"Who will roll away the stone from the grave for us?"Who will free us from fear and bitterness, from suffering and death, and open for us the way of joy and hope, we ask ourselves. The Easter season actualizes the power of God, the victory of life over death, the triumph of light over darkness, the rebirth of hope amidst the rubble of failure. And in that way, it inaugurates our journey with the risen Jesus. This is what the Pope has preached since the Easter Vigil. He then showed us how to make Jesus' attitudes towards others our own: not only in relation to the suffering and vulnerability of people, but also in scientific and educational work, which must be carried out as a service of Christian solidarity to humanity.
Welcoming the Risen Jesus
In its homily of the easter vigil (30-III-2024), Francis has transported us to the heart of the women who went to the tomb in the light of dawn. Her heart is still in the darkness of the night, paralyzed at the foot of the Cross. His eyes can hardly see, clouded with tears. His thought is blocked by a great stone: “Who will roll away the stone for us from the door of the tomb?” (Mk16:3). But when they arrived, they looked and saw that it had already been removed.
We too, says the Pope: "Sometimes we feel that a tombstone has been placed heavily at the entrance of our heart, suffocating life, extinguishing trust, locking us in the tomb of fears and bitterness, blocking the way to joy and hope.".
But Jesus is risen, has conquered death and has filled our lives with the light and power of the Holy Spirit.
For this reason, Peter's successor advises us to look to the risen Jesus and to welcome him: "Let us look to Him, let us welcome Jesus, the God of life, into our lives, let us renew our 'yes' to Him today and no stumbling block will be able to suffocate our heart, no tomb will be able to enclose the joy of living, no failure will be able to lead us to despair.". "Let us look to Him," he insists, "the Risen One, and let us walk with the certainty that in the dark background of our expectations and of our death there is already present the eternal life that He came to bring.".
Jesus in the face of human suffering
Whoever looks to Christ and lives with him, walks with him and participates in his attitudes. In an Address to the Plenary of the Pontifical Biblical Commission (April 11, 2014), the Successor of Peter exhorts us to share in the attitudes of Jesus, especially in the face of sickness and human suffering.
"We all falter under the weight of these experiences and must help each other through them by living them 'in relationship', without withdrawing into ourselves and without legitimate rebellion turning into isolation, abandonment or despair.".
From the experience of the wise and of cultures, we know that pain and sickness, especially if we place them in the light of faith, can become decisive factors in a path of maturity.; for suffering, among other things, makes it possible to discern what is essential from what is not.
The Pope maintains that it is above all the example of Jesus that shows the way, the attitude we must take in the face of illness and suffering, both our own and that of others, and translate it into beneficial steps: "He exhorts us to care for those who live in situations of illness, with the determination to overcome the illness; at the same time, he gently invites us to unite our sufferings to his salvific offering, as a seed that bears fruit.". Caring and trying to overcome, unite and assume.
Specifically, Francis points out, the vision of faith can lead us to face pain with two decisive attitudes: compassion and inclusion.
Compassion that assumes
"Compassion indicates the recurrent and characteristic attitude of the Lord towards the fragile and needy people he encounters.. Seeing the faces of so many people, sheep without a shepherd struggling to find their way in life (cf. Mk 6:34), Jesus is moved. He has compassion on the hungry and exhausted crowds (cf. Mk 8:2) and tirelessly welcomes the sick (cf. Mk 1:32), whose petitions he hears: think of the blind who beg him (cf. Mt 20:34) and the many sick who ask to be cured (cf. Lk 17:11-19); he has 'great compassion', says the Gospel, for the widow who accompanies her only son to the tomb (cf. Lk 7:13). Great compassion. This compassion manifests itself as closeness and leads Jesus to identify himself with the one who suffers: 'I was sick and they came to visit me' (Mt 25:36).".
Let us look closely: Jesus is moved, he sympathizes, he comes close to the point of identifying himself with the one who suffers.
What does this attitude of Jesus reveal to us? Jesus' approach to pain: not with explanations - to which we tend to tend - or with sterile encouragement and consolation, or with good words or a recipe book of sentiments, as we sometimes see in the stories of Sacred Scripture, as in the case of Job's friends, who try to theorize pain by linking it to divine punishment.
"The response of Jesus is vital, it is made up of 'compassion that assumes' and that, by assuming, saves the human being and transfigures his pain. Christ transformed our pain by making it his own to the end: living it, suffering it and offering it as a gift of love. He did not give easy answers to our 'whys', but on the Cross he made our great 'why' his own (cf. Mk. 15:34).".
Thus, Francis points out, by assimilating Sacred Scripture we can purify ourselves of certain mistaken attitudes, and learn to follow the way indicated by Jesus: "To touch human suffering with one's own hand, with humility, meekness and serenity in order to bring, in the name of the incarnate God, the closeness of a saving and concrete support. To touch with one's own hand, not theoretically". The Pope is clear and direct.
Solidarity inclusion
Without being a biblical word, the term inclusion, Francis points out, expresses well an outstanding feature of Jesus' style: to go in search of the sinner, the lost, the marginalized, the stigmatized, so that he may be welcomed into the Father's house and healed completely, in body, soul and spirit (for example, the prodigal son or the lepers). Moreover, Jesus wishes to share with the disciples this mission and attitude of consolation: he commands them to care for the sick and bless them in his name (cf. Mt 10:8; Lk 10:9; Lk 4:18-19).
"Therefore, through the experience of suffering and sickness, we, as the Church, are called to walk together with everyone, in Christian and human solidarity, opening, in the name of common fragility, occasions for dialogue and hope.". A clear example is the parable of the Good Samaritan, which shows ".with what initiatives can a community be rebuilt from men and women who make the fragility of others their own, who do not allow a society of exclusion to be erected, but who make themselves neighbors and raise up and rehabilitate the fallen, so that the good may be common"(encyclical Fratelli tutti, n. 67).
The Pope identifies a key principle: "The Word of God is a powerful antidote against all closed-mindedness, abstraction and ideologization of the faith: read in the Spirit in which it was written, it increases the passion for God and for mankind, unleashes charity and rekindles apostolic zeal.". For this reason, the Church has a constant need to drink - and to give to drink - from the fountains of the Word.
Before persons with disabilities
These same attitudes of Jesus, care and inclusion, we must have them, for example, towards people with disabilities, as Francis taught in his Address to the Academy of Social Sciences (11-IV-2024), taking into account the social and cultural factors: "their lives are conditioned not only by functional limitations, but also by cultural, legal, economic and social factors that may hinder their activities and social participation.".
Underpinning these attitudes is "the dignity of persons with disabilities, with its anthropological, philosophical and theological implications".
Bearing in mind that "vulnerability and fragilitybelong to the human condition and are not exclusive to people with disabilities."The Pope directs our gaze once again to the Gospel stories:
In Jesus' numerous encounters with these people, Francis observes, we can see the attitudes that we too must cultivate. Jesus comes into contact with them (he neither ignores nor denies them, neither marginalizes nor discards them); he also changes the meaning of their experience of life, with "the way they live".an invitation to weave a unique relationship with God that makes people blossom anew"as we see in the case of blind Bartimaeus (cf. Mk 10:46-52).
The current culture of discarding and waste, the Pope laments, easily leads these people to consider their own existence as a burden for themselves and for their loved ones. And so this mentality opens up to a culture of death, abortion and euthanasia.
For a culture of integral inclusion
For this reason, Peter's successor proposes, "fighting against the throwaway culture means promoting the culture of inclusion - they must be united - creating and strengthening the bonds of belonging to societyespecially in the poorest countries, "to work," "to work, especially in the poorest countries," "to work, especially in the poorest countries," "to workfor greater social justice and for the elimination of the various barriers that prevent so many from enjoying fundamental rights and freedoms". The results of these actions are more visible in more economically developed countries.
He understands that this culture of comprehensive inclusion is promoted more fully "when people with disabilities are not passive recipients, but participate in social life as protagonists of change.". That is why he argues that "subsidiarity and participation are the two pillars of effective inclusion. In this light, the importance of associations and movements of people with disabilities that promote social participation is well understood.".
Teaching and serving humanity
This walk with the Risen Jesus, making his attitudes our own, is reflected even in the way we approach historical questions. The Bishop of Rome explained it in his Address to the Pontifical Committee on Historical Sciences, on its seventieth anniversary (April 20, 2024).
Both the Church and historians, he noted, are united in the search for and service of truth.. And concretely, as St. Paul VI pointed out, the link between religious truth and historical truth is the fact that "the whole edifice of Christianity, of its doctrine, its morals and its worship, everything rests ultimately on the witness"(Discourse 3-VI-1967). Francis adds that, on the basis of the witness that the apostles bore to the risen Jesus, the Church wishes to enliven all cultures with this witness so as to build with them the civilization of encounter.
This is what St. Paul VI proclaimed at the opening of the third session of the Second Vatican Council on September 14, 1964:"Let it not be thought that (...) the Church stops in an act of self-indulgence, forgetting, on the one hand, Christ, from whom she receives everything and to whom she owes everything, and on the other, humanity, to whose service she is destined. The Church places herself between Christ and the world, not withdrawn into herself, neither as an opaque diaphragm, nor as an end in herself, but fervently solicitous to be all of Christ, in Christ and for Christ, and all equally of men, among men and for men, humble and glorious intermediary....".
So too must historians be teachers and servants of humanity..
