“Sometimes we feel that a tombstone has been placed heavily at the entrance to our hearts, suffocating life, extinguishing trust, locking us in the tomb of fears and bitterness,” Pope Francis explained.
“They are ‘death pitfalls’ and we find them, along the way, in all the experiences and situations that rob us of the enthusiasm and strength to move forward; in the suffering that assails us and in the death of our loved ones, which leaves us with voids that are impossible to fill,” he continued.
These obstacles can also be “in the failures and fears that prevent us from achieving the good we desire; in all the closures that stop our impulses of generosity and do not allow us to open ourselves to love; in the walls of selfishness and indifference, which repel the commitment to build cities and societies that are more just and dignified for man; in all the longings for peace broken by the cruelty of hatred and the ferocity of war.”
Pope Francis then said that “when we experience these disappointments, we have the feeling that many dreams are destined to be shattered and we also ask ourselves in anguish: who will roll away the stone from the tomb for us? And yet, those same women who had darkness in their hearts testify to us something extraordinary: when they looked, they saw that the stone had been rolled away.