His Holiness Pope Leo XIV at Audience: We must lend our voice to those who have none

His Holiness Pope Leo XIV at Wednesday General Audience (@VATICAN MEDIA)

During his weekly General Audience, His Holiness Pope Leo XIV reminds the faithful that God calls on us, as people of faith, to offer our voices to help those in need and to protect the environment.

By Deborah Castellano Lubov

We are called "to reverse course," as Jesus asks us, and to "change history," His Holiness Pope Leo XIV insisted during his Wednesday General Audience in St. Peter's Square, as he continued his catechesis series on "Jesus Christ, Our Hope."

The Holy Father began his remarks considering Christ’s Resurrection and its impact on the challenges of today’s world, pointing out that if we allow it, Christ’s salvific act can transform all our relationships, especially those with God, other people, and creation.  

His Holiness Pope Leo XIV said that as Mary Magdalene on Easter morning turned around to look at Jesus, "we too must allow the seed of Christian hope to bear fruit, convert our hearts, and influence the ways we respond to the issues that we face."

Difficulty recognizing Christ in our midst

He recalled how St. John the Evangelist draws to our attention a detail not found in the other Gospels, namely that as Mary Magdalene was weeping near the empty tomb, she did not immediately recognize the Risen Jesus, but thought He was the gardener. 

The Pope observed that she "was not entirely mistaken then, believing she had encountered the gardener!"

"Indeed," he said, "she had to hear her own name again and understand her task from the new Man, the one who in another text of John says: “Behold, I make all things new” (Rev 21:5)."

Jesus asks us to reverse course

His Holiness Pope Leo XIV highlighted that the late Pope Francis, with his 2015 encyclical Laudato si’, "showed us the extreme need for a contemplative gaze: if he is not the custodian of the garden, the human being becomes its destroyer."

Thus, Pope Leo insisted, "Christian hope responds to the challenges to which all humanity is exposed today by dwelling in the garden where the Crucified One was laid as a seed, to rise again and bear much fruit."

"Paradise is not lost, but found again," he said. "In this way, the Death and Resurrection of Jesus are the foundation of a spirituality of integral ecology, outside of which the words of faith have no hold on reality and the words of science remain outside the heart."

"For this reason," the Pope affirmed, "we speak of an ecological conversion, which Christians cannot separate from the reversal of course that Jesus asks of them."

Spiritual passage that changes history

Mary’s turning around on that Easter morning, the Holy Father explained, is a sign of this, for "only by conversion after conversion do we pass through that vale of tears to the new Jerusalem"…

This report was originally published on the Website of Vatican News. Please click here to read the full text.