CONTEMPLATING THE FACE OF THE RISEN CHRIST

VATICAN CITY, APR 18, 2001 (VIS) - This week's Wednesday general audience was held in St. Peter's Square in the presence of 20,000 pilgrims from numerous countries around the world. The Holy Father's catechesis, given in Italian, with summaries in French, English, German, Spanish and Portuguese, focussed on "Contemplating the Face of the Risen Christ."

The Pope said that "today's audience is diffused with the luminous joy of Easter, ... a profound and inextinguishable joy, founded on the gift given by the Risen Christ of the new and eternal covenant. ... It is a joy which lasts not only throughout the Easter octave, ... but for fifty days, right up to Pentecost."

"In this splendid framework of the light and happiness proper to Easter time," he went on, "today we wish to pause and reflect together on the face of the Risen One, resuming and putting into practice what I did not hesitate to indicate as the 'essential nucleus' of the great legacy left to us by the Jubilee of the Year 2000."

John Paul II remarked that "just as we contemplated the suffering face of Christ on Good Friday and Holy Saturday, now we turn our glance, filled with faith and grateful love, to the face of the Risen One."

He went on to say that "Christ reveals Himself to us today as he did to the disciples on the road to Emmaus: through the Scriptures and through His Body and Blood which he gives to us in the Eucharist. He asks us to bear witness to Him, by our words and by the example of our lives."

"Christ has many things to explain regarding His and our destiny," the Pope concluded. "Above all He reveals that every human life must go through His Cross to enter into glory. But Christ fulfills something more: He breaks for us the bread of sharing, offering this Eucharistic meal in which the Scriptures take on their full meaning and reveal the unique and shining traits of the face of the Redeemer."

In multi-lingual greetings after the catechesis, John Paul II greeted the newly ordained deacons of the Pontifical Irish College and the bishop and pilgrims from the diocese of Nanterre, France, who came to the Rome at the end of their diocesan synod. He also had special words for groups from Croatia, Slovakia, the Netherlands and Hungary.

AG;FACE; RISEN CHRIST;...;...;VIS;20010418;Word: 390;