Pope Leo XIV on Wednesday warned against the claim that true joy “must be without wounds” or “trials,” saying pain is not the denial of God’s promise of love for his people.
During his Oct. 8 general audience at the Vatican, the Holy Father said “there is an obstacle that often prevents us from recognizing Christ’s presence in our daily lives: the assumption that joy must be free from suffering.”
Continuing his catechesis on the resurrection of Christ, the pope emphasized that God does not “impose himself loudly” but “waits patiently for the moment when our eyes will open to see his friendly face” in order to “transform disappointment into confident expectation.”
Before hundreds of faithful gathered in St. Peter’s Square, he asked for the grace to be able to notice the “humble and discreet presence” of Christ and to discover that “very pain, if inhabited by love, can become a place of communion.”
The Holy Father began his catechesis on the Resurrection with the image of the disciples of Emmaus, who walked “sadly because they hoped for a different ending” and “for a Messiah who did not know the cross.”
Despite having heard that the tomb is empty, the pope said the two disciples were “unable to smile” because they were unable to recognize God’s close presence.
“But Jesus walks alongside them and patiently helps them understand that pain is not the denial of the promise, but the way through which God has manifested the measure of his love,” Leo said in his Wednesday catechesis.
“Brothers and sisters, Christ’s resurrection teaches us that no history is so marked by disappointment or sin that it cannot be visited by hope,” he added. “No fall is definitive, no night is eternal, no wound is destined to remain open forever.”
“However distant, lost, or unworthy we may feel, there is no distance that can extinguish the unfailing power of God’s love,” he continued.
In times of disappointment, Leo XIV invited people to not give into despair but “to discover that beneath the ashes of disenchantment and weariness there is always a living ember, waiting only to be rekindled.”
“Instead, the Risen One is close to us precisely in the darkest places: in our failures, in our frayed relationships, in the daily struggles that weigh on our shoulders, in the doubts that discourage us. Nothing that we are, no fragment of our existence, is foreign to him,” he said.
“Today, the risen Lord walks alongside each of us as we travel our paths — those of work and commitment, but also those of suffering and loneliness — and with infinite delicacy asks us to let him warm our hearts,” he added.
Toward the conclusion of his address, the Holy Father asked people to pray for the grace to recognize Christ “as our companion on the road” in daily life.
“And so, like the disciples of Emmaus, we too return to our homes with hearts burning with joy. A simple joy that does not erase wounds but illuminates them,” he said. “A joy that comes from the certainty that the Lord is alive, walks with us, and gives us the possibility to start again at every moment.”
This article was originally published by CNA.
