Pope: Liturgy is a personal and communal encounter with God

By Deborah Castellano Lubov

The sacred liturgy is a personal and communal encounter with God, Pope Francis marveled as he received professors and students of the Athenaeum University of Saint Pacian of Barcelona in the Vatican on Friday.

In his remarks, the Holy Father underscored the incredible value of the liturgy, and recalled his having declared this year ahead of the 2025 Jubilee of Hope as a Year of Prayer.

"It is important," the Pope stressed, "that in your studies, you reflect on the need to seek this union with the Lord, and on the means that He, through the Church, has given us to achieve it."

An encounter which belongs to all

"The liturgy also reminds us," he underscored, "that this encounter around God belongs to all."

The Pope went on to underline the importance of the connection between God and man in liturgy.

"Man is for the liturgy because he is for God; but a liturgy, without this union of man with God," he warned, "is an aberration." He gave an example: "an abherration, would be a liturgy enslaved to rubricism, which is not conducive to union with God."

In this context, the Holy Father called on those before him to always epitomize fraternal love and humility, and to embrace the Cross.

Being shaped by God

Moreover, the Pope stressed the need "to allow ourselves to be shaped by God and touching the open wound of the Lord in the members of his Mystical Body," before asking them "to work to make our daily liturgy alive, so that it may express, question, and nurture this relationship."

"In this way," the Holy Father concluded, "our communities will be tabernacles of God among men."