“Christ’s Resurrection Brings Hope to Human Darkness”: Pope Leo

Vatican, Nov 5, 2025: Addressing the faithful at the Wednesday General Audience, Pope Leo said that Christ’s Resurrection gives direction to daily life, fulfils humanity’s thirst for meaning, and brings hope to the world. “Even our time, marked by so many crosses, calls for the dawn of Paschal hope,” he said

In his catechesis, the Pope reflected that Christ’s Resurrection is “not an idea, not a theory, but the Event that is the foundation of faith.”

He underlined that truly believing in the Resurrection means transforming how we live each day, and this renewal can help change “the world with the gentle and courageous power of Christian hope.”

“We can be His witnesses even where human history sees no light on the horizon,” the Pope urged. “Paschal hope does not disappoint.”

Lodestar in our chaotic lives

The Pope pointed out that in Christ’s Resurrection “we find an answer to our thirst for meaning,” especially when confronted with situations that appear senseless.

“In Him, we have the certainty of always finding the lodestar that can guide our seemingly chaotic lives, marked by events that often seem confusing, unacceptable, and incomprehensible: evil in its many forms, suffering, death, and those moments that touch each of us,” he said.

“Faced with our fragile humanity,” Pope Leo continued, Christ’s Resurrection “becomes care and healing, nourishing hope in the face of the daunting challenges that life presents us every day, both personally and globally.”

He explained that “in the perspective of Easter,” the Way of the Cross becomes the Way of Light. He encouraged the faithful “to savour and meditate on the joy after the pain, to retrace in new light all the stages that preceded the Resurrection.”

The Pope highlighted how Jesus, in the Book of Revelation (1:17), presents Himself as “the Living One,” revealing that His Resurrection is a present reality visible in everyday life.

Resurrection is not a distant event

Christ’s Easter, he affirmed, “is not an event belonging to a distant past, now confined to tradition like other episodes in human history.” The Pope noted that the Church teaches the importance of making a “living remembrance” of the Resurrection by celebrating Easter each year and the Eucharist daily.

“The Paschal Mystery is the cornerstone of Christian life, around which all other events revolve,” he said, adding that “we can therefore say, without sentimentality, that every day is Easter.”

“Hour by hour, we experience pain, suffering, and sadness intertwined with joy, wonder, and serenity. Yet through it all, the human heart longs for fullness and profound happiness,” he explained.

To illustrate this, Pope Leo quoted St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (St Edith Stein), who deeply explored the mystery of the human person. She wrote that humanity’s “dynamism” comes from a constant search for fulfilment and that we “always long to have being given to us anew, so that we can draw on what the moment gives us and at the same time takes away from us.”

“We are immersed in limitation, yet we strive to surpass it,” the Pope reflected.

Resurrection: the most beautiful news

Confronted with this human condition, the Pope said, “the Paschal proclamation is the most beautiful, joyful, and overwhelming news that has ever echoed through history.”

“It is the quintessential ‘Gospel’—the victory of love over sin and of life over death—and it alone satisfies the yearning for meaning that stirs our minds and hearts.”

Human beings, he added, are “constantly striving towards a beyond that continually draws them. No contingent reality fulfils us; we long for the infinite and the eternal.”

However, this desire stands in tension with “the experience of death, anticipated by suffering, loss, and failure,” he noted, quoting St Francis of Assisi’s Canticle of the Sun: “No living man can escape it.”

In conclusion, Pope Leo affirmed that the Resurrection transformed the course of human history. When the women went “to the tomb to anoint the body of the Lord” after His crucifixion, he recalled, they found it empty. Instead, they met “the mysterious youth dressed in white,” who said: “You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; He is not here.”

Courtesy: Vatican News