[ad_1]
“Here is the Easter announcement that I would like to leave: it is possible to start over, because there is a new life that God, regardless of all our failures, can restart in us,” Francis said in the Easter Vigil homily.
Bianca Fraccalvieri – Vatican News
The Mother of all vigils: the Easter candle lit St. Peter’s Basilica, in the ceremony presided over by Pope Francis in the early afternoon.
Due to the pandemic, baptisms were not administered during this Easter vigil, but baptismal promises were renewed and readings were also reduced.
In his homily, the Pope focused on a verse from the Gospel proposed by the liturgy: “He precedes you on your way to Galilee; there you will see it ”(16, 7). For Francis, here is the Easter invitation: “go to Galilee.”
Restart
Going to Galilee, the Pontiff explained, means, above all, restart.
God can build a work of art even with the rubble of our hearts; From the ruined pieces of our humanity, God prepares a new history.
He always precedes us, said the Pope. And in these dark months of the pandemic, “let us listen to the risen Lord who invites us to start anew, never to lose hope.”
New ways
Going to Galilee also means walk new paths, “it is to move in the opposite direction to the grave ”.
Many live the “faith of remembrance,” as if Jesus were a person from the past, the Pope said. On the contrary, going to Galilee means learning that faith, to be alive, must keep walking. We are afraid of God’s surprises, added the Pontiff, but today the Lord invites us to allow ourselves to be surprised.
“Jesus is not an old-fashioned character. He is alive, here and now. “He walks with us every day, in the situation we live in, in the dreams that we carry inside.
Geographic and existential limits
Going to Galilee also means go to the end. Because Galilee is the most distant place, Francis also explained, where Jesus began his mission, directing the announcement to the excluded.
“And today is also where the Risen One asks his people to go. It is the place of daily life, the roads we travel every day, the corners of our cities where the Lord precedes us and is present.
The Pope’s latest invitation is that we rediscover the grace of everyday life, to recognize Jesus in our “Galileans”, in everyday life. With him, life will change. With him, life begins anew. Because, beyond all defeat, evil and violence, beyond all suffering and beyond death, the Risen One lives and guides history.
