VATICAN - Benedict XVI at the General Audience: “Let us allow ourselves to be enlightened by the Risen Lord. Let us receive Him with faith and generously adhere our lives to His Gospel, as did the privileged witnesses of His Resurrection.”

Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - “This year, Easter once more resounds ever the same and ever new, in every corner of the world with this great news: Jesus who was crucified has risen and He lives in glory because he has destroyed the power of death and has brought mankind into a new communion of life with God and in God. This is the victory of Easter, our salvation!” This is what the Holy Father Benedict XVI said during his General Audience on April 15, in Saint Peter's Square, in which he spoke of the Lord's Resurrection.
After speaking of “spiritual joy,” joy that “arises from the certainty that Christ, through His death and Resurrection, has definitively triumphed over evil and death,” the Pope affirmed that “the Paschal Mystery embraces our entire existence,” and that “in this liturgical season, there are many Biblical references that invite us to deepen in the meaning and importance of Easter.”
Benedict XVI then mentioned that it “is therefore fundamental for our faith and for our Christian witness that we should proclaim the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth as a real historical event, borne out by many authoritative witnesses. We affirm it forcefully because, even in our own times, there is no lack of people who seek to deny its historical truth, reducing the Gospel narrative to a myth, to a 'vision' of the Apostles, re-presenting ancient and already out-dated theories as new and scientifically founded. Of course, for Jesus the Resurrection was not a simple return to His earlier life on earth...Rather it was a passage to a profoundly new dimension of life, that concerns us all, the whole human family, history and the entire universe...Christ's Resurrection is the foundation of our firm hope and illuminates our entire earthly pilgrimage, including the human enigma of pain and death. Faith in Christ crucified and risen is the heart of the entire evangelical message, the central nucleus of our 'Creed'.”
The Pope then cited the passage from the First Letter to the Corinthians (15:3-8) in which the Apostle Paul faithfully transmits that which he had received from the first apostolic community, on the death and resurrection of Our Lord. “Saint Paul first of all presents the death of Jesus and places, in such a brief text, two additions to the news that ‘Christ has died.’ The first added element is that He died ‘for our sins’; the second is: ‘according to the Scriptures.’ This expression of ‘according to the Scriptures’ places the event of the Lord’s death in relationship with the history of the old testament convenant of God with His People, and shows us that the death of the Son of God forms part of salvation history. Furthermore, it helps to understand that this history receives its logic and true meaning from this event…The ‘why and how’ of this event is contained in the other added element of Saint Paul: Christ died ‘for our sins.’ With these words, the Pauline text seems to harken back to Isaiah’s prophecy in the Fourth Canticle of the Suffering Servant (cf Is 53:12). The Suffering Servant, the Canticle says, ‘he surrendered himself to death,’ and took on ‘the sins of many,’ and interceeding for the ‘guilty,’ He obtained the gift of reconciliation of mankind amongst itself and with God. Thus, His death has placed an end to death; the Way of the Cross leads to the Resurrection. In the verses that follow, the apostle reflects on the Lord’s Resurrection…Many exegets find the expression ‘He rose on the third day according to the Scriptures’ to be a significant echo of what is read in Psalm 16, where the Psalmist proclaims: ‘you will not abandon me to Sheol, nor let your faithful servant see corruption’ (verse 10). This is one of the Old Testament texts which is often quoted by the early Christians, to demonstrate Jesus’ Messianic character. As Jewish tradition held that the decomposition (‘corruption’) of the corpse began after the third day, the Scripture is fulfilled in Jesus, who rises on the third day, i.e. before decomposition can begin. Saint Paul, in faithfully transmitting the teachings of the Apostles, highlights that Christ’s victory over death occurs by the creative force of God’s Word. This divine power brings hope and joy: this is the definitive freeing content of the Paschal revelation. In the Paschal Mystery, God reveals Himself and the power of the Trinitarian Love that destroys the destructive forces of evil and death.” The Pontiff concluded his catechesis by exhorting those present to let themselves be enlightened by the “splendor of the Risen Lord. Let us receive Him with faith and generously adhere our lives to His Gospel, as did the privileged witnesses of His Resurrection, as Saint Paul did, years later, in his extraordinary encounter with the Divine Master on the road to Damascus. We cannot keep the news of this Truth, that changes every person’s life, to ourselves…may the Virgin Mary help us to foster this Easter joy in ourselves and in those around us, so that we may become witnesses to the divine love in every instance of our lives.” (SL) (Agencia Fides 16/4/2009)