Saint Gertrude Parish - Lasne

HOMILY OF POPE FRANCIS

“After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to look at the tomb” (Mt 28:1). We can imagine those steps…: the typical step of someone going to a cemetery, a step weary with confusion, a weakened step of someone who cannot convince themselves that everything is over in this way… We can imagine their pale faces, bathed in tears… And the question: how is it possible that Love is dead?

Unlike the disciples, they are there—just as they accompanied the Master's last breath on the cross and then Joseph of Arimathea to give him a proper burial—two women capable of not fleeing, capable of resisting, of facing life as it comes and enduring the bitter taste of injustice. And here they are, before the tomb, caught between grief and the inability to resign themselves, to accept that everything must end this way forever.

And if we use our imagination, in the faces of these women, we can find the faces of many mothers and grandmothers, the faces of children and young people who bear the weight and pain of so many inhumane injustices. We see reflected in them the faces of those who, walking through the city, feel the pain of poverty, the pain of exploitation and trafficking. In them, we also see the faces of those who experience contempt because they are immigrants, orphans of homeland, home, and family; the faces of those whose gaze reveals loneliness and abandonment because their hands are too rough. They reflect the faces of women, of mothers who weep as they see their children's lives buried beneath the weight of corruption that deprives them of rights and shatters countless aspirations, beneath the daily selfishness that crucifies and buries the hopes of many, beneath the paralyzing and sterile bureaucracy that prevents any change. In their pain, they bear the faces of all those who, walking through the city, see their dignity crucified.

In the faces of these women, there are many faces; perhaps we find your face and mine. Like them, we may feel compelled to keep walking, to refuse to resign ourselves to the fact that things must end this way. Certainly, we carry within us a promise and the certainty of God's faithfulness. But our faces also speak of wounds, speak of many infidelities—our own and those of others—speak of attempts and lost battles. Our hearts know that things can be different, but without realizing it, we can become accustomed to living with the grave, to living with frustration. Moreover, we can come to convince ourselves that this is the law of life, numbing ourselves with escapes that do nothing but extinguish the hope God has placed in our hands. Such are, so often, our steps, such is our walk, like that of these women, a walk between the desire for God and a sorrowful resignation. It is not only the Master who dies: with him dies our hope.

“And behold, there was a great earthquake” (Mt 28:2). Suddenly, these women received a violent shaking; something and someone made the earth tremble beneath their feet. Someone, once again, came to meet them to say, “Do not be afraid,” but this time adding, “He has risen, just as he said.” And here is the message that this Night bestows upon us from generation to generation: Let us not be afraid, brothers, he has risen, just as he said! The life torn away, destroyed, annihilated on the cross has awakened and begins to stir again (cf. R. Guardini, Il Signore, Milan, 1984, p. 501). The fact that the Risen One stirs is offered to us as a gift, as a present, as a horizon. The fact that the Risen One trembled is what is given to us and what we are asked to give in turn as a transformative force, as the leaven of a new humanity. Through the Resurrection, Christ not only removed the stone from the tomb, but he also wants to shatter all the barriers that imprison us in our sterile pessimism, in our worlds of conceptual calculations that distance us from life, in our obsessive search for security, and in the excessive ambitions capable of toying with the dignity of others.

When the High Priest and the religious leaders, in collusion with the Romans, believed they could calculate everything, when they thought the final word had been spoken and that it was up to them to determine it, God intervenes to overturn all the criteria and thus offer a new possibility. God, once again, comes to meet us to establish and consolidate a new era, the era of mercy. This is the promise made from the beginning, this is God's surprise for his faithful people: rejoice, for your life holds a seed of resurrection, a gift of life waiting to be awakened.

And this is what this night calls us to announce: the stirring of the Risen One, Christ is alive! And this is what changed the steps of Mary Magdalene and the other Mary: this is what makes them set off again in haste and run to bring the news (cf. Mt 28, 8); this is what makes them retrace their steps and their gaze; they return to the city to meet the others.

Just as we entered the tomb with them, so too, with them, I invite you to go, to return to the city, to retrace our steps, to reflect on our own experiences. Let us go with them to proclaim the news, let us go… Everywhere it seems that the tomb has had the last word and where it seems that death has been the only solution. Let us go to proclaim, to share, to reveal that it is true: the Lord is alive. He is alive and wants to rise again in so many faces that have buried hope, buried dreams, buried dignity. And if we are not able to let the Spirit lead us along this path, then we are not Christians.

Let us go and be surprised by this different dawn, let us be surprised by the newness that only Christ can offer. Let us let his tenderness and love guide our steps, let us let the beating of his heart transform our feeble trembling.

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EASTER VIGIL ON HOLY NIGHT

HOMILY OF POPE FRANCIS

Vatican Basilica

Holy Saturday, April 15, 2017