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
Psalm 8,2.5-9
1 O Lord, our Sovereign,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
4 what are human beings that you are mindful of them,
mortals that you care for them?
5 Yet you have made them a little lower than God,
and crowned them with glory and honour.
6 You have given them dominion over the works of your hands;
you have put all things under their feet,
7 all sheep and oxen,
and also the beasts of the field,
8 the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea,
whatever passes along the paths of the seas.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Look down, O Lord, on your servants.
Be it unto us according to your word.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
“O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth.” This exclamation that opens and closes Psalm 8 conveys the psalmist’s amazement for the human creature: “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, what are human beings that you are mindful of them?” (v. 5). What are human beings? It is a simple question that each one of us must ask him or herself not only in front of the immensity of creation, but especially because of the greatness of the Creator. But can we also read it as a prayer, an invocation directed to God? Only the Lord, in effect, can give reason to the greatness of humanity. None of us is capable of addressing the profound mystery of our existence. Human beings are not the masters of themselves and are marked with radical fragility. To know who we are we have to lift our gaze up to God. Only in God do we understand our true dignity, the dignity of each human being: “Yet you have made him little less than a god, crowned him with glory and honour” (v. 6). The author of the Letter to the Hebrews applies this psalm to Jesus, the perfect man, “crowned with glory and honour because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone” (Heb 2:9). Contemplating the firmament, the psalmist becomes aware that we are but small creatures, and yet we are the object of God’s care and mindfulness. Human life depends upon God’s mindfulness in which human fragility finds its majesty. The psalmist looks at God’s mightiness, the firm point of our faith. The human person, even when measured only against the expanse of the heavens and history, is but an insignificant thing, and it takes next to nothing for a person to fall into illness and death. And yet, the psalmist sings, God is mindful of him, and “you have put all things under their feet” (v. 6b). The psalmist employs two terms to signify the human person, enosh and ben adam. Enosh means the transient man, apparently insignificant, who in the face of the earth’s immensity and time’s length seems to vanish into nothingness: “As for mortals, their days are like grass” (Ps 103:15). Ben adam means “son of man”, that is, any person, a person who comes from the earth (adama). And yet it is to this ben adam that God has given the strength to love all as brothers and sisters. There is a radical unity that binds all men and women: they are children of God and so, brothers and sisters. The fact that God is our father is the source of the greatness of all and of each one.
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
