"At times, we may simply feel weary about our daily routine, tired of
taking risks in a cold, hard world where only the clever and the strong seem to
get ahead. At other times, we may feel helpless and discouraged before the
power of evil, the conflicts that tear relationships apart, the attitudes of
calculation and indifference that seem to prevail in society, the cancer of
corruption — there is so much — the spread of injustice, the icy winds of war. Then
too, we may have come face to face with death, because it robbed us of
the presence of our loved ones or because we brushed up against it in illness
or a serious setback. Then it is easy to yield to disillusionment, once the
wellspring of hope has dried up. ....
"This, then, is what the Pasch of the Lord accomplishes: it
motivates us to move forward, to leave behind our sense of defeat, to roll away
the stone of the tombs in which we often imprison our hope, and to look with
confidence to the future, for Christ is risen and has changed the direction of
history. Yet, to do this, the Pasch of the Lord takes us back to the grace of
our own past; it brings us back to Galilee, where our love story with Jesus
began, where that first call was. In other words, it asks us to relive that
moment, that situation, that experience in which we met the Lord, experienced
His love, and received a radiantly new way of seeing ourselves, the world
around us, and the mystery of life itself.
"Brothers and sisters, to rise again, to start anew, to take up the
journey, we always need to return to Galilee, that is, to go back, not to an
abstract or ideal Jesus, but to the living, concrete, and palpable memory of
our first encounter with Him. Yes, brothers and sisters, to go forward we
need to go back, to remember; to have hope, we need to revive our memory. This
is what we are asked to do: to remember and go forward! If you recover that
first love, the wonder and joy of your encounter with God, you will keep
advancing. So remember, and keep moving forward."
--Pope Francis, Homily, April 8, 2023
"Jesus goes forth into the night. Night signifies lack of communication, a
situation where people do not see one another. It is a symbol of
incomprehension, of the obscuring of truth. It is the place where evil,
which has to hide before the light, can grow. Jesus himself is light and
truth, communication, purity and goodness. He enters into the night.
Night is ultimately a symbol of death, the definitive loss of fellowship
and life. Jesus enters into the night in order to overcome it and to
inaugurate the new Day of God in the history of humanity....
"We think we are free and truly ourselves only if we
follow our own will. God appears as the opposite of our freedom. We need
to be free of him – so we think – and only then will we be free. This
is the fundamental rebellion present throughout history and the
fundamental lie which perverts life. When human beings set themselves
against God, they set themselves against the truth of their own being
and consequently do not become free, but alienated from themselves. We
are free only if we stand in the truth of our being, if we are united to
God. Then we become truly “like God” – not by resisting God,
eliminating him, or denying him. In his anguished prayer on the Mount of
Olives, Jesus resolved the false opposition between obedience and
freedom, and opened the path to freedom. Let us ask the Lord to draw us
into this “yes” to God’s will, and in this way to make us truly free."
--Pope Benedict XVI, Homily, April 5, 2012
