Sunday of the Word of God, a celebration that puts Bible at center of liturgy and life

In a video (IT), Andrea Riccardi explains the meaning of this feast

After the Council, the love for the Bible in the Catholic Church has grown in several ways. Prayer, liturgy and approach to theology have changed. However, familiarity with the Bible is not fully established in the people of God. Probably this is the reason that moved Pope Francis to suggest, at the end of the Jubilee Year of Mercy, that the Church devote one Sunday to this inexhaustible treasure: «It would be beneficial if every community, on one Sunday of the liturgical year, could renew its efforts to make the Sacred Scriptures better known, deepened, and more widely diffused. It would be a Sunday given over entirely to the Word of God, so as to appreciate the inexhaustible riches contained in that constant dialogue between the Lord and his people. Creative initiatives can enrich this moment as an opportunity for the faithful to become living vessels for the transmission of God’s word. Initiatives of this sort would certainly include the practice of lectio divina, so that the prayerful reading of the sacred text will help support and strengthen the spiritual life. Such a reading, centred on themes relating to mercy, will enable a personal experience of the great fruitfulness of the biblical text – read in the light of the Church’s spiritual tradition – and thus give rise to concrete gestures and works of charity» (Misericordia et misera 7).