Wednesday's general audience held by the pope was on Phillipians 2:6-11. The Zenit English translation is here.
No time to excerpt, gotta run to mass.
Weekly General Audience: October 2005 Archives
For some reason that line always is followed in my head by "I see dead people."
Anyway, here is the English translation of the Pope's General audience from yesterday, October 19, which was on Psalm 129 (130) or 130 (129), however you prefer.
Significant is the fact that what generates respect, an attitude of fear mixed with love, is not punishment but forgiveness. More than the anger of God, his generous and disarming magnanimity must arouse a holy fear in us. God, in fact, is not an inexorable sovereign who condemns the guilty, but a loving Father, whom we must love not out of fear of punishment, but because of his goodness ready to forgive.
The canticle we just heard and enjoyed as a prayer is one of the most beautiful and moving of the "songs of ascent." It is Psalm 121(122), a lively and participatory celebration in Jerusalem, the Holy City toward which the pilgrims ascend.
In fact, immediately in the opening, two moments come together lived by the faithful one: that of the day in which he accepted the invitation to "go to the house of the Lord" (verse 1), and that of the joyful arrival at the "gates" of Jerusalem (see verse 2); now his feet finally tread on that holy and beloved land. Precisely then, lips part to intone a festive song in honor of Zion, understood in its profound spiritual meaning.
From all the community gathered in the temple rises a blessing in unison to God Creator of the universe and Savior of his people, expressed in the diversity of voices and humility of faith.
The liturgy is the privileged place to listen to the divine Word, which renders present the Lord's salvific acts, but it is also the circle in which the communitarian prayer rises which celebrates divine love. God and man meet in a saving embrace, which finds its fulfillment precisely in the liturgical celebration.
