“The power of Easter calls you today to roll back the rocks of disappointment and mistrust; and the Lord, expert in the heart of the rocks of the graves of sin and fear, wants to illuminate your sacred memory, your most beautiful memories, and to make your first encounter with Him instantaneous. Remember and walk: return to Him, and rediscover grace.” God’s resurrection in you!” This is what Pope Francis said in his homily at the Easter Vigil.
On Saturday evening, His Holiness Pope Francis presided over a festive mass in St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican on the occasion of the Easter Vigil. The mass included a homily, which the Pope invoked by saying that the night was drawing to a close and the first lights of dawn were lit, when the women set out towards the tomb of Jesus. They were hesitating, lost, and their hearts were torn apart by the pain of death that took away the beloved. But when they came to that place and saw the empty tomb, they changed their course and changed their path; They leave the tomb and run to announce to the disciples a new path: Jesus is risen and is waiting for them in Galilee. In the lives of these women the Passover took place, which means the passage: they in fact passed from the mournful march towards the tomb to the joyful run towards the disciples, in order to tell them not only that the Lord had risen, but that there was also a goal which they had to reach immediately, the solemn. There is the appointment with the Risen One, and there the Resurrection leads. The new birth of the disciples and the resurrection of their hearts pass through Galilee. Let us also enter into this journey of the disciples, which begins from the tomb to Galilee.
FOLLOWING POPE FRANCIS The Bible says that the two women came “to see the tomb”. You think that Jesus is in the place of death and that everything is over forever. Sometimes it also occurs to us to think that the joy of meeting Jesus belongs to the past, while at present we only know the sealed graves: the graves of our disappointments, our bitterness and our mistrust, the graves of “there is nothing more to do”, that “things will never change”, and “It is better to live each day as it is” because “tomorrow is not certain.” We too, if we are in the grip of pain, oppressed by sorrow, humiliated by sin, embittered by some failure or haunted by some fears, we have experienced the bitter taste of weariness and we have seen joy extinguished in our hearts.
Sometimes we simply felt tired of getting on with everyday life, tired of taking risks against the rubber wall of a world in which the toughest and strongest laws always seemed to prevail. At other times, we have felt helpless and frustrated by the power of evil, the conflicts that tear apart relationships, the logic of calculation and indifference that seems to rule society, the cancer of corruption, the spread of injustice, and the winds of the Cold War. Likewise, we may find ourselves face to face with death, because it has robbed us of the sweet presence of our loved ones or because it has touched us in sickness or calamity, and we have easily fallen into disillusionment and dried up the fountain of our hope. Thus, in these or other situations, our paths stop in front of the graves and we remain motionless, weeping and lamenting, alone and helpless as we repeat our questions.
The Pontiff continued, saying: As for the two women, on the feast of Easter, they did not remain paralyzed in front of the tomb, but rather, as the Gospel says, “they left the tomb hastily, in great fear and joy, and hastened to the disciples to bring the good news.” They carried the good news that will change life and history forever: Christ has risen! At the same time, they memorized and transmitted the commandment of the Lord, his invitation to the disciples: to go to Galilee, because there they will see him. But what does it mean to go to Galilee? Two things: on the one hand, getting out of the upper room to go to the area inhabited by the pagans, getting out of hiding to open up to the message, escaping from fear to walk towards the future. On the other hand, it means going back to the origins, because it all began in Galilee. There the Lord had met the disciples and called them for the first time. Therefore, to go to Galilee is to return to the original grace, it is to recover the memory that regenerates hope, the “memory of the future” with which the Risen One imprinted us.
This, then, is what the Lord’s Passover does: it pushes us to move on, to let go of the sense of defeat, to roll back the stone from the graves in which we often confine hope, and to look to the future with confidence, because Christ has risen from the dead and changed the course of history. But, in order to do so, the Lord’s Passover takes us back to our past, the past of grace, and makes us return to Galilee, where our love story with Jesus began. That is, he asks us to live again that moment, that state and that experience in which we met the Lord, experienced His love, and obtained a new and enlightening look at ourselves, at reality and at the mystery of life. In order to rise again, in order to begin again and resume the journey, we always need to return to Galilee, that is, to return not to an abstract and idealistic Jesus, but to the living, tangible and vivid memory of our first encounter with him. Yes brothers and sisters, in order to walk we must remember; In order to have hope, we must nurture memory. This is the invitation: remember and walk! If you regain your first love, the wonder and joy of meeting God, you will move on. Remember and walk.
The Holy Father added, “Remember your majesty and walk towards your majesty.” It is the “place” where you came to know Jesus personally, where for you he no longer remains a historical figure like others, but a person of life: not a God far away, but a God near, who knows you more than anyone else and loves you more than anyone else. Brother, sister, remember the majestic, your majesty: your calling, the word of God that spoke to you at a specific moment; That powerful experience of the soul, the great joy of forgiveness that you felt after that confession, that powerful and unforgettable moment of prayer, that light that blazed within you and changed your life, that meeting and that pilgrimage… Each of us knows the place of his inner resurrection, that first place. And the main thing is that changed things. We cannot leave it to the past, and the Risen One invites us to go there to celebrate the Passover. Remember your glory, remember it and revive it today. Go back to that first meeting. Ask yourself how and when it was, reconstruct its context, time and place, re-experience its feelings and sensations, and live again its colors and flavours. Because when you forgot that first love, when you forgot that first meeting, the dust began to settle on your heart. You experienced grief, and like the disciples, everything seemed out of perspective, with a rock sealing hope. But the power of Easter calls you today to roll down the rocks of disappointment and distrust; And the Lord, the expert in the heart of the rocks of the graves of sin and fear, wants to illuminate your sacred memory and your most beautiful memories, and to make your first meeting with Him instantaneous. Remember and walk: return to Him, and rediscover the grace of God’s resurrection in you!
Pope Francis concluded his homily by saying, Brothers and sisters, let us follow Jesus to Galilee, and let us meet and worship Him there, where He awaits each of us. And let us revive, having discovered that he is alive, Jamal when we declared him the Lord of our life. Let us return to Galilee, let each of us return to his Galilee, the Galilee of our first encounter, and let us rise to a new life!