Easter Vigil: We must roll away the stones in our hearts, preaches Pope Francis

ROME – Presiding over the Easter Vigil Mass on Saturday night Pope Francis drew particular attention to the concerns of the women who went to Jesus’s tomb after his crucifixion to anoint his body.

He focused on how they were worried about the stone that would be blocking them from getting to the tomb. And yet, the Pope noted, when the women arrived, they discovered that the stone had already been rolled back.

The stone, he explained, was “an overwhelming obstacle” which symbolised “what the women felt in their hearts”. He said it represented “the end of their hopes, now dashed by the obscure and sorrowful mystery that put an end to their dreams”.

This feeling, the Pope went on to say, is something everyone can experience when stones block the doors of the heart, “stifling life, extinguishing hope, imprisoning us in the tomb of our fears and regrets, and standing in the way of joy and hope.”

These stones are encountered throughout life in all sorts of experiences and situations that impede the ability to persevere, whether it be sorrow, fear or failure, as well as selfishness and indifference that prevent one from being generous and attentive to others, the Pope said.

These stones are also found “in all our aspirations for peace that are shattered by cruel hatred and the brutality of war”.

“When we experience these disappointments, do we also have the sensation that all these dreams are doomed to failure?” he asked, noting that the same women who worried about their inability to move the stone covering Jesus’s tomb also discovered, when they looked up, that it had already been rolled back.

The image of looking up and finding the stone rolled back, Pope Francis said, “is the Pasch of Christ, the revelation of God’s power: the victory of life over death, the triumph of light over darkness, the rebirth of hope amid the ruins of failure.”

“It is the Lord, the God of the impossible” who rolled away the stone forever, he said, noting that even now, God rolls opens the tombs of human hearts “so that hope may be born ever anew”.

Francis urged believers to look up to Jesus who, after assuming human flesh, descended to the depths of death, “allowing an infinite ray of light to break through for each of us”.

By rising from the dead in human flesh, the Pope said, Jesus “turned a new page in the history of the human race”.

He added: “If we allow Jesus to take us by the hand, no experience of failure or sorrow, however painful, will have the last word on the meaning and destiny of our lives…if we allow ourselves to be raised up by the Risen Lord, no setback, no suffering, no death will be able to halt our progress towards the fullness of life.”

Quoting famed German Jesuit theologian Father Karl Rahner, Pope Francis said Christians can confidently say that this history has “a meaning no longer tainted by absurdity and shadows…a meaning that we call God.”

“All the waters of our transformation converge on him; they do not pour down into the depths of nothingness and absurdity,” he said.

Jesus, the Pope emphasised, is the one who brings humanity from darkness to light, and who rescues each person from sin and death, bringing them instead to a place of forgiveness and eternal life.

Francis urged believers to welcome Jesus into their lives, saying: “then no stone will block the way to our hearts, no tomb will suppress the joy of life, no failure will doom us to despair.”

“Let us lift our eyes to him and ask that the power of his Resurrection may roll away the heavy stones that weigh down our souls,” he said.

Believers, the Pope said, must look to the risen Jesus and “press forward in the certainty that, against the obscure backdrop of our failed hopes and our deaths, the eternal life that he came to bring is even now present in our midst.”

Pope Francis closed quoting Jean-Yves Quellec, a French Benedictine priest, writer and former prior of Clerlande Abbey, saying:

“All peoples beset by evil and plagued by injustice, all peoples displaced and devastated: on this holy night cast aside your songs of sadness and despair. The Man of Sorrows is no longer in prison: he has opened a breach in the wall; he is hastening to meet you.

“In the darkness, let an unexpected shout of joy resound: He is alive; he is risen! And you, my brothers and sisters, small and great…you who are weary of life, who feel unworthy to sing…let a new flame be kindled in your heart, let new vitality be heard in your voice. It is the Pasch of the Lord; it is the feast of the living.”

Photo: Pope Francis presides over Easter Vigil Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican, 30 March 2024. (Photo by Vatican Media via Vatican Pool/Getty Images.)

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