If you’re seeking hope,
read the pope’s moving Easter Vigil homily 2019
"Jesus is a specialist at turning our deaths
into life, our mourning into dancing"
1. The women
bring spices to the tomb, but they fear that their journey is in vain, since a
large stone bars the entrance to the sepulchre. The journey of those women is
also our own journey; it resembles the journey of salvation that we have made
this evening. At times, it seems that everything comes up against a stone: the
beauty of creation against the tragedy of sin; liberation from slavery against
infidelity to the covenant; the promises of the prophets against the listless
indifference of the people. So too, in the history of the Church and in our own
personal history. It seems that the steps we take never take us to the goal. We
can be tempted to think that dashed hope is the bleak law of life.
Today however we see that our journey is not in vain;
it does not come up against a tombstone. A single phrase astounds the woman and
changes history: “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” (Lk 24:5).
Why do you think that everything is hopeless, that no one can take away your
own tombstones? Why do you give into resignation and failure? Easter is
the feast of tombstones taken away, rocks rolled aside.
God takes away even the hardest stones against
which our hopes and expectations crash: death, sin, fear, worldliness. Human
history does not end before a tombstone, because today it encounters the
“living stone” (cf. 1 Pet 2:4), the risen Jesus. We, as
Church, are built on him, and, even when we grow disheartened and tempted to
judge everything in the light of our failures, he comes to make all things new,
to overturn our every disappointment. Each of us is called tonight to
rediscover in the Risen Christ the one who rolls back from our heart the
heaviest of stones. So let us first ask: What is the stone that I need
to remove, what is its name?
Often what blocks hope is the stone of
discouragement. Once we start thinking that everything is going badly and
that things can’t get worse, we lose heart and come to believe that death is
stronger than life. We become cynical, negative and despondent. Stone upon
stone, we build within ourselves a monument to our own dissatisfaction: the
sepulchre of hope. Life becomes a succession of complaints and we grow sick
in spirit. A kind of tomb psychology takes over: everything
ends there, with no hope of emerging alive.
But at that moment, we hear once more the insistent
question of Easter: Why do you seek the living among the dead? The
Lord is not to be found in resignation. He is risen; he is not there. Don’t
seek him where you will never find him: he is not the God of the dead but of
the living (cf. Mk 22:32). Do not bury hope!
There is another stone that often seals the heart
shut: the stone of sin. Sin seduces; it promises things easy and
quick, prosperity and success, but then leaves behind only solitude and death.
Sin is looking for life among the dead, for the meaning of life in things that
pass away. Why do you seek the living among the dead? Why not
make up your mind to abandon that sin which, like a stone before the entrance
to your heart, keeps God’s light from entering in? Why not prefer Jesus, the
true light (cf. Jn1:9), to the glitter of wealth, career, pride and
pleasure? Why not tell the empty things of this world that you no longer live
for them, but for the Lord of life?
2. Let us
return to the women who went to Jesus’ tomb. They halted in amazement before
the stone that was taken away. Seeing the angels, they stood there, the Gospel
tells us, “frightened, and bowed their faces to the ground” (Lk 24:5).
They did not have the courage to look up.
How often do we do the same thing? We prefer to
remain huddled within our shortcomings, cowering in our fears. It is odd, but
why do we do this? Not infrequently because, glum and closed up within
ourselves, we feel in control, for it is easier to remain alone in the darkness
of our heart than to open ourselves to the Lord. Yet only he can raise us up. A
poet once wrote: “We never know how high we are. Till we are called to rise”
(E. Dickinson).
The Lord calls us to get up, to rise at his word,
to look up and to realize that we were made for heaven, not for earth, for the
heights of life and not for the depths of death: Why do you seek the
living among the dead?
God asks us to view life as he views it, for in
each of us he never ceases to see an irrepressible kernel of beauty. In sin, he
sees sons and daughters to be restored; in death, brothers and sisters to be
reborn; in desolation, hearts to be revived.
Do not fear, then: the Lord loves your life, even
when you are afraid to look at it and take it in hand. In Easter he shows you
how much he loves that life: even to the point of living it completely,
experiencing anguish, abandonment, death and hell, in order to emerge
triumphant to tell you: “You are not alone; put your trust in me!”
Jesus is a specialist at turning our deaths into
life, our mourning into dancing (cf. Ps 30:11). With him, we
too can experience a Pasch, that is, a Passover– from self-centredness to
communion, from desolation to consolation, from fear to confidence.
Let us not keep our faces bowed to the ground in
fear, but raise our eyes to the risen Jesus. His gaze fills us with hope, for
it tells us that we are loved unfailingly, and that however much we make a mess
of things, his love remains unchanged. This is the one, non-negotiable certitude
we have in life: his love does not change. Let us ask ourselves: In my
life, where am I looking? Am I gazing at graveyards, or looking for
the Living One?
3. Why
do you seek the living among the dead? The women hear the words of the
angels, who go on to say: “Remember what he told you while he was still in
Galilee” (Lk 24:6). Those women had lost hope, because they could
not recall the words of Jesus, his call that took place in Galilee.
Having lost the living memory of Jesus, they kept looking at the tomb.
Faith always needs to go back to Galilee, to reawaken its first love for Jesus
and his call: to remember him, to turn back to him with all
our mind and all our heart. To return to a lively love of the Lord is
essential. Otherwise, ours is a “museum” faith, not an Easter faith. Jesus is
not a personage from the past; he is a person living today. We do not know him
from history books; we encounter him in life. Today, let us remember how Jesus
first called us, how he overcame our darkness, our resistance, our sins, and
how he touched our hearts with his word.
The women, remembering Jesus, left the tomb. Easter
teaches us that believers do not linger at graveyards, for they are called to
go forth to meet the Living One. Let us ask ourselves: In my life,
where am I going? Sometimes we go only in the direction of our
problems, of which there are plenty, and go to the Lord only for help. But
then, it is our own needs, not Jesus, to guide our steps. We keep seeking
the Living One among the dead. Or again, how many times, once we have
encountered the Lord, do we return to the dead, digging up regrets, reproaches,
hurts and dissatisfactions, without letting the Risen One change us?
Dear brothers and sisters: let us put the Living
One at the centre of our lives. Let us ask for the grace not to be carried by
the current, the sea of our problems; the grace not to run aground on the
shoals of sin or crash on the reefs of discouragement and fear. Let us
seek him in all things and above all things. With him, we will rise
again.
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