At his Wednesday General Audience in St. Peter’s Square on November 5, Pope Leo XIV urged the faithful to rediscover the power of Christ’s Resurrection as the living heart of Christian faith and the key to finding hope amid today’s chaos.
According to Vatican News, the Pope reflected that the Resurrection is “not an idea, not a theory, but the Event that is the foundation of faith.” He emphasized that truly believing in the Resurrection “means revolutionizing how we live,” allowing it to transform our actions and “change the world with the gentle and courageous power of Christian hope.”
A Light in the Midst of Confusion
Pope Leo acknowledged the confusion and pain that define modern life, calling the Resurrection “the lodestar towards which we can direct our seemingly chaotic lives.” He said that in Christ’s victory over death, we find assurance even in the face of suffering, evil, and loss.
“In Him, we have the assurance of always being able to find the lodestar towards which we can direct our seemingly chaotic lives,” the Pope said, noting that Christ’s Resurrection “becomes care and healing, nourishing hope in the face of the frightening challenges that life presents us with every day.”
Every Day Is Easter
The Holy Father underscored that the Resurrection is not merely a historical memory. “Christ’s Easter is an event that does not belong to a distant past,” he said, explaining that through the Eucharist and the liturgical life of the Church, believers are invited to live Easter continually. “The Paschal Mystery is the cornerstone of Christian life, around which all other events revolve. We can say, then, without any irenicism or sentimentality, that every day is Easter,” he added.
The Search for Meaning and Fulfillment
Drawing on the writings of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (St. Edith Stein), Pope Leo reflected on the human heart’s desire for fulfillment. Quoting her insight that we “always long to have being given to us anew,” he described this yearning as the dynamism that propels us beyond limitation toward the infinite.
“We are immersed in limitation, but we also strive to surpass it,” the Pope said, emphasizing that this tension between limitation and longing is precisely where the message of the Resurrection brings healing and hope.
“The Most Beautiful, Joyful, and Overwhelming News”
“The Paschal proclamation,” Pope Leo proclaimed, “is the most beautiful, joyful, and overwhelming news that has ever resounded in all of history.” According to Vatican News, he called it “the quintessential Gospel,” declaring that it “attests to the victory of love over sin and of life over death.”
This truth, he said, fulfills humanity’s deepest need for meaning: “It is the only thing capable of satisfying the demand for meaning that troubles our minds and our hearts.”
Love That Conquers Death
Pope Leo concluded by reminding the faithful that the Resurrection irrevocably changed human destiny. Referring to the Gospel of Mark, he recalled the moment when the women discovered the empty tomb and heard the angel’s words: “You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; He is not here” (Mk 16:6).
That moment, the Pope said, is not only the turning point of the Gospel but of all human history — the dawn of a new creation that continues to light even “our time, marked by so many crosses,” with the unending “dawn of Paschal hope.”
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