CHRISTIANS: WITNESSES OF EASTER’S NEW PATH
VATICAN CITY, 27 APR 2011 (VIS) – This morning the Pope travelled from
Castelgandolfo to the Vatican for the General Audience that took place in
St. Peter’s Square and in which over 20,000 people participated.
“Christ resurrected from the dead”, the Holy Father asserted, “is the
foundation of our faith that radiates throughout the Church’s liturgy,
giving it content and meaning … Christ’s resurrection is the door to a new
life that is no longer subjected to the termination of time, a life immersed
in the eternity of God. With Jesus’ resurrection begins a new condition of
human being, which illuminates and transforms our daily path and opens a
qualitatively new and different future for all humanity”.
“In his Epistle to the Colossians, St. Paul says ‘If then you were raised
with Christ, seek what is above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of
God. Think of what is above, not of what is on earth'”. However, Benedict
XVI emphasized, the apostle “is far from inviting Christians, any of us, to
shun the world in which God has placed us. It is true that we are citizens
of another ‘city’, our true home, but the path toward this goal must be
traversed every day in this land. To participate, from this moment, in the
life of the resurrected Christ, we must live as new men and women in this
world, at the heart of this earthly city”.
“This is the path”, the Holy Father continued, “to transform not only
ourselves but also to transform the world, to give the city a new face that
favors the development of humankind and society within the logic of
solidarity, goodness, and profound respect for the dignity proper to each
… Easter offers the newness of a profound and complete passage from a life
subject to the slavery of sin to a life of freedom, inspired by love, the
force that breaks down barriers and builds new harmony in our hearts and in
our relationships with others and with things”.
Every Christian, just as every community, “that lives the experience of
this passage to the Resurrection, cannot help but be new leaven in the world
giving themselves without reserve to the most urgent and just causes, as
seen by the witness of the saints in every age and place. The expectations
of our time are also great: believing firmly that the resurrection of Christ
has renewed humankind without separating it from the world in which it
builds its history, we Christians must be the radiant witnesses of Easter’s
new path”.
“Easter is, therefore, a gift that must be welcomed in faith more deeply
each time, to work in any situation with the grace of Christ, according to
the logic of God, the logic of love”, the pontiff concluded.
AG/ VIS
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