Within the catechesis that is taking place during the Jubilee Year 2025, whose degree scroll is Jesus Christ our Hope, Leo XIV has dedicated the last few weeks to the Passover of Jesus. That is, to the events that took place around his passion, death and resurrection.

What place does Jesus' submission for us occupy in our lives? Do we consider it as an event of the past, unconnected with our present and our future? Christian faith assures us that it is something central, full of implications for our staff, social and ecclesial life.

On the first of these Wednesdays (cf. General Audience, 6-VIII-2025) the Pope focused on the word prepare. "Where do you want us to go to prepare the Passover meal for you?" (Mk 14:12). In reality, everything was prepared beforehand by Jesus: "The Passover, which the disciples must prepare, is in fact already prepared in the heart of Jesus". 

At the same time, he asks his friends to do their part: "Grace does not eliminate our freedom, but awakens it. God's gift does not annul our responsibility, but makes it fruitful".

We too, therefore, have to prepare this meal. It is not only a question, warns Peter's successor, of the liturgy or the Eucharist (which means "thanksgiving"), but of "our availability to enter into a gesture that surpasses us". 

"The Eucharist," observes Leo XIV, " is celebrated not only at the altar, but also in daily life, where it is possible to live everything as an offering and thanksgiving. 

Hence the question: "We can then ask ourselves: what spaces in my life do I need to rearrange so that they are ready to welcome the Lord? What does 'prepare' mean for me today?".

Some suggestions: "Maybe give up a pretense, stop waiting for the other to change, take the first step. Perhaps listen more, act less, or learn to trust what you are already willing to trust."

In the midst of Jesus' most intimate meal with his own, the greatest betrayal is also revealed: "Truly I tell you, one of you will submit me, one who is eating with me" (Mk 14:18). "These are strong words. Jesus does not pronounce them to condemn, but to show that love, when it is true, cannot do without truth". 

Surprisingly, Jesus does not raise his voice or his finger to accuse the betrayer. He leaves each one to question himself: "They began to be sorrowful and to ask him one after another, 'Is it I?'"(Mk 14:19). On Wednesday, August 13, the Pope dwelt on this question, because, he noted, "it is perhaps one of the most sincere questions we can ask ourselves." And this is why: "The Gospel does not teach us to deny evil, but to recognize it as a painful occasion for rebirth".

What follows may sound like a threat: "Woe to that man through whom the Son of Man will be betrayed; it would be better for that man if he had never been born" (Mk 14:21). But it is rather a cry of pain, of sincere and profound compassion. For God knows that if we deny his love, we will be unfaithful to ourselves, we will lose the meaning of our life and we will exclude ourselves from salvation. But instead, "if we recognize our limit, if we allow ourselves to be touched by the pain of Christ, then we can finally be born again". 

During the Last Supper, Jesus offers the morsel to the one who is about to betray him. "It is not only a gesture of sharing, it is much more: it is the last attempt of love not to give up" (cfr. General Audience 20-VIII-2025) Jesus continues to love: he washes the feet, wets the bread and offers it even to the one who is about to betray him.

The forgiveness offered by Jesus," the Bishop of Rome pointed out, "is revealed here in all its power and manifests the face of hope: "It is not forgetfulness, it is not weakness. It is the ability to set the other free, loving him to the end. The love of Jesus does not deny the truth of pain, but does not allow evil to be the last word". 

The Pope insists: "To forgive does not mean to deny evil, but to prevent it from generating more evil. It is not to say that nothing happened, but to do everything possible so that it is not rancor that decides the future".

And he turns to us: "We too live through painful and exhausting nights. Nights of the soul, nights of disappointment, nights when someone has hurt or betrayed us. In those moments, the temptation is to close ourselves off, to protect ourselves, to refund the blow. But the Lord sample us that there is hope, that there is always another way (...) Today we ask for the grace to know how to forgive, even when we do not feel understood, even when we feel abandoned. In this way we open ourselves to a greater love. 

Then, Jesus freely and courageously confronts his arrest in the Garden of Olives: "Whom do you seek?His love is plenary session of the Executive Council and mature, he does not fear rejection, but allows himself to be captured. "He is not the victim of an arrest, but the author of a gift. In this gesture is embodied a hope of salvation for our humanity: to know that, even in the darkest hour, one can remain free to love to the end" (General Audience, 27-VIII-2025).

Jesus' sacrifice is a true act of love: "Jesus allows himself to be captured and imprisoned by the guards just so that he can set his disciples free. He knows well that to lose one's life for love is not a failure, but brings with it a mysterious fruitfulness (cf. Jn 12:24).

Thus he teaches us. "In this is true hope: not in trying to avoid pain, but in believing that, even in the heart of the most unjust suffering, there is hidden the seed of a new life".

The Pope's catechesis on the words of Jesus at his crucifixion was particularly powerful: "I thirst" (Jn 19:28), just before these other words: "All is accomplished" (19:30).

The thirst of the Crucified One," observes Leo XIV, " is not only the physiological need of a broken body. It is also, and above all, the expression of a deep desire: that of love, of relationship, of communion" (General Audience, September 3, 2025).

Hence a surprising teaching : "Love, to be true, must also learn to ask and not only to give. Jesus says, 'I thirst,' and in this way he manifests his humanity and ours as well. None of us can be enough for ourselves. No one can save himself. Life is 'fulfilled' not when we are strong, but when we learn to receive". And it is then, precisely when everything is fulfilled. "Love has made itself needy, and precisely because of this it has carried out its work."

The Bishop of Rome points out that this is the Christian paradox: "God saves not by doing, but by allowing himself to be done. Not by overcoming evil with force, but by accepting to the end the weakness of love". 

From the cross, Jesus teaches that each of us is not fulfilled in power, but in trusting openness to others, even if they were enemies. "Salvation is not in autonomy, but in humbly recognizing one's own need and knowing how to express it freely".

Attention, Leo XIV seems to say, also for educators and formators, because this "feeling and recognition of our need" cannot be imposed, but must be freely discovered by each person (each person can be gently helped to discover it), as a way of liberation of oneself towards God and others. "We are creatures made to give and receive love".
 

Worthy of contemplation is the fact that Jesus does not die in silence. "Hedoes not go out slowly, like a light that is being consumed, but he leaves life with a cry: 'Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last' (Mk 15:37). This cry contains everything: pain, withdrawal, faith, offering. It is not only the voice of a body that gives up, but the last sign of a life that is being submission" (General Audience, Sept. 10, 2025).

His cry is preceded by these words: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" which correspond to Psalm 22 and express the silence, the absence and the abyss experienced by the Lord.It is not a crisis of faith," says Leo XIV, " but the last stage of a love that is submission to the very depths. The cry of Jesus is not despair, but sincerity, truth pushed to the limit, trust that resists even when all is silent".

In this Jubilee year, the cry of Jesus speaks to us of hope, not resignation. "We cry out when we believe that someone can still listen. One cries out not out of despair, but out of desire." Concretely: "Jesus did not cry out 'against' the Father, but 'towards' Him. Even in silence, he was convinced that the Father was there. And so he showed us that our hope can cry out, even when all seems lost."

We cry out when we are born (we arrive crying), when we suffer and also when we love, when we call and invoke: "To cry out is to say that we are here, that we do not want to die out in silence, that we still have something to offer".

And this is the teaching of Jesus' cry for life's journey, instead of keeping everything inside and slowly wasting away (or falling into skepticism or cynicism).

Then the silence of Jesus in the tomb opens (cf. Jn 19:40-41): "A silence full of meaning, like the womb of a mother guarding her unborn but already living child" (General Audience, September 17, 2025). 

He was buried in a garden, in a new tomb. As it happened at the beginning of the world, in paradise: God had planted a garden, now the door of this new garden is the closed tomb of Jesus. 

God had "rested," says the book of Genesis (2:2), after creation. Not because he was tired, but because he had finished his work. Now God's love has been shown again, fulfilled "to the end". 

We find it hard to rest. But "knowing how to stop is a gesture of trust that we must learn to fulfill. We must discover that "life does not always depend on what we do, but also on how we know how to give up what we have been able to do".

Jesus is silent in the tomb, like the seed awaiting its dawn. "Every time stopped can become a time of grace, if we offer it to God."

Jesus, buried in the earth: "He is the God who lets us do, who waits, who withdraws to leave us freedom. He is the God who trusts, even when everything seems finished". 

We must learn to let ourselves be embraced by the limit: "Sometimes we look for quick answers, immediate solutions. But God works in the depths, in the slow time of trust". 

And all this speaks to us again in this Jubilee of Hope: "True joy is born of hope, of patient faith, of the hope that whatever has lived in love will certainly rise to eternal life".

Also on Wednesday, September 24, the Pope dwelt on Holy Saturday. Christ not only died for us, but also descended into the realm of the "hells" to bring the advertisement of resurrection to all those who were under the dominion of death. These "hells" refer not only to the dead, but also to those who live under darkness (pain, loneliness, guilt) and, above all, sin. "Christ - the Pope points out - enters into all these dark realities to bear witness to the love of the Father (...) He does so without clamor, on tiptoe, as one who enters a hospital room to offer consolation and financial aid".

The Church Fathers describe it as a meeting between Christ and Adam to bring him back into the light, with authority, but also with gentleness. Not even our darkest nights or our deepest sins are obstacles for Christ. Descending for God is not a failure but the way to victory. No grave is too sealed for his love. God can always make, out of forgiveness, a new creation.