BENEDICT XVI
GENERAL AUDIENCE
Wednesday, 28 December 2005
Psalm 139[138]
"The wonder of my being"
Evening Prayer - Wednesday of the Fourth Week
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
1. At this General Audience on Wednesday of
the Octave of Christmas, the liturgical Feast of the Holy Innocents, let us
resume our meditation on Psalm 139[138], proposed in the Liturgy of Vespers in
two distinct stages. After contemplating in the first part (cf. vv. 1-12) the
omniscient and omnipotent God, the Lord of being and history, this sapiential
hymn of intense beauty and deep feeling now focuses on the loftiest, most
marvellous reality of the entire universe: man, whose being is described
as a "wonder" of God (cf. v. 14).
Indeed, this topic is deeply in tune with the
Christmas atmosphere we are living in these days in which we celebrate the great
mystery of the Son of God who became man, indeed, became a Child, for our
salvation.
After pondering on the gaze and presence of
the Creator that sweeps across the whole cosmic horizon, in the second part of
the Psalm on which we are meditating today God turns his loving gaze upon the
human being, whose full and complete beginning is reflected upon.
He is still an "unformed substance" in his
mother's womb: the Hebrew term used has been understood by several
biblical experts as referring to an "embryo", described in that term as a small,
oval, curled-up reality, but on which God has already turned his benevolent and
loving eyes (cf. v. 16).
2. To describe the divine action within the
maternal womb, the Psalmist has recourse to classical biblical images, comparing
the productive cavity of the mother to the "depths of the earth", that is, the
constant vitality of great mother earth (cf. v. 15).
First of all, there is the symbol of the
potter and of the sculptor who "fashions" and moulds his artistic creation, his
masterpiece, just as it is said about the creation of man in the Book of
Genesis: "the Lord God formed man out of the clay of the ground" (Gn 2:
7).
Then there is a "textile" symbol that evokes
the delicacy of the skin, the flesh, the nerves, "threaded" onto the bony
skeleton. Job also recalled forcefully these and other images to exalt that
masterpiece which the human being is, despite being battered and bruised by
suffering: "Your hands have formed me and fashioned me.... Remember that
you fashioned me from clay...! Did you not pour me out as milk and thicken me
like cheese? With skin and flesh you clothed me, with bones and sinews knit me
together" (Jb 10: 8-11).
3. The idea in our Psalm that God already sees
the entire future of that embryo, still an "unformed substance", is extremely
powerful. The days which that creature will live and fill with deeds throughout
his earthly existence are already written in the Lord's book of life.
Thus, once again the transcendent greatness of
divine knowledge emerges, embracing not only humanity's past and present but
also the span, still hidden, of the future. However, the greatness of this
little unborn human creature, formed by God's hands and surrounded by his love,
also appears: a biblical tribute to the human being from the first moment
of his existence.
Let us now entrust ourselves to the reflection
that St Gregory the Great in his Homilies on Ezekiel has interwoven with the
sentence of the Psalm on which we commented earlier: "Your eyes beheld my
unformed substance; in your book were written every one of them [my days]" (v.
16). On those words the Pontiff and Father of the Church composed an original
and delicate meditation concerning all those in the Christian Community who
falter on their spiritual journey.
And he says that those who are weak in faith
and in Christian life are part of the architecture of the Church. "They are
nonetheless added... by virtue of good will. It is true, they are imperfect and
little, yet as far as they are able to understand, they love God and their
neighbour and do not neglect to do all the good that they can. Even if they do
not yet attain spiritual gifts so as to open their soul to perfect action and
ardent contemplation, yet they do not fall behind in love of God and neighbour,
to the extent that they can comprehend it.
"Therefore, it happens that they too
contribute to building the Church because, although their position is less
important, although they lag behind in teaching, prophecy, the grace of miracles
and complete distaste for the world, yet they are based on foundations of awe
and love, in which they find their solidity" (2, 3, 12-13, Opere di Gregorio
Magno, III/2, Rome, 1993, pp. 79, 81).
St Gregory's message, therefore, becomes a
great consolation to all of us who often struggle wearily along on the path of
spiritual and ecclesial life. The Lord knows us and surrounds us all with his
love.
