Reading of the Word of God
Praise to you, o Lord, King of eternal glory
I am the good shepherd,
my sheep listen to my voice,
and they become
one flock and one fold.
.
Praise to you, o Lord, King of eternal glory
Exodus 32,7-14
Yahweh then said to Moses, 'Go down at once, for your people whom you brought here from Egypt have become corrupt. They have quickly left the way which I ordered them to follow. They have cast themselves a metal calf, worshipped it and offered sacrifice to it, shouting, "Israel, here is your God who brought you here from Egypt!" ' Yahweh then said to Moses, 'I know these people; I know how obstinate they are! So leave me now, so that my anger can blaze at them and I can put an end to them! I shall make a great nation out of you instead.' Moses tried to pacify Yahweh his God. 'Yahweh,' he said, 'why should your anger blaze at your people, whom you have brought out of Egypt by your great power and mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, "He brought them out with evil intention, to slaughter them in the mountains and wipe them off the face of the earth?" Give up your burning wrath; relent over this disaster intended for your people. Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to whom you swore by your very self and made this promise: "I shall make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven, and this whole country of which I have spoken, I shall give to your descendants, and it will be their heritage for ever." ' Yahweh then relented over the disaster which he had intended to inflict on his people.
Praise to you, o Lord, King of eternal glory
I give you a new commandment,
that you love one another.
Praise to you, o Lord, King of eternal glory
In the desert -- as in the difficult moments of life - it is easy to think that God is far away. The instinctive reaction is same as Israel's: to make one's own "god" which guides us and responds to our needs. It is almost paradoxical how much Israel is able to say in front of that golden calf: "There is your god, Israel, the one who has made you escape from the land of Egypt." Israel attributes freedom from slavery to an idol built by their own hands. We could say that it is unbelievable! But when the memory of what God has done in our lives is gone, everything becomes our own work. Only the memory of God's work in our lives makes possible a true response to the difficulties of life. Unfortunately focusing on ourselves makes us become "stiff-necked" men and women. We need then the intercession of a brother or sister, like Moses, who prays to the Lord for us. It is the ministry of love which becomes true in the Church when we pray for one another. In this prayer for the whole Church, for the whole Community, we perform a priestly service. Our common prayer rises toward the Lord, up to his heart, and even can convince him to turn back from his judgment of condemnation, as it happened this circumstance: "And the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people." Prayer is an extraordinary strength in the hands of believers, as Jesus reminded his disciples several times: "Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them" (Mt 18:19-20).
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!
