| Open your spirit to Christ who renews us
The proclamation of Easter extends through the world in an
"unleavened", that is, a simple, humble, manner of life, fruitful in
good works, as the Holy Father said on Easter morning, 13 April [2009],
during the Holy Mass at which he presided in St Peter's Square. The
following is a translation of the Pope's Homily, which was given in
Italian.
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
“Christ, our Paschal lamb, has been sacrificed!” (1 Cor 5:7). On this
day, Saint Paul’s triumphant words ring forth, words that we have just
heard in the second reading, taken from his First Letter to the
Corinthians. It is a text which originated barely twenty years after the
death and resurrection of Jesus, and yet
— like many Pauline passages
—
it already contains, in an impressive synthesis, a full awareness of the
newness of life in Christ. The central symbol of salvation history
— the
Paschal lamb
— is here identified with Jesus, who is called “our Paschal
lamb”. The Hebrew Passover, commemorating the liberation from slavery in
Egypt, provided for the ritual sacrifice of a lamb every year, one for
each family, as prescribed by the Mosaic Law. In his passion and death,
Jesus reveals himself as the Lamb of God, “sacrificed” on the Cross, to
take away the sins of the world. He was killed at the very hour when it
was customary to sacrifice the lambs in the Temple of Jerusalem. The
meaning of his sacrifice he himself had anticipated during the Last
Supper, substituting himself
— under the signs of bread and wine
— for
the ritual food of the Hebrew Passover meal. Thus we can truly say that
Jesus brought to fulfilment the tradition of the ancient Passover, and
transformed it into his Passover.
On the basis of this new meaning of the Paschal feast, we can also
understand Saint Paul’s interpretation of the “leaven”. The Apostle is
referring to an ancient Hebrew usage: according to which, on the
occasion of the Passover, it was necessary to remove from the household
every tiny scrap of leavened bread. On the one hand, this served to
recall what had happened to their forefathers at the time of the flight
from Egypt: leaving the country in haste, they had brought with them
only unleavened bread. At the same time, though, the “unleavened bread”
was a symbol of purification: removing the old to make space for the
new. Now, Saint Paul explains, this ancient tradition likewise acquires
a new meaning, once more derived from the new “Exodus”, which is Jesus’
passage from death to eternal life. And since Christ, as the true Lamb,
sacrificed himself for us, we too, his disciples
— thanks to him and
through him
— can and must be the “new dough”, the “unleavened bread”,
liberated from every residual element of the old yeast of sin: no more
evil and wickedness in our heart.
“Let us celebrate the feast … with the unleavened bread of sincerity and
truth”. This exhortation from Saint Paul, which concludes the short
reading that was proclaimed a few moments ago, resounds even more
powerfully in the context of the Pauline Year. Dear brothers and
sisters, let us accept the Apostle’s invitation; let us open our spirit
to Christ, who has died and is risen in order to renew us, in order to
remove from our hearts the poison of sin and death, and to pour in the
life-blood of the Holy Spirit: divine and eternal life. In the Easter
Sequence, in what seems almost like a response to the Apostle’s words,
we sang: “Scimus Christum surrexisse a mortuis vere”
— we know
that Christ has truly risen from the dead. Yes, indeed! This is the
fundamental core of our profession of faith; this is the cry of victory
that unites us all today. And if Jesus is risen, and is therefore alive,
who will ever be able to separate us from him? Who will ever be able to
deprive us of the love of him who has conquered hatred and overcome
death?
The Easter proclamation spreads throughout the world with the joyful
song of the Alleluia. Let us sing it with our lips, and let us sing it
above all with our hearts and our lives, with a manner of life that is
“unleavened”, that is to say, simple, humble, and fruitful in good
works. “Surrexit Christus spes mea: praecedet vos in Galileam”
—
Christ my hope is risen, and he goes before you into Galilee. The Risen
One goes before us and he accompanies us along the paths of the world.
He is our hope, He is the true peace of the world. Amen!
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