Pope Leo XIV's Visit: An opportunity to respond to Jesus Christ that we love him

Pope Pope's trip to Spain The call is to overcome the temptation to make a big show, even if we know that some of the acts to be carried out may be seen in that way. The call to look up We can no longer continue to look at the ground, caught up in what happens every day or absorbed in our own solitude. We are challenged to come together, to listen, to welcome and to look up together, as the motto of the visit proposes. We can look at this event as just another event in a busy calendar. But we can also help each other to contemplate it more deeply.

The Holy Father will help us to go beyond what is simply “seen” to God. And from God we will be able to journey to the heart of our lives and the lives of so many good people around us. The presence of Pope Leo XIV will help us glimpse the meaning of life, announce a transcendent hope to our young people and to our tired society, and place us before the gift of eternal life that we celebrate at Easter. 

A higher look, with our feet on the ground, that will allow us to rediscover the meaning of human dignity and the ethics of love as an essential cornerstone for our time.

Embracing the successor of Peter

We are faced with an opportunity to respond to Jesus Christ. Each of us is invited, with Peter in front of us, present in his successor, to answer the question Peter heard by the lake: “Do you love me?”. A question that since then has crossed the history of the Church, resonates in every generation of believers and also reaches us. Today we are the ones who have the opportunity to place ourselves before Jesus, with all his disciples and with all his Church, to participate in this colloquy, and thus to respond to the question that Jesus Christ asks us. An answer that must be given by each one of us, but that we can and must also give together, as a Christian community.

A response that is an expression of communion, that shows the harmony present in our Church. Beyond the temptation of individualism, we are called to manifest in our response that the Church is a great harmony. The visit of the Holy Father offers us the opportunity to listen again to that question and to respond, personally and communally, from the depths of our hearts. An expression of communion with him who comes to confirm our faith and to make us see the need to deepen our understanding of the meaning of the Church.

A visit that takes place a few days after the end of the Easter season. During Easter we have the opportunity to renew the faith of all the baptized, strengthen the hope and rekindle the charity of each one of us and of all our communities. Together with the universal Church, by which we feel embraced in the figure of the successor of Peter, we are challenged to respond to this embrace, extending the arms of our diocese and uniting our hearts to his.

The illusion, hope and spirit of service have become a tonic in the life of our diocese as it prepares for this event. In fact, the visit of the Holy Father, which we have been preparing in recent weeks with great generosity on the part of many people, is an opportunity to strengthen our faith as a Church that walks together and looks at our world as a mission field.

Assuming the mission

This trip of Pope Leo XIV to our country and our diocese comes to draw from us the Christian commitment to say that we have a responsibility before the world of how we make the Kingdom of God grow in the midst of this reality. It can be a moment to put on the horizon the mission of the Church and see how each one of us can respond from our own reality.

A witness that can offer answers in the midst of a complex social and world situation. Humanity is suffering in the face of the drama of violence and the many open wars in different regions of the world. Following the echo of the Easter words of the Risen Lord: “Peace to you.” (Jn 20:19), the Holy Father, who, from the beginning of his pontificate, has made peace a priority, of “a disarmed and disarming peace”.”, comes to us to entrust us with the mission of being artisans of peace.

This is a task that we are called to undertake with responsibility. It is a common mission. Even more so in the face of a visit in which the successor of Peter will come to remind us that our world has a future and that we Christians have much to offer through spirituality, encounter and fraternity. May this trip, closer every day, be an opportunity to give a fundamental message, which is that faith is above other individualities, that faith unites us and puts us at the foot of the Cross, puts us in the Resurrection.