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
John 17,1-11a
After saying this, Jesus raised his eyes to heaven and said: Father, the hour has come: glorify your Son so that your Son may glorify you; so that, just as you have given him power over all humanity, he may give eternal life to all those you have entrusted to him. And eternal life is this: to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I have glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. Now, Father, glorify me with that glory I had with you before ever the world existed. I have revealed your name to those whom you took from the world to give me. They were yours and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now at last they have recognised that all you have given me comes from you for I have given them the teaching you gave to me, and they have indeed accepted it and know for certain that I came from you, and have believed that it was you who sent me. It is for them that I pray. I am not praying for the world but for those you have given me, because they belong to you. All I have is yours and all you have is mine, and in them I am glorified. I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep those you have given me true to your name, so that they may be one like us.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Look down, O Lord, on your servants.
Be it unto us according to your word.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
"After Jesus had spoken these words, he looked up to heaven and said..." With this prayer Jesus intercedes for the unity of believers which becomes true as far as they participate in the one between the Father and the Son. The prayer begins with a name that is uniquely his: "Father." Jesus knows well that his "hour" has come, the high point of his mission. And he asks the "Father" to "glorify him," that is, to complete the mission the Father had entrust him to do: to make the disciples part of eternal life, that is "that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent." This was Jesus' work with the disciples he was about to leave. He wants to introduce them to the Father: "They were yours, and you gave them to me." The choice of the disciples was not made at random: before choosing them Jesus prayed all night. That group of disciples is the fruit of prayer. It is a gift from the Father. Jesus never ceases to repeat that he came to do the Father's will and not his own. This is the teaching he left to them: he has them like converted to the Father: "Now they know that everything you have given me is from you." They can become heirs to this revelation which in turn they will have to communicate to others to whom they are sent. It is the entrustment of his own mission and work to those disciples. He knows them well, one by one; he knows their merits and also their weaknesses, their faults, their narrow-mindedness. This is why Jesus prays to the Father for them: "I pray for them." We can imagine how Jesus' soul was full of thoughts and worries for tomorrow, for the future. It is a prayer - marked in particular by the invocation for unity - that Jesus made that evening, but which he continues to do today so that the Father may keep all his disciples in the unity of love and mission. In this is a "priestly" prayer: it is for the unity of all the believing people.
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!
