VATICAN - POPE’S TEACHING AT GENERAL AUDIENCE: “WITH US IN SUFFERING AND IN DEATH, CHRIST NOW DRAWS US TO BE WITH HIM IN HIS GLORY, BLESSING US AND CALLING US TO SHARE IN HIS ETERNITY

Vatican City (Fides Service) – Pope John Paul II met visitors who had come for his Wednesday Audience on October 19 in the Paul VI Hall. This week his teaching on the psalms of Vespers, focussed on the Canticle Fil 2,6-11: “Christ Servant of God” ( first Vespers of Sunday week one).
This Biblical canticle is “certainly one with the most significance and theological density” the Pope said: “it is considered to be an expression of early Christian liturgy and it is a joy for our generation two thousand years later to join the prayer of the apostolic Church”. The Canticle reveals a double movement, descent and then ascent. “On the one hand there is in fact the humiliating descent of the Son of God when with his Incarnation he becomes man for love of man… On the other hand, we see the triumphant ascent of Easter when Christ is re-established by the Father in the splendour of divinity and is celebrated as Lord of the entire cosmos and of all men and women now redeemed”
In the closing hymn Christ appears “as the Pantokrator, that is the almighty Lord who sits enthroned in the apses of early Christian basilicas. He bears the signs of his passion, that is of his true humanity, but now he reveals himself in the splendour of divinity. Close to us in suffering and death, Christ now draws us to him in glory, blessing us and calling us to share in his eternity.” (S.L.) (Fides Service 19/11/2003 – lines 20; words 260)