EVERYDAY PRAYER

Memory of the Mother of the Lord
Word of god every day

Memory of the Mother of the Lord

Feast of Mary of Mount Carmel. Read more

Libretto DEL GIORNO
Memory of the Mother of the Lord
Thursday, July 16

Feast of Mary of Mount Carmel.


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

Isaiah 26,7-9.12.16-19

The path of the Upright One is honesty; you smooth the honest way of the upright. Following the path of your judgements, Yahweh, we set our hopes in you, your name, your memory are all our soul desires. At night my soul longs for you and my spirit within me seeks you out; for when your judgements appear on earth the inhabitants of the world learn what saving justice is. Yahweh, you will grant us peace, having completed all our undertakings for us. Yahweh, in distress they had recourse to you, they expended themselves in prayer, since your punishment was on them. As a pregnant woman near her time of delivery writhes and cries out in her pangs, so have we been, Yahweh, in your eyes: we have been pregnant, we have writhed, but we have given birth only to wind: we have not given salvation to the earth, no inhabitants for the world have been brought to birth. Your dead will come back to life, your corpses will rise again. Wake up and sing, you dwellers in the dust, for your dew will be a radiant dew, but the earth will give birth to the shades.

 

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia

Look down, O Lord, on your servants.
Be it unto us according to your word.

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia

This passage belongs to the section of the Book of Isaiah known as "the Apocalypse of Isaiah" (chapters 24-27).We can read this passage as the prophet's invitation to trust totally in the Lord who will help us read history, through his eyes and learn from it. Abandonment in God is revealed mostly in turning to Him in the moments of test and suffering - like a woman during her delivery - sure that He will help us. Help can come only from on High and life only from God. The righteous person knows that any of his or her efforts is futile without the help that comes from on high: "We have won no victories on earth, and no one is born to inhabit the world." The awareness of our weakness does not lead to resignation or pessimism. The righteous person knows that only the Lord can wake people back to life. That is why he never stops searching for the Lord in the midst of pain and tribulation, knowing that God is like a father who never abandons his children. Amidst the tragedy of a time without peace - as our world today - we need to look for God once again and let His word shed light on the lives of men and women. Too often because of pain we close in on ourselves and think that the Lord is far from us and our concerns. In truth God does not scorn our suffering; He does not let even one drop of the pain of this world, of the suffering of the poor, fall into the void. Rather He understands their anxiety and their pain and quickly comes to their aid. Let us join in the prayer of the prophet, which is the best and most true response to the world's suffering

WORD OF GOD EVERY DAY: THE CALENDAR

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!

WORD OF GOD EVERY DAY: THE CALENDAR