Reading of the Word of God
Praise to you, o Lord, King of eternal glory
You are a chosen race,
a royal priesthood, a holy nation,
a people acquired by God
to proclaim his marvellous works.
Praise to you, o Lord, King of eternal glory
1 Corinthians 3, 10-23
By the grace of God which was given to me, I laid the foundations like a trained master-builder, and someone else is building on them. Now each one must be careful how he does the building.
For nobody can lay down any other foundation than the one which is there already, namely Jesus Christ.
On this foundation, different people may build in gold, silver, jewels, wood, hay or straw
but each person's handiwork will be shown for what it is. The Day which dawns in fire will make it clear and the fire itself will test the quality of each person's work.
The one whose work stands up to it will be given his wages;
the one whose work is burnt down will suffer the loss of it, though he himself will be saved; he will be saved as someone might expect to be saved from a fire.
Do you not realise that you are a temple of God with the Spirit of God living in you?
If anybody should destroy the temple of God, God will destroy that person, because God's temple is holy; and you are that temple.
There is no room for self-delusion. Any one of you who thinks he is wise by worldly standards must learn to be a fool in order to be really wise.
For the wisdom of the world is folly to God. As scripture says: He traps the crafty in the snare of their own cunning
and again: The Lord knows the plans of the wise and how insipid they are.
So there is to be no boasting about human beings: everything belongs to you,
whether it is Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, the world, life or death, the present or the future -- all belong to you;
but you belong to Christ and Christ belongs to God.
Praise to you, o Lord, King of eternal glory
You will be holy,
because I am holy, thus says the Lord.
Praise to you, o Lord, King of eternal glory
Paul reminds the Corinthians of the uniqueness and the unrepeatable nature of the apostolic foundation on which the community was built: Jesus Christ. Paul, a man from the city and not the country, uses the image of the construction of a house, which connects directly to the image Jesus uses at the end of the Sermon on the Mount: the house founded on the rock of the Word of God, which stands up to wind, rain, and flood. Everyone builds his or her life, whether personal or communal, on such a foundation. The material may differ: there are as many pastoral methods as there are ways to grow, but only if we build up the interior person - only if we build a community based on the Gospel - will we be able to stand up to the fire of history and not immediately burn like straw. And we are not talking about just any building: it is “God’s temple.” This building needs to be constructed according to true wisdom, the wisdom of the Gospel, which the world does not recognize and which, in any case, it constantly tries to impede and defeat. It is easy for the disciples to let themselves be attracted by the world’s mentality, which, in truth, falls prey to many illusory and false idols. Paul warns the Corinthians, “Do not deceive yourselves.” Everyone is asked to be humble and to take responsibility. But humility does not mean keeping ourselves separated from others and cultivating our laziness. On the contrary: we should boast, but only in the Lord; we should not carve out our own space, but feel responsible for the entire body of Christ, the entire community. Everything belongs to the disciple because he or she belongs to Christ.
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
