Pope Leo XIV dedicated his preaching in the general audience on Wednesday about forgiveness in the midst of betrayal, as a way of loving until the end that “is never useless” and that can become an occasion of salvation.
Based on the evangelical passage that tells the moment in which the Lord faces the beginning of the betrayal of Judas during the last dinner (San John 13, 1-5), the Pontiff continued the preaching framed in the Jubileo de la Esperanza and dedicated to passion, after reviewing Jesus’ public life.
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After heading in Spanish in his first greeting and blessing in the classroom Paul VI of the Vatican, the Pope explained that the offer of the bread that Christ makes to Judas “is the last attempt of love for not surrendering.”
“Loving until the end: this is the key to understanding the heart of Christ. A love that does not stop at rejection, disappointment, not even ingratitude,” said the Pontiff, who explained that “Jesus knows the time, but does not suffer it: he chooses it”, so that, despite the betrayal, “the most painful wound”, he decides to continue loving “instead of retiring, accusing himself.
This way of loving the Lord is done “not because it ignores what is happening, but precisely because he sees it clearly. He has understood that the freedom of the other, even when he is lost in evil, can still be achieved with the light of a meek gesture. Because he knows that true forgiveness does not expect repentance, but is offered first, as a free gift, even before being welcomed.”
God does everything to save us
Leo XIV continued his catechesis explaining that the offer to Judas Iscariot by the Lord reveals that “that bite is our salvation: because it tells us that God does everything, absolutely everything, to reach us, even at the moment we reject it.”
In this way, “forgiveness is revealed in all its power and manifests the concrete face of hope. It is not forgetting, it is not a weakness. It is the ability to leave the other free, loving it until the end.” This does not involve denying the truth of pain, but, he stressed “does not allow evil to be the last word.”
That the resent does not decide the future
The Pontiff also reflected on “how many relationships are broken, how many stories are complicated, how many words do not say in the air”, despite which “there is always a way to continue loving, even when everything seems irremediably committed.”
“Forgiving does not mean denying evil, but preventing it from generating more bad. That is to say that nothing has happened, but to do everything possible so that it is not the resentment that decides the future.”
Inspired by the gesture of Jesus with Judas in the middle of Easter night, Leo XIV explained that “a light has already begun to shine. And it shines because Christ remains faithful until the end, and thus his love is stronger than hate.”
Before the nights of the soul that we can all live as a result of wounds and betrayals, the Pope warned against the temptation to “close, protect us, return the blow” and encouraged to contemplate as “the Lord shows us the hope that there is always another way.”
“It teaches us that you can offer a bite even to those who turn our backs. That you can respond with the silence of trust. And that you can move forward with dignity, without giving up love,” he added.
Loving means leaving the other free even to betray
At the end of his catechesis, Leo XIV encouraged to ask for “the grace to know how to forgive, even when we do not feel understood, even when we feel abandoned. Because it is precisely at that time when love can reach its peak.”
In this regard, he shared that “loving means leaving the other free – even to betray – never stop believing that even that freedom, wounded and lost, can be torn from the deception of darkness and returned to the light of good.”
“When the light of forgiveness manages to filter among the deepest cracks of the heart, we understand that it is never useless. Although the other does not welcome it, even if it seems vain, forgiveness releases who offers it: dissolves resentment, returns peace, returns us to ourselves,” added the pontiff.
With the gesture of offering bread, Jesus “shows that all betrayal can become an opportunity for salvation, if chosen as a space for a bigger love. It does not yield to evil, but that it expires with good, preventing it from turning off what is more true in us: the ability to love,” he concluded.
More than an hour greeting pilgrims
After the song of the Our Father in Latin, Pope Leo XIV dedicated the rest of the morning to greet the numerous groups of pilgrims (up to a total of 15,000) that had to be located in three different spaces since the general audience was not held in the Plaza de San Pedro due to heat.
Thus, the Pontiff first departed with the faithful within the classroom Paul VI for more than an hour, among which he found sports teams, religious communities, marriages, families with babies and a long etcetera.
When leaving, he addressed the congregates in the shadow in the Plaza del Petriano, within the Vatican, to which he taught the apostolic blessing before entering the Basilica of San Pedro, where the Pontiff recalled that “forgiveness is a very great sign of love, of authentic love, and especially of God’s love for all of us.”
Leo XIV urged to ask for the forgiveness of God and forgive us among us because, he stressed, “builds peace and today we need more than ever that peace.”
Update: August 20, 2024 at 12:40 gmt+2
Nicolás de Cárdenas
Born in 1980, I am a Spanish and journalist’s husband and father with more than 20 years of experience in print and digital media, specialized in socio -political and religious information. I have worked more than 10 years in defense of human rights and I have accreditations in journalism and comprehensive communication. Since July 2022, I am a correspondent for ACI Press and Ewtn News in Spain, covering international events of the Catholic Church.