Vatican City, May 31, 2005 / 22:00 pm
During his weekly Wednesday audience earlier today, Pope Benedict XVI shared with nearly 23,000 pilgrims, a message of hope: That through emptying himself, taking on human weakness, and making himself like a slave, Christ leads mankind to discover his own freedom.
The Holy Father used the St. Paul’s Letter to the Philippians as the central theme of his catechesis during this morning’s general audience, held in St. Peter's Square.
He first discussed how, in the first part of what is called, the ‘Christological hymn’ found in the Letter to the Philippians (2, 6-11), we must consider "the paradoxical 'emptying' of the divine Word, Who deposes His glory and takes on the human condition.”
“Christ”, the Pope said, “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."