At the Wednesday General Audience on December 10, Pope Leo XIV highlighted the importance of reflecting on death - especially in today’s world that tends to avoid doing so - to discover the power of Christ’s Resurrection and thus find a new meaning for our life.
To know that death exists, “and above all to reflect on it, teaches us to choose what we really want to make of our existence,” the Pope said to the faithful gathered in St. Peter’s Square.
“The secret to living authentically is praying, so that we understand what truly brings the Kingdom of Heaven, and letting go of what is superfluous and ties us to passing things," he continued. "We must remember that our time on earth prepares us for eternity."
Pope Leo XIV’s catechesis continued on the theme ‘The Resurrection of Christ and the Challenges of the Contemporary World,’ as part of the series ‘Jesus Christ Our Hope.’
Death has become a taboo
“The mystery of death has always raised profound questions in human beings,” as it is simultaneously the most natural and unnatural event to exist, the Pope pointed out.
“The desire for life and eternity that we all feel for ourselves and for the people we love makes us see death as a sentence, as a ‘contradiction’.”
He emphasized how, compared to the past, where many cultures developed rites linked to the cult of the dead and their journey towards an afterlife, today there seems to be the opposite trend.
“Death seems to be a sort of taboo, an event to keep at a distance; something to be spoken of in hushed tones, to avoid disturbing our sensibilities and our tranquillity,” he said, emphasizing that is why many people avoid visiting cemeteries.
Can science guarantee that life without death is happy?
At the same time, he also mentioned how “many current anthropological views promise immanent immortality” and “theorize the prolongation of earthly life through technology.”
“This is the transhuman scenario, which is making its way into the horizon of the challenges of our time,” the Pope said.
“Could death really be defeated by science? But then, could science itself guarantee us that a life without death is also a happy life?”
Humans are powerless in front of death
“So what is death? Is it truly the last word on our lives?” the Pope asked. Human beings’ awareness that life ends at some point, in a certain sense, “‘burdens’ them compared to other living creatures,” he explained, adding how animals, for example, “do not question the meaning, purpose, and outcome of life.”
“Considering this aspect, one might then think that we are paradoxical, unhappy creatures, not only because we die, but also because we are certain that this event will happen, even though we do not know how or when,” he added.
“We find ourselves aware and at the same time powerless. This is probably where the frequent repressions and existential flights from the question of death originate.”
An answer to our existential questions
However, the Pope also offered an answer to all these reflections in the Resurrection of Christ.
It “reveals to us that death is not opposed to life, but rather is a constitutive part of it, as the passage to eternal life” and it “gives us a foretaste, in this time still full of suffering and trials, of the fullness of what will happen after death.”
Only the Resurrection “is capable of illuminating the mystery of death to its full extent. In this light, and only in this, what our heart desires and hopes becomes true: that death is not the end, but the passage towards full light, towards a happy eternity,” the Pope insisted.
“The Risen One has gone before us in the great trial of death, emerging victorious thanks to the power of divine Love,” he continued. “Thus, he has prepared for us the place of eternal rest, the home where we are awaited; he has given us the fullness of life in which there are no longer any shadows and contradictions.”
Only in light of Christ’s Resurrection can one be able to call death our “sister,” as St. Francis did, emphasized the Pope, while concluding that waiting for death in the hope of Jesus' Resurrection “preserves us from the fear of disappearing forever and prepares us for the joy of life without end.”