Breath of Leo XIV: Easter is medicine, healing, and hope every day

With his reflection on ‘The Resurrection of Christ and the challenges of today's world,’ the Pope offered an injection of optimism and hope at this morning's Audience. Easter is “medicine, healing and gives hope to daily life (Mt 28:18-20)”. 

His entire meditation revolved around this idea, which has a lot to do with the Pope's prayer intention for November: “For the prevention of suicide”, as you can see in the information from CNS here.

The Easter of Jesus is an event that does not belong to a distant past, already sedimented in tradition, the Pontiff began by saying, but is actualized every day. “The Easter message is a sure anchor: love has conquered sin forever, and life triumphs over death,” he encouraged the English-speaking pilgrims. 

Paschal Mystery, every day in the celebration of the Eucharist

Earlier, his words had been: “The Church teaches us to remember the Resurrection every year on Easter Sunday and every day in the Eucharistic celebration, during which the promise of the Risen Lord is fully realized: ‘Know that I am with you always, to the end of time’ (Mt 28:20).

“For this reason, the Paschal Mystery constitutes the axis of the Christian's life around which all other events revolve,” he said. In his words to the German-speaking faithful and pilgrims, he exhorted them: “Just as Christ entrusted to the Apostles, the Church celebrates in every Holy Mass the true actualization of his death and resurrection. Here Christ's promise is continually fulfilled: ‘I will be with you always, to the close of the age’ (Mt 28:20)”.

“The Pole Star”: from the Way of the Cross to the Via Lucis

In him we have the certainty, the Pontiff stressed, of “always being able to find the pole star towards which to direct our lives of apparent chaos, marked by events that often seem confusing, unacceptable, incomprehensible: evil, in its many facets; suffering, death: events that affect each and every one of us”. 

Meditating on the mystery of the Resurrection, we find an answer to our thirst for meaning. “In the face of our fragile humanity, the Easter proclamation becomes medicine and healing, nourishing hope in the face of the alarming challenges that life places before us every day on a personal and planetary level. From the perspective of Easter, the Way of the Cross is transfigured into the Via Lucis,” he added.

Resurrection: not an idea, not a theory, but an event on which faith is based.

The Pope wanted to point out that “Easter does not eliminate the cross, but overcomes it in the prodigious mourning that has changed human history. Our time too, marked by so many crosses, invokes the dawn of Easter hope”. 

“The Resurrection of Christ is not an idea, a theory, but the Event that is the foundation of faith. He, the Risen One, always reminds us of it through the Holy Spirit, so that we can be his witnesses even where human history sees no light on the horizon”. 

Easter hope does not disappoint, he pointed out shortly after. “To truly believe in Easter through the daily journey means to revolutionize our lives, to be transformed in order to transform the world with the gentle and courageous strength of Christian hope.”. 

St. Benedicta of the Cross and St. Francis of Assisi

In two moments of catechesis, Leo XIV has relied on some saints. 

First of all, he cited a “great philosopher of the 20th century, St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross - whose secular name was Edith Stein - who delved so deeply into the mystery of the human person, and who reminds us of this dynamism of the constant search for fullness”.

He then recalled that from death ‘nullu homo vivente po skampare’ (no living man can escape), as St. Francis of Assisi sings (cf. Canticle of Brother Sun)”. But “everything changes thanks to that morning when the women who had gone to the tomb to anoint the body of the Lord found it empty”. 

The Easter proclamation is “the most beautiful, joyful and moving news that has ever resounded in the course of history,” he said. “It is the “Gospel” par excellence, which testifies to the victory of love over sin and of life over death.”.

“We are all called to be saints”

Before giving the blessing, in Italian, the Pope urged the international community not to forget Myanmar, and recalled the recent feast of All Saints. He reflected on «the common vocation to holiness. We are all called to be saints. I invite you, therefore, to adhere ever more closely to Christ, following the criteria of authenticity that the Saints have given us as an example”.

Made for the eternal

Shortly before, he had reminded the French-speaking faithful of the message he is repeating these days, in line with the liturgy: “The month of November not only invites us to pray for our deceased, It also reminds us that we are made for the infinite and the eternal: that is, for the blessed life, the only reality that can fulfill the aspirations of our heart.