IMAGE: CNS photo/Paul Haring
By Cindy Wooden
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Truly celebrating Easter means
allowing Jesus to triumph over personal fears and give life to hope, creativity
and care for others, Pope Francis said.
Easter is “an invitation to break out of our routines
and to renew our lives, our decisions and our existence,” the pope said
during the Easter Vigil March 31 in St. Peter’s Basilica.
“Do we want to share in this message of life,” he
asked in his homily, “or do we prefer simply to continue standing
speechless before events as they happen?”
During the liturgy, Pope Francis baptized eight adults, who
were between the ages of 28 and 52. The Vatican said Nathan Potter, who was
born in 1988 and comes from the United States, was one of the eight. Four of
the other catechumens were from Italy and one each came from Albania, Peru and
Nigeria.
Pope Francis also confirmed the eight and give them
their first Communion during the Mass.
The Mass, on a very rainy night, began in the atrium of St.
Peter’s Basilica with the blessing of the fire and of the Easter candle. With
most of the lights in the basilica turned off, Pope Francis and the
concelebrating cardinals, bishops and priests processed in darkness toward the
altar, stopping first to light the pope’s candle and then those of the
concelebrants and faithful.
“We began this celebration outside, plunged in the darkness
of the night and the cold,” the pope said in his homily. “We felt an
oppressive silence at the death of the Lord, a silence with which each of us
can identify, a silence that penetrates to the depths of the heart of every
disciple, who stands wordless before the cross.”
Transitioning from the Good Friday commemoration of Jesus’
death and commenting on the silence of Holy Saturday, the pope spoke of the
hours when Jesus’ followers are left speechless in pain at his death, but also
speechless at the injustice of his condemnation and at their own cowardice in
the face of the lies and false testimony he endure.
“It is the silent night of the disciples who remained
numb, paralyzed and uncertain of what to do amid so many painful and
disheartening situations,” the pope said. “It is also that of today’s
disciples, speechless in the face of situations we cannot control, that make us
feel and, even worse, believe that nothing can be done to reverse all the
injustices that our brothers and sisters are experiencing in their flesh.”
But in the midst of silence, he said, the stone is rolled
away from Jesus’ tomb and there comes “the greatest message that history
has ever heard: ‘He is not here, for he has been raised.'”
Jesus’ empty tomb should fill Christians with trust in God
and should assure them that God’s light “can shine in the least expected
and most hidden corners of our lives.”
“‘He is not here … he is risen!’ This is the message
that sustains our hope and turns it into concrete gestures of charity,”
the pope said. It is a call to revive faith, broaden one’s horizons and know
that no one walks alone.
“To celebrate Easter is to believe once more that God
constantly breaks into our personal histories, challenging our conventions,
those fixed ways of thinking and acting that end up paralyzing us,” he
said.
– – –
Copyright © 2018 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. www.catholicnews.com. All rights reserved. Republishing or redistributing of CNS content, including by framing or similar means without prior permission, is prohibited. You may link to stories on our public site. This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To request permission for republishing or redistributing of CNS content, please contact permissions at cns@catholicnews.com.
