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Liturgy of the Sunday
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Liturgy of the Sunday

Eleventh Sunday of Ordinary Time Read more

Libretto DEL GIORNO
Liturgy of the Sunday
Sunday, June 13

Eleventh Sunday of Ordinary Time


First Reading

Ezekiel 17,22-24

"The Lord Yahweh says this: From the top of the tall cedar tree, from the highest branch I shall take a shoot and plant it myself on a high and lofty mountain. I shall plant it on the highest mountain in Israel. It will put out branches and bear fruit and grow into a noble cedar tree. Every kind of bird will live beneath it, every kind of winged creature will rest in the shade of its branches. And all the trees of the countryside will know that I, Yahweh, am the one who lays the tall tree low and raises the low tree high, who makes the green tree wither and makes the withered bear fruit. I, Yahweh, have spoken, and I will do it." '

Psalmody

Psalm 91

Antiphon

It is good to praise your name, O Most High.

It is good to give thanks to the Lord
to make music to your name, O Most High,

to proclaim your love in the morning
and your truth in the watches of the night,

on the ten-stringed lyre and the lute,
with the murmuring sound of the harp.

Your deeds, O Lord, have made me glad;
for the work of your hands I shout with joy.

O Lord, how great are your works!
How deep are your designs!

The foolish man cannot know this
and the fool cannot understand.

Though the wicked spring up like grass
and all who do evil thrive;

they are doomed to be eternally destroyed.
But you, Lord, are eternally on high.

See how your enemies perish;
all doers of evil are scattered.

To me you give the wild-ox's strength;
you anoint me with the purest oil.

My eyes looked in triumph on my foes;
my ears heard gladly of their fall.

The just will flourish like the palm-tree
and grow like a Lebanon cedar.

Planted in the house of the Lord
they will flourish in the courts of our God,

still bearing fruit when they are old,
still full of sap, still green,

to proclaim that the Lord is just.
In him, my rock, there is no wrong.

Second Reading

2 Corinthians 5,6-10

We are always full of confidence, then, realising that as long as we are at home in the body we are exiled from the Lord, guided by faith and not yet by sight; we are full of confidence, then, and long instead to be exiled from the body and to be at home with the Lord. And so whether at home or exiled, we make it our ambition to please him. For at the judgement seat of Christ we are all to be seen for what we are, so that each of us may receive what he has deserved in the body, matched to whatever he has done, good or bad.

Reading of the Gospel

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia

Yesterday I was buried with Christ,
today I rise with you who are risen.
With you I was crucified;
remember me, Lord, in your kingdom.

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia

Mark 4,26-34

He also said, 'This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the land. Night and day, while he sleeps, when he is awake, the seed is sprouting and growing; how, he does not know. Of its own accord the land produces first the shoot, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. And when the crop is ready, at once he starts to reap because the harvest has come.' He also said, 'What can we say that the kingdom is like? What parable can we find for it? It is like a mustard seed which, at the time of its sowing, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth. Yet once it is sown it grows into the biggest shrub of them all and puts out big branches so that the birds of the air can shelter in its shade.' Using many parables like these, he spoke the word to them, so far as they were capable of understanding it. He would not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything to his disciples when they were by themselves.

 

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia

Yesterday I was buried with Christ,
today I rise with you who are risen.
With you I was crucified;
remember me, Lord, in your kingdom.

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia

Homily

Jesus compares the Kingdom to the act of sowing: "The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground." When the sowing is finished, the farmer waits patiently and without too much concern until harvest time. The earth spontaneously ("automatically," automaté, says the Greek text) bears fruit at the right time. Jesus does not speak of the work of the farmer, but of the "work" that the seed does, by its internal energy, from the time of sowing until the maturity of the plant. This is all with no intervention of the farmer. With this image Jesus seems to desire to comfort his listeners. Those who study the text think that maybe we should think of the Christian community that Mark was addressing, the community in Rome that was living in very difficult times, even of persecution. Those first believers were wondering where the power of the Gospel was, and why evil seemed to win over everything. Did Jesus die in vain? This and many other questions led to sad resignation. We too can understand this passage perhaps in this perspective even today. It is easy to give up and wander: "Where are the kingdom of God and His power?" Jesus with his parables wants to tell us that the Kingdom of God is already at work.
Obviously, Jesus does not want to praise passivity and even less favour sleep and laziness. The Lord does not abandon his disciples to the power of evil. He accompanies them while they preach the Gospel along the streets of the world till the end of days when all will be summed up in Christ Jesus.
With the parable of the mustard seed, Jesus wants to show the style of the Kingdom, the way it becomes true. And Jesus insists on the smallness of the seed. You do not do great things because you are powerful. In the Kingdom of God the opposite happens: "Whoever wants to be the first among you, will be the slave of all," says Jesus. In short, whoever becomes small and humble becomes a shrub as tall as three meters that can accommodate even the birds in the sky. Already the prophet Ezekiel, while he was in exile in Babylon, foretold that a fragile branch, like the tip of the cedar tree, would become a robust and refreshing tree: "I myself will take a sprig from the lofty top of a cedar; I will set it out. I will break off a tender one from the topmost of its young twigs; I myself will plant it on a high and lofty mountain. On the mountain height of Israel I will plant it, in order that it may produce boughs and bear fruit, and become a noble cedar" (Ez 17:22-23).
The Kingdom of God grows like the little mustard seed, like the little cedar top: they do not impose themselves by their outward power, it is the Lord who makes them grow. And love is the sap that sustains them. There where the poor are filled, the afflicted comforted, the foreigners welcomed, the sick healed, the lonely consoled, those in prison visited and enemies loved, there the Kingdom of the Lord is at work.

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