MAN'S HUNGER AND THIRST FOR GOD

VATICAN CITY, APR 25, 2001 (VIS) - In today's general audience, held in St. Peter's Square, John Paul II gave a commentary on Psalm 62, " the Psalm of mystical love, which celebrates total adhesion to God" in which "prayer becomes desire, hunger and thirst, because it involves both the soul and body."

The Pope affirmed that: "As dry land is dead, as long as it is not irrigated by rain, and in its cracks seems a thirsty and parched mouth, so the faithful soul longs for God in order to be filled by Him and to be thus able to exist in communion with Him."

Recalling the sacrifices "of communion" offered in the temple of Zion, the psalmist alludes to the hunger for God, satisfied only "when one listens to the Divine Word and encounters the Lord." This brings to mind the banquet of Christ "on the last evening of His earthly life," the Last Supper.

"Through the mystical food of communion with God 'the soul," which evokes all of humanity, "'clings' to Him. ... Also when it is in the dark night, it feels protected by the wings of God."

"In the light of the Paschal mystery," the Holy Father concluded, "Christians understand that their hunger and thirst for God are satisfied through the Risen Christ's gift of the Holy Spirit and the Sacraments, which fulfil the deepest longing of the human spirit for God."

After reading a synthesis of today's catechesis in five languages, the Pope greeted, among others, "the representatives of the Italian National Committee 'Monuments to the Redeemer' and the mayors of the districts in which there are the sixteen mountains upon whose summits, in the Holy Year of 1900, my predecessor Pope Leo XIII wished to raise as many monuments to the Redeemer."

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