GENERAL AUDIENCE: PSALM 50, SIN AND PERSONAL CONVERSION

VATICAN CITY, OCT 24, 2001 (VIS) - In today's general audience, celebrated in St. Peter's Square, John Paul II spoke on "Psalm 50 - Have Mercy on me, O God," in which the believer expresses his desire to do penance and his hope in the mercy of God.

"Psalm 50 outlines two aspects," the Pope said. "There is first of all the dark region of sin, in which man lives from the first moment of his life." Though not speaking explicitly of original sin, it states that there is "a profound dimension of inborn moral weakness in man."

The Holy Father affirmed that "if man, however, confesses his sin, the salvific justice of God is ready to radically purify him. In this way one passes into the second spiritual region of the Psalm, the luminous region of grace. ... The Lord does not only act negatively, eliminating sin, but rather recreates sinful humanity through His enlivening Spirit: he gives man a new and pure 'heart', that is, a renewed conscience, and opens to him the possibility of a pure faith and devotion pleasing to God."

This Biblical supplication "reveals to us certain fundamental elements of a spirituality which must reverberate in the daily life of the faithful. Above all," he concluded, "there is a lively sense of sin" and "an equally lively sense of the possibility of conversion: the sinner, sincerely pentitent, presents himself in all of his misery and nakedness before God, beseeching Him not to drive him from His presence."

AG;PSALM 50;...;...;VIS;20011024;Word: 260;