Reading of the Word of God
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Whoever lives and believes in me
will never die.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Luke 20,27-40
Some Sadducees -- those who argue that there is no resurrection -- approached him and they put this question to him, 'Master, Moses prescribed for us, if a man's married brother dies childless, the man must marry the widow to raise up children for his brother. Well then, there were seven brothers; the first, having married a wife, died childless. The second and then the third married the widow. And the same with all seven, they died leaving no children. Finally the woman herself died. Now, at the resurrection, whose wife will she be, since she had been married to all seven?' Jesus replied, 'The children of this world take wives and husbands, but those who are judged worthy of a place in the other world and in the resurrection from the dead do not marry because they can no longer die, for they are the same as the angels, and being children of the resurrection they are children of God. And Moses himself implies that the dead rise again, in the passage about the bush where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. Now he is God, not of the dead, but of the living; for to him everyone is alive.' Some scribes then spoke up. They said, 'Well put, Master.' They did not dare to ask him any more questions.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
If you believe, you will see the glory of God,
thus says the Lord.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
The Sadducees do not believe in the resurrection, they are "realist" and "material" people who basically believe only in what they see and believe they can verify, frame, with a law. And they polemically pose a question to Jesus, the hypothetical "case" of a woman who, having been widowed, remarries according to the law, after her death whose wife will she be? These men read life with the eyes of the law, of the rule; they deny the resurrection, that is to say, they believe that death is the end of everything, and they believe that this can be easily demonstrated from the law and the rule of evidence. Not believing in the resurrection means not believing in hope, living in the resignation that nothing can change: how often does this idea of impossibility also become our law? When one does not believe in the resurrection, the law of evil and death always seems to prevail. Jesus does not surrender to this law, but responds with the realism of faith. The Sadducees believe the law but do not know how to look at life. They know the "cases" but cannot give answers. Well, Jesus responding to the Sadducees tells us the opposite: "Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage" (i.e. they live everything as a habit, and affections as a possession); "but" Jesus continues, "those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead... are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection." There is another possible world, there is a different world beyond that of our present. The resurrection is life that does not end, it is a window on eternity, where there is no longer human law to regulate relations between men and women, but only God's love, which is the love of a father towards his children. Too often we accept that we are only children of this world, of its absurd laws that separate, distinguish, exclude. Today, Jesus is asking us to begin to be children of the resurrection, and to live as "angels," sent into the world to care for our brothers and sisters, to build an "elsewhere" with respect to the world in which we live.
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!
