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
Judges 6, 11-24a
The Angel of Yahweh came and sat under the terebinth at Ophrah which belonged to Joash of Abiezer. Gideon his son was threshing wheat inside the wine-press, to keep it hidden from Midian,
and the Angel of Yahweh appeared to him and said, 'Yahweh is with you, valiant warrior!'
Gideon replied, 'Excuse me, my lord, but if Yahweh is with us, why is all this happening to us? And where are all his miracles which our ancestors used to tell us about when they said, "Did not Yahweh bring us out of Egypt?" But now Yahweh has deserted us; he has abandoned us to Midian.'
At this, Yahweh turned to him and said, 'Go in this strength of yours, and you will rescue Israel from the power of Midian. Am I not sending you myself?'
Gideon replied, 'Forgive me, my lord, but how can I deliver Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh and I am the least important of my father's family.'
Yahweh replied, 'I shall be with you and you will crush Midian as though it were one man.'
Gideon said, 'If I have found favour in your sight, give me a sign that you are speaking to me.
Please do not go away from here until I come back to you, bringing you my offering and laying it before you.' And he replied, 'I shall stay until you come back.'
Gideon went away, he prepared a young goat and from an ephah of flour he made unleavened cakes. He put the meat into a basket and the broth into a pot, then brought it all to him under the terebinth. As he approached,
the Angel of Yahweh said to him, 'Take the meat and unleavened cakes, put them on this rock and pour the broth over them.' Gideon did so.
The Angel of Yahweh then stretched out the tip of the staff which he was carrying, and touched the meat and unleavened cakes. Fire sprang from the rock and consumed the meat and unleavened cakes, and the Angel of Yahweh vanished before his eyes.
Gideon then knew that this was the Angel of Yahweh, and he said, 'Alas, my Lord Yahweh! Now I have seen the Angel of Yahweh face to face!'
Yahweh answered, 'Peace be with you; have no fear; you will not die.'
Gideon built an altar there to Yahweh and called it Yahweh-Peace. This altar stands in our own day at Ophrah of Abiezer.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Look down, O Lord, on your servants.
Be it unto us according to your word.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
The story of Deborah, the prophetess and judge, immediately precedes the cycle of Gideon, which takes up three chapters. The story opens by recounting the slavery under the yoke of the Midianites who force the Israelites to work for them. At the end of the work, in fact, they seize their entire crop. Gideon, however, tries to trick them by keeping the harvest. Meanwhile Israel did not cease to pray to the Lord that they may once again be freed from slavery. The Lord sees the suffering of his people, he hears their prayer and decides to intervene. The Lord then reveals himself to Gideon while he is working. Encounters with God do not take place outside our lives or personal histories. God presents himself in the guise of an angel who speaks directly to Gideon, as he did with Abraham and Moses. The Lord reveals himself always as a word. Scripture never describes God’s shape because the first thing he shows of himself is His word. Even to Gideon the first encounter is with a word. The first words - as it usually happens - are a greeting: “The Lord is with you.” Gideon’s response to this greeting is plural: “But sir, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us?” For Gideon it was clear that the call of the Lord is never individual, it is for all the people which he represents at that moment. Gideon is not worried for himself or for his personal future, but for the entire people of Israel. His answer is also a cry, a lament and a question. We could also ask ourselves: if it is true that God loves us, that he prefers the poor, then why is there so much injustice, pain and misery? How many times this question has come to our lips. Truly, God hears and answers, although in a different way from what we want. And anyway he does not waste time offering theoretical explanations. The Lord responds by choosing the same Gideon and sending him to win the same evil he complains about, “Go in this might of yours and deliver Israel from the hand of Midian.” Gideon is scared by this answer. How can he, the youngest of a family among the poorest, fight an enemy as powerful as the Midianites? He argues: “But sir, how can I deliver Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family.” Maybe in the answer of Gideon there is the fear and laziness for a task that appears impossible. But nothing is impossible with God. The Lord has different criteria than the human ones: he chooses what the world despises - and often believers have the same idea - to win over the powerful. It is a kind of law that fills the entire Bible. The strength of Gideon is in the Lord himself: “I will be with you, and you shall strike down the Midianites.” Gideon began to these words seriously. But he still wants to continue the dialogue with God to be sure that he is the one talking to him. We could say he wants to “see” God with his own eyes. And he “sees” in the context of hospitality. Gideon, as a liturgical gesture, offers his guest some food, but it is the same guest who touches it and makes it holy. And then the angel of the Lord vanished from his eyes. It looks like an anticipation of the meeting of Emmaus. From the very beginning of the history of salvation, hospitality and welcome appear as the place of encounter with God. Jesus says, “I was hungry ... I was a stranger and you welcomed me” (Mt 25:31-46). And the Letter to the Hebrews points out: “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers; for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it “(13:2).
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
