The mass cannot be heard as if we were spectators

During a general audience on Wednesday, February 3, Pope Francis warned that the phrase “I will listen to the Mass” is incorrect because the Mass cannot be “only heard, as if we were only spectators.”

The mass cannot be ‘heard’ as if we are merely spectators of something slipping off without getting involved. Mass is always celebratedNot only of the priest who presides over it, but of all Christians who live in it. The center is Christ! Each of us, in the diversity of talents and services, we all share in his work, because he, Christ, is the hero of the liturgy, “the Pope noted.

The Holy Father continued his teaching series on prayer, so he thought about praying with the liturgy and stressed that “Life is called to worship GodBut this cannot happen without prayer, especially liturgical prayer. “

From this point of view, the Supreme Pontiff pointed out that “the liturgy, precisely because of its objective dimension, demands celebration with enthusiasm, so that the grace poured into the rite is not dispersed but rather reaches the experience of each one.”

In addition, the Holy Father realized that in the history of the Church there has been “on more than one occasion a temptation to an intimate Christian practice that does not recognize the spiritual significance of public liturgical rites” and added that this trend claimed “the supposed greater purity of a religion that does not depend on external ceremonies, which is considered a burden without Benefit or harmful. “

Nevertheless, the Pope referred to the Constitution of the Second Vatican Council board This “fully and organically affirms the importance of the divine liturgy for the lives of Christians, who find in it the objective mediation required by the fact that Jesus Christ is not an idea or a feeling, but a living personAnd his puzzle is a historical event. “

Christian prayer passes through concrete means: the Bible, the sacraments, the liturgical rites, the congregation. In the Christian life, the physical and material realms are not dispensed with, because this became in Jesus Christ the way of salvation. The Pope said: “We can say that we can pray with the body, so that the body enters the prayer.”

In this sense, the Holy Father cited the catechesis of the Catholic Church to emphasize that “the message of Christ and the Holy Spirit who, in the Church’s liturgy of the sacraments, declares, occurs and transmits the mystery of salvation, continues in the heart that prays.”

“The liturgy, in and of itself, is not only an automatic prayer, it is something more and more original: it is an act that completely establishes the Christian experience, and thus prayer as well. The liturgy is an event, it is an event, it is an presence, it is an encounter with Christ,” he added.

In this way, the Pope stressed that “Christ makes himself present in the Holy Spirit through the signs of the sacraments: from here we Christians derive the need to participate in the divine mysteries. Christianity without the liturgy is Christianity without ChristHe added, “Even in the most abstract rituals, such as those celebrated and celebrated by some Christians in places of imprisonment, or in a cache of a house during times of persecution, Christ is truly present and donates himself to the” believers. “

This thought may help us all: When I go to Mass on Sunday, I will pray in congregation, and I will pray with Christ present. When we go to celebrate baptism, for example, it is Christ who is baptizing. “No father, that’s an idea, it’s a way of saying it.” No, it is not a way to say, Christ is present and in the liturgy you pray with Christ who is beside you, “concluded the Pope.