Reading of the Word of God
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Glory to God in the highest
and peace on earth to the people he loves.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
1 John 4,7-10
My dear friends, let us love one another, since love is from God and everyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. Whoever fails to love does not know God, because God is love. This is the revelation of God's love for us, that God sent his only Son into the world that we might have life through him. Love consists in this: it is not we who loved God, but God loved us and sent his Son to expiate our sins.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
John once again writes, "Let us love one another." He repeats this idea three times in just a few verses: "love one another." And he gives the reason: "because love is from God." In fact, "Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God." On the contrary, "Whoever does not love does not know God." And John - with a claim never used anywhere else in the Bible - defines the very mystery of God: "God is love." Saint Augustine writes: "If nothing else had been written in praise of love in the rest of the letter, or better in the rest of Scripture, and we had heard from the mouth of the Holy Spirit just this assertion, God is love’, we would not have to look for anything else." This is not a theoretical statement, no matter how lofty it is. For John, this claim comes from observing God’s activity in human history, which reaches its culmination in Jesus Christ. By affirming, "God is love," John sums up what the whole history of salvation testifies: namely, that God chooses, forgives, and remains faithful to his people, despite their betrayals. Moreover, in Jesus Christ this love reaches the limit, the furthest boundaries of the imaginable, when he gives his life for the salvation of humanity. This is why John continues, "God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him." How then could someone not understand this impassioned argument, meant to convince the hearts and minds of believers? He writes, "Since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another." The love of which John is speaking is so sublime that not only can we not live it, we cannot even conceptualize it. It is so sublime and far from the way people usually feel. We can only understand this love because God himself revealed it to us and testified to it in many ways, up to its culmination in Jesus. John can insist to his disciples: "In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins." The love that is laid in the hearts of the disciples is not a romantic feeling; it is God’s own love, agape, as is written in the New Testament. The consequences of this are clear: those who do not love are far from God and do not know him, precisely because God is love. But those who welcome love abide in God and already know Him intimately.
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
