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POPE-AUDIENCE Oct-5-2005 (440 words) With photos. xxxi
At audience, pope says people meet God in celebration of liturgy
By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- In the celebration of the liturgy, "God and man meet in an embrace of salvation," Pope Benedict XVI said.
During his weekly general audience Oct. 5, as bishops from around the world met in small groups during the Synod of Bishops on the Eucharist, the pope focused on the meaning of true religious faith and worship of God.
Pope Benedict did not specifically mention the synod, which began Oct. 2, but he offered special greetings to young people from several countries who had traveled to Rome for a meeting on eucharistic adoration.
"I ask you, dear young people, to place the Eucharist at the center of your personal and community life, learning to live from the spiritual strength that flows from it," the pope said.
Greeting Polish pilgrims at the end of the audience, the pope said six months had passed since the April 2 death of "my dear predecessor, Pope John Paul II. His entire teaching and the witness of his life remain important and current for us."
The pope told the Poles, "I entrust his cause for beatification to your recitation of the rosary."
Pope Benedict waived the five-year waiting period normally required before the official process leading to beatification and canonization could begin. The Diocese of Rome is conducting the diocesan phase of the investigation into the late pope's life, but no timetable for its completion has been announced.
In his main audience talk, Pope Benedict focused on Psalm 135 and its use in the church's evening prayer.
The psalm, he said, contrasts faith and idolatry.
The "living and personal God" is not inanimate, but "a living person who guides his faithful, is moved by pity for them and supports them with his power and love."
An idol, on the other hand, is the work of human hands and a projection of human desires for wealth and power.
"The fate of one who adores these dead realities is to become like them: powerless, fragile and inert," he said.
Pope Benedict said the psalm ends with hymns of praise from different sectors of the community of true believers, all united in their humble recognition of God's greatness.
The psalm's final verses illustrate that "the liturgy is the privileged place for listening to the divine word which makes the saving acts of the Lord present, but it is also the place from which the communal prayer celebrating divine love rises," the pope said.
"God and man meet in an embrace of salvation, which finds its completion precisely in the liturgical celebration," he said.
END
Copyright (c) 2005 Catholic News Service/USCCB. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed.
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