Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Vatican City (Fides Service) - On the occasion of a Study Day on the theme: "Sunday Mass for the Sanctification of the Christian People", promoted by the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments to mark the anniversary of the Constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium, Pope Benedict XVI addressed a message to Cardinal Francis Arinze, prefect of the above mentioned Congregation.
“Sundays”, writes the Pope, “remain the fundamental seedbed and the primordial nucleus of the liturgical year; ... a fragment of time pervaded by eternity, because its dawn saw the Risen Christ enter victoriously into eternal life. Sunday is so to say a fragment of time permeated with eternity because it’s dawn saw the crucified Risen Lord enter victoriously into eternal life”
In the Resurrection creation and redemption are fulfilled. “In "the first day after the Sabbath", the women and then the disciples, meeting the Risen Lord, understood that it was "the Day made by the Lord ", " His" day, dies Domini” the message continues explaining that “from the beginning this was the stable element in the understanding of the mystery of Sunday”… "For the first Christians, participation in Sunday celebrations was the natural expression of their belonging to Christ, of their communion with His mystical Body, in joyous expectation of His glorious return."
The Holy Father continued: “ "Today," the Holy Father continues, "it is more than ever necessary to reiterate the sacred nature of the Lord's day and the need to participate in Sunday Mass. The cultural context in which we live, often marked by religious indifference and secularism that obscure the horizon of transcendence, must not cause us to forget that the People of God who came into being with the events of Easter must return [to those events] as an inexhaustible spring, in order to better understand ... their own identity and the reasons for their existence.”.
Sunday was the day chosen by Christ himself who rose on that day and appeared to the disciples on that day and then again a week later. Pope Benedict XVI stressed the need to deepen awareness of the importance of the Lord’s Day and the “centrality of the Eucharist, as the founding pillar of Sunday and all church life. Every Sunday celebration of the Eucharist sanctifies the Christian people, until the Sunday which will have no end, the day when God will encounter His creatures”. The Pope concluded “may this Study Day help people rediscover the Christian sense of Sunday in the ambit of pastoral care and in the life of every believer”. (S.L.) (Agenzia Fides 2/12/2006 - Righe 32, parole 419)
