Remembrance of Saint Therese of Lisieux (†1897), a Carmelite nun with a deep sense of mission of the Church. Read more
Remembrance of Saint Therese of Lisieux (†1897), a Carmelite nun with a deep sense of mission of the Church.
Reading of the Word of God
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
I am the good shepherd,
my sheep listen to my voice,
and they become
one flock and one fold.
.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Job 19,21-27b
Pity me, pity me, my friends, since I have been struck by the hand of God. Must you persecute me just as God does, and give my body no peace? Will no one let my words be recorded, inscribed on some monument with iron chisel and engraving tool, cut into the rock for ever? I know that I have a living Defender and that he will rise up last, on the dust of the earth. After my awakening, he will set me close to him, and from my flesh I shall look on God. He whom I shall see will take my part: my eyes will be gazing on no stranger. My heart sinks within me.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
I give you a new commandment,
that you love one another.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Unlike his friends, who are unable to enter his heart, Job clearly understands the meaning of the words they address to him: "If indeed you magnify yourselves against me, and make my humiliation an argument against me." They do not know how or do not want to enter their friend's situation to understand its deep causes and take on some responsibility for it. They stay on the outside and simply repeat a doctrine. Job cannot stand his friend's continued preaching. He is not interested in their speeches. The only one he wants to talk to is the Lord, whom he continues to call out, without stop, but from whom he has still not received any answer. Job goes as far as to describe the Lord as an adversary, as someone who does not listen to the cry of the oppressed, someone who even blocks his way, who strips away his reputation, who takes away his hope, who rises in anger against him, and who takes away his friendship. But there is more in Job's life. Even his relatives, his friends, and his acquaintances have fled from him and have vanished. They are horrified by his situation. The desperate cry that rises from Job's lips helps us understand the situation of so many poor men and women who have been abandoned by everyone, scorned and threatened. For most people they do not even exist. But Job does not stop calling on the Lord, "Have pity on me, have pity on me, O you my friends, for the hand of God has touched me!" However Job is convinced that God has not completely abandoned him. God is not like men and women. This is why a prayer of full of suffering and faith rises from Job's lips: "For I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth...then in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold, and not another."
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
