BENEDICT XVI • 111 I thank you who wonderfully made me! You formed my inmost being; you knit me in my mother’s womb. I praise you, because I am wonderfully made; wonderful are your works! My very self you know. My bones are not hidden from you, When I was being made in secret, fashioned in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw me unformed; in your book all are written down; my days were shaped, before one came to be. Ps 139:13-16 This sapiential hymn of intense beauty and deep feeling now focuses on the loftiest, most marvelous reality of the entire universe: man, whose being is described as a “wonder” of God.… 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 ref lected 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 real ity, but on which God has already turned his benevolent and loving eyes.... 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 f ill 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 Saint 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].” 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.… Saint 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.183 183 Benedict XVI, General Audience of December 28, 2005. Meditation on Psalm 139 Psalm 139 © Bridgeman The Infant Samuel at Prayer (1777), Joshua Reynolds (1723-92), Musée Fabre, Montpellier, France. P R A Y I N G wi th Benedict XVI
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