VATICAN - Pope Benedict XVI’s meditation at the opening session of the Synod of Bishops: “evangelization, the proclamation of the Gospel, the mission are not a type of ecclesial colonialism, where we wish to insert others into our group. It means going beyond the individual culture into the universality that connects all, unites all, makes us all brothers.”

Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) – In opening the sessions of the XII Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, on Monday, October 6, the Holy Father Benedict XVI presided the celebration of the liturgy of the hours, during which he meditated on several verses of Psalm 118, which is prayed in the liturgy, and is dedicated to the Word of God: “praise for His Word, expression of the joy of Israel in learning it and, in it, to learn about His will and His face.”
The Psalm opens with the firmness of the Word: “It is solid, it is the true reality on which we must base our life... the Word of God is the foundation of everything, it is the true reality... At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord speaks to us about the two possible foundations for building the house of one’s life: sand and rock. He who builds on sand only builds on visible and tangible things, on success, on career, on money. Apparently these are the true realities. But all this one day will vanish. We can see this now with the fall of two large banks: this money disappears, it is nothing. And thus all things, which seem to be the true realities we can count on, are only realities of a secondary order... Only the Word of God is the foundation of all reality, it is as stable as the heavens and more than the heavens, it is reality. Therefore, we must change our concept of realism. The realist is he who recognizes the Word of God, in this apparently weak reality, as the foundation of all things.”
Quoting the following verse of the Psalm – “Omnia serviunt tibi” – the Pope commented: “All things come from the Word, they are products of the Word... All is created from the Word and all is called to serve the Word. This means that all of creation, in the end, is thought to create the meeting place between God and His creature, a place where the history of love between God and His creature can develop... The history of salvation is not a small event, on a poor planet, in the immensity of the universe. It is not a minimal thing, which happens by chance on a lost planet. It is the motivation for everything, the motivation for creation. Everything is created so that this story can exist, the encounter between God and His creature. In this sense, the history of salvation, Covenant, precedes creation... In serving the Lord we achieve the goal of the being, the goal of our own existence.”
Continuing his meditation, Benedict XVI pointed out that “Just reading it does not mean necessarily that we have truly understood the Word of God. The danger is that we only see the human words and do not find the true actor within, the Holy Spirit. We cannot find the Word in the words...Thus, may we enter the internal movement of the Word, which in human words hides and opens the divine words. Therefore, exegesis, the true reading of the Holy Scripture, is not only a literary phenomenon, not only reading a text. It is the movement of my existence. It is moving towards the Word of God in the human words.”
Lastly, the Pope reflected on the fact that all human things are finite because “God alone is infinite. And therefore His Word too is universal and knows no boundaries. Coming into communion with the Word of God, we enter a communion of the Church that lives the Word of God. We do not enter into a small group, with the rules of a small group, but we go beyond our limitations. We go towards the depths, in the true grandeur of the only truth, the great truth of God. We are truly a part of what is universal. And thus we go out into the communion of all the brothers and sisters, of all humanity, because the desire for the Word of God, which is one, is hidden in our heart. Therefore even evangelization, the proclamation of the Gospel, the mission are not a type of ecclesial colonialism, where we wish to insert others into our group. It means going beyond the individual culture into the universality that connects all, unites all, makes us all brothers.” The Holy Father concluded his meditation on the Psalm, saying that “the Word of God is like a stairway that we can go up and, with Christ, even descend into the depths of His love. It is a stairway to reach the Word in the words... The word has a face, it is a person, Christ.” (SL) (Agenzia Fides 7/10/2008)