Vatican City, Apr 15, 2012 / 15:12 pm
Holy Mass is more than a historical re-enactment, Pope Benedict XVI said on April 15, Divine Mercy Sunday.
“Christian worship is not just a commemoration of past events, or even a particular mystical, interior experience, but essentially an encounter with the Risen Lord,” he told pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square prior to the midday recitation of the Regina Coeli prayer.
For while Christ now “lives in the dimension of God, beyond space and time” he is still truly present in the midst of his creation as “he speaks to us in Scripture and breaks for us the bread of eternal life.”
Pope Benedict reflected upon Sunday’s Gospel reading in which Christ appears twice to his disciples after the Resurrection. In the Mass, the Pope said, we live what the same experience as the disciples did in “seeing Jesus at the same time as not recognizing him – touching his body, a real body, yet free from earthly ties.”