Concluding a series of audience talks begun by Pope John Paul II in 2001, Pope Benedict XVI said the psalms and canticles used for morning and evening prayer are a “flowering garden” of praise and contemplation.

At his weekly general audience Feb 15, the pope announced that with a brief meditation on Mary's Magnificat he was concluding the series begun “years ago by my beloved predecessor, the unforgettable Pope John Paul II.”

Because of the large number of visitors present, the pope actually held two audiences: one in St Peter's Basilica and the other in the Vatican audience hall.

The crowd included some 6,000 Italian grade school and high school students.

The pope told the students he was sure they had heard about his first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est (“God Is Love”), in which “I wanted to recall that the source and reason for our true joy is the love of God.”

“I invite each of you to understand and increasingly accept this love, which changes lives and will make you credible witnesses of the Gospel,” he said. “In this way, you will become authentic friends of Jesus and his faithful apostles.”

The pope told the young people that they must help the weak and needy “feel the tenderness of the heart of God” and that by doing so they would make the world more just.

Entering the Vatican audience hall, where another 9,000 people awaited him, he stopped to sit and pose for a photograph amid a group of 97 Catholic bishops attending a conference sponsored by the Focolare movement.

Over the course of the five years of the audience series, the psalm or canticle chosen for the papal meditation each week was sung at the beginning of the audience by a soloist and one or two other singers.

But for the series finale, members of the Sistine Chapel choir sang the Magnificat .

Mary's hymn of praise to God for the great things he had done for her, the pope said, illustrates the “spirituality of the biblical anawim , those faithful who saw themselves as poor not only in their detachment from any idolatry of riches and power, but also in their profound humility of heart, free of any temptation toward pride, open to the flow of divine saving grace.”

Setting aside his prepared text, Pope Benedict said he is “touched and surprised” every time he reads St Ambrose's commentary on the Magnificat , especially the Italian saint's observation that “if, according to the flesh, there is only one mother of Christ, according to faith all souls generate Christ.”

“Interpreting the words of the Madonna,” the pope said, St Ambrose “invites us to make sure that in our souls and in our lives the Lord finds a dwelling place, and not just a dwelling place to carry him in our hearts, but to carry him into the world, generating Christ in our time.

“Let us pray to the Lord that he helps us magnify him with the spirit of Christ and to carry him once again into the world,” the pope said.

(CNS)