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
Jeremiah 30, 12-24
Yes, Yahweh says this: Your wound is incurable, your injury past healing.
There is no one to plead your cause; for an ulcer there are remedies, but for you no cure at all.
All your lovers have forgotten you, they look for you no more. Yes, I have struck you as an enemy strikes, with cruel punishment (because of your great guilt and countless sins).
Why cry out because of your wound? Your pain is incurable! Because of your great guilt and countless sins, I have treated you like this.
But all those who devoured you will be devoured, all your enemies, all, go into captivity, those who despoiled you will be despoiled, and all who pillaged you be pillaged.
For I shall restore you to health and heal your wounds, Yahweh declares, you who used to be called 'Outcast', 'Zion for whom no one cares'.
Yahweh says this: Look, I shall restore the tents of Jacob and take pity on his dwellings: the town will be rebuilt on its mound, the stronghold where it ought to stand.
From them will come thanksgiving and shouts of joy. I shall make them increase, they will not decrease; I shall make them honoured, no more to be humbled.
Their sons will be as once they were, their community fixed firmly before me, and I shall punish all their oppressors.
Their prince will be one of their own, their ruler come from their own people, and I shall permit him to approach me freely; for who, otherwise, would be so bold as to approach me, Yahweh demands?
You will be my people and I shall be your God.
Look, Yahweh's hurricane, his wrath, bursts out, a roaring hurricane, to burst on the heads of the wicked;
Yahweh's burning anger will not turn aside until he has performed, has carried out, what he has in mind. In the final days, you will understand this.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Look down, O Lord, on your servants.
Be it unto us according to your word.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
This oracle speaks first of wounded people and then of people who have been healed. At first it seems like Israel’s wounds are incurable, and that there is nothing that can heal the people because the evil they have committed is so great. They have been suffering for years, and remedies are now useless. Israel’s iniquity is so deep and its sins so great that they have gone beyond all measure. Yes, the people have chosen to abandon God, searching for other refuges that have been duly proven false: the gods of the other nations have become idols, because the people of Israel put them in the place of the One who had always been their saviour. Israel could have allowed the other nations to give honour to their ancestral gods, but these gods should never have been considered divinities equal to the Lord of the Universe, the One who made heaven and earth. As we read in the book of Jeremiah itself, “the prophets prophesied by Baal, and went after things that do not profit” (2:8). The wound is so grave because Israel’s sin touches the first commandment: “The Lord is our God, the Lord alone” (Dt 6:4). At this point, only the Lord himself could change history and heal his people, bringing them back from exile and beginning the reconstruction of their cities and houses. Only the Lord was capable of having compassion on the people and healing the wounds that were so deep that they seem incurable. The Lord’s compassion was the great medicine that healed the great wound of betrayal: the Lord “has raised up a mighty saviour for us in the house of his servant David” (Lk 1:69). Jeremiah’s prophecy is fulfilled in Jesus, the Messiah-King who comes out of the people, from the tribe of Judah and the family of David (v. 21). The disciples of Jesus are the people who belong to the Lord through a covenant of love: “You shall be my people, and I will be your God” (v. 22). The covenant with the Lord is the medicine that heals the wound of loneliness, and continuously listening to his Word is the daily balm that gives us strength on our way.
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
