“We would like to be happy, and yet it is very difficult to be happy in a continuous way, without any shadows. We come to terms with our limitations and, at the same time, with the irrepressible urge to try to overcome them. We feel deep down that we are always missing something”. With these words, Leo XIV, in his catechesis during today’s audience in front of 60,000 people, described the ‘paradoxical situation’ we experience in our lives. “Our lives are marked by countless events, full of different nuances and experiences”, was the Pope’s analysis, which focused on the relationship between the Resurrection of Jesus and the current human and historical reality, with its questions and challenges: “At times we feel joyful, other times sad, other times fulfilled or stressed, gratified or demotivated.
We live busy lives, we concentrate on achieving results, and we even attain lofty, prestigious goals. Conversely, we remain suspended, precarious, awaiting success and recognition that are delayed or do not arrive at all.
In short, we find ourselves experiencing a paradoxical situation:
we would like to be happy, and yet it is very difficult to be happy in a continuous way, without any shadows.
We come to terms with our limitations and, at the same time, with the irrepressible urge to try to overcome them. We feel deep down that we are always missing something”. “we were not created for lack, but for fullness, to rejoice in life, and life in abundance”, Leo stated.
“This deep desire in our hearts can find its ultimate answer not in roles, not in power, not in having,
but in the certainty that there is someone who guarantees this constitutive impulse of our humanity”, he warned: “in the awareness that this expectation will not be disappointed or thwarted”. “This certainty coincides with hope,” the Pontiff continued: “This does not mean thinking in an optimistic way: often optimism lets us down, causing our expectations to implode, whereas hope promises and fulfills”. “The Risen Jesus is the guarantee of this deliverance!”, the Pope assured; “He is the wellspring that satisfies our thirst, the infinite thirst for fullness that the Holy Spirit imbues into our hearts”. The Resurrection of Christ, is indeed, “not a simple event of human history, but the event that transformed it from within”. “The Risen One is the living wellspring that does not dry up and does not change”, is the example chosen by the Pope: “It always stays pure and ready for anyone who is thirsty”. “ And the more we taste the mystery of God, the more we are attracted to it, without ever becoming completely satiated”, Leone stated, quoting Saint Augustine’s Hymn to Beauty, found in the Confessions.
Only Jesus, who died and rose again, responds to the deepest questions of our heart: is there really a destination for us? Does our existence have any meaning? And the suffering of so many innocents, how can it be redeemed?
“Jesus, with his Resurrection, has guaranteed for us a permanent source of life: he is the living one, the lover of life, the victor over all death” Leo XIV remarked: “Therefore, he is able to offer us refreshment in our earthly journey and assure us of perfect peace in eternity”. “The Risen Jesus does not bestow upon us an answer ‘from above’, but becomes our companion on this often arduous, painful and mysterious journey”, the Pope assured:
“Only He can fill our empty flask,
when our thirst becomes unbearable. And he is also the destination of our journey. Without his love, the voyage of life would become wandering without a goal, a tragic mistake with a missed destination”. “We are fragile creatures”, Leo noted: “Mistakes are part of our humanity; it is the wound of sin that makes us fall, give up, despair. To rise again instead means to get up and stand on our feet. The Risen One guarantees our arrival, leading us home, where we are awaited, loved, saved. To journey with him means to experience being sustained despite everything, to have our thirst quenched and to be refreshed in the hardships and struggles that, like heavy stones, threaten to block or divert our history”. “From Christ’s Resurrection springs the hope that gives us a foretaste, despite the fatigue of living, of a deep and joyful calm”, the Pope concluded: “that peace the only he can give us in the end, without end”.
