In order not to weaken the personal Encounter

(Jn 20:1-9)

In Jn the beloved disciple at the foot of the Cross together with the Mother is the figure of each one, and of the new community that is born around Jesus.

Rises the Church; not on the basis of a planned succession, but by full and spontaneous adhesion.

In Asia Minor the Lord’s friends, Hellenists less bound to custom, intended to oppose the uncertain and compromissory attitude of the Judaizers.

Most of the faithful of the Johannine churches thought of abandoning the synagogue and the First Testament, which delayed them.

Alternatively, they wished to embrace exclusively the New, through personal Faith in the living Christ, without uncertainty.

The Fourth Gospel attempts to rebalance extremist positions.

"Son" and Mother - that is, the people of the ancient Covenant [in Hebrew «Israel» is of the female gender] - must remain united (Jn 19:26-27).

In short, Faith and ‘works of law’ go hand in hand.

Faith is a progressive relationship that ignites in a ‘searching’ full of tension and passion [«to run»].

It conveys progressive perceptions, which give access to a new world [«to enter»], where we ‘see’ things we do not know.

This had already been in part the dismayed reaction of Mary Magdalene, who in Jn rushes alone to the tomb - not accompanied by other "women" as the Synoptics narrate.

A dismay that, however, pushes to the Announcement: the sepulcher (the condition of the Sheol, a ravine of darkness) was no longer in the arrangement in which it had been left after the burial of Christ.

And in fact, that «rewound [carefully] apart» sheet says it will never need any shroud. Death no longer has power over Him.

Thus, although the young man is faster than the veteran and arrives first to spot the signs of truth and the new world, he gives way and primacy.

Like a prophet who grasps everything ahead of time, the sincere disciple and the genuine community wait for even the slowest to come to the same experience, to the identical acumen of things; to believe in the mysterious process that brings gain in the loss and life from the death.

The eye of the fell in love immediately «perceives»; he has an intimate and acute gaze that grasps and makes its own the Novelty of the Risen One.

Earlier than mere admirers, the empathetic and true brother «catches Life amid signs of death».

As if by the relationship of Faith that animates us, in the attention of events, we were already introduced into a reality that communicates ‘new senses’. And the distinguish-and-hear of the heart.

A Listening that makes the eye sharp - projecting the Announcement.

In this way, a new People arises, which "sees inside", which feels the Infinite appearing in finiteness, and complete life that is revealed in the fragility of the (even obscure) event.

Perhaps not a few people are still surprised by the 'empty tomb': that is, a Risen Jesus only 'personal', lived in love, in the free normal, in the self-giving that overcomes death. But without any 'mausoleum'.

The Beloved Disciple - flowed from the Heart of the Pierced Jesus and who also brings Tradition to the top - in his sensitivity ‘intuits’ the living Lord well ahead of the one commemorated.

He is kidnapped from it, and in his experience he instantly ‘realizes’ the power of Life on any tie up.

Divine condition, enlightening, unfolded in history.

[Easter «Resurrection of the Lord»,  April 20, 2025]

Easter Sunday: the foundations, and the disappointed resurrection dudes

Lk 24:13-35 (13-48)

The disciples question, they are in confusion; they are anxious and accusing, disillusioned and frustrated - but what they seem most concerned about is not so much the mocking death of the Master, but (paradoxically) his own divine condition.

What they fear is exactly the crumbling of their hopes of glory.

They are only afraid of not feeling supported by someone who has achieved notoriety in order to achieve the longed-for dominance.

What deludes them is precisely that Jesus could be the Risen One: that is, the one grasped and incorporated into himself, the one assumed by the Father into his own full Life because he is recognised in the resigned Son.

Enthroned at the right hand of the heavenly throne, because true, and a servant of others.

Such apostles have their eyes held back by dreams of principality, wealth, and supremacy.

On such a basis it is impossible to recognise the Presence of Christ - who wants us to be in the present and see the future.

As before, they head to Emmaus, a place of ancient nationalist military victories.

Cleopas' very name was short for Cleopatros meaning 'of the illustrious, prestigious father'.

The disciples are still imbued with the ambition to succeed: this is their god.

It is still triumph - not genuineness and self-giving to the grave - that would change the world.

For these followers, the son of the carpenter Galileo was still the Nazarene - which meant subversive, rebellious: one of the many messiahs who were to take revenge against Roman oppression and conquer power.

Quietly, sick with ambition, they return to consider the very bandits disguised as men of God who had done away with the Master as their 'authority' (v.20).

So Jesus must once again pick up our pace and insist on interpreting the scriptures correctly.

From them it emerges that the concrete good of the real, multifaceted, even seemingly contradictory woman and man is a non-negotiable principle.

The Greek text of Lk says that Jesus "does hermeneutics" (v.27).

In short: the passages of sacred Scripture, from Moses to the Prophets and beyond, are not to be told and perceived by ear, but interpreted.

They are teachings, not stories or storytelling.

Even we, enamoured of our own ideas, find it hard to enter into the work of excavating the stories of failure, to extract sapiential pearls from them.

But conflicts are valuable mirrors: of internal struggles.

The Word of God, undomesticated by clichés, helps us to perceive events and the world even of the soul in the genuineness of providential signs.

They are there for a journey of evolution, where surprises of the most precious kind appear.

This is not in order to become cunning, strong; not even good in the current sense.

Events and emotions, even negative ones, happen but rather to develop the ability to set one's gaze and correspond to the inner tinkling of the Calling.

Vocation-character, in bad times: wonders for a great joy, like a Sun within, fiery and bright (without judgement).

Protagonist who extracts unexpected qualities; worker who tills the earth and waits.

Changing the way we perceive, the new energy of the Word brings considerations into a different dimension.

Discontents are no longer looked at to resolve them, but to understand their meaning.

We learn to realise that our ailments, sufferings and problems are often like clothes - even willingly undone overcoats.

Having thrown away these outer rags, we sense in the same disappointments a Presence coming to visit us.

An alternative Consciousness that wants to live and flow in us.

It will bring a Gift that brings another Relationship, to chase away banality and its thousand bondages.

It will in time have the strength to settle within.

And when personal anxieties, conditioned intentions, conformist expectations, will lead us into a territory where all things enter into another game, into a whole other reality - that Voice will increasingly become the fertiliser and substratum of our capacity to correspond, to grow and depart; to detach ourselves from common ideas and find new positions.

A new realm, another founding memory; new reminders, different hopes, convictions, trusts.

Little by little we realise: it is in the same sense of the dramatic story of the authentic Son that our lives as saved ones are spent.

Thus, instead of always standing with our heads backwards or only forwards, we begin to perceive the prophetic; and we bring it to awareness.

While the disciples of the glorious "messiah" continue to be directed to the old "village" - a place of narrowness, misunderstanding, even hostility to the Call of God - the Risen One goes further afield.

Then he enters, but not into the village [the common village, of dogmas, of even glossy manners, or of traditions, of conformisms] because he is already Present. And in any case it is not Shepherd who loses the flock.

In the watermark we grasp the rhythm of our worship: entrance, homily, Eucharistic liturgy, final choir, missionary proclamation... whose essential meaning is the proposal: 'to break life'.

It is the sharing that makes Jesus' being perceptible - in the Church that becomes sapiential and fraternal food for the completeness of all.

"This is my Body" means "This is Me".

God is expressed in a gesture, the breaking of the Bread - not in a sacred object.

It alludes to the Community that overcomes differences and comes together to make itself Food shared for the benefit of others.

Such is the essential, truly sacred call.

No pre-emptive sterilisation: only that in the round is the experience that makes the divine Presence perceptible.

"He made himself invisible" because the Risen One has a life that is not subject to the banal perception of the ordinary senses.

He comes in the Church that gratuitously offers itself for the life of the voiceless, the distant, the different; not of the good and the bad.

"Take and eat": make my story your own, the choice of the conviviality of differences and contrasting sides. Which convey dignity to any walk.

The news is too good: you give up the barley harvest [the end of the first ten days of April: in Palestine it was the right time to start harvesting] and set off immediately for Announcement.

The business of the land is put in brackets, so that it is not only the business of the land that goes by the wayside - becoming explicit proclaimers, assertors and sustainers of those who seek life.

Broken: different Perfection

After the first persecutions (64), the bloody civil war in Rome (68-69) and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem (70), the rebels of the empire tended to decrease - along with the second generation Christians, direct witnesses of the Apostolic teaching.

In such a reality, entirely new and undermined by the danger of routine, perhaps more than a dozen years after the fall of Masada (73), Lk wrote a Gospel for converted Hellenists - but educated to the ideal of a Greek man.

Its purpose was to stem defections, encourage new believers, allow the culturally distant a living experience of the Lord.

The Risen One's life is no longer subject to the senses, for it is full. Now it is the community that manifests him present [or - unfortunately - useless and absent].

Conditioned by a false vision inoculated by bad teachers and pagan values, the disciples still felt bewilderment in the face of failure.

The expectations of religion, of philosophies, of life in the empire, made them gloomy and lost during the trials of Faith.

All awaited the divine man: ruler, possessor, revered, avenger, titled and super-affirmed. Capable of leading his own to the same fortune.

Luke reverses the banal perspective, because within each of us there is an innate wisdom, sometimes stifled by external ideas, but different.

Only a different understanding of the sacred Scriptures, which still resound with critical prophecy, warms the heart and makes each one recognisable in Christ.

Wisdom that is combined with the quality of life experienced in a multifaceted fraternity, albeit destitute, but which abandons no one.

In the authentic church, in fact, the synergy of differences or different and shadowed sides configures a New Covenant; it opens the eyes of all, intensely manifesting the Son.

And the Risen One does not cling to the least of these in a paternalistic manner (vv.28.31) but confidently calls for reinterpretation in love, without boundaries or identified roles.

His Presence in spirit and deed allows anyone a coined-spoken calibre of life without prior conditions of fulfilment.

Hence the return (v.33) and personal proclamation (v.35), instead of indifference or flight.

The passage from Lk is one of the most profound testimonies of Jesus' Easter.

The tragedy of the cross still frightens, so does the failure.

But we do not candidly encounter the Lord as an executioner, or in the fervour of a 'victorious' holy war.

Christ is not a leader. Liberator yes, but not of an idea or of a single chosen people.

In short, the new order dreamt of will not be contrived, procedural, forlorn; nor achieved with military triumph: it would disown Him.

We meet the Risen One outside the tomb.

We catch Jesus on a journey, and in the authentic sense of the 'living scriptures'; in the breaking of the bread that illuminates coexistence and the richer meaning of church life.

We personally see the Son lifted up, building the new community of disciples who are not lost in history - indeed they flourish because of the reversals.

Making it possible for brothers and sisters to meet with Easter as well.

In their ceaseless beginning there is a discovery and something special, abnormal, disruptive; laying a continuous foundation.To internalise and live the message:

When have you experienced a Jesus who gently approaches and takes your step? For you, is the Cross a catastrophe?

Which side of your personality grasps that of the Eucharistic Christ and in between? Perhaps something one-sided, or overt?

What turns you away from the blindness of present Life?

It does not create a hierarchy: in the middle and wounded, or ghostly

(Lk 24:35-48)

We do not recognise a person by hands and feet (v.39).

The Risen One has a life that escapes the perception of the senses, yet the Resurrection does not annul the person, but rather expands it.

The identity and being that characterises him is of a different nature, but the heart is that, characterising. Love to the core: unsparing action [hands] and walk [feet], which non-faith marginalises, humiliates, kills.

Christ cannot be grasped outside the experience of sharing, witnessing, mission - the point of the text - which extends among all men.

Evangelisation from direct heralds and enthusiastic proclaimers. Centred in the core of the Announcement, which moves everything and gives access (vv.35-).

Finally, thanks to the intelligence of the Scriptures, which brings one out of commonplaces and vague interpretative automatisms.

In the specific listening and forgiveness that makes us participate; in the commitment that risks, walks, and speaks.

The human project of the Creator has taken on a pedagogical configuration in the Law. It was taken up, actualised and purified by the prophets, and sung in the psalms (v.44).

But the Conversion proposed by Christ is not a return to religiosity, but "change [of mind] into remission" (v.47).

The change of convictions and mindset is "for the forgiveness of sins": that is, in overcoming the sense of inadequacy preached by the manipulative religious centre.

Its formal and empty directions prevent women and men from corresponding to their roots, character, vocation - to joy, to the fullness of personal fulfilment, to the great Desire that pulses within each one.

In Jesus, salvation history takes on and redeems the totality of the human: it becomes the privileged place of the true seal of the eternal Covenant between the Father and his children. Only in Him does our life go right.

This awareness formed the core of all the early liturgical signs, which in words and gestures expressed the attitude of gratuitousness and acceptance that animated belief.

In this way, also the multifaceted encounter; and the risk of the mission of Peace-Shalôm (v.36): Presence of the Messiah himself, actualised in the Spirit.

The Passover of the Lord gave meaning to the past of the people and was the foundation of freedom in love, in coexistence - for personal and ecclesial work.

Principle of new configurations. "Made" par excellence [in this sense Lk in vv.41-43 insists on the reality of the resurrection].

Here is the beginning, source and culmination of authentic history - in the very figure of the Eucharist as the Table of the "Fish" [acrostic abbreviation, in Greek, of the divine condition of the Son of Man].

In short, we are eyewitnesses, not gullible or victims of collective hallucinations.

We do not see projections of anguish and frustration converging in the Risen One; we do not look to him for compensation.

In the early years after the Master's death, some disciples actually defended themselves against sceptics by telling of apparitions.

The most convincing and genuine Manifestation of the Living One was actually the wisdom and quality of life expressed by the first communities.

Those who "see and touch" are those disciples who involve themselves to the point of finally making their soul movements, their exoduses to the peripheries, and their passionate gestures, coincide with the Master's own wounds of love: "Touch me and see" (v.39).

This points to an event and story of admirable light for all, which becomes extended history, from brother to brother.

Witness of weight, of the divine (v.48) - in the Yes of being, even undermined or destroyed by the archaic sacral society of the outside.

In the earliest times believers - here and there - made it through the help of fraternities in which the Person of the authentic Messiah manifested himself persuasively, because "in the midst" (v.36).

Not 'above' or 'in front' - nor with ethics and dogmas.

Hence in the assemblies there should never have been any placemen (for life) who claimed to represent Him and had title and prominence, while others were destined for the rear or subordinates (equally fixed).

All should have been equidistant from God: no privileged, no installed.

No one leading the ranks - or closer to the Lord, while others distant.

The Lord was revealed Living in conviviality - the key word, the apex of the entire Bible.

Sharing also in the summary, which found the ways of sensitive, personal intimacy and trust: "They gave him a portion" (v.42).The concrete and global perspective of the Cross as source of Life was a transmutation of the haughty and distant sense of 'glory'.

Natural talent or not, those who represented the Risen One were always at hand: no chosen ones - zero those sent to the rear.

Even the first community tasks reflected the character of a Jesus who was shareable, spontaneous, accessible to everyone - at the centre and in a position of reciprocity.

No inbred, predestined, at the top.

This is why the Announcement had to begin from the Holy City (v.47), configured to the opposite vitality - compromised, inert, omertosa; pyramidal, co-opted, and murderous of the prophets.

That of the Eternal City ... remained the first of the 'pagan peoples' [v.47 Greek text] to be evangelised!

Only a strong identity of stringent Faith, of Hope from Elsewhere and real Communion could convert them from sin and be a code for understanding the Scriptures.

And not make Christ a ghost (v.37).

In the communities of the early days, listening to the personal and communal inner world was particularly pronounced, because the direction of travel proposed by the Master seemed to be all wrong.

Despite the chaos of external securities, the crossing from fear to Freedom came from a tolerant perception - from visceral cores of experience.

It was precisely the bottlenecks that accentuated change, internalisation, and tore disciples away from the habit of conformist harmonies.

One then relied more willingly on the tracks of the soul. Thus encountering one's own profound nature - a new axis of life, starting from the roots.

The search for a new compass for one's paths, the loss of predictable references, and social discomfort, put one in touch with oneself and others, in an authentic way.

Feeling the anxiety, the malaise, and the plagues, they let their own Calling be known - even though the external way in which they saw themselves and dealt with normal or spiritual existence, was for them.

Having to move from habits, one no longer shrank from the most precious revelation: of the primordial and humanising intimacy deposited in the fraternal communion of the new crucified Way.

Educated by the paradox of narrowness, the uncertain apostles became step by step the seekers of a trace, of a more pertinent route; the pilgrims of unexpected codes.

"Witnesses" (v.48): fathers and mothers of a new humanity.

To internalise and live the message:

How do you experience the identity of the Risen Crucified One? And his Glory? Of what does your heart burn, and Whom do you radiate?

Are you one who places himself at the head of the group? Or do you "with Jesus in the midst" contribute to the happiness of all?

The Gospels do not describe the chronicle of Christ's Resurrection, but the experience of the Risen One in the early church.

All the evangelists hint at the fact that the fulfilment of law and mass (Sabbath) delays both the unrepeatable comprehension and the awareness of the power of Life unleashed by the Person, the Word, the whole story and proposal of Jesus.

Mk and especially Mt reiterate the appointment of "Galilee": theological and existential territory opposed to observant Judea.

Today, we would perhaps speak of the 'spirit of the origins' - the primordial experience of the Lord - or of 'summary daily life'; that is, of an 'outgoing' assembly

Exodus towards fragmented peripheries, distinct from an identified but inert and unimaginative Centre, predisposed only to judgement [which does not respect what deeply belongs to the woman and man of all times].

Mt specifies that it is the event of "the Mount": we experience the Living One in the embodiment of the Beatitudes, the Spirit of Love resigned but vital.

Reversal that sometimes throws up idols to force us to encounter them, in the dignity of our own imprint - carried within the oneness, in the spirit of family, for eternity.

Lk recommends that we do not seek the Friend (our departure, guide, brio and silent knowledge) among the "dead" who encumber us.

To the disciples of Emmaus, it is revealed in an overturned capacity for interpretation of the inglorious events, and in an ardent understanding of the Scriptures.

In particular, it manifests itself in the 'breaking of life': in the reciprocity of receiving and being nourished, without inhibiting character and exceptional choices.

Jn insists on turning our gaze planted on the grave. In the grave of a tomb there is nothing but a Birth.

The fourth Gospel gives the essential criterion for recognising the manifestation of the living Jesus: his Peace.

Not the kind of Pax Romana [the empire was at peace] but Shalôm-fullness. Today we would say: complete joy; total, multifaceted fulfilment.

Code for understanding the Gospels is the flourishing and Happiness of people as they are.

Absolute criterion - true golden age.

Therefore, the missionary mandate that the Lord issues to us does not proclaim a different doctrine, from "others".

It is the invitation to be fully oneself in Him, and thus be able to embody the same Tenderness of the Father - vast, diverse, inclusive.

What has changed for us with the Resurrection? Is there evidence that he lives? Why does it not appear? What would be the signs? And the great benefits?

O. Wilde stated: 'When the gods want to punish us, they answer our prayers.

Of these kinds of requests, we must get rid.

Prayers stranded by common expectations or intentions are sometimes like the 'women' of the Gospels on Easter morning.

Still planted on funeral laments, they seek Life in the wrong places: places that are unhealthy, because they are tied to accepted ideas [of the past or conformist] and corpses.

There is a different, characterising track, for each one, dragging from within, and growing; for a decisive, non-external summit.

Victory in life means: stop tying ourselves to idolatries that are inactive but fallback.

Let us make the innate call of the essence fly, which we do not yet see but which pulses ardently, unquenchable.

It is not the conventional, conditioned, conforming, tone-deaf and 'as-is' but one-sided, shoddy purpose - that gives us joy.

It captures unseen energy, 'by name'. Which wants to sprout from the dark and opposite sides.

Birth and death are experiences of many times: why? For uninterrupted Genesis, and other possibilities.

For the sake of a healthy growth towards humanising realisation, in generosity and baptismal attitude, the stranded soul must be set free.

Our unusualness feels lost in the vicious circles of normal expectations.

And what we had imagined as inexorably the same, therefore vain and stagnant - infuses the astonishment of surprises that transcend expectations and intentions.

By eliminating conventional and other people's intentions in favour of personal Dreams that exaggerate, we will know the atypicality of God who leaps from the rubble and chaos of patterns.

Missionaries know this: it is not from Judea that certainty comes, but from Galilee, that is, from uncertainty. Their security lies in insecurity.

It is darkness that brings rebirth.

Laying aside what we previously interpreted with a sense of permanence, we marvel at the treasures that lie behind the shaky sides.

And of the independent Life that snaps amidst signs of death.

Perhaps more than a few are still surprised by the 'empty tomb': that is, a Risen Jesus only 'personal', lived in love, in the free normal, in the gift of self that conquers death. But without any 'mausoleum'.Beloved Disciple and Peter

Not to dim the personal encounter

(Jn 20:2-8)

"Now the two ran together, and the other disciple ran on ahead of Peter and came first to the tomb, and bending down he saw the linen cloths folded apart; nevertheless he did not enter" (Jn 20:4-5).

In the Fourth Gospel, the beloved disciple is an individual and ecclesial figure: of each of us, at the foot of the Cross together with the Mother - believing, sensitive and faithful Israel.

In addition, the beloved disciple himself is a broader, collective icon: of the new community that is born around Jesus.

It is precisely the Church that arises; not on the basis of a planned succession, but by full and spontaneous adherence, which is unpredictable.

At the end of the first century, the Gospel of John acquires its fourth-fifth and final draft, in a climate of growing conflict between the old institution [now reduced to a synagogue, without a Temple] and the new, adoring assembly of the sons.

Other tensions arise between the Johannine school - frankly prophetic - and the apostolic school, which we would define as Petrine charism, i.e. governmental.  A more diplomatic reality, and attenuated in its cues [with frictions evident throughout the redaction of Jn, as well as in the text we are commenting on].

In Asia Minor, the Lord's friends, Hellenists less bound by custom, intended to contrast the uncertain and compromising attitude of the Judaizers.

Many of the believers in the Johannine churches were thinking of abandoning the synagogue and the First Testament, which were holding them back.

Alternatively, they wished to embrace the New exclusively, through personal Faith in the living Christ, without uncertainty.

The fourth Gospel attempts to balance the extremist positions.

"Son" and Mother - that is, the people of the Old Covenant [in Hebrew "Israèl" is feminine] - must remain united (Jn 19:26-27).

In short, Faith and works of law go hand in hand.

Faith is a progressive relationship that is ignited in a quest filled with tension and passion ["running"].

It conveys progressive perceptions, which give access to a new world ['entering'], where we see things we do not know.

This had already been partly the dismayed reaction of Mary Magdalene, who in Jn 19:26-27 rushes alone to the tomb - not accompanied by other "women" as the synoptics narrate.

A dismay that, however, leads to the Announcement: the tomb (the condition of the Sheôl, a ravine of darkness) was no longer in the condition in which it had been left after Christ's burial.

And indeed, that sheet "wrapped [carefully] apart" says that he will never need any shroud. Death no longer has power over Him.

Thus, although the young man is faster than the veteran and arrives first to see the signs of the truth and the new world, he gives way.

Like a prophet who grasps everything beforehand, the outspoken disciple and the genuine community wait for the delayed ones to come to the same experience, to the identical acumen of things; to believing in the mysterious process that brings gain in loss and life from death.

The lover's eye immediately perceives; it has the acute, intimate gaze that grasps and makes its own the Newness of the Risen One.

Before mere admirers, who await results and anticipate favours before getting involved, immediately the empathetic and truthful brother grasps Life amidst signs of death.

As if by the relationship of Faith that animates us, in the attention of events, we are already introduced into a reality that communicates new senses. And the distinguishing-hearing of the heart.

A Listening that sharpens the eye - projecting the Announcement.

A new People thus arises, who "sees within", who perceives the Infinite appearing in finiteness, and complete life revealing itself in the fragility of the (even obscure) event.

Says the Tao Tê Ching [LII]: "He who increases his feats, for all his life has no escape. Enlightenment is seeing the small; strength is sticking to softness'.

Master Ho-shang Kung comments: "Only the clear understanding of small things appears as illumination. He who abides in weakness, every day becomes great and strong'.

Thus Master Wang Pi: "The meritorious work of those who govern does not lie in great things: seeing great things is not enlightenment; seeing small things is enlightenment. To stick to strength is not strength'.

For the liner of the institutional and governmental Church, the motorboat of the enthusiast is impregnable; at best, it tails it. Or at least, he should not lose sight of it.

In his sensitivity, the Beloved Disciple - springing from the Heart of the Pierced One and carrying the Tradition to the summit - senses the living Lord long before the one being commemorated.

He is enlightened by it, and in his experience he instantly realises the power of Life over all bindings.

A divine, enlightening condition, unfolded in history.But much patience will have to be exercised, so that amidst a thousand delays and backtracks that make the children stagnate, at least here and there we do not vaporise the charisma of the outriders and the personal encounter.

Those who play in advance and trigger the involvement of the heart to a new level, map out the present and the future for the entire field of those responsible who - uncertain or willingly - still linger.

Prayer-event, for awe

The encounter with the Lord has its own essential radicality. It is precisely the Easter event that reveals and communicates the absolute newness of the story of the children of God.

It is the birth of a new life that allows events to be freed from all limitations. Jesus assumes them all.

This absoluteness is able to bring every vicissitude and condition to blossoming, transforming all prayers into sanctuaries of absolute newness.

A power that rejects the torment of vulnerability, indeed transforms precariousness into a resource (a quality of ethical progress).

For an experience of the fullness of being, the virtuous and singular effort of the lonely and titanic torment of those who want to free themselves with their muscles from infractions is not enough.

Religiosity does not constitute us.

Authentic Power is only accepted - in the Spirit, which resurrects life from dust and obfuscation.

Illusory to eliminate all personal limits and conditioning: we would be outside the truth of the Easter Event.

A gift, not an appearance of impossible, out-of-scale hypocrisy.

Such is the dimension of the Easter 'Different' between religiosity and Faith,

We begin to take the divine Project and God Himself in others seriously, precisely when we begin to be patient with our own equivocal, mediocre affairs of such insufficiency.

E.g. by avoiding acceleration, or recognising the fruitfulness of one's own boundaries - including laziness to be redeemed, or any kind of excuses made for not moving; but in due time.

That of Love is a Path.

Thus, after the varied journey, as in the Gospels of Easter morning and Easter Day, we begin to glimpse Life even amidst signs of death! 

And the gaze fixed on the tomb turns to the Risen One, the Living One who enlivens us with other, unexpected processes.

Accepting oneself and one's history is a fundamental stage of the believer's journey: a new Covenant.

It is artificial to have sympathy for one's brothers if one is harsh and not tolerant - not even in manners.

From the point of view of Faith, it is precisely our eccentricities [and the most bizarre] that are interesting events to understand. Even those that have sent us into crisis and shamed us.

Inwardly, they speak of our essence and open missionary, cultural, affective, unusual, awe-inspiring horizons.

Achievements can evaporate, successes are often ephemeral. What does not pass is the deep relationship with one's 'self'. 

To know how to be with oneself means to esteem oneself without calculation, therefore not to torment oneself - and in return not to nag those around.

In the discouragement of betrayed Love... perhaps the most relevant aspect of the devout man who seeks Perfection is paradoxically that towards his own self.

The solution is provided by the believer in the Faith, affectively integrated because in deep prayer he has understood that a life of salvation is not identifiable with fortune, appearance, performance.

It is far more springing and unconditional reality.

And it is blossoming, now, astonishingly; it does not require a struggle against oneself, in order to go on stage.

On the contrary, it goes hand in hand with the growing awareness that it is good to start taking care of precisely the 'shadows'.

Grey areas perhaps accentuated by guilt - inculcated and underlined by our inevitable neglect of roles, mannerisms, the 'rule'.

Beware the filter of external expectations: especially those considered spiritual risk being illusory.

And in the pastoral of consensus [I give you what you want] totally conforms.

The poisons of criticism or self-criticism must be swept away, but not with laceration.

We should take the wise path that amplifies the horizon and puts the expectations of our imaginary spectacles first in the background, then behind us.

Let them flow, then perhaps they will play a role.

One must not get wrapped up in fragmentary considerations or schematic goals. Thus displeasing the personal soul with the comparison of what is in one's mind, making insufficiency to models the protagonist!

A little experience is enough to make us remember how many certainties we were once convinced of, have vanished, evaporated suddenly.

And in spite of this, we remain perhaps still outwardly full of certainties and false perceptions; sometimes with people we seem like a river in flood, about this.

Then we are no longer ourselves in the field with our attitudes, but our official persona, or someone else's dream.

And we do not see well what we actually need, which real life spontaneously brings - stronger than us.

In our innermost selves we grasp the Presence as of an 'innate knowledge', an original Wisdom that is a trace of God's signature in our souls - which every now and then bursts forth.

Presence that does not want to be submerged by induced ideas; those that cause personal character and its destiny to founder.This Invisible Friend suggests, and guides us far better than an unfailing falseness.

Because it leads the real game in synergy with our inclination and deep Calling, which is a trace of Creation.

If we do not listen to the Voice of this navigator who knows where to go, it is because we have allowed ourselves to be identified with tasks, robes, offices, positions, levels, titles, styles, ideologies or mental models that lead away from the Essence - as well as from the kind of change that belongs to us.

But although full of plans and dreams in the drawer, the soul chooses for us.

Every now and then the Roots break through the asphalt and come up unexpectedly. 

They reveal themselves like those of the pine trees; they are branching horizontal presences, just beneath the layer of earth that covers them.

To enrich Easter Love, the great work is not to seem 'better' at all costs, but to care for what emerges as estrangement from the standard of identified 'dispositions'.

And to be reborn upon it. Even suddenly; it is not the result of intentions, intentions and performance!

Regenerating... is when something non-ordinary is triggered: also a nice No to cages (within which idols and fixations bounce).

Therefore, one might even indulge in a dual or even distracted mind from time to time, in order to go beyond the established model of perfection.

Detachment neither conforming nor configured; placing oneself in a condition to welcome the gift of reality.

And allow oneself the right to wander, or to pursue one's own Image-Vision where a Calling lurks.

Tinkering with an eccentric, seemingly absurd vocation - and not knowing how to be in the world.

It is important to tolerate oneself - it is not a luxury - in order not to have a life that is always the same, rather recognising that one possesses underlying capacities.

Allowing oneself to be saved without claiming to redeem oneself with one's genius and muscles means welcoming what happens.

And letting life, personal instinct in the Spirit, lead us; with a more conscious perception, with a look into the 'present'.

To love God is to learn to correspond within, to that which comes within us, even in the summary - even as annoyance.

It is a worthy energetic host, albeit a different one: for an Annunciation. Daily Easter. 

It is a sign that our soul does not want to put its hidden resources into oblivion.

Let us not forget: when our deep nature felt dissatisfied [or even wanted to ridicule us], it was because it wanted to express strong inner knowledge.

Ways of being or something that to our 'identity' does not fit - and frankly (spontaneously) does not fit.

Often material failure is just around the corner precisely because we are already identified with the 'character' and distract ourselves from the events, neglecting their significance.

We feel, however, that a predetermined situation distances us from ourselves,

The 'manner', even the glamorous 'manner', extinguishes the blaze and brio of the sacred, unquenchable Fire that burns in the heart.

No one can make it pale. Not even a considered choice of accommodation, within which we have forced ourselves and sat down.

After all, we know that happiness is not the past or fashionable, nor can it be postponed.

let alone being reduced to a journey on an uphill vehicle with predetermined stages, which ends at the planned terminus - which then turns out to be anonymous and still uncertain, even deserted.

Things that do not please and trouble the soul bring great wisdom to Love and Life.

They are not a problem, but rather signs that if taken seriously bring with them the solution to the great and true unknowns, the significant lacerations of personal existence, of the relationship with sisters and brothers, of the world around us.

How do we internalise our emotions and events wisely?

If we sometimes judge ourselves and continue to re-actualise the episode with a sense of unworthiness, it drags on and devastates. And when one feels guilty or compressed, one cannot love.

Filling the reposed brightness of Consciousness with burdens, lamentations, induced or calculated expectations, becomes a poison that not only does not honour the Lord who wants to germinate and incarnate again, within. It disempowers and dulls the existence of all the hearts at our side.

We would also dampen the mental system, along with our own. And all the implications and activities we deny will turn into ballasts: fears that block new paths, any real attunement with God and neighbour.

For healthy growth in generosity and Easter attitude, one must release and integrate stagnant power; lost in the vicious circles of dissatisfaction with what we 'want'. However, wonderful Surprises about intentions.

Oscar Wilde said: 'when the gods want to punish us, they answer our prayers'.

Easter means: no regrets! Stop tormenting ourselves by telling ourselves that we are wrong.So let us cultivate the passions, let us pursue the Icon that characterises us, let us fly the Call without self-design.

And we see it Present - dreaming, but with open eyes.

It is not the goal that gives us the joy of the experience of fullness of being.

Let us not pass off an identity that does not belong to us, or a contraband affectivity, with what Jesus suggests.

He comes not to impute us with inexorable failure even in the details - as in archaic religions - but to make us grow and enhance us in everything.

The discriminating choice is between an illusion of victory over death, which then disintegrates, or the dazzling Easter in Faith, which recovers being and constitutes us.

Finding ourselves, reaching ourselves on time.

From weakness to full life, eliminating contrived intentions.

And when we catch ourselves scrutinised by men - perhaps by ourselves - we will know that we are redeemed from within.

Contemplated by God, in reality he sees life even behind dark sides, and amidst signs of death.

Perhaps not a few are still surprised by the 'empty tomb': that is, a Risen Jesus only 'personal', lived in love, in the free normal, in the gift of self that conquers death. But without any 'mausoleum'.

Dear Brothers and Sisters!

From ancient times the liturgy of Easter day has begun with the words: Resurrexi et adhuc tecum sum – I arose, and am still with you; you have set your hand upon me. The liturgy sees these as the first words spoken by the Son to the Father after his resurrection, after his return from the night of death into the world of the living. The hand of the Father upheld him even on that night, and thus he could rise again.

These words are taken from Psalm 138, where originally they had a different meaning. That Psalm is a song of wonder at God’s omnipotence and omnipresence, a hymn of trust in the God who never allows us to fall from his hands. And his hands are good hands. The Psalmist imagines himself journeying to the farthest reaches of the cosmos – and what happens to him? “If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me. If I say, ‘Let only darkness cover me’…, even the darkness is not dark to you…; for darkness is as light with you” (Ps 138[139]:8-12).

On Easter day the Church tells us that Jesus Christ made that journey to the ends of the universe for our sake. In the Letter to the Ephesians we read that he descended to the depths of the earth, and that the one who descended is also the one who has risen far above the heavens, that he might fill all things (cf. 4:9ff.). The vision of the Psalm thus became reality. In the impenetrable gloom of death Christ came like light – the night became as bright as day and the darkness became as light. And so the Church can rightly consider these words of thanksgiving and trust as words spoken by the Risen Lord to his Father: “Yes, I have journeyed to the uttermost depths of the earth, to the abyss of death, and brought them light; now I have risen and I am upheld for ever by your hands.” But these words of the Risen Christ to the Father have also become words which the Lord speaks to us: “I arose and now I am still with you,” he says to each of us. My hand upholds you. Wherever you may fall, you will always fall into my hands. I am present even at the door of death. Where no one can accompany you further, and where you can bring nothing, even there I am waiting for you, and for you I will change darkness into light.

These words of the Psalm, read as a dialogue between the Risen Christ and ourselves, also explain what takes place at Baptism. Baptism is more than a bath, a purification. It is more than becoming part of a community. It is a new birth. A new beginning in life. The passage of the Letter to the Romans which we have just read says, in words filled with mystery, that in Baptism we have been “grafted” onto Christ by likeness to his death. In Baptism we give ourselves over to Christ – he takes us unto himself, so that we no longer live for ourselves, but through him, with him and in him; so that we live with him and thus for others. In Baptism we surrender ourselves, we place our lives in his hands, and so we can say with Saint Paul, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” If we offer ourselves in this way, if we accept, as it were, the death of our very selves, this means that the frontier between death and life is no longer absolute. On either side of death we are with Christ and so, from that moment forward, death is no longer a real boundary. Paul tells us this very clearly in his Letter to the Philippians: “For me to live is Christ. To be with him (by dying) is gain. Yet if I remain in this life, I can still labour fruitfully. And so I am hard pressed between these two things. To depart – by being executed – and to be with Christ; that is far better. But to remain in this life is more necessary on your account” (cf. 1:21ff.). On both sides of the frontier of death, Paul is with Christ – there is no longer a real difference. Yes, it is true: “Behind and before you besiege me, your hand ever laid upon me” (Ps 138 [139]: 5). To the Romans Paul wrote: “No one … lives to himself and no one dies to himself… Whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s” (Rom 14:7ff.).

Dear candidates for Baptism, this is what is new about Baptism: our life now belongs to Christ, and no longer to ourselves. As a result we are never alone, even in death, but are always with the One who lives for ever. In Baptism, in the company of Christ, we have already made that cosmic journey to the very abyss of death. At his side and, indeed, drawn up in his love, we are freed from fear. He enfolds us and carries us wherever we may go – he who is Life itself.

Let us return once more to the night of Holy Saturday. In the Creed we say about Christ’s journey that he “descended into hell.” What happened then? Since we have no knowledge of the world of death, we can only imagine his triumph over death with the help of images which remain very inadequate. Yet, inadequate as they are, they can help us to understand something of the mystery. The liturgy applies to Jesus’ descent into the night of death the words of Psalm 23[24]: “Lift up your heads, O gates; be lifted up, O ancient doors!” The gates of death are closed, no one can return from there. There is no key for those iron doors. But Christ has the key. His Cross opens wide the gates of death, the stern doors. They are barred no longer. His Cross, his radical love, is the key that opens them. The love of the One who, though God, became man in order to die – this love has the power to open those doors. This love is stronger than death. The Easter icons of the Oriental Church show how Christ enters the world of the dead. He is clothed with light, for God is light. “The night is bright as the day, the darkness is as light” (cf. Ps 138[139]12). Entering the world of the dead, Jesus bears the stigmata, the signs of his passion: his wounds, his suffering, have become power: they are love that conquers death. He meets Adam and all the men and women waiting in the night of death. As we look at them, we can hear an echo of the prayer of Jonah: “Out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice” (Jn 2:2). In the incarnation, the Son of God became one with human beings – with Adam. But only at this moment, when he accomplishes the supreme act of love by descending into the night of death, does he bring the journey of the incarnation to its completion. By his death he now clasps the hand of Adam, of every man and woman who awaits him, and brings them to the light.

But we may ask: what is the meaning of all this imagery? What was truly new in what happened on account of Christ? The human soul was created immortal – what exactly did Christ bring that was new? The soul is indeed immortal, because man in a unique way remains in God’s memory and love, even after his fall. But his own powers are insufficient to lift him up to God. We lack the wings needed to carry us to those heights. And yet, nothing else can satisfy man eternally, except being with God. An eternity without this union with God would be a punishment. Man cannot attain those heights on his own, yet he yearns for them. “Out of the depths I cry to you…” Only the Risen Christ can bring us to complete union with God, to the place where our own powers are unable to bring us. Truly Christ puts the lost sheep upon his shoulders and carries it home. Clinging to his Body we have life, and in communion with his Body we reach the very heart of God. Only thus is death conquered, we are set free and our life is hope.

This is the joy of the Easter Vigil: we are free. In the resurrection of Jesus, love has been shown to be stronger than death, stronger than evil. Love made Christ descend, and love is also the power by which he ascends. The power by which he brings us with him. In union with his love, borne aloft on the wings of love, as persons of love, let us descend with him into the world’s darkness, knowing that in this way we will also rise up with him. On this night, then, let us pray: Lord, show us that love is stronger than hatred, that love is stronger than death. Descend into the darkness and the abyss of our modern age, and take by the hand those who await you. Bring them to the light! In my own dark nights, be with me to bring me forth! Help me, help all of us, to descend with you into the darkness of all those people who are still waiting for you, who out of the depths cry unto you! Help us to bring them your light! Help us to say the “yes” of love, the love that makes us descend with you and, in so doing, also to rise with you. Amen!

[Pope Benedict, homily at the Easter Vigil 7 April 2007]

1. “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen” (Lk 24:5).

These words of the two men dressed “in dazzling apparel” rekindle the hope of the women who had rushed to the tomb at the break of dawn. They had experienced the tragic events culminating in Christ’s crucifixion on Calvary; they had felt the sadness and the confusion. In the hour of trial, however, they had not abandoned their Lord.

They go secretly to the place where Jesus was buried in order to see him again and embrace him one last time. They are moved by love, that same love that led them to follow him through the byways of Galilee and Judea, all the way to Calvary.

What blessed women! They did not yet know that this was the dawn of the most important day of history. They could not have known that they, they themselves, would be the first witnesses of Jesus’ Resurrection.

2. “They found the stone rolled away from the tomb” (Lk 24:2).

So narrates the evangelist Luke, adding that, “when they went in they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus” (cf. 24:3). In one brief moment, everything changes. Jesus “is not here, but has risen”. This announcement, which changed the sadness of these pious women into joy, re-echoes with changeless eloquence throughout the Church in the celebration of this Easter Vigil.

A singular Vigil of a singular night. A Vigil, the mother of all vigils, during which the whole Church waits at the tomb of the Messiah, sacrificed on the Cross. The Church waits and prays, listening again to the Scriptures that retrace the whole of salvation history.

But on this night, it is not darkness that dominates but the blinding brightness of a sudden light that breaks through with the starling news of the Lord’s Resurrection. Our waiting and our prayer then become a song of joy: “Exultet iam angelica turba caelorum . . . Exult, O chorus of Angels!”

The perspective of history is completely turned around: death gives way to life, a life that dies no more. In the Preface we shall shortly sing that Christ “by dying destroyed our death, by rising restored our life”. This is the truth that we proclaim with our words, but above all with our lives. He whom the women thought was dead is alive. Their experience becomes our experience.

3. O Vigil imbued with hope, you fully express the meaning of the mystery! O Vigil rich in symbolism, you disclose the very heart of our Christian existence! On this night, everything is marvellously summed up in one name, the name of the Risen Christ.

O Christ, how can we fail to thank you for the ineffable gift which, on this night, you lavish upon us? The mystery of your Death and Resurrection descends into the baptismal waters that receive the old, carnal man and make him pure with divine youthfulness itself.

Into the mystery of your Death and Resurrection we shall shortly be immersed, renewing our baptismal promises; in a special way, the six catechumens will be immersed in this mystery as they receive Baptism, Confirmation and the Eucharist.

4. Dear Brother and Sister Catechumens, I greet you with all the warmth of my heart, and in the name of the Church gathered here I welcome you with brotherly affection. You come form different nations: Japan, Italy, China, Albania, the United States of America and Peru.

Your presence here in Saint Peter’s Square is indicative of the variety of cultures and peoples who have opened their hearts to the Gospel. On this night death gives way to life for you too, as for all the baptized. Sin is erased and a new life begins. Persevere to the end in fidelity and love. And do not be afraid when difficulties arise, for “Christ being raised from the dead will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him” (Rom 6:9).

5. Yes, dear Brothers and Sisters, Jesus lives and we live in him. For ever. This is the gift of this night, which has definitively revealed to the world the power of Christ, Son of the Virgin Mary, whom he gave to us as Mother at the foot of the Cross.

This Vigil makes us part of a day that knows no end. The day of Christ’s Passover, which for humanity is the beginning of a renewed springtime of hope.

“Haec dies quam fecit Dominus: exsultemus et laetamur in ea - This is the day that the Lord has made: let us rejoice in it and be glad”. Alleluia!

[Pope John Paul II, homily at the Easter Vigil 14 April 2001]

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

1. In the Gospel of this radiant night of the Easter Vigil, we first meet the women who go the tomb of Jesus with spices to anoint his body (cf. Lk 24:1-3). They go to perform an act of compassion, a traditional act of affection and love for a dear departed person, just as we would. They had followed Jesus, they had listened to his words, they had felt understood by him in their dignity and they had accompanied him to the very end, to Calvary and to the moment when he was taken down from the cross. We can imagine their feelings as they make their way to the tomb: a certain sadness, sorrow that Jesus had left them, he had died, his life had come to an end. Life would now go on as before. Yet the women continued to feel love, the love for Jesus which now led them to his tomb. But at this point, something completely new and unexpected happens, something which upsets their hearts and their plans, something which will upset their whole life: they see the stone removed from before the tomb, they draw near and they do not find the Lord’s body. It is an event which leaves them perplexed, hesitant, full of questions: “What happened?”, “What is the meaning of all this?” (cf. Lk 24:4). Doesn’t the same thing also happen to us when something completely new occurs in our everyday life? We stop short, we don’t understand, we don’t know what to do. Newness often makes us fearful, including the newness which God brings us, the newness which God asks of us. We are like the Apostles in the Gospel: often we would prefer to hold on to our own security, to stand in front of a tomb, to think about someone who has died, someone who ultimately lives on only as a memory, like the great historical figures from the past. We are afraid of God’s surprises. Dear brothers and sisters, we are afraid of God’s surprises! He always surprises us! The Lord is like that.

Dear brothers and sisters, let us not be closed to the newness that God wants to bring into our lives! Are we often weary, disheartened and sad? Do we feel weighed down by our sins? Do we think that we won’t be able to cope? Let us not close our hearts, let us not lose confidence, let us never give up: there are no situations which God cannot change, there is no sin which he cannot forgive if only we open ourselves to him.

2. But let us return to the Gospel, to the women, and take one step further. They find the tomb empty, the body of Jesus is not there, something new has happened, but all this still doesn’t tell them anything certain: it raises questions; it leaves them confused, without offering an answer. And suddenly there are two men in dazzling clothes who say: “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; but has risen” (Lk 24:5-6). What was a simple act, done surely out of love – going to the tomb – has now turned into an event, a truly life-changing event. Nothing remains as it was before, not only in the lives of those women, but also in our own lives and in the history of mankind. Jesus is not dead, he has risen, he is alive! He does not simply return to life; rather, he is life itself, because he is the Son of God, the living God (cf. Num 14:21-28; Deut 5:26; Josh 3:10). Jesus no longer belongs to the past, but lives in the present and is projected towards the future; Jesus is the everlasting “today” of God. This is how the newness of God appears to the women, the disciples and all of us: as victory over sin, evil and death, over everything that crushes life and makes it seem less human. And this is a message meant for me and for you dear sister, for you dear brother. How often does Love have to tell us: Why do you look for the living among the dead? Our daily problems and worries can wrap us up in ourselves, in sadness and bitterness... and that is where death is. That is not the place to look for the One who is alive! Let the risen Jesus enter your life, welcome him as a friend, with trust: he is life! If up till now you have kept him at a distance, step forward. He will receive you with open arms. If you have been indifferent, take a risk: you won’t be disappointed. If following him seems difficult, don’t be afraid, trust him, be confident that he is close to you, he is with you and he will give you the peace you are looking for and the strength to live as he would have you do.

3. There is one last little element that I would like to emphasize in the Gospel for this Easter Vigil. The women encounter the newness of God. Jesus has risen, he is alive! But faced with empty tomb and the two men in brilliant clothes, their first reaction is one of fear: “they were terrified and bowed their faced to the ground”, Saint Luke tells us – they didn’t even have courage to look. But when they hear the message of the Resurrection, they accept it in faith. And the two men in dazzling clothes tell them something of crucial importance: remember. “Remember what he told you when he was still in Galilee… And they remembered his words” (Lk 24:6,8). This is the invitation to remember their encounter with Jesus, to remember his words, his actions, his life; and it is precisely this loving remembrance of their experience with the Master that enables the women to master their fear and to bring the message of the Resurrection to the Apostles and all the others (cf. Lk 24:9). To remember what God has done and continues to do for me, for us, to remember the road we have travelled; this is what opens our hearts to hope for the future. May we learn to remember everything that God has done in our lives.

On this radiant night, let us invoke the intercession of the Virgin Mary, who treasured all these events in her heart (cf. Lk 2:19,51) and ask the Lord to give us a share in his Resurrection. May he open us to the newness that transforms, to the beautiful surprises of God. May he make us men and women capable of remembering all that he has done in our own lives and in the history of our world. May he help us to feel his presence as the one who is alive and at work in our midst. And may he teach us each day, dear brothers and sisters, not to look among the dead for the Living One. Amen.

[Pope Francis, homily at the Easter Vigil 30 March 2013]

FIRST MEDITATION

With increasing insistence one hears in our time about the death of God. For the first time, in Jean Paul, it is only a nightmarish dream: the dead Jesus announces to the dead, from the roof of the world, that on his journey into the afterlife he has found nothing, neither heaven nor merciful God, but only infinite nothingness, the silence of the gaping void. It is still a horrible dream that is put aside, groaning in awakening, like a dream, even though one will never be able to erase the anguish suffered, which was always lurking, gloomy, in the depths of the soul. A century later, in Nietzsche, it is a deadly seriousness that expresses itself in a shrill cry of terror: 'God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him!" Fifty years later, it is spoken of with academic detachment and preparations are made for a 'theology after the death of God', we look around to see how we can continue, and we encourage people to prepare to take God's place. The terrible mystery of Holy Saturday, its abyss of silence, has thus acquired an overwhelming reality in our time. For this is Holy Saturday: the day of God's concealment, the day of that unprecedented paradox that we express in the Creed with the words 'descended into hell', descended into the mystery of death. On Good Friday we could still look upon the pierced. Holy Saturday is empty, the heavy stone of the new tomb covers the deceased, all is past, faith seems to be definitively unmasked as fanaticism. No God saved this Jesus posing as his Son. One can be reassured: the cautious who had previously been a little hesitant in their hearts as to whether perhaps it might be different, were instead right.

Holy Saturday: day of God's burial; is not this in a striking way our day? Does not our century begin to be one big Holy Saturday, the day of God's absence, in which even the disciples have a chilling emptiness in their hearts that grows wider and wider, and therefore prepare themselves full of shame and anguish to return home and set off gloomy and broken in their despair towards Emmaus, not realising at all that he who was believed dead is in their midst?

God is dead and we have killed him: did we really realise that this phrase is taken almost literally by Christian tradition and that we often repeated something similar in our viae crucis without realising the tremendous gravity of what we were saying? We have killed him, enclosing him in the stale shell of habitual thoughts, exiling him in a form of piety without the content of reality and lost in the round of catchphrases or archaeological preciosities; we have killed him through the ambiguity of our lives, which has spread a veil of darkness over him as well: for what could have made God more problematic in this world if not the problematic nature of his believers' faith and love?

The divine darkness of this day, of this century that is increasingly becoming a Holy Saturday, speaks to our conscience. We too have to deal with it. But in spite of everything it has something consoling about it. The death of God in Jesus Christ is at the same time an expression of his radical solidarity with us. The darkest mystery of faith is at the same time the clearest sign of a hope that has no boundaries. And one more thing: only through the failure of Good Friday, only through the silence of death on Holy Saturday, could the disciples be brought to an understanding of what Jesus really was and what his message really meant. God had to die for them so that he could truly live in them. The image they had formed of God, in which they had tried to force him, had to be destroyed so that through the rubble of the ruined house they could see heaven, he himself, who always remains the infinitely greater. We need God's silence in order to experience anew the abyss of his greatness and the abyss of our nothingness that would open up if he were not there.

There is a scene in the Gospel that anticipates in an extraordinary way the silence of Holy Saturday and thus appears once again as the portrait of our historical moment. Christ sleeps in a boat that, battered by the storm, is about to sink. The prophet Elijah had once mocked the priests of Baal, who in vain cried out for their god to let fire descend on the sacrifice, urging them to cry out louder, just in case their god was asleep. But is God not really asleep? Does not the prophet's mockery ultimately also touch the believers of the God of Israel who travel with him in a sinking boat? God is sleeping while his things are about to sink, is this not the experience of our life? Does not the Church, the faith, resemble a small boat about to sink, struggling futilely against the waves and the wind, while God is absent? The disciples cry out in extreme despair and shake the Lord to wake him up, but he is astonished and rebukes their little faith. Is it any different for us? When the storm has passed, we will realise how much our little faith was laden with foolishness. And yet, O Lord, we cannot help but shake you, God who is silent and asleep, and cry out to you: wake up, do you not see that we are sinking? Awaken us, do not let the darkness of Holy Saturday last for ever, let a ray of Easter fall on our days too, accompany us as we set out in despair towards Emmaus so that our hearts may light up at your nearness. Thou who hast led in hidden ways the ways of Israel to be at last a man with men, do not leave us in the dark, do not let thy word be lost in the great waste of words of these times. Lord, give us your help, for without you we will sink.

Amen.

SECOND MEDITATION

God's hiding in this world constitutes the true mystery of Holy Saturday, a mystery already hinted at in the enigmatic words that Jesus "descended into hell". At the same time, the experience of our time has offered us a completely new approach to Holy Saturday, for the concealment of God in the world that belongs to him and that should with a thousand tongues proclaim his name, the experience of the powerlessness of God who is nevertheless the Almighty - this is the experience and misery of our time.

But even if Holy Saturday in this way has come closer to us, even if we understand the God of Holy Saturday more than the powerful manifestation of God amid thunder and lightning, of which the Old Testament speaks, the question of knowing what is really meant when it is said mysteriously that Jesus "descended into hell" remains unsolved. Let us say it with all clarity: no one can really explain it. Nor does it become any clearer by saying that here hell is a mistranslation of the Hebrew word shêol, which simply means the whole realm of the dead, and thus the formula would originally only mean that Jesus descended into the depths of death, really died and participated in the abyss of our destiny of death. For the question then arises: what really is death and what actually happens when we descend into the depths of death? We must pay attention here to the fact that death is no longer the same thing after Christ has undergone it, after he has accepted and penetrated it, just as life, the human being, are no longer the same thing after in Christ human nature was able to come into contact, and indeed did come into contact, with God's own being. Before, death was only death, separation from the land of the living and, albeit with different depths, something like 'hell', the nocturnal side of existence, impenetrable darkness. Now, however, death is also life, and when we cross the glacial solitude of death's threshold, we always meet again with the One who is life, who wanted to become the companion of our ultimate solitude and who, in the mortal loneliness of his anguish in the Garden of Olives and his cry on the cross "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?", became a sharer in our solitudes.

If a child were to venture alone into the dark night through a forest, he would be afraid even if he were shown hundreds of times that there is no danger. He is not afraid of something definite, to which a name can be given, but in the darkness he experiences insecurity, the orphan condition, the sinister character of existence itself. Only a human voice could console him; only the hand of a loved one could drive away the anguish like a bad dream. There is an anguish - the real anguish, lurking in the depths of our loneliness - that cannot be overcome through reason, but only through the presence of a person who loves us. For this anguish has no object to which we can give a name, but is only the terrible expression of our ultimate loneliness. Who has not felt the frightening sensation of this condition of abandonment? Who would not feel the holy and consoling miracle that a word of affection arouses in these circumstances? Where, however, there is such loneliness that can no longer be reached by the transforming word of love, then we speak of hell. And we know that not a few men of our time, apparently so optimistic, are of the opinion that every encounter remains on the surface, that no man has access to the ultimate and true depth of the other and that therefore in the ultimate depth of every existence lies despair, indeed hell. Jean-Paul Sartre expressed this poetically in one of his dramas and at the same time expounded the core of his doctrine on man. One thing is certain: there is a night in whose dark abandonment no word of comfort penetrates, a door that we must pass through in absolute solitude: the door of death. All the anguish of this world is ultimately the anguish caused by this loneliness. That is why in the Old Testament the term for the realm of the dead was identical to the term for hell: shêol. Death in fact is absolute solitude. But that solitude that can no longer be illuminated by love, that is so deep that love can no longer access it, is hell.

"Descended into hell": this Holy Saturday confession means that Christ has passed through the door of solitude, that he has descended into the unreachable and insuperable depths of our condition of loneliness. This means, however, that even in the extreme night in which no words penetrate, in which we are all like children cast out, weeping, there is a voice that calls to us, a hand that takes us and leads us. Man's insuperable loneliness was overcome from the moment he found himself in it. Hell has been conquered from the moment that love has also entered the region of death and the no-man's-land of solitude has been inhabited by him. In its depths man does not live by bread, but in the authenticity of his being he lives by the fact that he is loved and allowed to love. From the moment when the presence of love is given in the space of death, then life penetrates death: to your faithful, O Lord, life is not taken away, but transformed - the Church prays in the funeral liturgy.

No one can ultimately measure the extent of these words: 'descended into hell'. But if we are once given to approach the hour of our ultimate solitude, we will be allowed to understand something of the great clarity of this dark mystery. In the certain hope that in that hour of extreme loneliness we will not be alone, we can already now presage something of what is to come. And in the midst of our protest against the darkness of God's death we begin to become grateful for the light that comes to us from this very darkness.

THIRD MEDITATION

In the Roman breviary, the liturgy of the sacred triduum is structured with special care; the Church in its prayer wants, so to speak, to transfer us into the reality of the Lord's passion and, beyond words, into the spiritual centre of what happened. If one were to attempt to mark the prayerful liturgy of Holy Saturday in a few lines, then one would have to speak above all of the effect of profound peace that transpires from it. Christ has penetrated into concealment (Verborgenheit), but at the same time, in the very heart of impenetrable darkness, he has penetrated into security (Geborgenheit), indeed he has become the ultimate security. By now the psalmist's bold word has become true: and even if I wanted to hide in hell, you are there too. And the more one goes through this liturgy, the more one sees shining in it, like a morning dawn, the first lights of Easter. If Good Friday places before our eyes the disfigured figure of the pierced man, the liturgy of Holy Saturday draws rather on the image of the cross dear to the ancient Church: the cross surrounded by rays of light, a sign, in the same way, of death and resurrection.

Holy Saturday thus reminds us of an aspect of Christian piety that has perhaps been lost in the course of time. When we look at the cross in prayer, we often see in it only a sign of the Lord's historical passion on Golgotha. The origin of the devotion to the cross, however, is different: Christians prayed to the East to express their hope that Christ, the true sun, would rise over history, to express therefore their faith in the return of the Lord. The cross is at first closely linked with this orientation of prayer, it is represented as a banner, so to speak, that the king will raise in his coming; in the image of the cross, the advanced point of the procession has already arrived in the midst of those who pray. For early Christianity, the cross is thus above all a sign of hope. It implies not so much a reference to the Lord past, as to the Lord who is to come. Certainly it was impossible to escape the intrinsic necessity that, with the passage of time, our gaze should also turn to the event that took place: against every flight into the spiritual, against every misrecognition of the incarnation of God, it was necessary to defend the unimaginable prodigality of God's love who, out of love for the wretched human creature, became a man himself, and what a man! It was necessary to defend the holy foolishness of God's love, who chose not to utter a word of power, but to tread the path of powerlessness in order to pillory our dream of power and overcome it from within.

But then have we not forgotten a little too much about the connection between cross and hope, the unity between the East and the direction of the cross, between past and future that exists in Christianity? The spirit of hope that hovers over the prayers of Holy Saturday should once again penetrate our entire being as Christians. Christianity is not only a religion of the past, but, to no lesser extent, of the future; its faith is at the same time hope, since Christ is not only the dead and the risen, but also the one who is to come.

O Lord, enlighten our souls with this mystery of hope so that we may recognise the light that is radiated by your cross, grant us that as Christians we may go forward into the future, towards the day of your coming.

Amen.

PRAYER

Lord Jesus Christ, in the darkness of death Thou hast made light; in the abyss of deepest loneliness dwells now forever the mighty protection of Thy love; in the midst of Thy hiddenness we can now sing the hallelujah of the saved. Grant us the humble simplicity of faith, which does not allow itself to be misled when Thou callest us in the hours of darkness, of abandonment, when everything seems to appear problematic; grant us, in this time in which a mortal struggle is being fought around Thee, sufficient light so that we may not lose Thee; sufficient light so that we may give it to those who need it even more. Let the mystery of Thy paschal joy, as the dawn of the morning, shine in our days; grant that we may be truly paschal men in the midst of the Holy Saturday of history. Grant that through the bright and dark days of this time we may always with glad hearts find ourselves on the way to Thy future glory.

Amen.

[Pope Benedict, excerpt from "The Sabbath of History"; https://www.sabinopaciolla.com/benedetto-xvi-il-mistero-terribile-del-sabato-santo/]

Today we have an impression of oblivion, of the Lord.

The pit seems to be able to hide and silence Him, so much so that there is no need to contest him - it would be enough to neglect or pity him.

Instead, we want to meditate again on the revolution of Christ and his new Light, to recognize it as ours, assimilate and live it - right from the roots of being and on our journey.

God's Silence is part of Revelation: Glory and Life which correspond to us; in a democratic, multifaceted, not one-sided way.

Silence that respects our ‘flower’.

Thus, amidst the ups and downs of our lives as well, here is the laying and the mysterious plotting of ‘seeds’ - a whole series of alternatives:

A different Face of God, creator and redeemer of our intelligence and freedom; educator never sullen - nor dominator ready to unleash reprisals.

Not sovereign who governs by enacting laws, but Parent who transmits his own Life.

We do not meet Him by rising and forcing, for it is He who ceaselessly proposes, reveales Himself, and Comes.

He does not stand “at the head” and you at the back; he does not place himself above while you remain below.

It does not put itself “in front” so that someone is destined to fall behind [with the strongest, quickest and most organised ones always close, with no possibility of turnover and replacement].

An activity of denunciation of false religion: that of repetitive fulfilments - and of fixed or too sophisticated, disembodied ideas - beneath a cloak of plagiarism, fear, intimidation.

The Lord is righteous, for He understands us. Let's banish empty, futile, dissipative manners.

Whoever finds himself socially constrained is never himself and cannot love, as he’s conditioned; overwhelmed one by comparisons and external needs.

A new authenticity of woman and man, no longer identified in roles and characters to be played and compared, but autonomous and realized by a personal Call.

Not attracted ones by the combination of culture-devotion-power-interest, but fascinated by the Wisdom that dwells in every slight and small Uniqueness.

So free and unambitious, they can willingly stoop to the less fortunate. Without intimate dissociation.

A new face of society, one that is neither competitive nor the prerogative of the cunning, interest groups, or circles, but characterised by the exchange of ‘gifts’.

Conviviality of the differences that accentuates and lets life flourish, of each and every one.

In short, we are not a typology of eternal failures.

The Father  wants people who travel towards themselves, and dreams a humanizing Family.

Lovable, because He doesn’t absorb our energies, but rather transmits them.

Holy Saturday, Burial of the Lord [April 19, 2025]

Do you seek Jesus the Crucified? (Mt 28:5).

This is the question the women will hear when, "at dawn on the first day of the week" (Mt 28:1), they come to the tomb.

Crucified!

Before the Sabbath he was condemned to death and expired on the cross crying: "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit" (Lk 23:46).

So they laid Jesus in a tomb, in which no one had yet been laid, in a tomb lent by a friend, and they went away. They all departed, in haste, to fulfil the rule of the religious Law. For they were to begin the feast, the Passover of the Jews, the memory of the exodus from the slavery of Egypt: the night before the Sabbath.

Then the Easter Sabbath passed and the second night began.

2. And behold, we have all come to this temple, as have so many of our brothers and sisters in the faith to the various temples throughout the globe, that holy night may descend upon our souls and hearts: the night after the Sabbath.

You are here, sons and daughters of the Church that is in Rome, sons and daughters of the Church that is spread across countries and continents, guests and pilgrims. Together we experienced Good Friday: the Stations of the Cross among the remains of the Colosseum - and the adoration of the Cross until the moment when a large stone was rolled over the door of the tomb - and a seal was put on it.

Why have you come now?

Do you seek Jesus Crucified?

Yes. We seek Jesus Crucified. We look for him on this night after the Sabbath, which preceded the arrival of the women at the tomb, when they with great astonishment saw and heard: "He is not here..." (Mt 28:6).

We have therefore come early, already late in the evening, to keep vigil at his tomb. To celebrate the Easter Vigil.

And we proclaim our praise on this wonderful night, pronouncing with the deacon's lips the "Exsultet" of the vigil. And we listen to the sacred readings, which compare this one night to the day of Creation and especially to the night of the exodus, during which the blood of the lamb saved the first-born sons of Israel from death and brought them out of slavery in Egypt. And then in the moment of renewed threat the Lord led them out to dry in the midst of the sea.

Let us therefore keep vigil on this unique night at the sealed tomb of Jesus of Nazareth, knowing that all that has been foretold by the Word of God throughout the generations will be fulfilled on this night, and that the work of man's redemption will reach its zenith on this night.

Let us therefore keep vigil, and though the night is deep, and the tomb sealed, let us confess that the Light has already been kindled in it, and it walks through the darkness of the night and the darkness of death. It is the light of Christ: "Lumen Christi".

3. We have come to immerse ourselves in his death; both we who long ago received the Baptism that immerses in Christ, and also those who will receive Baptism on this night. They are our new brothers and sisters in the faith; hitherto they were catechumens, and this night we can welcome them into the community of the Church of Christ, which is one, holy, catholic and apostolic. They are our new brothers and sisters in the faith and in the community of the Church, and they come from different countries and continents: Korea, Japan, Italy, Nigeria, Holland, Rwanda, Senegal and Togo.

We greet them cordially and joyfully proclaim the "Exsultet" in honour of the Church, our Mother, which sees them gathered here in the full light of Christ: "Lumen Christi".

And let us proclaim with them the praise of the baptismal water, into which, through Christ's death, the power of the Holy Spirit has descended: the power of the new life that gushes forth for eternity, for eternal life (cf. Jn 4:14).

4. So even before dawn breaks and the women arrive at the tomb from Jerusalem, we have come here to seek Jesus Crucified,

for: "Our old man was crucified with him, so that... we would no longer be slaves to sin..." (Rom 6:6);

for: we do not consider ourselves "dead to sin, but living for God, in Christ Jesus" (Rom 6:11): "As for his death, he died to sin once for all; but now by the fact that he lives, he lives for God" (Rom 6:10);

for: "Through Baptism we ... have been buried together with him in death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too may walk in a new life (Rom 6:4);

for: "If we have been completely united with him by a death like his, we shall also be completely united with him by his resurrection" (Rom 6:5);

for we believe: that "if we have died with Christ... we shall also live with him" (Rom 6:8);

and because we believe that "Christ risen from the dead, he no longer dies; death no longer has power over him" (Rom 6:9).

5. That is precisely why we are here. That is why we keep vigil at his tomb.

Let the Church keep vigil. And watch over the world. The hour of Christ's victory over death is the greatest hour in history.

[Pope John Paul II, homily at the Easter Vigil 18 April 1981]