This is the seventh in a new series of posts sharing Pope Leo XIV’s words each Wednesday in his Weekly Audience, a time when he teaches, encourages, and shapes the mission of the Church around the world. Check back here each Wednesday to get to know Pope Leo!
“No heart is too closed, no tomb too tightly sealed for his love.”
In this week’s Wednesday audience, Pope Leo XIV continues his exploration of Holy Saturday, and the descent of Christ into the realm of the dead to bring the news of the Resurrection.
But the “underworld” is not so much a place as a condition—one in which our pain, solitude, and guilt separates us from God. And Christ’s descent is not an action of the past, but continues today in the lives of each one of us.
Christ enters into our darkest realities—our struggles, our loneliness, our shame and abandonment—to bear witness to the love of his Father.
“There is no past so ruined, no history so compromised, that it cannot be touched by mercy…. Even when we seem to have hit rock bottom, let us remember: that is the place from which God is able to begin a new creation.”
