GENERAL AUDIENCE: PSALM 50, A HYMN TO THE GOD OF MERCY

VATICAN CITY, MAY 8, 2002 (VIS) - In today's general audience, which, due to persistent rain, was held in the Paul VI Hall, the Holy Father spoke on Psalm 50, "the 'Miserere,' the most loved, sung and studied of the penitential Psalms, a hymn raised to the merciful God by the penitent sinner."

The Psalmist, the Pope explained, "clearly and unhesitatingly admits his sin. ... This experience involves both freedom and responsibility, it leads to an admission that a link was broken in making the choice to follow an alternative life with respect to the Divine Word."

John Paul II highlighted that sin "is not just a psychological or social matter, it is an event that damages the relationship with God, violating His law, refusing His project for history, overturning the scale of values, ... 'calling the good evil and the evil good.' More than an abuse against man, sin is first of all a betrayal of God."

"According to the Psalm," he went on, "evil lurks in the very depths of man and is inherent to his historical reality, it is for this reason that the request for the intervention of divine grace is so decisive. The power of God's love overcomes that of sin."

The Pope concluded by indicating that "the confession of guilt and the awareness of one's own misery do not lead to terror or the nightmare of judgement, but to the hope of purification, of liberation and of new creation."

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