The prayer for peace is held in the Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere.
Feast of the Black Christ of Esquipulas in Guatemala, venerated throughout all of Central America.
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The prayer for peace is held in the Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere.
Feast of the Black Christ of Esquipulas in Guatemala, venerated throughout all of Central America.
Reading of the Word of God
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
This is the Gospel of the poor,
liberation for the imprisoned,
sight for the blind,
freedom for the oppressed.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Mark 2,18-22
John's disciples and the Pharisees were keeping a fast, when some people came to him and said to him, 'Why is it that John's disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not?' Jesus replied, 'Surely the bridegroom's attendants cannot fast while the bridegroom is still with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. But the time will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then, on that day, they will fast. No one sews a piece of unshrunken cloth on an old cloak; otherwise, the patch pulls away from it, the new from the old, and the tear gets worse. And nobody puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost and the skins too. No! New wine into fresh skins!'
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
The Son of Man came to serve,
whoever wants to be great
should become servant of all.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
The evangelist speaks of the disciples of John the Baptist and of the Pharisees who, as it always happens to those who consider themselves righteous, felt entitled to turn to Jesus to ask him the reason why his disciples were not observing the fast that, although not mandatory, elevated the spirit. Their criticism, in truth, is directed more to the teacher than the disciples. In parabolic language, Jesus answers that it is not the external practices that make the heart pure and the life of people clean. The pure are those who welcome the Messiah as one welcomes the bridegroom. Jesus obviously intended for them to understand that he was the bridegroom who was coming. And when the groom's friends wait for him to celebrate they cannot fast. Fasting would be seen as inappropriate by the groom, who expects to be welcomed with a celebration, and certainly not by penitential fasting. However, he warns that even the friends of the bridegroom will go through difficult times, especially when the bridegroom will be taken away from them. In this manner, Jesus foretells, albeit covertly, his passion and his death. It is then that the moments of fasting, or rather of suffering, will come; and so indeed it has happened from then to the present day with the long line of disciples who have been persecuted because of their faith and resisted to the point of shedding their blood. With two images, Jesus makes it clear that the spirit of discipleship does not accord with the formal rigidity of religious and ascetic practices that do not change the heart. The old clothes and old wineskins indicate an external piety that does not change the heart or the behaviours. It is the Gospel that makes us new, not the external practices. How many mistakes we make when we entrust our lives to exteriority! The Gospel is the new wine that makes new hearts to receive it. The heart full of itself and of its works is an old wineskin incapable of grasping the newness of the Gospel, and the new cloth is the new mantle that is woven with the fabric of love, which has nothing to do with the old and tattered piece of cloth of one's egocentrism. The disciples understood that salvation is not in boasting about one's own works, even good ones such as fasting, but in loving Jesus above all else, as the bride loves her husband.
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
