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Vatican City (Fides Service) - Canticle (cfr Phil 2,6-11) “Christ Servant of God”, first vespers Sunday week 3 (reading: Phil 2,6-11) was the subject of Pope Benedict XVI’s teaching during the general audience in St Peter’s Square this morning where he was awaited by 23,000 visitors from all over the world.
“Every Sunday for the celebration of Vespers the liturgy presents us with the brief but meaningful Christological hymn from the Letter to the Philippians (cfr 2,6-11) in which we consider "the paradoxical 'emptying' of the divine Word, Who deposes His glory and takes on the human condition. Christ incarnated and humiliated in the most shameful form of death, that of crucifixion, is proposed as a model of life for Christians” the Pope said.
Christ does not live and interpret his divine nature “with power, grandeur and dominion. Christ, although He is equal to God, did not use His glorious dignity and power as an instrument of triumph, a sign of remoteness or an expression of supremacy”. Indeed he empties himself “immersing himself unreservedly in the poor and weak human condition”, marked by suffering, poverty, restriction and death. Christ is truly «God with us», said the Pope, “is not content to look at us kindly from his throne of glory, he immerses his very self in human history becoming flesh, that is a fragile reality conditioned by time and space.”
“This radical sharing the human condition, except for sin, leads Jesus to that frontier which is the sign of our finiteness and caducity, death... … he does this in obedience to the Father’s plan for salvation”. The death to which Jesus goes is the cross, the most degrading death, “in order to be truly a brother to every man and woman forced to an atrocious and ignominious end”. (S.L.) (Agenzia Fides 1/6/2005, righe 22, parole 332)
