AUDIENCE: THE REDEMPTION, A PATH OF LOVE AND OF JUSTICE

VATICAN CITY, JUN 1, 2005 (VIS) - The Letter of St. Paul to the Philippians was the central theme of Benedict XVI's catechesis during his traditional Wednesday general audience, which was held this morning in St. Peter's Square in the presence of 23,000 people.

  The Holy Father indicated how, in the first part of the Christological hymn contained in the Letter to the Philippians (2, 6-11), 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," who must, in fact, "'have this mind among (themselves), which was in Jesus Christ,' a mind of humility and of dedication, of detachment and of generosity."

  "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. Quite the contrary, He unreservedly assumed the human condition, miserable, weak, marked by suffering, poverty and fragility, subject to time and space. This took Him to the edge of our own limits and our own inevitable decay, in other words to death; thus obeying the plan of salvation wished for by the Father."

  Benedict XVI then went on to quote Theodoret, a fifth century bishop of Cyrus in Syria. In his commentary on the Letter to the Philippians, Theodoret mentions the links between the incarnation of Jesus and the redemption of human beings, and explains that, in order to save us, the Creator "chose a way full of love .. and adorned with justice. Indeed, after having bound man's nature to Himself, a nature already defeated, he leads it to the struggle and prepares it to repair the defeat, to overcome the one who had once iniquitously gained victory, to free it from the tyranny of one who had cruelly enslaved it, and to recover its long lost freedom."

  The Pope concluded by recalling that next Friday is the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, saying "let us ask Him to help us love our brethren as He loved us."
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