus deprived sin of its unstoppable power. Evil lost its primacy, but it still waits in ambush, as is written in the book of Genesis, “And if you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door” (4:7). When believers choose to obey the Spirit, their lives become a generous and joyous offering to the Lord and to their brothers and sisters. Jesus himself lived out his earthly existence as a complete offering to the Father for the salvation of all men and women. We, the disciples of the last hour, are called to follow him on the same road. It is the only way to be freed from the dominion of sin, which seeks in every way possible to subject us to its will. But the Lord, who knows our weakness, makes his grace for us abound.
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
