Reading of the Word of God
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
You are a chosen race,
a royal priesthood, a holy nation,
a people acquired by God
to proclaim his marvellous works.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
John 17, 11b-19
While I was with them, I kept those you had given me true to your name. I have watched over them and not one is lost except one who was destined to be lost, and this was to fulfil the scriptures.
But now I am coming to you and I say these things in the world to share my joy with them to the full.
I passed your word on to them, and the world hated them, because they belong to the world no more than I belong to the world.
I am not asking you to remove them from the world, but to protect them from the Evil One.
They do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world.
Consecrate them in the truth; your word is truth.
As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world,
and for their sake I consecrate myself so that they too may be consecrated in truth.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
You will be holy,
because I am holy, thus says the Lord.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Jesus has just prayed to the Father to protect his disciples. Until now he had been the one to gather them - he called them one by one - teach them, correct them, defend them, and lead them on the path to salvation. He had preserved all of them except one, Judah, who had preferred to follow his own plans and distanced himself from those of Jesus. But the eleven were about to be left alone, without his physical presence. And Jesus knows that they are about to face difficult trials. That is why he is concerned for them. Will they be able to withstand the assaults of the evil one who will try everything to pull them away from him and from the Gospel? He knows that any division among them would leave them an easy prey for the evil one. And so he prays, “Protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.” The unity between the Father and Son becomes not only the measure of the disciples’ authenticity, but also the rationale for the Christian vocation. Salvation is the communion of all with the Father and the Son. And it is in communion that we find the fullness of joy, as Jesus himself says, “so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves.” The disciples’ joy is not an easy and predictable optimism, but the commitment to overcome every division to create communion among all. This work does not simply come from our good will, but from listening to the Word of God, which pushes each of us to abandon our selfishness and destroy all enmity in order to create a more brotherly world, with greater solidarity. The believer’s work clashes with the individualistic and selfish mentality of this world. And this clash is inevitable. It is a struggle that begins in the heart, as we each try to uproot our selfish instincts, and continues in society. Jesus does not pray for his disciples to be taken out of the world; that would be the very negation of the Gospel. Rather, Christians are called to be a leaven of the brotherhood in the world. This is their vocation: to transform the world and make it more and more a world of brotherly love and affection. Jesus prays along these lines: “As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.” There is a common thread that ties the heart of the Trinity - when the Son said to the Father, “Here I am, send me” - to the way Jesus sends the disciples of every age into the world to continue God’s own work.
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
