By Deborah Castellano Lubov
Christ’s Resurrection is the source of our hope, Pope Leo XIV marvelled during his weekly General Audience on Wednesday morning in the Vatican, as he continued his catechesis series on Jesus Christ Our Hope.
The Holy Father began his remarks recalling that the centre of our faith and the heart of our hope are firmly rooted in the Resurrection of Christ.
When we read the Gospels carefully, we realize that this mystery is surprising not only because a man – the Son of God – rose from the dead, but also because of the way He decided to do so.
“Indeed, Jesus’ Resurrection is not a bombastic triumph, nor is it revenge or retaliation against his enemies,” the Pope reflected. Rather, “It is a wonderful testimony to how love is capable of rising again after a great defeat in order to continue its unstoppable journey.”
How our mentality differs from God’s
The Pope pointed out how our mentality and reactions tend to differ greatly from Christ’s.
“When we get up again after a trauma caused by others, often the first reaction is anger, the desire to make someone pay for what we have suffered,” but “the Risen One,” the Holy Father said, “emerges from the underworld of death” and “does not take revenge.” “He does not return with gestures of power, but rather with meekness he manifests the joy of a love greater than any wound and stronger than any betrayal.”
No longer paralyzed
Moreover, Pope Leo underscored, Jesus does not feel any need to reiterate or affirm His own superiority, but appears to His friends and “does so with extreme discretion, without forcing the pace of their capacity for acceptance, only with the desire to return to communion with them, helping them to overcome the sense of guilt.”
In fact, Pope Leo recalled that in the Upper Room, Jesus “enters the closed room of those who are paralyzed by fear, bringing them a gift that no-one would have dared to hope for: peace.”
‘Peace be with you’
The Lord’s greeting of ‘Peace be with you!’, the Holy Father marveled, strikes us for being so simple and almost ordinary. But, he pointed out, it is accompanied by a gesture “so beautiful that it is almost disconcerting,” when Jesus shows the disciples His hands and side, with the marks of the Passion.
The Pope observed there was not a shadow of resentment for Jesus is now fully reconciled with everything He suffered.
The Lord, in showing His wounds, Pope Leo clarified, serve not to reproach, but to confirm a love stronger than any infidelity, and “are the proof that, even in the moment of our failure, God did not retreat. He did not give up on us.”
Transfiguration into a hope of mercy
When betrayals wound us, Pope Leo acknowledged, we may often say, “it doesn’t matter”, “it is all in the past”, but “we are not truly at peace.
However, he stressed, this is not how Jesus operates or reasons, for the Lord “offers His wounds as a guarantee of forgiveness” and “shows that the Resurrection is not the erasure of the past, but its transfiguration into a hope of mercy.”
God forgives, lifts up, and restores trust
The Pope emphasized that the Lord, with words of peace, entrusts the Apostles with the responsibility of being instruments of reconciliation in the world, by breathing on them and giving them the Holy Spirit, the same Spirit who sustained Him in obedience to the Father and in love even to the Cross.
“From that moment,” the Holy Father noted, the Apostles would no longer be able to remain silent about what they have seen and heard, namely “that God forgives, lifts up, and restores trust.”
We too are sent
With this in mind, Pope Leo stated, “This is the heart of the mission of the Church: not to administer power over others, but to communicate the joy of those who are loved precisely when they did not deserve it.”
“It is the strength that gave rise to the Christian communities and made them grow,” he said.
Finally, Pope Leo XIV reminded the faithful that “we too are sent.” “The Lord shows us His wounds and says: Peace be with you,” and, the Pope reminded, He asks us to likewise be witnesses of His peace.” – Vatican News
