AUDIENCE: CHRIST FREES US WITH HIS DEATH AND RESURRECTION

VATICAN CITY, NOV 21, 2001 (VIS) - In today's Wednesday general audience, which took place in the Paul VI Hall, the Holy Father spoke of the Canticle to the victory of the people of Israel who, "in a humanly desperate situation," were freed by God after crossing the Red Sea.

"The Canticle," stated the Pope, "does not speak only of liberation obtained but it also indicates the positive effect, which is none other than entering into God's dwelling place to live in communion with Him." The event of the Red Sea "becomes the 'symbol' of the entire history of salvation ... and prefigures the great liberation that Christ will realize with His death and resurrection."

John Paul II stated that this liberation "will reach its fullness at the end of time" when "the event that the Exodus prefigured and Christ's Easter fulfilled in a definitive way, will be fully realized, open, however to the future."

"As days add on to days, there is no fatality that oppresses us, but rather a plan that unfolds and that our eyes must learn to read (events) as one reads a watermark."

The Pope concluded by recalling that "this hymn of victory does not express man's triumph, but God's triumph. It is not a hymn of war, it is a hymn of love. Allowing our days to be pervaded by this sigh of praise of the ancient Jews, we walk on the paths of the world, not without deceit, risks and suffering, with the certainty of being wrapped in the mysterious glance of God: nothing can resist the power of His love."

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