Memorial of Saint Scholastica (+547ca), sister of Saint Benedict. With her we remember all women hermits and nuns and all the women who follow the Lord. Read more
Memorial of Saint Scholastica (+547ca), sister of Saint Benedict. With her we remember all women hermits and nuns and all the women who follow the Lord.
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
Genesis 1,1-19
In the beginning God created heaven and earth. Now the earth was a formless void, there was darkness over the deep, with a divine wind sweeping over the waters. God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light. God saw that light was good, and God divided light from darkness. God called light 'day', and darkness he called 'night'. Evening came and morning came: the first day. God said, 'Let there be a vault through the middle of the waters to divide the waters in two.' And so it was. God made the vault, and it divided the waters under the vault from the waters above the vault. God called the vault 'heaven'. Evening came and morning came: the second day. God said, 'Let the waters under heaven come together into a single mass, and let dry land appear.' And so it was. God called the dry land 'earth' and the mass of waters 'seas', and God saw that it was good. God said, 'Let the earth produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants, and fruit trees on earth, bearing fruit with their seed inside, each corresponding to its own species.' And so it was. The earth produced vegetation: the various kinds of seed-bearing plants and the fruit trees with seed inside, each corresponding to its own species. God saw that it was good. Evening came and morning came: the third day. God said, 'Let there be lights in the vault of heaven to divide day from night, and let them indicate festivals, days and years. Let them be lights in the vault of heaven to shine on the earth.' And so it was. God made the two great lights: the greater light to govern the day, the smaller light to govern the night, and the stars. God set them in the vault of heaven to shine on the earth, to govern the day and the night and to divide light from darkness. God saw that it was good. Evening came and morning came: the fourth day.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
The Son of Man came to serve,
whoever wants to be great
should become servant of all.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Today we start reading the book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible. The liturgy of the Church reproposes Israel's thinking about creation and humanity in the first eleven chapters. Genesis was not the first book to be written; it came about after the period of exile in Babylon, when Israel started a deep reflection on their past to find an explanation for their existence as a people. While they pondered, they also found answers to the numerous questions about the meaning of creation, of life, of the existence of evil in human life, death and still more questions. The narration opens by showing the power of the Word: God creates with his word. God speaks and the world exists. This passage talks about the fourth day when the sun, moon and stars were created in order to bring "light" in the heavenly firmament; so that they may "be for signs and for seasons and for days and years." The passage marks the mid-point in the seven days of creation. Indeed, even though light was created on the first day, only on the fourth that it starts to exist and have a meaning for creation. Even if on one hand it is true that light and darkness serve to distinguish day from night, the author wants to underline that they were created to regulate time for men and women so that they welcome God's rhythm, that is liturgical feast days. Without feasts - as we will see more clearly in the Sabbath, the "seventh day" - creation does not reach its full completion. There is a huge difference between the clock time and "God's time" as it is already clear in this passage, Human being can lord over everything, but time is not totally theirs. In a society like ours that is losing the sense of a feast day, the creation story reminds us not to put our work and activity at the centre of everything. Welcoming time for God in our day is critical for us and for our society in order to avoid abuses, violence, and any kind of oppression. God's time saves humanity's time.
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
