The religious experience fundamentally aspires to a personal encounter with divinity, associated with a contemplation that, at most, asks for commitment to others. Especially since modernity, this mysticism has permeated Christianity, developing the cultivation of the interior life, but it has reduced relevance to what the original tradition placed as the culmination of the experience and its place of verification: the encounter with the Poor Christ in the poor and attention to their needs. With a phenomenological perspective, we investigate the features of the mystical experience in this encounter, to discover the God who becomes present in the poor and converts our experience into a vital, practical and historical communion with Him and with our neighbor.
