The New Creation, from Hearing

(Jn 20:11-18)

"In those days, in Israel, the testimony of women could not have official, juridical value, but women experienced a special bond with the Lord, which is fundamental for the concrete life of the Christian community, and this always, in every age, not only at the beginning of the Church's journey" [Pope Benedict, Regina Coeli 9 April 2012].

Mk tells of a young man dressed in white, Mt of an angel, Lk of two men dressed in white, Jn of two angels.

The stories about the annunciation and the heralds of the Resurrection do not fit together according to our way of telling.

In order to avoid a limited view of the victory of Life, it should be understood that we are not celebrating the week of the apparitions of the Risen One, but of his Manifestations [Greek text].

It does not just appear to some - to others it does not (depending on the lottery): it manifests itself. We experience this.

And there is a new creation: now one does not recognise Jesus when one sees him, but when one hears him (v.16).

The Lord makes himself seen not in the moment of vision, but in the time of the Word, of the personal call that makes the ancient gaze "turn away" from the irrelevant direction that clings to the image of "yesterday".

The experience of the living Christ excludes memories to be wept over.

It is present and grounded, convincing, multifaceted and accessible - direct. Definitely better than that offered later by the apostles, without pierced hearts (or proclamations).

But the face-to-face still remained closed, to the extent that one seemed to be looking for dead or distant museum pieces - to be found almost as before and at best kept without too much shaking.

Conditioned by excessively "usual" expectations, we would claim to trace Jesus to the wrong campsites and places. But in Jn the Ascension is placed on the same day as Easter (v.17).

The very observance of archaic religious law [v.1: in the particular case, the Sabbath] seems to delay the experience of the disruptive power of rebirth, in the Spirit.

Gradually, those primordial personal energies were being reactivated in the first communities that not even the blackmail, intimidation and marginalisation of the institutional apparatus could touch.

The Incarnation continued, unfolding in the believers; awakening new creative states in them.

The faithful were on the virtuous and enthusiastic wave of a further fundamental change: they now felt themselves to be 'brothers' of the Risen One (v.17).

The relationship of 'discipleship' (Jn 13:13) grown into 'friendship' (Jn 15:15) became that of kinsmen who felt like 'sons'.

[Jn 1:11-12: "He came among his own, and his own received him not. But to those who received him, he gave them power to become children of God; to those who believe in his Name" - that is, adhere to his entire word, event and action; even problematic, painful, denunciation].

Thus began the explicit Announcement, despite the fact that the part of the "church" that was really vital and increasingly determined proved to be the peripheral and from the pagans [in the figure of Mary Magdalene].

They wanted the reviving redemption, and thus pointed the right way to the assembly leaders themselves.

The Judeo-Christian community of the apostles was in fact all out for compromise with the distant and conflicting religious institution, that of power, which had wanted to destroy the Master.

The 'apostolic' hard core always lagging behind and to be evangelised: he is converted only by the one who feels himself a nothing (vv.2.18). And when she becomes aware that the realm of dead things will no longer surround her.

Woman: Authentic Assembly in the Spirit.

A boundless field of the humiliated, which nevertheless in the Risen Christ "sees itself" and is unblocked; it acquires new breath, overcomes discouragement, disorientation, uncertainty.

Still filled with Infinity, like pilgrims, the dreamers from below and the periphery seek their way.

They are activated with passion, to rekindle and resonate every fold of the human being - previously commanded by a world of calculated alternatives.

It is again the experience of "Mary of Magdala", who, by gaining confidence, can complete the perceptions and thoughts of even the top of the class.

The Risen One is always somewhere else... than what the expert or an average religious soul not ready for change expects.

His Person has unforeseen physiognomies, unconventional and out of pattern - like life, all to be discovered.

These are unseen profiles - to be grasped and internalised, sometimes almost without a struggle.

Only a call by name - his direct Word, the personal Appeal - makes us realise that by external influence we were perhaps chasing a Lord [of the past, or fashionable] too recognisable, to be commemorated as before.

To be carried in the saddlebag as always, with closed and normal love, the child of sorrow.The search for our Rabbuni may also arise from a sense of loss, or from the beatings suffered - but it is marked by Easter encounters and stages of new awareness.

New listening, shattering reassurances.

He remains a lukewarm stranger - at room temperature - for those who allow themselves to be influenced by limited (packaged) ideas and pretend to understand him with knowledge, recognise him with their eyes, or use him as a sleeping pill.

The Risen One is radical newness: wounded within and impetus. An itinerary that embraces and takes on the whole of humanity and history.

He acts in us by shattering all security; the very security that still does not let us out of the small circle.

And while labouring in the tension of the elusive [that cannot be made one's own] it is in the excitement of perceiving the treasures of atypical and personal intuitions that regenerated life attracts and opens up, amazes.

It is only in the experience of being born again by transmitting it that the Spirit is unleashed and charged - and the Living One does not remain a stranger or someone of whom one has already formed an idea.

"I have sought and seen the Lord!" [v.18: sense of the Greek text].

We do not experience Christ with intimism, nor with reminiscences and trinkets; not even in a cerebral way or by being content to fulfil pious memorial offices on the body.

There is an unprecedented situation.

But who notices? In spite of the neglect they suffer, only the souls who are brides - the poorly regarded.

To internalise and live the message:

What transmutation took place in you and your neighbour when you accepted the Call and the invitation to the Announcement?

How did the Person of Christ make you aware that you are fully wanted: inalienable subject, by Name?

Personal Manifestation: a law we find carved into many pages of the Gospels. But... soft happiness or the wave that sweeps everything away?

In these weeks our reflection moves, as it were, in the orbit of the Paschal Mystery. Today we meet the one who, according to the Gospels, first saw the risen Jesus: Mary Magdalene. The Sabbath rest had recently ended. On the day of the passion, there had been no time to complete the funeral rites; that is why, in that dawn filled with sadness, the women go to Jesus' tomb with perfumed ointments. The first to arrive is her: Mary of Magdala, one of the disciples who had accompanied Jesus all the way from Galilee, putting herself at the service of the nascent Church. Her journey to the tomb mirrors the faithfulness of so many women who are devoted for years to the cemetery paths, in memory of someone who is no longer there. The most authentic bonds are not broken even by death: there are those who continue to love, even if the loved one is gone forever.

The gospel (cf. Jn 20:1-2, 11-18) describes Mary Magdalene by immediately making it clear that she was not a woman of easy enthusiasm. In fact, after the first visit to the tomb, she returns disappointed to the place where the disciples were hiding; she reports that the stone has been moved from the entrance of the tomb, and her first hypothesis is the simplest that can be formulated: someone must have stolen Jesus' body. So the first announcement that Mary brings is not that of the resurrection, but of a theft that unknown persons perpetrated, while all of Jerusalem slept.

Then the gospels tell of a second journey of Magdalene to Jesus' tomb. She was stubborn! She went, she came back ... because she was not convinced! This time her pace is slow, very heavy. Mary suffers doubly: first of all for the death of Jesus, and then for the inexplicable disappearance of his body.

It is while she is bending over by the tomb, her eyes filled with tears, that God surprises her in the most unexpected way. The evangelist John emphasises how persistent her blindness is: she does not notice the presence of two angels questioning her, nor does she become suspicious when she sees the man behind her, whom she thinks is the guardian of the garden. And instead she discovers the most shocking event in human history when she is finally called by name: "Mary!" (v. 16).

How beautiful it is to think that the first appearance of the Risen One - according to the gospels - happened in such a personal way! That there is someone who knows us, who sees our suffering and disappointment, and who is moved by us, and calls us by name. It is a law that we find engraved in many pages of the gospel. Around Jesus there are many people seeking God; but the most prodigious reality is that, much earlier, there is first of all God who cares for our lives, who wants to raise them up, and to do this he calls us by name, recognising the personal face of each one. Every man is a story of love that God writes on this earth. Each one of us is a story of God's love. Each of us God calls by name: he knows us by name, he looks at us, he waits for us, he forgives us, he has patience with us. Is it true or not? Each one of us has this experience.

And Jesus calls her: "Mary!"The revolution of his life, the revolution destined to transform the existence of every man and woman, begins with a name that echoes in the garden of the empty tomb. The gospels describe to us Mary's happiness: Jesus' resurrection is not a joy given with an eyedropper, but a cascade that invests one's whole life. Christian existence is not woven with fluffy happiness, but with waves that sweep over everything. Try to think too, in this instant, with the baggage of disappointments and defeats that each of us carries in our hearts, that there is a God close to us who calls us by name and says: "Get up, stop crying, because I have come to set you free!" This is beautiful.

Jesus is not one who adapts himself to the world, tolerating that in it death, sadness, hatred, the moral destruction of people endure... Our God is not inert, but our God - if I may say so - is a dreamer: he dreams of the transformation of the world, and he has achieved it in the mystery of the Resurrection.

Mary would like to embrace her Lord, but He is now oriented to the heavenly Father, while she is sent to take the announcement to her brothers and sisters. And so that woman, who before meeting Jesus was at the mercy of the evil one (cf. Lk 8:2), has now become an apostle of the new and greater hope. May his intercession help us to live this experience too: in the hour of weeping, and in the hour of abandonment, listen to the Risen Jesus who calls us by name, and with a heart full of joy go and proclaim: "I have seen the Lord!" (v. 18). I have changed my life because I have seen the Lord! Now I am different from before, I am a different person. I am changed because I have seen the Lord. This is our strength and this is our hope.

[Pope Francis, General Audience 17 May 2017].

The event of the Resurrection as such is not described by the Evangelists: it remains mysterious, not in the sense of being less real, but hidden, beyond the scope of our knowledge: like a light so bright that we cannot look at it or we should be blinded. The narratives begin instead when, towards dawn on the day after Saturday, the women went to the tomb and found it open and empty. St Matthew also speaks of an earthquake and a dazzling angel who rolled away the great stone sealing the tomb and sat on it (cf. Mt 28:2).

Having heard the angel’s announcement of the Resurrection, the women, with fear and great joy, hastened to take the news to the disciples and at that very moment encountered Jesus, prostrated themselves at his feet and worshipped him; and he said to them: “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brethren to go to Galilee, and there they will see me” (Mt 28:10). In all the Gospels, in the accounts of the appearances of the Risen Jesus, women are given ample room, as moreover also in the accounts of Jesus’ Passion and death. In those times, in Israel the testimony of women could not possess any official or juridical value, but the women had had an experience of a special bond with the Lord, which was fundamental for the practical life of the Christian community, and this is always the case in every epoch and not only when the Church was taking her first steps.

Mary, Mother of the Lord, of course, is the sublime and exemplary model of this relationship with Jesus, and in a special way in his Paschal Mystery. Precisely through the transforming experience of the Passover of her Son, the Virgin Mary also becomes Mother of the Church, that is, of each one of the believers and of their whole community.

[Pope Benedict, Regina Coeli 9 April 2012]

Meditation on the Easter season

1. The Easter Sequence takes up the proclamation of hope that rang out at the solemn Easter Vigil: "The Lord of life was dead; now, alive, he triumphs", and gives it a new impact. These words guide the reflection of our meeting which is taking place in the luminous atmosphere of the Octave of Easter.

Christ triumphs over evil and death. This is the cry of joy that bursts from the heart of the Church during these days. Victorious over death, Jesus offers to those who accept and believe in him the gift of life that dies no longer. His death and his Resurrection therefore constitute the foundations of the Church's faith.

2. The Gospel narratives refer, sometimes in rich detail, to the meetings of the Risen Lord with the women who hurried to the tomb, and later, with the Apostles. As eye-witnesses, it is precisely they who were to be the first to proclaim the Gospel of his death and Resurrection. After Pentecost, they were to affirm fearlessly that what the Scriptures say about the Promised Messiah is fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth.

The Church, the depository of this universal mystery of salvation, passes it on from generation to generation to the men and women of every time and place. In our time too, with the commitment of believers, we must make the proclamation of Christ, who through the power of his Spirit now lives triumphant, ring out clearly.

3. So that Christians may properly carry out this mandate entrusted to them, it is indispensable that they have a personal encounter with Christ, crucified and risen, and let the power of his love transform them. When this happens, sadness changes to joy and fear gives way to missionary enthusiasm.

John the Evangelist, for example, tells us of the Risen Christ's moving meeting with Mary Magdalene, who, having gone very early to the tomb, finds the sepulchre open and empty. She fears that the body of the Lord may have been stolen, so she is upset and weeps. But suddenly someone whom she supposes to be "the gardener" calls her by name:  "Mary!". She then recognizes him as the Teacher, "Rabboni", and recovering quickly from her distress and bewilderment, runs immediately to announce this news enthusiastically to the Eleven: "I have seen the Lord" (cf. Jn 20: 11-18).

4. "Christ my hope is arisen". With these words, the Sequence highlights an aspect of the paschal mystery that men and women today need to understand more deeply. Perturbed by latent threats of violence and death, people are in search of someone who will give them peace and security. But where can they find peace other than in the innocent Christ who reconciled sinners with the Father?
On Calvary, Divine Mercy manifested his face of love and forgiveness for everyone. In the Upper Room after his Resurrection, Jesus entrusted the Apostles with the task of being ministers of this mercy, a source of reconciliation among men and women.

In her humility, St Faustina Kowalska was chosen to proclaim this message of light that is particularly fitting for the world of today. It is a message of hope that invites us to abandon ourselves in the hands of the Lord. "Jesus, I trust in you!", the saint liked to repeat.

May Mary, Woman of Hope and Mother of Mercy, obtain for us to personally encounter her Son, who died and rose! May she make of us tireless workers for his mercy and his peace.

[Pope John Paul II, General Audience 14 April 2004]

In the last few weeks, our reflection has been moving, so to speak, within the orbit of the Paschal Mystery. Today we meet the one who, according to the Gospels, was the first to see the Risen Christ: Mary Magdalene. The Sabbath had ended not long before. On the day of the Passion, there had not been enough time to complete the funeral rites. For this reason, at that sorrow-filled dawn, the women went to Jesus’ tomb with aromatic oils. The first to arrive was Mary Magdalene. She was one of the disciples who had accompanied Jesus from Galilee, putting herself at the service of the burgeoning Church. Her walk to the sepulchre mirrors the fidelity of many women who spend years in the small alleyways of cemeteries remembering someone who is no longer there. The most authentic bonds are not broken even in death: there are those who continue loving even if their loved one is gone forever.

The Gospel describes Magdalene by immediately highlighting that she was not a woman easily given to enthusiasm (cf. Jn 20:1-2, 11-18). In fact, after her visit to the sepulchre, she returns disappointed to the Apostles’ hiding place. She tells them that the stone has been removed from the entrance to the sepulchre, and her first hypothesis is the simplest that one could formulate: someone must have stolen Jesus’ body. Thus, the first announcement that Mary makes is not the one of the Resurrection, but of a theft perpetrated by persons unknown while all Jerusalem slept.

The Gospels then tell of Magdalene’s second visit to Jesus’ sepulchre. She was stubborn! She went, she returned ... because she was not convinced! This time her step is slow and very heavy. Mary suffers twice as much: first for the death of Jesus, and then for the inexplicable disappearance of his body.

It is as she is stooping near the tomb, her eyes filled with tears, that God surprises her in the most unexpected way. John the Evangelist stresses how persistent her blindness is. She does not notice the presence of the two angels who question her, and she does not become suspicious even when she sees the man behind her, whom she believes is the custodian of the garden. Instead, she discovers the most overwhelming event in the history of mankind when she is finally called by her name: “Mary!” (v. 16).

How nice it is to think that the first apparition of the Risen One — according to the Gospels — took place in such a personal way! To think that there is someone who knows us, who sees our suffering and disappointment, who is moved with us and calls us by name. It is a law which we find engraved on many pages of the Gospel. There are many people around Jesus who search for God, but the most prodigious reality is that, long before that, in the first place there is God, who is concerned about our life, who wants to raise it, and to do this, he calls us by name, recognizing the individual face of each person. Each person is a love story that God writes on this earth. Each one of us is God’s love story. He calls each of us by our name: he knows us by name; he looks at us; he waits for us; he forgives us; he is patient with us. Is this true or not true? Each of us experiences this.

And Jesus calls her: “Mary!”: the revolution of her life, the revolution destined to transform the life of every man and every woman begins with a name which echoes in the garden of the empty sepulchre. The Gospels describe Mary’s happiness. Jesus’ Resurrection is not a joy which is measured with a dropper, but a waterfall that cascades over life. Christian life is not woven of soft joys, but of waves which engulf everything. You too, try to imagine, right now, with the baggage of disappointments and failures that each of us carries in our heart, that there is a God close to us who calls us by name and says to us: ‘Rise, stop weeping, for I have come to free you!”. This is beautiful.

Jesus is not one who adapts to the world, tolerating in it the persistence of death, sadness, hatred, the moral destruction of people.... Our God is not inert, but our God — allow me to say — is a dreamer: he dreams of the transformation of the world, and accomplished it in the mystery of the Resurrection.

Mary would like to embrace her Lord, but he is already oriented towards the heavenly Father, whereas she is sent to carry the news to the brethren. And so that woman, who, before encountering Jesus, had been at the mercy of evil (cf. Lk 8:2) now becomes the Apostle of the new and greatest hope. May her intercession also help us live this experience: in times of woe and in times of abandonment, to listen to the Risen Jesus who calls us by name and, with a heart full of joy, to go forth and proclaim: “I have seen the Lord!” (v. 18). I have changed my life because I have seen the Lord! I am now different than before. I am another person. I have changed because I have seen the Lord. This is our strength and this is our hope.

[Pope Francis, General Audience 17 May 2017]

(Mt 28:8-15)

The Gospels do not offer entirely reconcilable chronicle data about the unfolding of events after the discovery of the «empty tomb», but the Message of those traces (of the first events) is self-evident.

No mausoleum, no relics... but rather the ability to see the graves open - and to guess life amidst footsteps of death: dangerous Truth.

Hence the unleashing of engaging enthusiasm.

Two processions depart from the empty crypt: sounding Messengers of unheard-of life, though uncredited, and sepulcher guards:

Welcoming aimed at witnessing, and rejection of those who do not read the meaning-filled 'sign'.

The gendarmes of the ancient world go from pit to pit; dragging behind them the same burial chamber.

In fact, to the priests they announce the empty vault as if it were a factual little story, controllable, of mere chronicle (v.11) that then turns to rumor, to legend (v.15).

By the time Mt writes there were already fervent discussions between Jews and Christian converts from Judaism.

Believers felt fulfilled in Christ - in this way also able to spread this Word-event.

Disputes were heated: the Gospel passage places us in a reality that dragged on throughout most of the first century.

As time went on - even before the separation from the institutional synagogue - the very existence of the fraternities, their lifestyle and witness, became a denunciation against the authoritarian spirit, greed, teaching and roles of religious leaders (e.g., Acts 3:1-8).

Amidst a thousand upheavals, the new world was beginning - heralded with high forehead.

The waiting was over: one just had to be convinced of reality - no more dreaming of a future that while proceeding would return to the past, or adhere to conformity and self-interest.

Mt's beginning and ending recall each other.

Jesus is the Immanu-'El of the ancient Scriptures: God-With-us. The hope of the outcasts from the round, and of wavering ones - always given over to the mercy of others, enslaved, and subjugated.

A radical change was expected in the unlivable situation of injustice and social collapse, spiritually dull and habitual - endured by the wretched in the humiliation of the whole being.

By getting busy in the Announcement, Women do not stumble upon a packaged Christ, to be impersonally conveyed.

It’s in their going the Way that a new Spirit is kindled - with the contagious jubilation of Exodus.

The Encounter with God's world becomes a decisive event because all (first without-voice) receive a fervent invitation to the preaching and living of the Beatitudes [the Mount of Galilee, v.10: the "periphery" of life resuming its normal activity; land of Jesus' ministry and disciples' following].

Now as limpid, complete and pure protagonists to whom the Mystery does not resist. 

In short, for us: if someone does not take the field but shuns, does not transmit, or considers neutral the News of the victory of life over death, it is in danger of becoming a humbug, nonsense.

Instead, now it is the Risen One who comes to meet the revived ones (v.9) - just as he had done with the one born blind (Jn 9:35).

We are no longer the excommunicated, or prolongers of the tombs’ world, nor the merely awakened.

We are those who convey impetus, verve, character, a sense of fullness and Mystery that saves - heralds of open contradiction.

Progeny springing not from the grave, but from God's world - the source of indestructible being, in which we finally stand firm.

«Rejoice!» (v.9).

In community, cheerfulness for the sense of personal esteem and relational depth related to the new pattern of life overcomes fears.

The first realities of communion [the «Women»] make their own the same Path of the Master [clasping and worshiping his «Feet»].

A conscious and autonomous proposal arises.

The Announcement of a startling experience is born: in the Living One we are ourselves, and the Gift of self - whatever it may be, even previously despised - produces personal completeness and coexistence.

He who spends what he authentically is, values his story: he does not waste existence, but recovers, realizes and sublimates it.

New people flourish, inwardly reborn and no longer left to their own devices.

Seeing far ahead and proceeding in the same 'footsteps' as the Lord, all the unsteady ones overcame the sense of unworthiness inculcated by ancient religion.

Aware of esteem, personal quality, and other resources, the early believers immediately demonstrated a marked aptitude for frankness.

Even the little ones gained courage - recovering the opposite sides of themselves. And no longer suffocated by fears of bogus authority, capable only of retaliation.

Obviously the ancient world wanted to perpetuate itself, and defended itself with pirouettes and lies. As still today, by handing out favours (vv.12-15).

To internalize and live the message:

What inner and outer powers accentuate the disturbances and fight your ability to proclaim the Good News?

Angel of Counsel and ministers of Christ

However the Angel of the Resurrection also calls to mind another meaning. Indeed, we must remember that as well as describing Angels, spiritual creatures endowed with intelligence and a will, servants and messengers of God, the term "Angel" is also one of the most ancient titles attributed to Jesus himself. We read, for example, in Tertullian: "He", that is, Christ, "was also the «Angel of counsel», that is, a herald, a term that denotes an office rather than a nature. Effectively he was to proclaim to the world the Father's great plan for the restoration of man" (cf. De Carne Christi, 14). This is what the ancient Christian writer said. Jesus Christ, the Son of God was therefore also called the "Angel of God the Father": he is the Messenger par excellence of God's love. Dear friends, let us now consider what the Risen Jesus said to the Apostles: "As the Father has sent me, even so I send you" (Jn 20: 21); and he communicated his Holy Spirit to them. This means that just as Jesus was the herald of God the Father's love, we too must be heralds of Christ's charity: let us be messengers of his Resurrection, of his victory over evil and death, heralds of his divine love.
By our nature, of course, we remain men and women, but we have received the mission of "Angels", messengers of Christ.

(Pope Benedict, Regina Coeli, April 5, 2010)

[Easter Monday, April 21, 2025]

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

In the light of Easter that we are celebrating throughout this week I renew my most cordial greetings of peace and joy. As you know, the Monday after the Sunday of the Resurrection is traditionally known as "Lunedì del Angelo". It is very interesting to reflect on this reference to the "Angel". Of course, we think straight away of the Gospel narratives of Jesus' Resurrection, in which a messenger of the Lord appears. St Matthew writes: "And behold, there was a great earthquake; for an Angel of the Lord descended from Heaven and came and rolled back the stone, and sat upon it. His appearance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow" (Mt 28: 2-3). All the Evangelists, then, explain that when the women went to the tomb and found it open and empty, it was an Angel who told them that Jesus had risen. In Matthew, this messenger of the Lord says to them: "Do not be afraid; for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has risen, as he said". (Mt 28: 5-6); he then shows them the empty tomb and charges them to take the message to the disciples. In Mark, the Angel is described as "a young man... dressed in a white robe", who gives the women the same message (cf. 16: 5-6). Luke speaks if "two men ... in dazzling apparel", who remind the women that Jesus had told them long before of his death and Resurrection (cf. Lk 24: 4-7). John also speaks of "two Angels in white"; it is Mary Magdalene who sees them as she weeps by the tomb and they ask her: "Woman, why are you weeping?" (Jn 20: 11-13).

However the Angel of the Resurrection also calls to mind another meaning. Indeed, we must remember that as well as describing Angels, spiritual creatures endowed with intelligence and a will, servants and messengers of God, the term "Angel" is also one of the most ancient titles attributed to Jesus himself. We read, for example, in Tertullian: "He", that is, Christ, "was also the "Angel of counsel', that is, a herald, a term that denotes an office rather than a nature. Effectively he was to proclaim to the world the Father's great plan for the restoration of man" (cf. De Carne Christi, 14). This is what the ancient Christian writer said. Jesus Christ, the Son of God was therefore also called the "Angel of God the Father": he is the Messenger par excellence of God's love. Dear friends, let us now consider what the Risen Jesus said to the Apostles: "As the Father has sent me, even so I send you" (Jn 20: 21); and he communicated his Holy Spirit to them. This means that just as Jesus was the herald of God the Father's love, we too must be heralds of Christ's charity: let us be messengers of his Resurrection, of his victory over evil and death, heralds of his divine love.
By our nature, of course, we remain men and women, but we have received the mission of "Angels", messengers of Christ: it is given to all in Baptism and in Confirmation. Through the sacrament of Orders, priests, ministers of Christ, receive it in a special way. I wish to emphasize this in this Year for Priests.

Dear brothers and sisters, let us now turn to the Virgin Mary, invoking her as Regina Caeli, Queen of Heaven. May she help you to accept to the full the grace of the Paschal Mystery and to become courageous and joyful messengers of Christ's Resurrection.

[Pope Benedict, Regina Coeli 5 April 2010]

1. The great announcement of the Resurrection of Jesus also rings out loudly this Easter Monday, which commemorates the heavenly messenger's meeting with the women who had hastened to the tomb. "Do not be afraid; for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has risen, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay" (Mt 28,5-6).

From the empty tomb the Angel's message spread throughout the world and reached every corner of the earth; it is a message of hope for all. Ever since the crucified Nazarene rose at dawn on the third day, it is life, no longer death, that has the last word! In the risen Lord God revealed the fullness of his love for all humanity.

2. First the women, then the disciples and Peter himself note the consoling truth:  "This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses" (Acts 2,32).

Dear brothers and sisters, like them and with them, we too are called to spread this "good" news among the men and women of our time:  "Christ my hope is arisen" (Easter Sequence).

How I long for the Easter announcement to constantly strengthen every baptized person in the faith! How I long for peace, a gift of the risen Christ, to reach every human heart and restore hope to all who are oppressed and suffering!

3. May Mary, a silent witness of the Death and Resurrection of her Son Jesus, help us to believe totally in this mystery of salvation which, received with deep faith, can change life. May she enable us to transmit it with joy, as consistent and courageous disciples of the risen Lord, to all those we come across.

[Pope John Paul II, Regina Coeli 1 April 2002]

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Good Morning and a Happy Easter to you all! I thank you for coming here today too in such large numbers, to share in the joy of Easter, the central mystery of our faith. May the power of Christ’s Resurrection reach every person — especially those who are suffering — and all the situations most in need of trust and hope.

Christ has fully triumphed over evil once and for all, but it is up to us, to the people of every epoch, to welcome this victory into our life and into the actual situations of history and society. For this reason it seems to me important to emphasize what we ask God today in the liturgy. “O God, who give constant increase/to your Church by new offspring,/grant that your servants may hold fast in their lives/to the Sacrament they have received in faith” (Collect, Monday within the Octave of Easter).

It is true, yes, Baptism that makes us children of God and the Eucharist that unites us to Christ must become life, that is, they must be expressed in attitudes, behaviour, gestures and decisions. The grace contained in the Sacraments of Easter is an enormous potential for the renewal of our personal existence, of family life, of social relations. However everything passes through the human heart: if I let myself be touched by the grace of the Risen Christ, if I let him change me in that aspect of mine which is not good, which can hurt me and others, I allow the victory of Christ to be affirmed in my life, to broaden its beneficial action. This is the power of grace! Without grace we can do nothing. Without grace we can do nothing! And with the grace of Baptism and of Eucharistic Communion I can become an instrument of God’s mercy, of that beautiful mercy of God.

To express in life the sacrament we have received: dear brothers and sisters, this is our daily duty, but I would also say our daily joy! The joy of feeling we are instruments of Christ’s grace, like branches of the vine that is Christ himself, brought to life by the sap of his Spirit!

Let us pray together, in the name of the dead and Risen Lord and through the intercession of Mary Most Holy, that the Paschal Mystery may work profoundly within us and in our time so that hatred may give way to love, falsehood to truth, revenge to forgiveness, and sadness to joy.

[Pope Francis, Regina Coeli 1 April 2013]

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?