Live in hope
‘Believers do not linger at graveyards. Believers are called to go forth and meet the Living One.’
During the Easter vigil Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica, Pope Francis asked the crowd several times in his homily: “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” (Luke 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,” Pope Francis said.
“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?”
Pope Francis called us to get out of what he called “tomb psychology.” We imprison ourselves in graveyards of negativity that we build ourselves. He challenged us to roll away the stones that cast away hope. He identified two: the stone of discouragement and the stone of sin.
‘‘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 sepulcher 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?”
Easter, according to Pope Francis, reminds us that believers do not linger at graveyards. Believers are called to go forth and 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 center 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,” he ended in prayer.
For the complete beautiful Easter vigil homily, log on to www.vaticannews.va
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