Pope Leo XIV teaches that Christ’s Resurrection transforms modern restlessness into hopeful rest in God, urging focus on eternal treasure over worldly pursuits.
Newsroom (17/12/2025 Gaudium Press ) In his General Audience on Wednesday, December 17, 2025, in St. Peter’s Square, Pope Leo XIV continued his Jubilee 2025 catechesis series on “Jesus Christ our Hope,” turning his attention to the Resurrection of Christ as a source of profound rest for the human heart amid the relentless pace of contemporary life.
Before addressing the thousands gathered in the square, the Holy Father made a personal visit to the sick assembled in the Paul VI Audience Hall. Shielding them from the December chill, he offered warm greetings and a blessing. “Christmas is almost here,” he told them, “and we would like to ask the Lord that the joy of this Christmas season accompany you all: your families, your loved ones, and that you may always be in the Lord’s hands with the trust and love that only God can give us.”
Returning to the square, Pope Leo XIV began his main address by observing a defining trait of modern existence: constant motion. “Human life is characterized by a constant movement that drives us to do, to act,” he said. “Nowadays speed is required everywhere in order to achieve optimal results in a wide variety of fields.”
He asked how Christ’s Resurrection illuminates this experience and whether participation in that victory over death promises rest. “Faith tells us: yes, we will rest,” the Pope affirmed. “We will not be inactive, but we will enter into God’s repose, which is peace and joy.”
Yet this future rest, he insisted, can transform the present. Despite immersion in countless activities—practical responsibilities, problem-solving, and daily difficulties—many people end days feeling empty and overwhelmed. “We then feel tired and dissatisfied,” he noted, “time seems to be wasted on a thousand practical things that do not, however, resolve the ultimate meaning of our existence.”
Drawing on the Gospel of Matthew, the Holy Father highlighted Jesus’ words: “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Mt 6:21). The true treasure, he stressed, is not found in financial investments—“which today more than ever before are out of control and unjustly concentrated at the bloody price of millions of human lives and the devastation of God’s creation”—but in the heart itself, the invisible center of thoughts, feelings, and desires.
Invoking Saint Augustine’s famous line from the Confessions—“Lord, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you”—Pope Leo XIV described human restlessness (cor inquietum) not as disorder but as a purposeful yearning for ultimate fulfillment in God, who is Love.
This fulfillment, he explained, is reached not by accumulating worldly goods but by loving concrete neighbors whose presence “stirs and questions our heart, calling it to open up and give itself.” Such encounters often require slowing down, changing plans, or even altering life’s direction.
“No one can live without a meaning that goes beyond the contingent,” the Pope declared. Through his Incarnation, Passion, Death, and Resurrection, Jesus Christ has provided a “solid foundation” for hope. “The restless heart will not be disappointed,” he assured the faithful, “if it enters into the dynamism of the love for which it was created.”
In a summary of his catechesis distributed to pilgrims, the Holy Father reiterated that the Resurrection opens heaven’s doors and enables Christ’s victory “not just at the hour of our death, but also today, right now, and every day hereafter.”
Pope Leo XIV concluded with special greetings to English-speaking pilgrims from Nigeria, Indonesia, and the United States, praying that they and their families experience a blessed Advent in preparation for Christmas. He imparted his apostolic blessing to all present and to those following through media.
- Raju Hasmukh with files from Vatican.va
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